Ms. Lacombe, your approach to portrait photography is often described as the unmasking of the subject’s personality to go beyond what people see at the first glimpse. How does that process work?

I am interested in photographing the person as bare as possible. This means that I do not want to arrive at the shoot with a concept or with an idea. I don’t want to put people into special situations, ask them to do specific things, or act a certain way. I try to do with a minimum of hair, make-up, and styling – or with none at all. Also, I put people in a very neutral place in terms of the décor. If I can I will use a neutral backdrop or a simple wall. I often prefer working with daylight.

Do you also keep the team around you as small as possible?

The team is very discreet. I try to stay by myself and my assistants are very quiet on the side. I want every shoot to become like the two of us are now: just one-on-one, looking at each other and having a moment and an exchange that does not have anything to do with any of the distractions or the protections that you get with having a costume, props, and everything. That is easier to do than to be just your bare self.

Do you try to get to know someone a little bit before you take a portrait? For example, Annie Leibovitz apparently visits people for half a day before taking a portrait or Martin Schoeller tries to pick music that he thinks will go well with his subject.

No, they are both very different to me. I try to have nothing and to stay without any preconceived idea or plan. I only exercise control by making the set completely empty and bare. This is also a way to control the situation, but almost the opposite approach.

Do you know immediately when you have taken a good portrait? Is there a split second when you press the button and you know you have made the shot?

Yes. Mostly you know when you have caught the moment. Sometimes I feel like I did not do well enough. It then becomes really hard to live with yourself, because you feel you could have done better. But often, as you live with the images, you realize that there is a moment in them and you overlooked it because of some tension or agitation you had with yourself at the time. But mostly you recognize it when it’s there.

There are some people that you have photographed many times over the years, like Meryl Streep or Miuccia Prada. Is your process different when you shoot someone that you know well?

Yes, it’s interesting and very different. I have always followed people I am interested in over years and I keep making portraits of them. That intimacy that I am always looking for develops immediately with someone like that. It’s a given, because you have the person’s trust. You are always looking for something that you have not done before, but by the nature of it being several years later the person has changed. Basically, I am not doing anything but recording what I see.

How are your friendships connected with your professional life?

My work and my life are the same thing to me. I don’t have a life on one side and work on the other side. My entire life is my work. I don’t have a family. I am by myself because I have made very strict choices.

What kind of choices?

Like, no kids. I am not so interested in possessions, either. So really I am either working or I am sleeping – there are not many things in between. That’s what I do and everything is folded into that: my friendships and love stories. I have always been within the world of my work.

Do you think your very personal approach is why many people like working with you? Miuccia Prada, for example, is known as a very private woman who rarely lets anyone take her portrait.

In her case our relationship has developed into a very real friendship. She is one of the people that I love and admire most. I get along with people who are reluctant to be in the public eye, but who need to be because of what they do for a living. It’s more comfortable for them to be photographed by me than it would be by somebody else.

Because they can trust you?

Yes, everything is very private. I control every image coming out of our studio. There is a dimension of trust in everything in the way we operate. This suits people that are very private themselves.

Does your subject’s profession influence your portrait?

I don’t think so. I think a good portrait is a good portrait. And there are so many different ways to do a portrait. For me this has no influence because I am always looking for the same thing. I don’t think I shoot someone differently if they are an actor, or a designer, or even a politician. I approach the people as people that I am interested in. I propose a lot of my assignments. I have eliminated a lot of people that I am not so fascinated by and I photograph people I am interested in.

But doesn’t it matter what they do, what they stand for?

Yes, absolutely. That’s why I don’t do fashion anymore. I was not interested enough in just physical beauty, perfection, and youth. I want to be interested in the person and what a person does.

The world around you has changed a lot over the years. Today designers and fashion stand for a different thing than they did 30 years ago.

That’s true. I find Miuccia Prada makes the most interesting product in the fashion world. I don’t see it as fashion. It’s more connected with architecture, art, and politics. For me it’s a whole and not only fashion, although of course it is fashion. My interest in fashion is through her, because she is bigger than fashion.

Scorsese is another person that you have access to like nobody else.

I’ve been so lucky to be, in a sense, adopted by Martin Scorsese. I am the only one who is allowed to shoot on his set throughout the process of filmmaking. I go in and out depending on the film scenes that I would be interested in. He loves what he does and he is totally passionate. He is a joy to be around.

You said before that you are either sleeping or working. Do you always have a camera with you?

Yes. I take pictures all the time. It’s alarming, really. I mean, I wish I could stop! I take snaps of everything, like taking notes. It became a way to look at the world. It’s a very different way to see life.

In Britain it was definitely a period of time where we’ve never really had it so good. There was the odd blip here and there, but in general I think people felt fat and happy. I think it was a decade of anesthesia in a way. And yet if you look at the music of the ’90s, it was the first time that alternative music really dominated mainstream radio and mainstream media. That was exciting to me.

Are you talking about rap music?

Yeah, in the ’90s there was at least hip hop and rap. That was rebellious to our parents. They were all kind of freaked out and wondered what this music was. An alternative standpoint had finally taken over for a very brief period of time, maybe 6 or 7 years of the ’90s. I actually feel like the 2000s were the least rebellious decade.

How come?

Now, my friends, people my age are the parents and the kids are all hipsters. I keep saying to my friends, “Where are the fucking agitators? Where are the young people in complete dissent with the mainstream?” I don’t see it. I feel like they have been anesthetized by Twitter and Facebook and what I call the “Like” culture. Young people measure how popular they are by how many likes they have on Facebook and how many people are following them on Twitter. There’s this whole culture obsessed with being liked! Of course there can’t be any dissent when you’re obsessed with being liked and loved and worshipped.

Was this different in the ’70s and ’80s when you were growing up?

When I was growing up there was always a group of young kids who would be provocative, deliberately disassociating themselves from society. You’d have mods, you’d have big packs of bikers, you’d have punks, you’d have all these sorts of youth groups marauding the streets and distinguishing themselves with amazing physical adornments. And you don’t see that anymore. Everyone pretty much dresses the same. You might see the one odd goth kid looking miserable, but I don’t feel it in any way. I don’t feel any real cultural rebellion.

People have always labeled you as “rebellious.” Is this a term that you identify with or was that just because of the color of your hair?

I could never really relate to my public image as rebellious. I just want to be straightforward. I’m not smart enough to present a fake, false façade that anybody’s going to buy. I think I’ve always been like that. I can even remember when I was a child at the dinner table with my parents and my siblings I’d be calling people out all the time for not telling the truth. I never wanted to be that kind of person.

Have people gotten more fake in the last 20 years?

Because of the omnipresence of the Internet I think there are fewer and fewer people who are willing to go on record about what they feel and what their beliefs are. I feel like we’re living in a culture right now that’s incredibly timid and I find that really alarming. People fear that they will be criticized or they will be judged.

You don’t?

I used to, but one day I realized that it didn’t matter whether people loved me or not. I was released of all that insecurity when I released myself from that hope or that fantasy or whatever that yearning is and came to the conclusion that I could be happy making music regardless of whether I was successful or not. It was just a release of concern about whether I was popular or not or whether people liked me or not. It was just irrelevant to me all of a sudden.

Are there situations that can still make you feel insecure?

When you go and do photo sessions, particularly for magazines, you’re dealing with other people’s expectations and that is what shuts me down. That is when I start feeling insecure about myself. I’m enough for me. If somebody took a picture of me, I could deal with it being unflattering because I know, yeah, there are times when I don’t look good. That’s okay. But when you’re dealing with the media’s expectation of how you should look because they need you to look a certain way to sell, that’s where I get crazy. They’re asking you to conform, they’re asking you to play a role, to be dishonest, to be something that you’re not.

And at the same time they want you to pretend that this is who you really are.

That’s the worst part about it. I did a photo session last year that was honestly so mind-boggling to me. They wanted me to be in the magazine because, “We love her, we love what she’s about.” Cool. So we go to do the photo shoot and I get ready and I present myself to the photographer. He loves the way I look. But then a woman from the magazine said to me, “Oh, we can’t have you looking like that in the magazine. We won’t run those pictures.” I thought to myself, “Okay, I really need to stay calm here otherwise I’m going to walk out.”

What kept you from leaving?

I didn’t want to create a scene. I’m representing my band’s interests, not just my own so I have to be cool. So I said to her, “How do you envisage seeing me today?” (Laughs) You know, trying to engage her and also being curious and she said to me, this is a quote, “You know, just that sort of tousled hair, that just-got-fucked look. That straight-off-the-beach look.” (Laughs) And I’m wondering, “Are you fucking high?”

Maybe she was…

I couldn’t believe she said that to me! I told her, “I’m a 46 year old who’s had a career of 20 years and you’re trying to suggest that I go on a magazine cover looking as if I just got fucked?” And also, “just got off the beach” look? I’m Scottish, I’ve never stood on a beach in my life.

So how did the photos turn out in the end?

I didn’t change or anything and they were fine in the end. They loved the photos and me just being me. You don’t want to be an asshole, but at the same time this is the kind of pressure that, every artist right now in this climate, but women in particular, are being molded and just completely homogenized so that everyone looks the same and talks the same. Everything has become all about the surface and not about substance. It’s an exciting time though because everything has gotten so beige and uniform that something is going to come along and rock our foundations. It has to.

I spent my time in school painting stuff and my art teacher said, “You could do graphic design.” Basically it looked like I could get a professional job doing what I liked doing in my spare time. I didn’t understand what it really meant. I grew up in Northern England and the cultural horizons were very, very limited. The only interesting, avant-garde visual information I was receiving in the mid ’70s was on a record sleeve. So, you know, you’re 20 years of age and you say, “I want to do that!”

That’s interesting because when we interviewed Raf Simons he said that the album covers you did for Factory Records similarly opened him up to the broader cultural world and helped him find the path he ultimately took as a fashion designer.

It ends up being an early inspiration for many. Whether it’s Raf Simons or Jonathan Ive or Wolfgang Tillmans or endless others. It still staggers me. Before they’ve decided that they want to be a ballet dancer or an architect or an accountant or a research scientist, the first shared common experience outside of the home is through this medium of music. And in my late teens my horizons began to expand all through pop. Not through a school curriculum, not through my family background, just pop culture.

What kinds of things did you learn through pop culture?

Roxy Music introduced me to the idea that somewhere out there was something called a demimonde, what history books referred to as a café society. I remember thinking, “I would quite like to find that place.” I began to listen to classical music because of Kraftwerk. Then, whilst I’m at art school punk happened and in ’76 there was a kind of coup d’état in youth culture.

A coup d’état?

The incumbent establishment of rock ‘n’ roll had lost the ear of its electorate and it wasn’t really speaking to you anymore. 23-truck convoys and huge inflatable pigs over Battersea Power Station weren’t actually anything to do with your reality, with your life. After Roxy there was a group called Dr. Feelgood and you felt something else coming, a kind of new authenticity. And suddenly in ’76 there’s this coup d’état and a bunch of kids come out of London and changed the order of youth culture. And then some groups in Manchester began. Suddenly, you’re actually close to it. Suddenly…

…you’re a part of it.

Because you’re just in the right place at the right time and you’re the right age and… weren’t you at the bar with that guy last night? Suddenly you actually became a part of it. One evening in a little basement club in Manchester with about 30 other people, I remember thinking, “Wow, this must have been what rock ‘n’ roll was like.”

In retrospect that was probably pretty accurate.

Yeah, that thought actually went through my mind one night. Formerly I had sat with 2,000 other kids in an auditorium and was just a passive recipient and suddenly by ’76 you were in the very midst of it. We were suddenly there on the ground and as art students we felt this responsibility, post-punk, to propose a new visual language for youth culture. There were 18 months of punk, the gates were pulled down, the palace was burned, cut up blackmail style, anarchic Jamie Reid, Sex Pistols, okay, fine. You’ve done that. Now what are you going to say?

What did you propose?

It seemed as if we were in a revolution in our microcosm of youth culture and we had to propose a new way forward, so I began to make the analogy with early modernism – Malevich’s Black Square, Constructivism, Modernism in Germany, De Stijl in Holland, Marinetti and the Futurists in Italy. So when I met with Tony Wilson, with whom I would later start Factory Records, and said, “Can I do something?” and he said, “Yes, we’re having a night called The Factory, do a poster,” I knew exactly what I wanted. I knew I wanted to quote Tschichold, one of the pioneers of modern typography, a Swiss designer.

That’s how you got involved with Tony Wilson and Factory Records?

Yes and from then on the visual side of Factory ended up being my responsibility. For instance, Joy Division gave me some elements when they were ready to do Unknown Pleasures and I was just allowed to do it the way I wanted to do it. And when there was a second album they came to me: “What have you got?” And that’s where the Closer cover came from.

What happened when Ian Curtis died and left behind what became New Order?

Stephen, Bernard, and Peter Hook became a kind of triumvirate. After Ian died, nobody took control of New Order until the ’90s. All songs were written and performed by New Order; they were nobody’s group. And by virtue of being nobody’s group, there was no reciprocal ego for me to address in the imagery of the group – it wasn’t for anyone and they didn’t really want to discuss it in person. It was a completely unique situation in the context of communications design.

Why was it unique?

Because it defaulted to me. In the real world of communications design, or graphic design, the work is about other people, not about you. In almost any form of commissioned work, the commissioner isn’t really that concerned about what this is about for you. They’re commissioning it, so they want to know why it matters to them. But the covers were about what I wanted to do, which was in some kind of weird, subconscious way about me and where I was going. New Order didn’t approve it, they rarely saw it. More often than not they would go directly from me; “Blue Monday” for example went directly from me to the printer.

Sometimes the band didn’t even see the cover before it went to the printer?

No, it was always, “Where is it? It’s late, it should have been done weeks ago, just get it to the fucking printer.” More often than not, New Order would get to see the covers when they were in the stores. And sometimes they liked them and sometimes they didn’t. So there’s this decade during which my sensibility, my own pathway of enquiry, goes out on a New Order cover a couple of times a year.

Where did you take inspiration from if you could do whatever you wanted?

I would just have to find something in me that I needed to do. They’re very fashion linked. They’re linked to a zeitgeist that I was picking up from many places. And because of the success of New Order, they go from this relatively small audience that grows and grows and grows and “Blue Monday” goes to a million or two million people. So I had exceptional circumstances at the beginning, but after such freedom I knew that general design was not what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to do other people’s work for them because more often than not the purpose or the meaning of that work was unlikely to support your own ideals.

Do you still do commissioned graphic design work?

Alice, my assistant, doesn’t like me using the word “retired” because it’s not accurate, but 10 years ago I formally stepped away from pursuing commissioned work. I cannot even operate any of the design programs. Graphic design “deliverables” do not come out this studio, or out of me and I’ve been able, finally, to try and follow my own path by not having a business to run. In 2003 I accepted that my future would be on the art side of the divide rather than the design side, but I soon realized that I didn’t really know anything about art.

Really? Some people would call your album covers art.

As a designer, you think you know about art, but that rigorous process of who you are and “why do you want to do this?” is not incumbent upon you as a designer. You know about art by looking in through the window, but you don’t really know anything about art at all. I realized that if the work was going to stand alone in its own right, I had to understand myself. I did work which I never had to answer to anyone about – but I also never had to answer to myself about it.

Have you started to come to terms with those questions since giving up doing design work?

I’m very pleased that I’ve begun to get somewhere. What I did at Factory and what is at the heart of what I am doing now is sharing where I’m at with other people, in a very inclusive way. I seem to be wired towards sharing my state with others. I quite like giving the work to people. I sort of want them to have it. Gradually, I’m beginning to understand that the work that I’ve done is about me – but in a way that it becomes about you.

Thomas Mars: We are really good friends, so we are happy to see each other every day. Even if it can be painful because we love each other. (Laughs)

Laurent Brancowitz: We are a bunch of friends and with all the crew it’s really just a beautiful family traveling around.

Even if you’re stuck together for hours on a bus every day?

Laurent: The tour bus is a very important tool to our happiness. We tried one tour without a tour bus and it was a disaster. We need our little home. But also you need discipline because this life can be very boring if you do it the obvious rock ‘n’ roll way.

What do you mean?

Laurent: It really drives you crazy because it’s always the same and it’s not very satisfying. So you have to have discipline to do things differently; not to be the slave of this life but to control it.

There are tons of people who would love to live the cliché rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.

Thomas: We’ve always had a very non-rock ‘n’ roll attitude. When you’re making something you want to feel unique in a way and when you do a summer festival or when you’re on tour it’s very easy to fall into clichés. We really want things to be different and we work really hard to do things our own way.

Laurent: It’s a matter of what you want to do. I am the extreme member of the band because I never go out after the show. It’s my rule. It’s just what you want to do. To me, the idea of living this lifestyle is so boring that I would prefer to read Marcel Proust the whole time during a tour.

There is actually a Proust quote that says: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

Thomas: And for us it’s hard to have new lives, new eyes, if you do the same thing every day. Those backstage parties and stuff are pretty much the same everywhere – it’s the same drinks, the same everything. The most important thing is to constantly seek something new. Nothing is worse for us than being satisfied with the present. We love the future too much to be stuck.

How do you cope with the fact that you are traveling all the time?

Thomas: You have another kind of routine that helps you mentally. We couldn’t live without that very special routine. It’s not like we’re traveling the world and being tourists all the time. There’s a purpose to it and a sense, so that helps a lot. I think that keeps us from being tired. When you know why you’re there and you are not just wandering around it’s really fine. We’ve never felt exhausted from too much touring.

Don’t you ever miss home?

Thomas: We miss our homes sometimes, it’s true. We just put on some Edith Piaf and cry a little and then we  can all do fifty more shows.

Laurent: When you travel it even gives you a new vision of home. Now we love France; when we were kids we hated it. Now we kind of love it like tourists; we love every little cheesy aspect of it.

What did you hate about it when you were kids?

Laurent: Just the fact that it was familiar, that it seemed so cheap. We are like sailors attracted by the sea – we couldn’t imagine living our whole lives in France. It’s just a thing we never thought about; it would have been so boring.

Is that why you decided to write songs in English?

Thomas: I don’t like sports, but it’s like being a basketball player – you have to go to the US. You cannot stay in France. The community we are speaking to and we are part of has this language and it’s just a convention. Just like Latin was the language of the Quattrocento, of the Renaissance. English is the language of pop music, pop culture. It is above nationality.

John Lennon said, “Life it what happens while you are busy making plans.” Do you find the process of getting there more fun than actually getting the result in the end?

Laurent: Yeah, it’s the process that is important even if it’s complicated and painful. There are moments that are sublime that we will never forget. And all the rest, playing live and everything, is just a bonus and we take it as a gift. Maybe we did the first album with the thinking of the reward afterwards and it was a mistake because there is no reward. The reward should be the fact that you’re making it and now we know that so we cherish it.

Is that why your last two albums have taken 3 or 4 years to produce?

Thomas: We actually never stop working. It just takes a lot of time. Everything you do changes you and it’s really hard to understand how every event in your life changes you or how you grew because of it.

Well, I’m an actor. I think that answers your question. Every actor wants to be the center of attention. It’s just a question of how you finally come to deal with that narcissistic, self-loving, desperate need for validation that is very much part of an actor’s psyche.

And how do you deal with it?

About a decade ago something went click in my head and I thought, “If I have twenty or something years left, I’m going to live them as real as I can.” Because when I was young I was very much about artifice. I was a very good-looking man and I had a lot of hair, but those things go away. And I think I’m a little more likeable now than I was when I was younger. A lot of people didn’t like me at all. And that is fine by me. The worst thing you can lust after is popularity. The worst thing in the world is to want to be popular. I can’t give you a recipe for success, but I can give you a recipe for failure: try to please everybody.

Sometimes it’s easier said than done.

You should live your life as you wish. Particularly in these years I have a much more “live and let live” attitude about life than I had when I was younger. I let people be who they want to be and I will be who I am. I am less judgmental.

How come?

I think you get to a certain point where you don’t try to figure life out anymore. There is no more, “What does is mean? Where do I go?” You just figure out that you have a finite period of time and you might as well use it in the best way you can, given whatever demons came to me throughout my childhood and my life.

Is that what made you want to write a memoir?

What made me want to write a book was the memory of so many extraordinary people in my life that younger people had never heard of. I’ve been very lucky to meet such extraordinary people in my life and I wanted to preserve my memory of fascinating individuals.

Was the glamour and the high life as good as you thought it would be?

When it’s glamorous and it’s high: yes. But you are absolutely and totally deserving of it because the majority is acutely painful and not glamorous at all. If you’re sitting in a tiny trailer for seven hours to do one scene because they have problems with the weather, you’re earning their money – and it is a lot – but that is because it’s a difficult life. But then a job comes along where you’re in Nice with lovely actors and a great director and you come out to look at the sea and you think, “This is a good one.”

The New York Times wrote that, judging by your memoir, “Frank Langella has slept with, been propositioned by, or at least swapped dirty jokes with a breathtaking swath of stars.” Were you always such a Casanova?

I was very uncomfortable when I was a teenager. I couldn’t look a girl in the eye. I couldn’t do it. I was shy in class, I was not a good sportsman and I was not one of the guys. But the minute I discovered that I could act, I became awake.

Have you ever stopped thinking about women?

Yes I have. There was a season and that season is over. The thing is: it’s inappropriate at my age to still be acting that way. I look at older men who still think that they are hot. You have to know when it’s right. And at my age, it’s not. I am very happy. I have what I want. I don’t have to swagger around like a young man. It just isn’t attractive. These days if someone is interested they practically have to sit on me, because I would ask, “Are you sure?”

The names in your book are prodigious – Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Olivier, Jackie Kennedy. Who are you star-struck by?

I’m not a star-struck person. When people come through the door, I don’t care how famous they are or how powerful they are, I look into their eyes and I see if that’s a person I can communicate with.

I suppose that’s why you were able to write so candidly…

Yeah, there is a certain healthy and respectful “I don’t give a shit” attitude that starts to come over you as you get older. I tried not to be damaging, or rude, or ridiculously unkind, but I did say what I thought about each person. Good and bad. I make a good deal of fun of myself in the book, too. I thought, “If I dish it out I better be able to take it.”

Do you ever regret anything?

Everyday.

Really?

Oh sure. I made so many mistakes. And I am not against self-pity. I don’t think you should disallow yourself those feelings. If you want to feel sorry for yourself, roll up in a ball, lie over there, and feel sorry. Then get up and go on, but do allow yourself those feeling. Yesterday I was walking around in London and I thought, “Oh, I really regret that I didn’t take more time when I was here for a year doing Frost/Nixon.” Then I thought, “I can still do it.” And I forgave myself.

I saw you play Richard Nixon on stage in Frost/Nixon. What was it like playing him?

I draw all the characters I am playing from my own experiences and my own feelings. I try to find how many qualities in that person are in me, then I try to exploit them. I am the character I am playing. Nixon was much more uncomfortable in his skin than I am. He maintained his sad discomfort in life until the day he died. I am relatively able to call on the worst and the best of myself when I act – I can be pretty nasty and I can be pretty vulnerable – and the older I’ve gotten the easier it is.

Are you going to continue your career in acting?

Until the day I die.

Yes, certainly. Growing up in L.A. I have driven past car accidents with a dead body that had not been covered yet. I have seen a dead body, but I have never been brought to a dead body to see it. The first dead body I ever saw was at my school. A bus driver had a heart attack. He was dead and he was still sitting in the seat.

In your novels your write explicitly about violence and death. Is that something you are fond of?

I am very sensitive and a nasty, extreme piece of writing can upset me a lot.

Really? Then how can you write the way you do?

At first I am horrified and I am upset. But by the time I’ve written all the scenes and they’re all completed I am a cool technician. We are now twenty drafts from when I first imagined these images and these horrible scenes and I am numb by that time. I just want to arrange it in a way that I think makes sense in the movements of the novel. I am sad about a lot of what the book is about, because it is based on a lot of my own experience.

Can you tell me an example?

Like in terms of how confused the character is, for example Patrick Bateman. There is a part of me in him. I am not a serial killer or anything, but I was definitely an alienated person in society the same age as he was. And I really thought the society I was a part of was ridiculous and it was full of shit and everyone was awful – and yet I wanted to fit in. I was 23, 24, 25 when I was writing that book and I was extremely depressed with the idea of society and what society expects of you. When I saw all the things people expected you to have to be a happy or a successful man I just thought it was a bunch of bullshit. But I went along with it anyway.

You were a successful writer in your mid-twenties and depressed?

When you become well known the first year is really, really fun and then you spend the rest of your life humiliated or trying to avoid humiliation. Everyone is so nice to you in that first year and then they all want to see something different. They want to see you get fucked up a bit and they want to take you down. It’s just the nature of the world. You can deal with it or you can fight it. Whatever. Then I realized how – this sounds like such a cliché – empty it all is. There is nothing there. It’s an idea. It’s a concept. It’s not real.

After the success of American Psycho you were described as both the enfant terrible and the voice of your generation. Which description can you identify with more?

I am comfortable with both. You can call me anything you want. Just don’t call me fat. I was never writing to become the voice of a generation and I was never writing thinking that I was an enfant terrible. I was just writing what I wanted to write and it was other people who decided that I was or wasn’t those things. I don’t identify with either one.

Have you taken to Twitter to show people who you really are? It seems like you just write whatever is on your mind instead of carefully curating it.

I just have these random opinions about movies or bands or what I am listening to and they end up floating on my little Twitter page and that’s it. I just have this abstract notion that I have 350,000 followers. But what does that mean? I never tweet at people. I’m not a bully. I just have these thoughts. A lot of people do insult others. I get those tweets constantly where people are like, “You are a douche bag!” “You suck!” or “You haven’t been relevant in years!” I get those all the time. A hundred of them a day. I’ve never done that in my life.

Well, you definitely have insulted people before. You even apologized for saying that Kathryn Bigelow is really overrated because she’s “a very hot woman.”

I did apologize for the Kathryn Bigelow tweet because I had too many women who were friends of mine, and my mother, and my sisters, say: “You really have to understand what you’re doing and how it’s coming off. What did you mean by that?” It was a week of being kind of annoyed. And you don’t get to actually say anything in a tweet. You can’t. What can you say in 140 characters? It encourages you to make statements and be a provocative person without being nuanced.

So what were you trying to say about her?

What I really wanted to do was make a statement not about Kathryn Bigelow, but about a film industry that is pretty sexist. It needs to protect itself, or feel good about itself and, therefore, makes a woman who maybe isn’t the best filmmaker into a symbol. And if you tarnish that symbol you get a lot of shit for that. She makes them feel good about the fact that they live and work within an incredibly sexist industry. That was what I wanted to say, but I ended up looking like a misogynist. More and more I regret the apology. The piece that I did write was chopped in half; it was originally much more about writing tweets on Twitter and less an apology. It was also about other things. So I wish I hadn’t posted it, but I did.

Do you often have the feeling that people misunderstand you?

I feel that I am portrayed in the press as being this person who wears masks. But I feel that I am a completely transparent person and yet people seem to think that I am not. They are unable to deal with my candor and my honesty. I remember a girl, it was for this New York Magazine piece that came out a few months ago, that was very shocked when I talked about this cocaine mistake that I made.

That sounds interesting.

I tweeted drunkenly that I wanted some coke. And I said: I am going to tell you the whole story and you can print it. I don’t care. This is what really happened. She said: “I am really shocked that you are going to talk about this.” And I said, “What’s wrong about it? Why can’t you talk about it?” She thought I was playing a kind of game. Because I was so upfront in talking about it, that she was not able to believe that I was telling her the truth.

Well a lot of people wouldn’t be honest in a situation like that.

But those days are over. We don’t live in that world anymore. Some people still live in this shadow world of non-transparency and inauthenticity. I think that world is leaving us, because of – yawn! – technology, social media and the overabundance of sharing. You really can’t lie anymore.

Because you will get caught?

Exactly. Young people nowadays post private things about themselves daily. If you look at Frank Ocean or Lena Dunham there is a whole new sensibility at play of not being afraid of who you are and showing that. There is no going back to my parents, where everyone thought that your dignity depended on your secrecy. That world is gone.

If I tried to order coke via Twitter no one would care because I don’t have 350,000 followers. But because you do maybe people think that you are setting a bad example.

A bad example for what? For being a stupid clown who would order cocaine drunk on his iPhone? I was setting the example of being a clown and a loser with my cocaine tweet. The example is: that is a loser. People should say, “I don’t want to be that loser.” I have never promoted drug taking.

Have you ever had problems with drugs?

I guess I was lucky in that sense. I’ve never been an addict. I could always deal with it. It was on the weekend. It was fun. It was never a lifestyle. There was always work to do and too many other things that I was interested in. And I really wasn’t interested in drugs every single day of my life in my apartment. I was interested in doing them for fun, because it felt good. And I feel no need to hide that part of myself. Just as I feel no need to hide any part of myself anymore.

None at all?

I want to be an authentic person. And I feel that when people react in an extreme way, like to the cocaine tweet, I start to feel that it’s a mission. I am not going to hold back on an opinion I have about something; I don’t know what the point of that would be. Because people would’t like me?

How can I put this without being too critical? I don’t have so many things in the fashion world that interest me. It’s probably because I am so deeply into it. Often when you go very deep into something, you also discover what it’s about and you understand it better. With the art world I still have a lot of curiosity. There are a lot of things that I feel attracted to and I don’t necessarily understand them and that’s what fascinates me. In the fashion world I know a lot of the brands and the designers and you start to be more critical and you start to have a very specific point of view.

But isn’t fashion such a significant part of your life?

The fashion thing is something I do, and yes it is definitely also becoming a part of myself and my personality. It also doesn’t really feel like a job either: it’s a dream or a passion or something. I think there are things that I relate to more than fashion though, personal, private things. Like my environment, my family, my friends, you know.

I’ve read that the first fashion show you ever went to was Maison Martin Margiela. You said it was so beautiful that half the audience cried and it had a huge influence on you. Why?

Because that was the day that I understood that fashion could also be conceptual and intellectual, that it could be linked to a certain kind of social, psychological thing. That Martin Margiela show was in a really trashy area in Paris and it wasn’t in a building, it was in a playground from a black neighborhood. The parents had agreed to do the show for the Margiela company only if their children could come and see it. Everybody was expecting the children to just stay on the side and sit with the audience, but they didn’t.

What happened?

They started to play with the girls and it was a very, very different thing. Before my perception of fashion was a high-staged Americano, you know like sun tans, boys, healthy. Martin was turning it completely around; it was like they came out of a grave or something. They looked really different. I don’t have that background; my parents are very working-class and I come from a village where there is no culture.

How did you find your creativity in such a place?

One of the first things I picked up when I was very, very young out of a record store was work from Peter Saville, the early things he used to do for Factory Records. I come from a village of 6,000 people, so forget about Berlin, London, New York – what are you talking about? – I didn’t know anything. So I picked up things because of the imagery. We have to think back in time – no computers, no mobiles, no nothing – it was pure isolation in a way.

You never traveled when you were younger?

No traveling, never went on a holiday. My life was literally my street. And I picked up records because when you’re young, you’re into the bands. And what were the bands back in the day? The Cure, Anne Clarke, and all the new wave things. And then suddenly there were these things from New Order, Power, Corruption, and Lies with the flowers and the wreath. I was like, “What is that?”

Is that how you became interested in fashion?

No. I was in a college, you know, with priests teaching. We were not informed about what was possible. Until I was eighteen I did not know that you could study fashion design or art. I really didn’t know. I already had my nose in the art world, I was already looking at things, but I didn’t really get it that you could study that because my school was a very different environment. It was the kind of school where they want you to become a doctor or a lawyer and that’s not at all what my personality is.

How did you manage to get out of that?

I got this book from these people who would come to the class once or twice a year to show you what the possibilities to go and study are. In the back of the book there was a half page on architecture and a half page on industrial design. I looked at the address of the industrial design school and it wasn’t too far from my parents’ house – I could get there with a bus – so I thought I’d go and have a look. I walked through the door and I thought, “This is what I’m going to do.” I saw all these kids sitting there, with cigarettes, it looked like such a different world.

But that was industrial design, how did you end up in fashion?

Within the first months at that school I realized everything that was possible – going to an art school, going to a fashion school – and it was in that period that the Belgian designers started to shape up and I was very attracted to that. There was a Belgian fashion designer named Walter Van Beirendonck and I saw that the way he was handling fashion was not just by making clothes, he was also doing presentations and masks and furniture. I was so modest to think that I wouldn’t be welcomed in fashion because I was in design school, but I thought maybe I should just write a letter to see if he had an interest in letting me work for them and that worked out. He’s actually the one who took me to Paris to that Martin Margiela show we were talking about earlier.

It’s interesting because it feels like this combination of different but related art fields was always very present in your career and in your interests.

Yeah.

How do you deal with your star status in the fashion industry?

It’s not that much in my interest. It’s actually something that I’ve found quite complicated for a while. I’ve always kind of tried to split it up, but that is becoming more and more difficult because I’m attracted to do things that have this constant dialogue with an audience and it seems to keep growing. Which is a good feeling because that means that people want to have that dialogue with me or the things I do. So it is kind of fascinating, but the idea of fame just for fame’s sake is something that I actually hate.

How important is the Internet in that dialogue with your audience?

That’s the question that is in my head a lot lately. I don’t really know about the long run. It’s clearly quite important right now – it’s so much a tool from this moment and from this generation – but what were the tools when I was young? The tools were television and magazines or a normal telephone in the house and now twenty years later those are all gone. So I’m just trying to imagine if this computer thing and the Internet thing might be gone in twenty years. It’s an important tool in this moment, but I’m still somebody who believes that a real-life experience makes a difference. I know a lot of young kids whose world is literally their sixteen square meter room and their computer. With all respect, and yes I embrace the young generation’s approach, but you miss a lot that way.

An actual encounter with an art piece or a fashion show is significantly different than seeing it on a screen.

Exactly. The dimensions, the light, everything is different. Looking at and experiencing a movie in a theater or a performance on stage and being there and feeling the vibe and also feeling the other people’s vibes – it’s a very different thing. It’s one hundred percent the opposite of what we embrace so much as the new communication. But it’s important because it’s what the young kids embrace very, very much. Still, I think if it was only that, it could mean that it will disappear really fast. At the end of the day we are animals; it’s very animalistic in a way. We like to have contact.

Talking about the new generation, you used to teach fashion in Vienna. Do you think it’s possible to teach someone to do what you do?

That’s a good question. I think it partly can’t be taught, because I think teaching is not just learning to make a pattern or learning to sew a skirt or whatever. Teaching is also having a dialogue with somebody in order to teach the person to create a thought process. I do find a lot of people who have an interesting, individual, unique, meaningful thought process, but then comes the moment that the thought process, which is very abstract, has to be translated or brought to an actual thing, to a materialization. That’s where a lot of them have difficulties.

What is your thought process like? Let’s imagine you’re stuck with an idea and you don’t know where to go with your designs for a new collection…

Then I stop fashion, that’s not possible. That’s the day that I die!

But I’m sure you get stuck every now and then.

No, for me it’s the opposite. I have to find ways to stop the thought process because the thought process is constant; it’s constantly everywhere. And that’s not to make me sound pretentious, because it sometimes makes me unhappy. It can keep you awake or you have it in the middle of a meeting.

Does that affect the people around you?

It sometimes makes people nervous. I’m doing things and at the same time thinking about something else and they are responsible for working things out from the thing that I said before and I’m already saying something else. They would say, “Calm down! First this.” It’s a flow. I’m not somebody who has to sit at a desk and think over what I have to do. I know for myself that the day I’m stuck for an idea is the day that it has to stop; that’s the day that I know it’s not going to work anymore. So for me it’s the opposite: I have to find ways to stop my creative thought process.

What are some of those ways?

I go to the art world and I look at all the people’s work and I’m so fascinated with the work because it takes me away from my fashion thing. That’s also probably why I keep doing several things all the time – because the thought process never stops.

My life is not a political campaign. I just write about what is on my mind. I just play whatever I feel like playing. Whatever is in my soul at the time is what I want to do. I have, thank god, enough people who are still interested in what I am doing so that I can go out and keep doing it.

Do you think music can still change how people think these days?

I think that it can cause reflection and discussion, which is all you can do.

What about in the past?

I try not to look back. I’m looking forward. I’m worried more about what I’m going to do next week than I am what I did last week. There are too many things to do. Looking back is for everybody else.

Well, let me have a look back. I’ve read that you refused to be filmed at Woodstock. Was that really true?

I believe it was.

Why?

That was a turning point when music was becoming media and music was turning into an industry instead of a direct communication between musicians and the audience. In my view, cameras had no place on stage. They could film from far away and it wouldn’t bother me at all.

Do you think music today is too corporate?

Well, I can’t imagine American Idol in the ’60s. It’s so different you can’t compare it. The idea that there is a contest for who can pose the best. They are all just imitating other people. I don’t know what that is.

Unfortunately that garbage works.

Well it’s the media. The media has got the whole thing. (sarcastic) But we don’t have to worry about that in the United States. We’ve got CNN. We have the best political team on television working the story, so we’ve got no problems. (Laughs)

So, what excites you these days?

Well, when I get excited about anything nowadays it’s either new music or energy. Those are the two subjects I’m most concerned with.

Your own new music?

Yeah, I’m always open to new stuff. I don’t sit and try to figure out what to do, I just wait for an idea to come.

And what excites you so much about energy?

We’re working on building an automobile that doesn’t have to go to a fueling station, that creates its own fuel. That’s really what I am focusing the rest of my life on. I am finished with everything else as far as I am concerned.

Besides music of course…

The music is great and it is nice because it gets people thinking, it moves people, but ultimately, to make a real change in the world, it’s going to have to come from energy. It’s going to have to come from physics and science. So I am working with physicists, scientists, and engineers around the world trying to build this car.

What caused that change for you?

I’m older. I’m an older person now. I see things differently. Some things that used to be important to me to write about, social things, are not important at all anymore. What’s really important now is not the politics of the world, not who is the president, but how you can get to the source of the problem: energy.

Do you continue to tour in order to stay in the public eye so you can draw attention to your other projects?

I don’t have to perform to stay in the public eye anymore. I really don’t. I am who I am and what I do on this musical stage these days really makes no difference at all. I already have all the momentum there. I am only doing it now because I love to do it. I don’t have to do it for any other reason. But I am selling a lot of the old cars that I own to make the money to fund these ideas.

Isn’t it a bit ironic that you used to have an infatuation with old cars and now you want to get rid of them?

It’s not that I want to get rid of the old cars. I want to recycle them into something that’s right for the 21^st century, that’s right for the environment, that’s right for the survival of the human race.

Like a classic car with an electric motor?

I want to have the most outrageous, beastly looking, gas-guzzling thing that doesn’t have to go to a gas station. But when you buy an electric car you have to think about one thing: what are you plugging it into and where is that coming from? Coal, wind, solar? Whatever it is, electricity has the advantage of being a constantly evolving source of power. So that’s a good thing. So if you are using an electric car it means that in the future hopefully it will be a cleaner source.

Even if it’s not that clean now.

Right. But I am more interested in eliminating the distribution channels of the energy companies. If we can eliminate the distribution channels, like the gas stations, then we can basically eliminate a lot of the reasons for all the wars that we are going to have. You shouldn’t need to go to a gas station for anything else than a Coca-Cola. It should be a rest area where you stop to clean your windows and your car creates its own fuel from something that you can get that is cheap or free.

Do you really think that is possible?

This is the 21st century, we are a highly evolved race, our capabilities are so great compared to what we are doing. We have been lulled into addiction and everything is built around it and you have to break out of it and think outside of the box.

It’s a very exciting time because it’s all new, everything is off the board. It’s no longer the cinema of the 20^th century. I guess we’ll call it cinema, but films will be made for these small screens.

Is that a good thing or bad thing?

That doesn’t mean that’s bad, but they shouldn’t see Lawrence of Arabia on those screens, that’s all. I think it’s a matter of putting things in perspective and place. But I feel we must always, always expose the younger generation to the films of the past, that’s the best possible circumstance. Otherwise culture, everything will be forgotten. We’ll only be dealing with animated films and, you know, giant communal experiences that are surface films – you look at them once and – bang! – it’s gone.

That would be horrible.

We would lose the beauty of seeing a film at the age of 10 and then seeing it at the age of 25 and it changes and then at the age of 40 and it changes even more and then at the age of 60 it all comes together and you realize, “Wow! This is amazing, this picture got better!” Where’s that going to be for the children of the future? Why wipe out the moving image as an art form that means something in this society? I come from a time when it did mean something.

Are you getting more sentimental with age?

I hope not sentimental. Sentimental is superficial, isn’t it?

More emotional?

I’ve always been emotional. It’s genuine sentiment I hope. You know, it’s just a matter of growing older and seeing people around you being born and dying. And having a child at a late age is different from when my first two daughters were born when I was in my 20s and 30s; it’s a different perspective. It’s time to think of the end, like in my George Harrison picture. Being a Roman Catholic it’s always been time to think of the end for me.

Do you allow your daughter to see your movies yet?

No, no. (Laughs)

When do you think you will?

My wife and I talk about it a lot. Kundun I’d like to show first, but it’s not necessarily the style even…  Or Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, even The Color of Money maybe. But she’d have to see The Hustler first, which is a better picture, and I don’t necessarily want that. But still, The Hustler you have to be sophisticated to a certain extent, older than 13 or 14. So I don’t know, it’ll be interesting to see.

Did your father take you to the cinema?

There was a bond between my father and I with those early films that I saw in the late 1940s and early ’50s until I started going to the films by myself. The only place I could really find a sense of entertainment that was not sports, fighting, running, laughing, going to the country, or seeing animals was in the movie theater.

What was it like growing up in the 1950s in New York?

I was around the working classes, not people who read books. The conservative working class, they had gone through the Great Depression and World War II and then there was quite an economic boom. The cars were getting bigger and more importantly the fins on the car were getting bigger. On the Lower East Side the only guys who had big things were wise guys. I mean, in New York if you’re working class you don’t have a car. In the city you use the subway or you use the bus.

That was the beginning of the Cold War. Was there constant fear of an attack from the Soviet Union?

You felt it and you knew it. The nuns would tell us at school, any low-flying plane could be delivering that bomb. We’d all hear a low-flying plane and we’d all be terrified. I remember going to school every day, it was very cold usually, and they gave us dog tags in case of an air raid. You got to school and you were praying that there would be no air raid that day. I was very impressionable, what can I say? I had nothing else to do, that’s who I am. I’m standing there in 3rd grade and all of a sudden you’d hear her on the loudspeaker: “Attention please, take cover!” And you’d jump underneath the desk and then you found out it was just a test. It was pretty crazy.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve done making a movie?

Pretty much everything. I find when I make a movie that I never realize what is really involved. When we were shooting Raging Bull me and my producer would say, “This is crazy! How did we get here?” But if we thought that at the beginning, we never would’ve started.

Did any actors ever tell you that?

Funny enough, it was never an actor. But Michael Ballhaus, my director of photography, turned to me during the impossible first shot of The Last Temptation of Christ and he said, “This is the way it’s going to be. It’s going to be a tough movie. Every shot is going to be working against us.”

Do you think it has to be like that?

Other people will say there’s a different style, a different way of behaving around films and behaving about directing, where everything is cool and quiet. Well, I’m not a cool and quiet person.

Sometimes scripts should be filmed as straightforwardly as possible, because to cut them up would reduce whatever is already working. The opposite is true when a script needs a visual idea to transform what has been written. But I find much of that comes to you in the process of making the movie; the decision is intuitive. I go with an impulse and say where we should or should not cut. And we do that through the whole movie and then we start again!

Working so intuitively, do you ever look back at a film and wish that you had done things differently?

It’s not like I wish that my movies were different. I make these movies because that’s what I’m interested in and that’s what feels like a movie to me. I just make whatever I am interested in making.

By doing that you’ve carved out a Noah Baumbach genre that you really own. In 20 years do you think you will still be making this same kind of movie?

I hope they don’t feel like the same kind of movie…

Of course not, but your work does have a consistent style.

Well why would I give the style that I have away? (Laughs) I feel that for each movie as I write it the style and approach somehow reveals itself. Sometimes while I’m writing it I have a distinct idea of how I want to shoot it and sometimes it’s only after I’ve sat down with the cinematographer and started prepping the movie that I start to think about the style.

How does an idea for a movie start for you?

It can be combining something disparate. With Greenberg, for example, I had the idea with the character and I wanted to make a movie in L.A. and about L.A. Then I put the two things together and that was the movie. With Francis Ha I wanted to do things in black and white, in New York, and with Greta Gerwig. These are the more conscious things.

You worked with Greta Gerwig in both of those films. What makes her special to you?

There is something both very naturalistic about how she comes at a character, but she is also very in control of what she’s doing – and she’s really funny.

I agree.

In some cases it was overlooked how funny she was in Greenberg. With Francis Ha I wanted to give Greta a part in which she could show what a great comic she is. Something Diane Keaton might have done. Or even going older, like Carol Lombard, who would have these roles or scripts that would showcase their skills. Greta has those old studio system chops.

What does that mean?

In the old days they would take classes and could all do everything. Like Claudette Colbert, Carol Lombard, or Katherine Hepburn, they could be in something totally dramatic or totally funny and they were great in both. They could sing, they could dance, they could do everything. Greta can also do all these things.

Both your first film Kicking and Screaming and your latest film Francis Ha are about 20-somethings struggling to grow up. Do you have a different perspective on coming-of-age now that you are older?

Kicking and Screaming I did when I was 24 and it was about 21 year olds and I felt like I was already looking far back into the past. I remember people back then saying, “Nobody really cares about young people.” I thought this was important because I was going through it, but people were like, “When you get older these concerns will seem trivial.” So, I have gotten older and I still have the same concerns. (Laughs) But yes, it was interesting to make a movie about characters of a quite similar age as in my first movie and have 20 years on them.

Do you feel like an adult now?

Do I feel like an adult now? I guess, yes, I do.

What was the decisive moment?

…it was just being asked that question right now. (Laughs)

Like you said, Frances Ha was shot in black and white in New York. Is Woody Allen a big influence for you?

I did think about Woody Allen’s movies with Frances Ha because Woody Allen’s movies were also in black and white and very contemporary. Manhattan and Stardust Memories are not period pictures. Particularly in Manhattan you have the grandeur of the black and white and the Gershwin music sort of playing up against a more intimate storyline in which, when you break it down, is really just people sleeping with each other and trying to figure out their lives. But something about the filmmaking and the approach to it makes it feel almost epic. And, ultimately, the concerns of those people are epic. That movie is a masterpiece.

A lot of your films are about the “epic” concerns of ordinary people. Do you think that it is possible to make better art by sticking to familiar subject matter?

Annie Hall, Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose, Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors are all Woody Allen movies and they all have similar themes and preoccupations, but I think the achievement of his career in those movies is that they are all complete, full meals in themselves and the pleasure is in seeing him and his personality in them. I wouldn’t want him to make something else. And if he did make something else it would feel like him again anyway, wouldn’t it? You just can’t get away from yourself.

Even if he would have made, I don’t know, an epic war movie?

Well, Robert Altman made so many different kinds of movies and they all look so much like Altman. He did make different genres. He made a Raymond Chandler movie, but The Long Goodbye feels as much like a Robert Altman movie as Nashville or MASH, which is a war movie. But they are so much him.

So, this raises the obvious question: would a Noah Baumbach superhero movie still be recognizable as a Noah Baumbach movie?

I don’t think they would hire me to make a superhero movie. (Laughs)