Dutchman's Breaches - Interview

ArtForum, Summer, 2000

BD: Nazi propaganda films had all these really sweet-seeming people--

PV: Definitely. You know the shot at the beginning of Starship Troopers where they all turn to the camera and say, "I'm doing my part!"? That's straight out of Leni's film, where the one guy turns and says, "I'm from Silesia!" And then another one says, "I'm from Bavaria!" So, yes, I tried to give it that kind of feeling. And I don't really know why.

BD: People have a problem with ambiguity. They think everything's deadly serious unless Adam Sandler walks on honking a bicycle horn.

PV: Even the advertising people had a hard time with it. They had no idea how to market that movie. There was only one campaign that was absolutely marvelous, the one in England with these giant teaser posters all over town with the different catch phrases in huge letters, like "THE ONLY GOOD BUG IS A DEAD BUG!" They understood that sort of irony. But even if you look at the more normal movies--Total Recall [1990] and Basic Instinct [1992]--there's also a gigantic layer of ambiguity in those. Although it's more in the story, isn't it?

DR: It's a narrative ambiguity.

PV: Right. Starship Troopers was more some sort of "politicized pop." But again, I have to say it's not a political movie. It's not done to say "fascism is bad" or "fascism is good" or "you should become a soldier" or "you shouldn't become a soldier." It's more just my own observations, expressed in film language. Observations of any, let's say, imperialist country. It could be in the future or it could be the Roman Empire--which has lots of similarities, of course, with the United States.

BD: A few weeks after Starship Troopers came out, I saw an ad on TV for the US Army Reserves, with this GI Jane-type woman working in an office, and she says, "No problem, this weekend I just refueled sixteen Apache helicopters!" That's almost exactly the same line Denise Richards has in the movie: "Imagine piloting half a million tons of starship!"

PV: It's ridiculous, of course. And with those insects--but at the same time the insects are truly devastating. And then there's also some beauty in all the destruction, isn't there? You know the scene in Patton where he looks out at all those tanks that have been destroyed and says, "God forgive me, but I love this!"? (Laughs.) Somehow, that's also part of me. I love to see movies on war and destruction. And I could say, "God forgive me for liking them." Perhaps it's because I grew up during the bombardments in The Hague. And a lot of houses in our quarter--not our street, but the whole area around it--were destroyed. So sometimes I think, "Oh, maybe it's my youth, you know?" That's why that sort of thing fascinates me. Anyway, it's why I feel that movie is about me, really. It's about how contradictory I am, myself, and how ambivalent I am about all those things. I mean, of course, the Allies freed us from the Germans, for God's sake. Which was good. But, on the other hand, I still can jump into the German thinking and live there in my imagination, as an artist, if you like, Not as a person. As a human being, I'd just say, "You fucking idiot!"