Joachim Back: Master of Fate

Watching Joachim Back’s darkly satirical short, The New Tenants, it’s clear to see why it took home the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short at the 2010 Oscars. The macabre yet funny film weaves a 21-minute tale of love and death as a couple get far more than they bargained for when they move into a new apartment. But more than just an award winner, the piece deftly showcases Back’s craft as a director. The sharp script, emboldened by strong characters and clever dialogue, is complemented by Back’s sombre colour palette and camera close-ups, which visually build on the claustrophobic atmosphere that permeates the film.

“I’m very drawn to these elements,” ponders the director from across the table at Park Pictures’ Fifth Avenue office in New York, “because one word can give a very strong expression, but the right lighting can also say the same. So the balance of how many words you want to say should come from how much the room should tell you.”

Setting the scene

Back’s current home in New York – he has just moved from Brooklyn to the more sedate Long Island after eight years – is many miles from his childhood town of Holte, just outside the Danish capital of Copenhagen. Born in 1972, like many of his contemporaries Back fell in love with filmmaking from a young age, but unlike most it was the mechanics at work behind the scenes that initially sparked his interest in the directing world.

“My mum showed me Oliver Twist, the black and white version, and it actually touched me greatly. To a certain extent it frightened me and I got kind of spooked about it, and so she explained to me that it was just a film and that in a minute they’d all stop and have a cup of coffee. I was wondering what the heck she was talking about and so she went on to tell me that after each scene there would be a pause and everyone could get a coffee. And since that day I started looking into it and trying to understand filmmaking and what it was – and you know what, we still to this day drink coffee after every scene, so it makes sense,” he smiles.

After Back’s father sadly passed away when he was just six years old, his mother kept the young boy and his two brothers out of trouble by fuelling their imaginations with tales from the likes of Dickens, Hans Christian Andersen and Mark Twain. Inspired by these adventures, Back began staging scenes and putting on plays with his friends and ventured on to his first film set while still just a teenager.

“I started on the dailies on feature films,” recalls Back, “so I put the sound and film together and the director and producer would see the dailies. It was the old-fashioned way, where you had to synch it up, and I would stand in the projector room while they gave their opinions on the other side.”

Back’s film education didn’t stop there; over the next few years he moved between the camera department, the lighting department, the edit suite, and even did a stint in front of camera – something he confesses to hating. But bringing all the puzzle pieces together was what really appealed to him, and seeing spec commercials as a low-cost and low-risk way of experimenting with his own ideas, Back set about building up a reel.

“The first ones I did were all one-shot commercials, because I had no idea what I should shoot if I turned the camera round,” laughs Back. “Some of the first ones were just a guy, and one shot – very Scandinavian, and it wasn’t because I was Scandinavian I just didn’t know what else to do. But then I was very good at the characters and I think that was my strength, and people still say today that actors and casting are what I am very good at, and that was probably because of that process – I had only one shot, I couldn’t play with the pictures. But of course I slowly added on different things and now my whole piano is playing.”

Indeed his reel today plays across the whole spectrum. Recent visual storytelling pieces such as Audi The Swan for BBH London are contrasted with comedy dialogue spots for the likes of Miracle Whip through McGarryBowen. Back revealed his knack for subtly subversive comedy back in 2005 when he helmed Viagra’s first foray into comedy and made a splash across industry awards with Office, while other spots such as Captain Morgan Cell Phone and Canalsat Cinema display a depth that Back aims to bring to every piece.

Relocation, relocation, relocation

“What I think is probably the most interesting thing about directing is that it’s one expression with a thousand ideas,” explains Back. “From the room, to the lighting to whatever is on the table, what’s in front, what’s behind, who the characters are, what clothes they are wearing, what smile they have at that second. There are so many details and layers in it, and all of them have a meaning in terms of direction and I am very fascinated by this. When you start to play in that world it’s like building with LEGO. The same script can be interpreted in a thousand ways and it’s just one expression – what lens are you using? What time of day is it? What choreography are you using? You can create whatever you want to and I think that process for me is one of the most fun places to be. I even think sometimes prep is more interesting than shooting because that’s where you work out the logistics and if you figure that out it’s very easy to shoot it. I always say if you don’t have it right at the first step then you wont get it at the second step, so you pretty much have to have it figured out before you get to the set.”

Having embarked on his career in Denmark, Back crafted out a reputation and went on to become a co-founder of Bacon, one of Copenhagen’s top production houses. But despite his success in his native country, Back felt the itch to try something new and decided it was time to broaden his horizons and seek out bigger fish.

“It felt claustrophobic to have a title that was just going to carry me all the way to the end of my career,” explains Back of his decision to relocate to the States. “I have an exploring personality and I hate to know what the ending is. I’m a very analysing personality, especially of myself, and if I can see any step to the grave I get a bit claustrophobic. I just wanted to push myself and I started that by moving here. I have no idea where the story ends but I like the conversations here in New York. I like to talk and walk, and you take 25 steps here and there is a story going on with many different layers. You don’t have to get into a car and drive yourself somewhere and dig up a story. There is just something about New York that is not anywhere else in the world. I like the layers, they are endless. Whatever you want to eat, whatever you want to see – when it comes to creativity there are so many different forms and shapes and colours. It’s quite amazing actually.”

Biting the Apple

Back made the trans-Atlantic journey with his wife, Mette, and two young children Rebecca and Johan, and it was through his wife that he first came in contact with Lance Acord, fellow director and co-founder of Park Pictures. After hitting it off with Acord’s partner at Park, executive producer Jackie Kelman Bisbee, he signed with the production company and has since bridged that somewhat elusive step in the directing world – the transition into a successful career as a European in the American market.

“Being European just means I reflect differently, because of my way of growing up and just having a different mindset. It gives another point of view on how to obtain an idea, that maybe could be an advantage but also maybe not,” he jokes, “but I think it just adds on points. The more places you have been, the more different keys you can play. It creates a bit more fun, as nowadays everything is in boxes, but if you can break the rules sometimes and do things differently, there becomes a different pace and a different feeling. I’m not afraid of things and I need to be challenged, and if I’m not I simply choke. So if I do one format too much I need to do another one, I kind of have to grow – I’m not sure what it will grow into, I have no idea but I just love to try new things.”

Moving to the Big Apple was just one of those challenges, and as well as embedding himself in the US advertising scene, Back and his family made a concentrated effort to embrace the Empire state of mind rather than settle into a Scandinavian expat lifestyle, and this attitude trickled into the making of The New Tenants too. Uninspired by many of the boards the recession-hit industry was churning out at the time, Back’s longtime friend and DP Pawel Edelman encouraged him to take matters into his own hands and make a short film, and it was a script by Danish writer Anders Thomas Jensen that he fell for. But wanting to transport the action to New York City, Back teamed with the late New York-based writer David Rakoff to adapt the story. Using the metropolis’ subdued tones and cramped geography to add to the tension in the film, Back was drawn to the script by its satirical take on death.

“My dad dying was a very significant part of my life, and so I have to challenge death because it has hurt me a lot. So somehow taking the piss out of it or teasing it is trying to distance myself from it, or by even daring to be around it I’m confronting it. I’m starting to get out of that space but I needed to go through that process. I think that it was a heavy burden for me, as being so young it was tough.”

Life and death continues to be a theme that influences Back’s work, and is something he’s able to delve into more now as he explores the features world. Scripts he’s pitched on include Frankenstein and a trilogy for Dante’s Inferno, and he recently penned a script of his own titled Adam & Eve. It may have been almost three years since his Oscar win, but Back is biding his time and waiting for the right project to come along. Still, after receiving such an accolade, is he now feeling the pressure?

“It’s fun when you do something you believe in and it seems like someone else likes it too, and I think that’s probably the best place to be,” he reflects. “In some ways it does create a kind of pressure about how I can get to the next level, but the good thing for me is that I don’t measure my success with prizes, I measure my own success of quality. I asked myself once: ‘Do you like it because you get attention or do you like the process?’, and I figured out I actually like doing it. And if you get attention on top of that, that’s fine, but it shouldn’t be the main part of it. I like the process and the creativity, and then of course I welcome the attention.”

Cast away

While an Oscar will no doubt work in his favour when it comes to Hollywood, the door that Back really hopes it will help open is to talent. For this director, casting and character are central to his work: “People say my castings are quite intense because they’re all over the map. I might ask them to read poetry or sing or recite Shakespeare even if it has nothing to do with the piece. I push them a lot and that’s just a way of figuring out who they are, where I can push them to and what we can do with it. It’s about working out if they’re open or closed, because sometimes even if they can’t project or express themselves, that might be the kind of person you are looking for. It’s about trying to figure out what the actors are about, what their strong and weak sides are, and from then on I can kind of form the piece.”

Returning to the day job, Back is continuing to expand his reel with his commercial jobs and as a director he’s eager to try some more concept-driven work fuelled by striking visual storytelling because for him, whatever he is doing, he’s determined to always push himself.

“I’ve just always been curious and I think that’s been my saving grace. Even as a little boy, whatever toys I had, I’d take them apart, as I wanted to see inside, I wanted to know how and why they worked. You could say that’s a question of life; you can open up life but then you have to go into all those different spaces, and I think that’s what it is today for me. It’s like opening all those small toys, except it’s a humongous toy called life,” he grins, “and then I just have to figure out what is in it before I put it back together again. I don’t know if I’m going to get to that point but at least I will try.”