http://www.zap2it.com/movies/movies/spotlight/story/0,1259,---3481,00.html

Zap 2 It  2000-09-29

By Mike Szymanski


"Björk Chats About Her Dark Musical"


She glides into the room a bit shy, a bit child-like, swaying, almost 
dancing. There's more behind her gray eyes than a carefree la-dee-da 
attitude. She's smart; some say a genius. She's strong-willed; some say 
cunning. But ultimately, she's innocent.

Björk is 34, but she comes across as girlish as the days when this 
Iceland-born singing sensation released her first album at only 11.

She smiles shyly as she waltzes in, as if a new tune is already forming 
in her head and it's infecting her every move. She carries a glittery 
silver koala bear, which opens into a purse. She wears a fist-sized 
paper pineapple, like something you'd get in a fancy Mai Tai, and it's 
pinned on her otherwise-conservative gray dress. Her hair is long and 
wavy, hanging past her shoulders, and her eyes are circled with light 
red eyeshadow.

This isn't the dowdy, pasty-faced single mother named Selma she portrays 
in her first movie tole in Dancer in the Dark, which opens wide in 
theaters Sept. 29. But, the internal, cerebral, withdrawn Selma seems to 
capture a lot of what is the real Björk.

She giggles and leans over to whisper in an elfish voice, "I couldn't 
bare to see myself in the movie, but I told them I didn't care how I 
looked. Selma would not have worn any make-up at all. I have no visual 
vanity, really, about myself. If I should care how I looked then I would 
be running screaming from the theater when I saw how I came across."

Björk comes across as an enigma. Critics have been unsure whether to 
praise or condemn her performance, the New York Times predicts audiences 
will either love or hate the strange musical about a woman wrongly 
convicted to death row. Her co-stars smile and wince when they're asked 
about working with her. Not even the mysterious Catherine Deneuve gets 
her.

"We worked closely together, but I wouldn't say we are friends, she's--"
hesitates Deneuve, who plays her best friend in the film. "Well, we 
live in different countries, and we speak different languages." 

Odd, off-beat, quirky, sweet. Any of those words could describe her, but 
they're not enough. She's been reported to be a bit difficult, too.

But Björk doesn't come across at all like the hellion she's been 
portrayed as in what she calls the "gutter press." She supposedly 
disappeared from the set during dramatic moments in filming and sparked 
fights with director Lars von Trier. She's giving interviews now, she 
says, to stop the rumors. 

"I only left once, and it wasn't like I wasn't going to come back," 
Björk explains. "I was protecting my music, that's what it was all 
about."

She talks about her songs as if they're her children. Ironically, she 
protects her music much like Selma protects her only son in the movie. 

After the film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, she was supposed 
to do post-production work on the music for nine months and have control 
of the songs she wrote for the film. The producers balked. She walked.

"I was supposed to have the final mix, and they said they couldn't sign 
the papers that way. And they couldn't agree to it," Björk says in her 
small voice. "What I was asking for was something to protect my music, 
it had nothing to do with the film."

She spent a year of her life on the project. As the director instructed, 
she wrote eight minutes of music for each song. Many songs were cut to 
four minutes, and she felt some of the best parts were cut. She didn't 
like that.

"I don't mind being edited. I don't mind collaborating. but to have the 
heart cut out, I can't do that after 20 years of doing music," says 
Björk, a former member of the pop rock band The Sugarcubes who has 
released three solo albums since their break-up.

"I'm very anal, eh?" she admits, looking direct as she tries to explain 
herself. "I know three solo albums can make you quite narcissistic. I 
have to let the music flow out of me. If you want to control it, you've 
got a problem. It's much bigger than you. And if you want to control it, 
you're just being an arrogant cunt, aren't you?"

Her music in the film is haunting, devastating, and a choreographer for 
some of Madonna's most famous videos, Vincent Patterson, says he tried 
to incorporate the quirky, languid moves and moodiness of Björk herself 
into the dance sequences. The magical and strange musical numbers are 
set in a working pot-making factory, a courtroom, a prison around a 
hangman's noose and on a moving train.

"This is pure Björk, and I tried to get the dance sequences to work for 
her," says Patterson, who not only dealt with the more than 100 cameras 
on the set, but also acted as a drama teacher in the movie. "The 
movements didn't have to be precise. In fact, if they were precise, it 
wouldn't work."

Joel Grey, best known for Cabaret, has fond and unusual memories of the 
movie as well. 

"I recorded one of my songs in a hotel room with Björk sitting on the 
edge of the bed, and I had one foot in the shower because there was no 
room with all the equipment," says Grey. "And I thought that for sure we 
were going to do it again in the studio, but we didn't. That was what 
they used in the movie!"

Björk says she got advice from Grey and Deneuve, and likened working 
with the superstars as "jumping off a cliff." She also says she doesn't 
want to act again.

"My music is what I do best. It's not like I have it all planned, but I 
don't know if I want to act again," says Björk, who won a Best Actress 
honor at Cannes and is already hearing buzz of an Oscar nomination. "I 
appreciate all the praise, but I really can't relate to it. I watch it 
and go 'yecch.' It's emotional to watch the film. I was very emotional 
when I read the script." 

Her close-knit family suggested she not do the movie because it sounded 
so strange. She felt compelled to do it, though, and filming it made her 
more raw emotionally.

"I was bad before, right? I would be in the underground, the subway, or 
at an airport and see people kissing or saying good-bye, and I would 
cry," Björk smiles. "Now, I'm 10 times worse."

And there was a day when Björk would never read reviews. She's changing 
now, opening up more to the world - to its criticisms and praise. 

"People can write the review from hell about me, and I never used to 
read reviews, so it wouldn't bother me," Björk smiles shyly. "But the 
reality is that even the worst review can't be as hard as I am on 
myself. I'm 50 times worse on myself."