When Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets hits the theaters on Thursday, director and writer Luc Besson will have fulfilled a childhood dream of bringing one of his favorite comic books to life.
Casually seated at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, Besson chats with BSO about Valerian and it’s effects, how Rihanna blew him away, and his early beginnings as a bathing suit clad water explorer to a filmmaker who’s projects have been known to make people walk out in disgust.
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BSO: Not only did you direct Valerian but you wrote it. Is it challenging to execute a film when you assume both roles?
LB: No since the writing is way before. It was the first five years of me with my pen and ripping out the paper and starting again.
It’s like you are a cop. As the writer you are at home without your vest but as the director you have to get out of the house and put on your badge and gun and go out and do your job.
My wife (Virginie Besson-Silla), who produced the film, is a black woman from Senegal. She is this first black European producer and I’m very proud of her. She was really the bones of the adventure. Over the 5 years she was completely calm. Never up, never down. With someone like me who is a creative one minute I’m happy, one minute I’m depressed. It’s so good when you have one person next to you who holds it together. We finished shooting 3 days early and we finished under budget.
BSO: When you come in under budget what do you do with that money? Did you have a big party?
LB: [Laughs] No, no, not enough to do a party, but just the fact to be under is just amazing because usually you go a million or two over.
BSO: I’ve read about your childhood years with your parents who were scuba diving instructors and how a lot of your time was spent in that sort of mystical world of the sea. How much of that time inspired you to create these sci-fi films you’ve become known for?
LB: Going underwater is really like putting on a spacesuit and going to see aliens. It’s exactly the same. The fishes go from whale to octopus to sea urchin. The shapes are just amazing underwater. So when we are in Alpha in Valerian, and we see all these different kind of aliens, I feel at home. I feel like it’s the same thing for me.
There is really a link between the ocean and space for me.
BSO: I was a huge fan of a film you made 20 years ago, The 5th Element (starring Bruce Willis and Milla Jovavich). Did anything in the making of that film helped you with Valerian?
LB: Making The 5th Element was very painful. The special effects at the time were made by hand. There was no digital world yet. In that film I had 188 shots with special effects. In Valerian I have 2,734. So it’s another world and I wish I could have had these tools at the time because I would have done things differently for sure. It’s a classic now, but at the time it was not very popular. For people the film was weird.
BSO: Looking back at the cast with Bruce and Chris and Milla, the costumes, creatures speaking a foreign language, it had so many interesting components…
LB: I know but I swear to you at the beginning the critics were not so good. I went to a screen test and the scene where suddenly this blue alien comes on stage and starts singing classical music and I heard three guys say, “let’s get the f**k outta here.” It was too much. It was too weird.