An Emotional Luc Besson Gets Rapturous Reception At Venice Presser For ‘DogMan’: “The Only Two Things That Can Save You Are Love And Art, Definitely Not Money”
31.08.2023 - 13:15
/ deadline.com
An emotional Luc Besson and his actors Caleb Landry Jones and Jonica T. Gibbs got a rapturous reception at the press conference for their Venice Film Festival movie DogMan.
The filmmaker and lead Landry Jones were applauded on multiple occasions, with one journalist moved to tears when asking her question.
The film is being billed by some as a comeback movie for Fifth Element and Leon director Besson who has had a bumpy few years after high-profile box office failure Valerian, the demise of his French studio EuropaCorp and a long-running legal entanglement relating to a rape allegation, of which he was recently cleared.
“The only two things that can save you are love and art, definitely not money. When you have both you’re lucky,” the filmmaker told the audience.
At one stage, the director thanked his actors and producer wife Virginie Besson-Silla before himself fighting back tears. The filmmaker was on self-deprecating form, saying “I’m not a specialist in cinema”.
Speaking of his method and how he cast Landry Jones, the filmmaker said he wrote to “escape the world”: “I’m very proud of my freedom. I wake up, start writing at 5am, and no one can stop me. I leave the script to the side for a couple of weeks. My first fear [about DogMan] was ‘who is gonna play that’. I feared I wouldn’t find an actor crazy enough to do that.”
In a surreal turn, Landry Jones spent the entire press conference answering questions with a Scottish accent in preparation for his next role in which he plays a Scotsman. You can read our exclusive interview with Landry Jones here.
Besson described the versatile actor as a “chameleon”. In the film, Landry Jones plays a tormented young man who was abused as a child and who finds salvation through