Niko von Glasow

First you have to find von Glasow’s house – “It’s nr. 14, but the red nr. 14, not the white one!” Then sort out the laptop, assume the position (him at the desk, me on the sofa) and... you’re off on a roller-coaster ride of free association, leaps of imagination and trains of thought leading to all kinds of destinations. Meet Niko von Glasow, award-winning writer-producer-director and genuine never-a-dull-moment!

In his own words, von Glasow is “a German-Jewish-Buddhist, disabled, film producer living in London! I’m difficult! You don’t hire difficult!” He continues, laughing: “But I want a job and maybe you should not write that! Or that I’m difficult! Truth is, there are two souls in my breast: I’ve succeeded in becoming a filmmaker with a signature but I also dream of becoming an ordinary director making good films, like 'ET'. I would love to have made 'The Witness' with Harrison Ford, about the Amish, its simple filmmaking, actors with a brilliant script. That’s my big dream.”

“The problem of filmmaking,” von Glasow explains, “is you have to find the edge between something commercial and highly artistic. You have to, as a filmmaker, try to find it without compromising any of the vision. One of the problems in Germany is that you’re either pushed into the commercial or art corner. It is very difficult to convince people you can do both and you need both. I am living outside this world of subsidized filmmaking thinking. I don’t live in this cloud where the only train of thought is how to get the subsidies. I am living in a ’normal’ world and the English-speaking film world is much harsher and reminds you of the reality of the international market all the time.”

He then pays tribute to one of the respected names in the international film market, HanWay: “For my intellectual stimulation, brainstorming, I go there. Stefan Mahlmann is my favorite guy there. He’s one of the partners. Lovely guy, German by the way. He’s very professional and very kind.”

Getting into the film business by “walking into Bavaria Studios and asking which way to make films!” von Glasow ended up with Fassbinder. “By luck, and I didn’t even know who he was! I only realized much later what a blessing that was! I learned from him that warmth is the most important quality a director has to have – he was a real dangerous bastard, especially at the end of his career, but at the same time he was a very warm and kind person, and this warmth can be felt in all his films. It’s important to say he was a bastard, but that doesn’t preclude him being a warm one!”

Deciding he wanted to learn more about acting, von Glasow went to Jean Jacques Arnaud and the self-confessed “worst actor in the world” was hired for five weeks to play a monk alongside Sir Sean Connery in "The Name of the Rose": “I was right. I’m really an awful actor and they cut me out entirely!” So off he went to the Actors Studio in New York. He studied scriptwriting and then went to film school in Lodz, “one of the world’s best film schools at the time,” where he made "Wedding Guests".

Back in his home town, Cologne, von Glasow made "Marie’s Song", discovering the then extra, Sylvie Testud. At which point he hands me the DVD with his foot, explaining: “I wanted to make a really poetic film and I succeeded. It’s beautiful if a bit boring – poetic films are not the most driving!”

A move back to America saw the now married von Glasow and his wife working on a joint project, raising children, “which we did very successfully.” After which he embarked on the very underfinanced (then DM 1.5m) "Edelweiss Pirates", about a group of kids fighting the Gestapo in Cologne. Shot on mini-DV in St. Petersburg, starring two-time Oscar ® -winner Jan Decleir, Anna Thalbach and Bela B, "Edelweiss Pirates" shows how much can be done with very little, and yet von Glasow admits he broke his own film’s neck. “I couldn’t bring myself to have a reconciliatory ending at the end of the Nazi time. I knew this would drive it against the wall, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I studied this in detail. It’s a very interesting question: I think every good film story has to start with a question and the answer must be yes.”

Calling "The Blair Witch Project" “a genius, genius film,” thanks to its script placing the main character’s goal outside the film, von Glasow explains that fulfilling endings count, not happy ones. “Leaving Las Vegas – why was it so successful? It’s not about taste, it’s about Handwerk! These films are great Handwerk! There are many films I hate but they’re still great Handwerk ... It’s interesting to see why films worked, that’s the key question.”
How about his own film, "NoBody’s Perfect"? Again, von Glasow is open: “It was the first real cinema film, historically, made by a disabled director about disability. It was time to face my demons! I always wanted to avoid the subject of disability. I was like the drinker who didn’t want to admit it. That’s the first step at the AA meeting. I never wanted to admit publicly I’m disabled. My wife said it was time to look the devil in the eye! We started with a very simple question: who could be the hero: answer, me!”

But having himself as the hero wasn’t enough. Von Glasow then asked himself “what’s my biggest fear? In my case it’s public nudity. People stare at me anyway. When I go to a beach with my swimming suit on people stare even more, so I don’t go to beaches. I had to find 11 other thalidomiders who strip naked for a calendar and I became Mr. December. It became a dark but very funny comedy. I did it and now I feel better! More secure: in my soul, in my being, inside. Once you go into it, honesty is very healing.”

Calling "NoBody’s Perfect" “the best black comedy about Thalidomide ever”, von Glasow is rightly proud of his German Film Award: “It’s the greatest honor you can get in Germany and comes with € 200,000, which makes the honor even bigger! I really appreciate the award coming from colleagues. It’s basically the ’German Oscar’.”
Having bagged the ’German Oscar’, von Glasow is now out for the real deal! “You have to run one week commercially in L.A. and New York and then you have to be nominated by the Academy selection committee. How can you be so idiotic to try that? Americans nominate only American subjects! Why would they vote for a European film about naked disabled people?” He supplies his own answer: “I noticed when I won the award in Berlin actors came up to me and loved the film. It’s about what an artist/actor has to go through to be a real artist – through hell, through their biggest fear. Actors love this film, artists love this film. I hope there are artists in the Academy and if they see it, they will love it!”

Among the films he admires, von Glasow lists "Shrek 2", "The Last King of Scotland", "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The Baader Meinhof Complex". He praises this last’s producer, Bernd Eichinger, as “one of the few people in Germany who knows a lot about scripts and distribution. He’s also the kind of person who is very similar to Fassbinder in a way. He is a great filmmaker, he’s tough, but also has a warm heart.”

And now I’ve finally twigged it! The key to von Glasow’s instinct, the key to the man and filmmaker, is that of the gut: “I’ve learned more and more to go with my gut feeling and instinct, even if it seems against your own interests at the time. Don’t do it if it’s not the right thing for you. I think the quality of good character and kindness becomes more and more important in the film business.”

Author: Simon Kingsley