Michael Rozek was at his dwelling in rural Nebraska on a Zoom name with Isabelle Huppert and members of a manufacturing crew in Normandy, again in November 2022. The primary-time director was to start with phases of a movie shoot for “Marianne,” a film he spent the previous decade making an attempt to make with Huppert and an Oscar-nominated producer. Rozek, now 70, had no filmmaking background, solely a ardour for the humanities and to search out folks keen to assist him make motion pictures. The shoot started as a dream and have become a nightmare after it completed.
Movie pageant rejections, no hopes for distribution, and a scarcity of curiosity from the press left a movie he made to spark debate and not using a probability to be seen. Satirically, the present destiny of Rozek’s movie ties immediately into what it’s about. For 90 minutes, Huppert talks on to the digicam concerning the thought of narrative itself. Rozek, via Huppert, interrogates the aim of plots and tales in movies, contemplating them distractions from the medium’s skill to mirror actuality again at us. The movie additionally confronts the business’s enterprise aspect, known as “they” and “them,” for chasing escapism in pursuit of the almighty greenback. At one level, Huppert actually yells at viewers to “get up” from their complacency to demand higher movies.
Rozek sees the hostile indifference in the direction of“Marianne” as an injustice summed up by a line Huppert says within the movie: “They by no means let you might have any of it.”
“I’ve not had a traditional life,” Rozek advised IndieWire. He grew up in New Jersey within the Nineteen Sixties earlier than finding out English at Vanderbilt College, the place he started writing articles for The Village Voice and Rolling Stone. He hung out in public relations earlier than he walked away from workplace jobs to pursue freelance writing full-time, with over 2,000 articles to his identify, and even ran his personal impartial publication within the Nineties referred to as Rozek’s.
Rozek remembers touring to New York Metropolis as an adolescent to observe motion pictures, though filmmaking wasn’t a profession selection he had in thoughts. A purchase order of a DVD participant within the 2000s rekindled his curiosity in worldwide movie via The Criterion Assortment, and after a troublesome 10-year interval of his life, he knew he reached a degree the place he had one thing to say: “I wanted to undergo these 10 years to study what life was all about, to dwell in poverty, to be underneath extreme duress for a very long time, so you actually discover out who you might be and what you wish to do. After which I discovered that I had issues to jot down about.”
In 2011, whereas dwelling in Boise, Idaho, with out a pc, he wrote his first screenplay on the public library and deployed a easy, persistent technique: write as many scripts as he might and solely ship them to European producers, a selection he made “considerably underneath the phantasm that European cinema was a lot freer and creative than American cinema.” Rozek utilized the identical tenacity from his profession as a contract journalist, claiming to have despatched over 20,000 emails to producers. He obtained a response again from Philippe Carcassonne, a French producer who’s labored with administrators like Benoît Jacquot and Florian Zeller (Carcassonne acquired an Oscar nomination for Zeller’s “The Father”). Carcassonne loved Rozek’s writing however handed on his scripts as a result of they had been, in accordance with Rozek, too American.
Rozek stayed in contact with Carcassonne and in 2013, whereas dwelling in what he described as “a 300-square-foot cottage within the jungle” in Hawaii, the place he wrote “Marianne.” The movie was impressed by the concepts of renegade impartial filmmaker John Cassavetes, so Rozek initially noticed Cassavetes’ spouse and muse Gena Rowlands within the lead function. Earlier than he even acquired a response from producers to his script, Rozek obtained a maintain of Rowlands’ dwelling telephone quantity and referred to as her up himself to see if she’d have an interest. His brash effort didn’t go over effectively.
“It was just like the CIA was referred to as. Every part went nuts,” he stated, detailing the best way an “old skool agent” chewed him out over the telephone. Rozek despatched the script to Carcassonne, who expressed curiosity in producing it, however the expertise of making an attempt to get Rowlands soured him on discovering an actress via illustration. Rozek requested if Carcassonne knew anybody he might hand his script to immediately. Carcassonne responded with one identify: Isabelle Huppert. “I believed, man, I’m beginning on the prime,” Rozek stated.
Huppert liked the script and met Rozek in 2015 to substantiate she would tackle the function. The novel nature of a one-character, direct-address function meant even somebody as linked as Carcassonne had problem discovering funds for a number of years. A price range of round $350,000 was ultimately secured, and “Marianne” filmed over three days, with Rozek remotely directing from dwelling because of journey restrictions amid the continued pandemic.
The quick timeline meant some elements of the script, like Huppert delivering a monologue in a city sq., had been scrapped in favor of solely utilizing one location. Rozek didn’t thoughts so long as his concepts weren’t compromised. “What issues to me is my script and an ideal actor,” he stated assuredly. “After that, you may name it your mama if you wish to.”
Manufacturing wrapped over Thanksgiving weekend of 2022, and Rozek locked his reduce by Christmas. The hopes of premiering at Cannes or Venice, festivals the place Huppert is a mainstay, had been dashed as soon as the rejections got here in. The movie ultimately premiered in November 2023 on the Torino Movie Competition, though Huppert couldn’t attend and Rozek didn’t wish to spend the cash to journey. And whereas Rozek provides nothing however reward and respect for Huppert in what he calls her “Brechtian” efficiency, she has not spoken publicly about “Marianne.” Once I requested him why she hadn’t executed something to advertise the movie, his response was succinct: “I don’t wish to converse for Isabelle Huppert.” (Her representatives didn’t reply to request for remark.)
Because the premiere, and with no prospects of “Marianne” screening at festivals or securing a launch, Rozek is now a lone crusader for his movie, and he isn’t afraid to make as a lot noise as he can to get anybody’s consideration. His makes an attempt to drum up curiosity for the movie via “guerrilla advertising” had restricted outcomes.
He turned to social media, repeatedly calling out the movie business and media on his X, previously Twitter, account for “suppressing” the movie, a confrontational technique he gained’t converse to me about (“it’s self-evident,” he stated). He not directly addresses it when he mentions a response he gave to somebody who requested what he’d be keen to do to maintain “Marianne” alive: “Something, together with making an entire ass out of myself, being keen to be perceived as loony.”
Realizing the story behind “Marianne,” his on-line antics learn extra like exasperation on the movie’s present limbo state. A movie designed to confront viewers and reject conventions of plot and narrative, “Marianne” would at all times be a troublesome promote. The best way Rozek sees it, given Huppert’s star energy and his movie’s low price range, the business’s aversion to “Marianne” is one other signal of their lack of creativity: “You’ll be able to’t make a revenue with that? You’re not considering straight.”
Rozek defined the way it all linked into “Marianne” and his ongoing struggle to get it seen: “You’ve obtained an business that’s taking away your humanity, calling you eyeballs and butts in seats, operating a weight-reduction plan of unreality towards you with no different probability of consuming anything. When a movie like mine seems, and so they mainly exterminate it, you bought to get mad, man.”
Whereas Rozek continues to surprise why, in his eyes, folks “hate” his movie, he stays optimistic about its future because the movie slowly good points admirers. A kind of admirers consists of self-described “distribution veteran” Nick Newman (additionally an IndieWire contributor), who stated Rozek’s debut was “already suggesting a serious auteurist stamp and flying within the face of typical knowledge.”
Newman will assist Rozek independently distribute “Marianne” throughout theaters in America and is at the moment searching for North American venues to display screen the movie. It’s a transfer that ties again to Cassavetes, who independently launched his movies, and Rozek hopes the movie will join with audiences keen to interact with its concepts.
Regardless of the tough journey Rozek has taken together with his first function, it hasn’t slowed down his ambition. He has different scripts he hopes to make, and mentions a movie manifesto he’s engaged on that pertains to his concepts in “Marianne.” He summed up his aspirations with a declaration one wouldn’t essentially anticipate from a filmmaker beginning out of their 70s: “My purpose in doing what I’m doing is to be identified earlier than I die as one of many best filmmakers who ever lived.”