Bigger splashes & Bigger Pictures

An Interview with Jack Hazan

As a new major exhibition of David Hockneys paintings opens in London, the time has
come to revisit Jack Hazans A Bigger Splash. Rather than simply following the artist
in his daily routine, the film insists on the limit between factual and fiction, wilfully
intertwining plot and observation. Through a constant game of elective affinities, A
Bigger Splash creates a system of passages and resonances between what is painted and
what is screened, an invitation to chase the truth of images in their transient evidence.


1- The film owes a lot to its fictional character rather than to observation.. Why
did you decide on this format?
We decided not to go for the normal question and answer interview method which had
been forced on us by working in the TV industry. This, we felt was a tyranny and a bore.
Further, it does not necessarily provide a true reflection of the artist who can present
himself as he wishes. Moreover, it was unlikely at the time that a documentary (as
described above) could be exhibited theatrically (we thought it unlikely that the subject
matter could be shown on TV and nor were we interested in TV) and this led us to
fashion a plot. The fictional character of the film is based totally on observation, the
starting point and not the end point.
2- The cinematography is very luminous; it seems to echo the kind of luminosity
one finds in Hockneys paintings from the time. What kind of preparation
did you do to achieve this effect?
My training is that of a Lighting Cameraman (Director of Photography) and being
heavily involved in documentaries I was skilled in lighting and lighting rapidly. I had
absorbed the new naturalistic method of lighting, much admired in the US and France,
and of course this was similar to the way David painted his portraits.
3- The frames are often composed with great formal precision, where you
trying to echo the geometry of some of Hockneys paintings?

Yes, of course and I am flattered by your words: formal precision. I was mimicking
deliberately the settings in Davids paintings so that it might appear seamless in going
from reality to painting and vice a versa and back. And there is often a right angle
perspective of a scene just as you would see in one of Davids paintings. But this naif
representation is also picked up from Warhols movies.

4- The voice-overs are never illustrative, they are morsels of conversations that
seem almost stolen, did you script them or were they part of confessions?

There is one voice-over throughout, that of Mo McDermott who helps with illustration of
the plot, such as his whining: When love goes wrong theres more than two people
suffer. This was written by me. The conversations were initiated by my presenting one
of the characters with a question which I knew would provoke a response from the other
character (I couldnt handle more than two characters at a time as I was also operating the
camera and would be stretched).

5- The camera seems to look at the paintings not in order to dissolve their
presence, their enigma, but to reinforce it (the splash in the painting passes
then into the action). What kind of communication, if any, can exist between
the film camera and a painting?
In this instance I knew I was blessed by the sort of naturalistic paintings that David had
made of his friends, deliberately placing them in provocative (to each other) poses. The
camera then had only to mimic this and try to elucidate further as to what was going on,
what the painting was probably suggesting. I can only say that colour cinema film loves
paintings and I love 35mm cinema film. But I would suggest that you have also answered
your own question.
6- When it comes to the people in the film, you often multiply their image
(subject/portrait, painting/photograph, Hockney and his images in the TV screen,
newspapers cuttings). It seems possible to find at least a double for everyone. Was
this dictated to you by the world you were filming a world of display or did
you plan this?
It was a principle fascination to double up or more the people and the places in the movie.
The possibility to do this became instantly evident when I went to see Davids
retrospective exhibition in 1970, suggested by my partner David Mingay. There were the
double portraits of friends and there were the swimming pools of Southern California.
They had to be real and they were. It then seemed just a question of executing these
endless choices offered up on what seemed to be a plate. Pragmatically, it turned out to
be much more problematical.
7- Is there an artist nowadays you could do something similar with?
I have to think that this is a one-off attempt because the notoriety of the film preceded us
and therefore any subject is alerted. Indeed we lined up a New York artist in the late
eighties but he was tipped off (we think by Henry Geldzahler) and faded away. We did
treat The Clash in Rude Boy but I cant claim that we really suggested what made them
tick or entered their vulnerability in any way.