SXSW Film President Janet Pierson greets Tilda Swinton. Photo Credit: Jason Bailey / Flavorwire
The strangest role she’s ever taken: “Playing a corporate lawyer, truly. That takes the cake.”
On that MoMA piece: “It was… like a bloody living history lesson, because when I originally made it [19 years earlier], not only was there no Twitter, there were no mobile telephones, and it is interesting fact of our life, apparently, for millions of people to see something without being actually there. But I find that a very interesting aspect to that work, because the piece is about authentic presence, and the fact that there actually only is one body in one case in one place at any one time. And yet it feels as if things, there are sort of, there’s an addition now. There’s another whole cavalcade of the piece now. I mean, apparently I’m there now. And that’s real, that’s the reality. Apparently I’m there all the time. And if someone writes that, that’s real, isn’t it? Because don’t we believe everything that we read?”
What cinema means to her: “I went up to say goodnight to my children, and they were 8 1/2 at this moment. And my son, who’s a very fanciful being, said to me–I was giving him a dream. And he suddenly said to me, ‘Mama, what were people’s dreams like before cinema was invented?’ It was unbelievable!… His remark totally blew my mind, and it made me think what it would’ve been like to’ve been born before cinema, and how lucky we are, and how we must use it and nurture it.”
Tilda Swinton with Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Eugene Hernandez. Photo Credit: Jason Bailey / Flavorwire
Why cinema is good for the soul: “What it is for me is this amazingly humane opportunity to put yourself in the shoes of somebody else. It’s no more complicated and no less powerful than that. You go in, it all goes dark, and you put yourself into somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes… And that’s just mega! That’s so powerful! Even a painter can do less, because a painter, at one time, is only showing you one frame. But a filmmaker can take you into an experience, and an existential atmosphere, that may be a trip for you, it’s a transport, it’s like a magic carpet. So anyway, this is how I feel about cinema, sorry, it’s like really high-falutin’, but it also, by the way, involves Herbie Rides Again. It means the same thing!”
On the technological changes to how we consume cinema: “I’m just open to all of it. I think the drug itself is strong enough and powerful enough to withstand all of this. We’re still gonna want to go and sit in dark rooms and look at flickery old prints, and we’re gonna watch things here (referencing a cell phone) and sooner or later we’re gonna have a chip in our wrists and we’ll watch things there. It’s all fine. I’m up for all of it. I think that essential, existential transport, we’re never gonna not want that. I don’t see why we’d ever stop wanting it. We just have to separate the signal from the noise, as they say.”
Quote without context: “We always dance before our screenings. It’s really important.”
What comes next? “I’ll have to think of another challenge. There’s always bank manager…”