by Eldsjäl » Wed Oct 31, 2018 7:46 pm
Now I'm going to try to cover everything of note that Ralph told us during that event here in this thread.
All in all there were very few people there at the salon on that day the 23rd, most of the audience consisted of a couple of former municipal representatives and their relatives. One municipal official named Gunnar Källström acted as the compère for the two panels that were held there; the first being the interview with Ralph and the second being those representatives talking about how they reacted to the film's title and the events that followed.
Ralph began telling us his story of how he one day received a phone call about doing an audition for a feature film that were to be shot in Trollhättan, reportedly he was told early on that “There were not a lot of money in this project”, i.e. that it was going to be a low budget film. Before actually meeting the film crew or anybody involved his thoughts on what to expect were very modest, pointing out that Film i Väst was not this big household name back then that it is today.
He reminisced about some early rehearsal sessions, sitting on chairs in a circle reading from the script, and tells us that he was very impressed with the dialogue and remarked on how well-written he thought it was. “Every ‘uhm’ you hear was written in the script, I have worked with Colin Nutley for example and there we would improvise quite a lot with the dialogue, but not here.”
[I should point out that obviously not all dialogue in the film actually went completely according to the script, especially the 9th edition which was the version used when shooting the film, with some stuff being improvised or edited together to appear in a different order at the post-production phase]
When being asked about what he thought was Lukas secret that allowed people to act so naturally during some of the more difficult scenes, Ralph answered that Lukas behaved in a very prestigeless manner and that he was able to communicate to people at their own level.
That scene was brought up where Olof tries to console Agnes by telling her that he also had it rough in school but that everything worked out for him over time. Ralph mentioned to us that it's pretty rare for him to have lines that are as long as that particular one and that he also expressed concern about if he'd be able to pull it off. He asked Lukas “I don't think this will turn out too great, perhaps we should rewrite this?” and was answered somewhat playfully “Go ahead and rewrite it, if you think that you can do it better yourself”. Ralph was thinking for a while about how he perhaps could change some parts of it but ultimately gave up and said “Well it's good as it is, I'll just have to learn it I guess”.
They started talking about what happened that night at Guldbaggegalan of '99 but nothing was really mentioned there that weren't already well know before.
When talking about the fact that there are no shots of Åmål in the actual film, he said that he personally think it's hilarious that a feature that's this highly regarded and well-known with the title ‘Fucking Åmål’ does not actually contain any footage of Åmål itself.
He begun talking about some amusing encounters he have had throughout the years with people who recognized him for being Olof in FÅ. The funniest story by far in my opinion was that he in the more recent years had been to the hospital Södersjukhuset/SÖS in Stockholm and the personnel there had jokingly remarked to him that “You've just missed your daughter!”, obviously referring to Rebecka Liljeberg.
He remarked on how mature Rebecka was behaving for her age and that it was mentally draining for him to do the scene where Agnes is crying for example, “You have to really prepare yourself to do scenes like that, and maybe try to find similar things that have happened in your own private life that reminds you of this in order to feel the right emotions”.
The compère began to wrap things up and asked the audience if anyone had any questions. I raised my hand and asked Ralph if he could talk some more about his different experiences working with Lukas Moodysson. He once again mentioned that Lukas acted in a very prestigeless manner, that he kept an open mind and never tried to stand above anyone even though he was the director and everything, also adding that he was pretty hands-on during times showing his presence when shooting the scenes. Ralph said that he suspected that Lukas always knew that the script was something extraordinary and that he knew he had something big going on with this film.
Unhindered, he carried on talking by bringing up a fun behind-the-scenes anecdote about how they in Agnes' room during one take had to interrupt everything because one of the audio engineers [Nils Nilsson?] noticed that he was picking up snoring sounds, which turned out to be the owner of the house who was sleeping at the nearby room. They had borrowed that house from none other than the municipality chairman of Trollhättan.
[He said that they were doing the scene where Agnes “wakes up” in the morning on her birthday, but I think he possibly could've mixed that up with another scene shot during the night. If you've read Anna Westerståhl Stenport's study (that one book) then you'll recognize this story as it's briefly mentioned there as well.]
Once again pointing out that the film had a low budget, he told us that one of the people responsible for costuming wanted to investigate the possibilities for Ralph to use his private clothes in the film. This person [Maria Swensson or perhaps Lise-Lotte Book?] visited Ralph's home to check out his clothes and concluded that they indeed should do that in order to save some production money. So we actually are seeing him wearing his own personal clothes during the entire film. [This does not per se mean that everyone is using nothing but their own clothes in the film. Alexandra for example expressed discontent with Elin's choice of clothes, indicating that those probably weren't her own clothes. But it's reasonable to think that this also could've been the case for many of the more minor roles.]
Last edited by
Eldsjäl on Thu Nov 01, 2018 12:20 am, edited 2 times in total.
“Whatever. We'll go there and burn the house down. Come on. Please...”