How Does An Artist Avoid Clichés In Their Work? by Director Jay Silverman
Film Courage I heard you touch on this in another interview, I’m wondering if you can elaborate? That everything is a cliché and it’s all been done before? So how do we keep films fresh?
Jay Silverman, Director (OFF THE MENU)/Photographer: It’s an interesting thing because I don’t think a filmmaker sets out to ‘I want to do a fresh approach to food. I want to do a fresh approach to a romantic comedy.’ I think what you do if you’re doing a good service to storytelling is try to do it with the best experiences that you’ve got with the knowledge and knowing that people don’t like to be preached to. With the knowledge and knowing that ‘Oh I want to make a strong female character and it’s written strong but I’d like to make it even stronger because I’d like to make a statement about (in this particular case food).’ And I also think clichés, it’s part of the vernacular of human communications so it’s not a bad thing to make a cliché.
People have compared this movie [OFF THE MENU] to CHEF. Who wouldn’t be more flattered than that or a reviewer just reviewed it and compared it to CHOCOLAT. CHOCOLAT was a major influence on me choosing to make this movie because I wanted it to be a discovery. I wanted it to be warm. I wanted it to be rich. And I wanted it to be real.
It’s funny, there’s a TV show on Amazon right now that’s basically a mimic (and I’m not going to tell you the name) of UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN. And it’s all filmed in Greece and it’s unbelievably, magical done. It takes place in the 1930’s and I look at that and I say to myself ‘Is that a cliché? Is that an exploitation?’ No, it’s just another way to tell the story that is about place…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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