An Interview With Hamlet Sarkissian

On paper, Hamlet Sarkissian's life story reads like the best movie-of-the-week ever scripted. In person, it sounds even better.

Sitting in a booth at Musso & Frank Grill, the writer, director and son of a prominent Armenian dissident describes how he left the Soviet Union, in 1990. The Soviet Union had yet to implode, and the KGB was hot on his heels. Thanks to an international human-rights agency he found refuge in heavily Armenian East Hollywood.

Sarkissian, whose Camera Obscura opens Friday in limited release, wasn't in town a week before applying to the American Film Institute. Because he was forced to leave Leningrad without a copy of his prize-winning short, The Road, he was told to come back when he had something to show for himself. He would continue his film studies at Columbia College/Hollywood, where his thesis film took first place in a campus festival and was added to the permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museum.

Sarkissian graduated from the AFI in 1996, with an MFA in directing. Between then and now, he's kept busy directing theater, opera, ballet productions, as well as short films. Camera Obscura is the first of his four feature screenplays to make the screen.

Set largely in contemporary downtown Los Angeles, the psychological thriller describes how an artistic photographer deals with the nearly constant exposure to death, crime and corruption he encounters while moonlighting with the LAPD. Further complicating matters, the photographer (Adam Trese) is forced to deal with the suspicions of his wife (Ariadna Gil), a ballet dancer who falsely assumes she has to accept work as an exotic dancer to make ends meet.

MOVIE CITY NEWS: Here we are, sitting in one of this city's legendary watering holes. How much of the mythology of Hollywood were you exposed to, growing up in Armenia?

HAMLET SARKISSIAN: The information given to us was very controlled. The only American films that were distributed were the ones that had some political content ... capitalism had to be shown in a bad light.

MCN: Was there some kind of a black market in western films, then?

HS: Every Soviet profession and institution had a cultural club, even the KGB. That's where we could see the best American films.

MCN: You're kidding.

HS: When I met Peter Fonda, I told him that the first time I saw Easy Rider was in the culture club of the KGB. There were two famous culture clubs in the Soviet Union. One belonged to the KGB, the other to the physicists.

Physicists were like rock 'n' roll stars. That's where I saw a double bill of Coppola's The Conversation and Champion, with Kirk Douglas. Then, that's also where I saw Wild Strawberries.

MCN: Was this in Armenia or Russia?

HS: Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Life in the republics then was very much like a science-fiction movie. The state controlled everything ... the content of newspapers, working relationships, the economy, housing … it was a constant state of fear and paranoia.

It was also at this time, though, that national characteristics were beginning to form in the republics. In some places it was easier to live, while, in others, it was worse. In Armenia, we more joyful and family oriented ... like the Cubans.

MCN: How did seeing these movies influence your decision to become a filmmaker?

HS: The Conversation had a huge impact on me, when I was 19. This was when my identity was forming, and I tried to figure out what I would do in my life. At first, I wanted to be a musician.

MCN: Was it difficult to get into film school?

HS: The only film schools were in Moscow and Leningrad. I went to the Institute of Theater, Music and Cinema, in Leningrad. There was VGIK, in Moscow, which was the only specialized film school.

At my school, we studied everything. They said, "A good director should be able to direct anything, even street traffic." We directed opera, theater, TV, film ... everything. By the third year, they would tell you which discipline you would concentrate on. Mine was film.

MCN: Sounds like the process Soviet athletic officials used to determine the sports young athletes would pursue.

HS: It was the opposite of the American way. Art was considered to be something only for the privileged.

But even so, artists were expected to live a hard life. The school's agenda was to make your life as difficult as possible, and only the most determined students would stick it out. The philosophy was, "The only good artists were the ones who couldn't life without their art."

MCN: Art and science don't co-exist all that easily.

HS: They were trying to detect "biological directors." People who couldn't live if they were weren't directors. It wasn't pretentious, though. People respected the students who were determined to be artists.

MCN: Please explain how you got the name, Hamlet.

HS: In the Soviet Union, people would name their children after heroes of the revolution. But, my father was such an adamant hater of communism that he decided he would name me after a creation of his hero, Shakespeare.

At the time, there was a Shakespearean cult in the Soviet Union. Believe it or not, I would occasionally meet other Hamlets. I've also met an Othello, a Moliere. In one class, I had a Hamlet, Euripides and Moses.

MCN: Easy to spot the kids with intellectual parents.

HS: We were raised on literature. Everyone would exchange books, whenever we met.

MCN: Camera Obscura likely will be described as "stylized." How much of the surrealistic, neo-noir look comes from your background?

HS: Style is your own individuality … it's within you. No one can be taught style. It can be taught out of you, though.

The way I'm evolving - and this is only my first film - is like a combination of the Russian and American schools, meeting in me.

MCN: So, what did you bring with you from Russia?

HS: In Russian, the theory of montage - editing -- is such a fundamental part of filmmaking. You wouldn't start to shoot a film, unless you had a concept of how you were going to edit it. Plus, you had to have a concept of the theory behind your work. You had to know how you were going to make your film breathe.

MCN: One of the conceits of your film is that the photographer is so traumatized by his constant exposure to the ugliness of death that he starts to re-arrange the bodies into tableaux.

HS: We all loved the surrealists and expressionists. I loved Bunuel. You couldn't tell your thoughts in a straightforward manner.

MCN: That explains your Last Supper scene.

HS: I wanted to make a film about an artist who rejects death, just as I rejected my father's suicide. I knew quite a few people who had a death wish. I wanted to know how does it affect their relationship with their families. I wanted to know how love could survive ... Death is not the end of love. How does it survive?

MCN: What was it like going from Leningrad to the Armenian enclaves of East Hollywood and, later, Glendale.

HS: When I moved to Glendale, the city was celebrating its 50th anniversary. I came from a town that was 3,000 years old. The city was younger than my mother.

MCN: So, "culture shock" doesn't quite cover it?

HS: In Russia, art was our only escape. Here, it wasn't anything but a business. I hadn't heard the word, "box office," until I came here. But, coming here was my dream and it was what kept me going.

MCN: And artistically?

HS: In Hollywood, I learned, everything is about sex and violence. In Russia, everything was life and death. We were obsessed with these things, just like Dostoevsky.

MCN: How did you make it out of Russia, considering your father was a dissident?

HS: I didn't finish my senior year. My father was a political dissident. He spent 18 years in a KGB prison. I was brought here through the program, International Institute of Human Rights. I was a political refugee, so I got a green card immediately. The Soviet government wanted my dad's archives, but I was smuggling them out, bit by bit.

MCN: Your father never envisioned a time when the Soviet Union wouldn't exist?

HS: No. He gave up. He instructed me to move to the United States. He wanted future generations of our family to be raised in freedom.

MCN: You've been back?

HS: Yes, last year, for the first time. Because of Soviet decadence, Russia was in ruins, although Armenia was faring better than most places.

MCN: How did the Spanish actress, Ariadna Gil, come to be in Camera Obscura?

HS: Literally, I found her in a video store. Originally, the part was written for a Mexican actress. But, in my auditions, I found them to be very melodramatic, so I changed it to a European.

I was in a place called Video Journey, in Silver Lake, and I asked the people who worked there for recommendations on actresses from Europe. They pointed out a fellow named Carlos, who was a year behind me at AFI. He handed me a cassette of Belle Epoque, and told me to pay attention to Gil.

We sent her a script, but heard back that she wasn't interested.

MCN: So, what prompted her to change her mind?

HS: Another Spanish student I knew had just come back from Spain, and he asked how the movie was doing. He said he would check with Ariadna when he returned to Spain.

Three weeks later, she called me and apologized. She said she never read the scripts her agent sent her from here, because they were so lousy. Ariadna was so supportive and generous. Whenever we faced a problem, she would tell the producers she would take care of it and not to worry.

MCN: Working on something new?

HS: Two screenplays. One is a love story set on a cruise ship. The other is a social drama, set in L.A.

-- September 25, 2003