In Memoriam - Krzysztof Kieslowski To Smoke and Drink in L.A. Premiere, June 1996 By Harvey Weinstein He drank too much and smoked too much, he was proud, arrogant, entertainingly cynical - in other words, my kind of guy. He was also one of the world's great directors. The first time I heard of Krzysztof Kieslowski was in 1990, when Trea Hoving, our head of acquisitions at Miramax, told me I had to see The Decalogue, a ten-hour miniseries made for Polish TV and based on the Ten Commandments. The thought of seeing ten hours of Polish TV and going to London to do it seemed about as appealing as going to the dentist. But Trea was persistent and I found myself in a screening room in London with two six-packs of Diet Coke and one of those boring British pickle-and-cheese sandwiches. Ten hours later, I had had my sense of cinema rearranged. I walked out of the room both devastated and euphoric, having just run the gauntlet of every emotion. I suppose if you wanted to summarize the theme of this man's career in two words, they would be human nature. Although he lived in a world permeated by politics, Krzysztof’s films were always about the human condition. In the spring of 1991, I saw ten minutes of footage from The Double Life of Veronique, read the script, and bought the movie. I saw the completed movie in Paris three months later. and met Kieslowski for the first time. The film was one of the most romantic I'd ever seen. Meeting him, I first noticed that he wore the mask of European cool; I later learned that that mask hid a huge reservoir of compassion. I also discovered that the man whom those around me revered with awe as a cinematic genius, and who often appeared stubborn and arrogant, could also be warm, honest, and down-to-earth. And while his work was touched by the divine, the man himself was a total pragmatist. Most important, he introduced me to Polish vodka, which he swore was better than Russian. But while I loved The Double Life of Veronique, I just didn't get the ending. Later on, in Cannes. where the film premiered, none of the highbrow critics I asked, nor the so-called intellectuals on my staff, could explain to me what the freeze on Veronique's hand as she touches a tree meant. So I did the unthinkable. When he came to New York for the opening night of the New York Film Festival, I asked the master what he was trying to say. Expecting some revelation of great profundity, I got simplicity itself: Veronique has had a really bad day and is going home to Daddv. Now I knew Krzysztof was not trying to do one of those parlor-game endings that you scratch your head at trying to figure out what the director is trying to say, or break your hand patting yourself on the back for being so smart that you figured it out. So I committed heresy. I asked Krzysztof to change the ending to make his intention a little clearer to American audiences. He said he would consider it. This was Krzysztof Kieslowski, however, and even I didn't want to press the issue too hard. Then, the morning after the film screened at the festival, I got a phone call. It was Krzysztof: "Come over right away. I want to change the ending. they don't get it." He'd quizzed some of the guests at the party after the screening and realized that if the Fifth Avenue crowd didn't get his ending, it certainly wasn't going to play in Peoria. We Sat in a hotel room and Krzysztof drew storyboards for me on hotel stationery of the changes he wanted to make. We brought in the footage from Poland and, using Krzysztof’s storvboards, made the changes. We promoted the hell out of the film, and, despite a bad review in The New York Times and an even worse review in the Los Angeles Times from Peter Rainer, who compared the film to a perfume commercial, it grossed $2 million and won several critics awards and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Film. Krzysztof had his first hit in America. Quentin Tarantino had seen The Double Life of Veronique at the Cannes Film Festival when he was there with Reservoir Dogs, and he wrote the part of the boxer's girlfriend in Pulp Fiction (eventually played by Maria de Medeiros) for Irene Jacob, the young French actress Krzysztof had used as his lead. Later, Quentin asked me to approach Irene about taking the role. She was flattered, but she had already made a commitment to be in a trilogy Krzysztof was working on. That was the first I heard about this dazzling series of films. Trea and I read the scripts of Krzysztofs Three Colors trilogy about liberty, equality, and fraternity (and entitled Blue, White, and Red, respectively) in the summer of 1993 and loved them. But Marin Karmitz, the producer, wouldn't sell the movies at that stage because he wanted to make sure that all his buyers shared his enthusiasm. What? I flew to Paris with Trea and Agnes Mentre, the president of Miramax-Zoe. We screened Blue in Karmitz's tiny screening room. The story of a woman whose husband and child are killed in a car accident she survives, Blue stars the luminous Juliette Binoche. I’d lost my father at an early age, and all the emotions of that loss came flooding back. I found myself sobbing at the end of it. Business sometimes deals in the unspoken, and I think when Karmitz saw the look on my face and the tears from this so-called tough guy, he knew and I knew that Miramax and the trilogy were fated. With White, a comedy about a Polish hairdresser who takes revenge on his French wife, we discovered Krzysztof's flair for comedy. At every film festival and award ceremony, from Telluride to the New York Film Festival to the Golden Globes, Krzysztof was always there with his Polish vodka and his cigarettes, even when the event was in that smoker's hell known as L.A. I always had to assign one person on my staff to figure out where he could smoke, and, after three vodkas, my normal competitive nature was so dull that I didn't care if we won or lost. Krzysztof says in Kieslowski On Kieslowski, "I've got an increasingly strong feeling that all we really care about is ourselves. Even when we notice other people we're still thinking of ourselves. That's one of subjects of Red - fraternity." when I saw Red for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival, I was with Quentin, and after the film, he turned to me and said, "That's the best movie of this year and it's going to win the Palme d'or." We all presumed that Krzysztof had the Palme all locked up. So not only were we blown away when Pulp Fiction won, we were even more blown away that Red didn't get anything. Later that night, I saw Krzysztof, always the fatalist, having a rip-roaring good time at the production company MK2's boat dancing with Irene Jacob. If I had to weigh which was more fun, winning the Palme d'or or dancing with Irene, I think they'd be just about equal. With Krzysztof’s death, my heart goes out Irene. The muse has lost her painter. Ironically, Red was delivered a second blow when it was disqualified on a technicality as the Swiss entry for the 1994 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. A similar blow had been delivered to Blue the year before. But the membership of the Academy stepped to the plate and nominated Red for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. That recognition helped make Red a phenomenal success in the U.S. Red, which ended up being his last film, was really loved by filmgoers and critics alike. Many reviewers who had not been fans came on board the Kieslowski bandwagon with Red. When I called Krzysztof on the morning the nominations were announced to tell him the good news, he put me on hold. He was talking to his insurance agent about his car, and before he would listen to the good news, he had to finish the call and then tell me his car troubles. He was a first-things-first guy. Krzysztof came to the Oscars last year even though they were in L.A. We found the smoking area in the Shrine for him, but had a much tougher time with the Governors Ball. He smuggled in the Polish vodka and I joined happily in his conspiracy. All my other filmmaker friends wanted to know what we talked about, what he was like - did we contemplate the metaphysical nature of human existence together? The truth was, we talked about soccer or the news of our families. He was an incredibly down-to-earth guy. I suppose in retrospect we did talk about the metaphysical nature of human existence. I just didn't realize we were doing it at the time. It was small talk. Everyone was asking him if he was really retiring, and he kept saying yes. But I saw the crease of a smile at the edge of his mouth. He was exhausted. He needed a rest. Publicly, he was definitely retiring, but privately he was not so sure. Ironically, just as he left L.A., after the Oscars, he confided to me that he was thinking of another trilogy. He told me: "In case I ever decide to do something else, I have this idea about a trilogy on heaven, hell, and purgatory, set in three different cities. I don't know vet where I'd set heaven or purgatory, but I think I'd set hell in L.A." Sadly, a heart attack spared L.A. from the sharp eve of the master. Krzysztof Kieslowski lived the life he wanted to live, though not enough of it. He was a giant of the cinema and a crusader for humanity. I’ll miss the movies, I’ll miss the vodka, but more important, I’ll miss the man.