Romain Gavras is one of the most controversial and transgressive directors working today, renowned for creating nihilistic and often ultra-violent music videos, such as M.I.A’s Born Free and Justice’s Stress...
Romain Gavras is one of the most controversial and transgressive directors working today and is renowned for creating nihilistic and often ultra-violent music videos, such as M.I.A’s Born Free and Justice’s Stress. Last year, Gavras released his first full-length feature Notre Jour Viendra (Our Day Will Come), starring his old friend Vincent Cassel, to critical acclaim. True to form, it tells the surreal tale of two redheads who try to set up a utopian community via an indulgent spree of incredibly violent acts. Here, the director tells us why Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter The Wu-Tang 36 Chambers changed his life, and how the son of a very respectable family turned into a self-confessed teenage dirtbag.
Romain Gavras: “Wu-Tang Clan’s 36 Chambers changed my life. I think it was the energy of the record that I liked, because the truth is that I didn’t understand a word they were saying. I was a 13-year-old French/Greek boy from an artistic family, and I suddenly started to wear hoodies and have a mean expression on my face all of the time. I also started fighting weaker kids then myself. I mean, how much more influential can a band be than to make a teenage kid from Paris punch a mentally challenged kid for no reason and scream 'Wu-Tang Motherfucker!' – I was just a very confused teenager I guess. From that point on, my opinions and views on the world pretty much followed this guideline: 'Wu-Tang Motherfucker!' When I was something like 15 or 16 years old, I was listening to the track C.R.E.A.M while riding a moped on a hill next to my family’s house in Greece – the most disconnected place from the atmosphere of the song. I was being very 'gangsta' in my mind and I tried to do a wheelie. I fell badly and was in pain, lying on the dirt road. I remember being able to hear the sound from one side of the headphones still playing 'cash rules everything around me / cream get the money / dolla dolla bill yo' but around me there was just dirt, olive trees and goats, which were all staring at me. Obviously, 36 Chambers doesn’t make me want to punch mentally challenged people in the face or do wheelies anymore, but when I listen to it, it still brings me back to the mid 90s and what a little brat I was then. I don’t know if the Wu-Tang Clan wanted the son of a political filmmaker to punch weak kids in the face. I’m not sure that was the message… But then again, I couldn’t really understand English at the time.”
Text by John-Paul Pryor
