How much money would you reckon knowing the meaning of life is worth? We asked popular Israeli novelist Etgar Keret about $9.99—a film based on his stories and shot in stop-motion—to talk about that and other aspects of the deceptively complex animated movie that he made with director Tatia Rosenthal (we review it here). It’s the story of a group of residents in a Sydney apartment building, all looking for meaning in their everyday lives.
I used to live in a Sydney apartment building like the one in the film, but it didn’t seem a likely place to find the meaning of life.
[Laughs] No. It doesn’t seem the most likely place where you would find the budget for a screenplay written by two Israeli short-story writers. But you find things where you find them, and not necessarily where you start looking for them.
Quite so. Do you find city apartment buildings to be, in general, good spots to find stories?
You know, I think it’s not the apartment building, but people together in close proximity that always makes for good stories. In a plane or Club Med or an apartment building. I think for me the fact that it’s specifically an apartment building is less of interest. Just the fact that these people lived so close together but lived lives that were totally different.
How much would you pay, personally, to find out the meaning of life? In American dollars, please.
Well, as much as I can afford. Which isn’t much.
Read the rest of the interview after the break.
You’re successful!
Well, as my mother likes to say, “All the money he’s made in books, he’s lost in movies,” you know. [Laughs]
Why are people always looking for easy answers to unanswerable questions?
I think the film isn’t about people looking for easy answers as much as it is the fact that people gave up on looking. Because I think that sometimes the yearning and the search is some sort of a meaning. And the difference between the character who wants to order the meaning of life and the other people around him is that you can say he’s naive and unrealistic, but he didn’t give up. He’s obsessed with this question. The other people are already executing their plan Bs and Cs—they’ve already given up on whatever they once believed in.
City life will do that to you.
Yeah, well, you live in New York. I live in Tel Aviv. It’s supposed to be a city, but it seems more like a town.
Why the stop-motion animation?
No pain, no gain. There is something about it, really. I said to Tatia [the director] originally that any critic who has a heart will never write a bad review on this film. I said you lived in Sydney for two years, shooting frame by frame. Even if you hate it, you say something nice. What I really love about Claymation is that you have this real material. There is nothing artificial about it. What I specifically like about that style is that, with Tatia, it’s this kind of hyperrealistic animation. You look at the characters’ eyes and you can forget that they’re puppets. And this is the sensibility that worked so well with my stories, because I think in my stories, all the time, you’re both in and out. You identify with the characters, but at the same time you say this can’t be happening, because what’s happening is crazy. You know, when you have a sex scene, and it’s really sexy and the sweating and the fucking, you know, and these same characters are three inches tall and made out of latex, but when you see the movie you forget that.
I identified with Ron [a slacker getting flak from his old lady]. Why are chicks always trying to make us dudes grow up?
Well, that’s the thing. I think with Ron, he was in this “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. Because Michelle has a case, and he has a case. If there was a correct option, then the story wouldn’t be tragic. But the fact that he wants to be connected to something beautiful from his past that makes him now an unbearable person to live with makes it tragic.
Ron had those little guys talking to him as the manifestation of his conscience. What does your inner dialogue sound like?
In the original story, it was his army buddies. But when we transformed it to Australia, they became surfers, or university guys. But in Israel, the people you bond with most are the people you serve with in the compulsory army service. So for me, it’s connected to my army buddies. I still see them, and sometimes when, say, my wife comes into the room, I feel like I’m in two different time zones. I get this instant jet lag. I feel like I’m being zapped on and off the Enterprise. Because, you know, I would talk to them in a very rude and teenagery way. It’s a different side of me.
So it’s best to pick and choose things you want to hang on to, rather than just always channeling your 16-year-old self?
I think that in most cases it wouldn’t be such a dichotomy. You could be both all the time. But from my personal experience, as someone who has many times tried to convince his wife to see the new Dolph Lundgren film, it’s not that easy.
Do you think American audiences will be put off by the gratuitous clay nudity?
The truth is that American audiences can be put off by such ridiculous things that I know that it would be unwise for me to speculate. I had a book called Dad Runs Away with the Circus, and this book was banned in stores because the title was apparently offensive to single mothers. So I don’t know. I think if people are offended by clay nudity… For me, it’s like the statue of David. If you’re annoyed by that, then what can I say?
Do you see your themes and styles shifting as you get older?
Well, the same problems kind of bother me now, but I have less urge to punch somebody as I get older. In the past, my stories were about trying to attack the people who stand between me and happiness, and failing. And now my stories are about trying to reconcile with those people and failing.
Writing about failures as you become more successful can be difficult to reconcile.
And that’s why I keep doing movies! Because this way I can always stay a failure. Well, when I published my first successful short story in Israel, for five years I stopped dealing with stories and did graphic novels and film and stuff. There is something about success that is frightening. It sort of makes your friction with life smaller. And I usually write about this friction. My older brother said to me, in my first collection many of the stories take place on buses. In the second one many are in taxis…
Upward mobility.
Yeah! And the last one took place in airplanes. I make more money, but what’s more difficult: waiting for a bus that never comes or sitting next to a German guy who farts for 16 consecutive hours on a flight to Brazil?
I think I prefer the bus.
Yeah, me too.
