German film good Oscar bet
The German comedy “Toni Erdmann” — a front-runner for best foreign film Oscar — offers hope to Andy Kaufman fans who believe the entertainer’s 1984 death was nothing more than one of his extravagant pranks.
Kaufman couldn’t have been a more constructive muse if he were whispering advice about making “Toni Erdmann” in filmmaker Maren Ade’s ear. His influence is even felt in the film’s title, which derives from lounge singer Tony Clifton, a character in Kaufman’s arsenal whom he relished playing as obnoxiously rude.
Ade became riveted by Kaufman’s antics on the Internet, where no one ever dies. “I started to Google all his ‘Saturday Night Live’ appearances, and they stayed with me when I began visualizing my movie,” she said in fluent English during an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Kaufman’s influence is felt in Ade’s creation of a mildmannered music teacher in a provincial German town who invents an alter ego named Toni Erdmann as outrageous as Tony Clifton. Believing his corporate daughter, an executive for a global consulting firm, is too uptight, he or, rather, Toni, follows her on a business trip to Romania and inserts himself into her business world.
“His last name came to my mind because it is very German, a very funny name for a type of animal,” Ade said. “‘Toni’ is more like showing off and ‘Erdmann’ is a downer. I liked that contrast.”
Sporting a stringy black wig and a set of joke-shop fake teeth, he passes himself off to one group of his daughter’s associates as a life counselor and to another as the German ambassador.
“My father was the inspiration for that character,” Ade said. “He also likes to joke, and for some time, he really did that thing with the gag teeth. They were a giveaway at the local premiere of ‘Austin Powers,’ and he held onto them.”
Although there are similarities between the two dads — hers is a retired music teacher — Ade wants to make clear that her relationship with her father is nothing like the one in her movie.
“Unfortunately, he never showed up at one of my meetings. It would have been interesting,” she said with a laugh.
“Humor comes from somewhere, so I like to think he gave me my humor and that humor in the film is him a bit.”
Her father isn’t concerned about being mistaken for Toni Erdmann. “He was more worried that the film was not good or not funny. He was very fatherly. He knew everything in the script. I showed him every phase of it. He was relieved in the end that he found it funny,” Ade said.
Numerous reviewers have pointed out how unusual it is to watch a German comedy. Ade stands up for her countrymen, saying “I think we have humor, but sometimes we hide it. But as a nation I suppose we are not very funny.”
The enthusiastic response to “Toni Erdmann” has come as a relief for Ade, who as a teenager desired to be a filmmaker. Her parents gave her one of the first video cameras available in Germany. “I made little short films about my friends,” she recalled.
She started a movie production company 15 years ago, influenced by American independent films and the Dogme school of filmmaking conceived of by Danish directors.
“Toni Erdmann” is Ade’s third film. Her first, “The Forest for the Trees,” was widely seen at festivals.
“You are always very nervous about the response to any film. I worked very long on ‘Toni Erdmann’ — five years between writing it, preparing, rehearsing and shooting it. I wound up with 100 hours of footage to edit.”
The film is almost two hours and 45 minutes, unusually long for a comedy or any movie, really.
“We discussed shortening it by about 10 minutes, but we found it lost complexity because 10 minutes is still 10 minutes,” Ade said. “We thought the length we turned in was the strongest version. That is a good thing about being your own producer. There’s no one to argue with you.”
The positive audience reaction along with Oscar buzz has opened up a possibility of her working in Hollywood.
“At the moment I don’t think about making a Hollywood film. It feels like a telephone joke to me, you know some friend calls me up and pretends to offer me work in Hollywood.
“For me I am very happy as a European to work in Europe. I like to work in Germany. We receive public money to make our films. I have a lot of freedom. I like my language. I also like writing so much. I have the feeling I can only make a good film if it comes out of me.”
“We thought the length we turned in was the strongest version. That is a good thing about being your own producer. There’s no one to argue with you.” Maren Ade, director and producer