[Airlight]

Zice mesterul Lyne

"I never wanted to remake Lolita; I wanted to make the novel. (Kubrik's) version doesn't have a lot to do with the novel. It was more about Peter Sellers's performance as Quilty than it was about James Mason's performance as Humbert. I wanted to make a movie about Humbert Humbert, because that's the story. (....) So I tried to make a movie that reflected this extraordinary but appaling novel. It's monstruous what this man does to the girl, and yet it's hillariously funny. So, I tried to accomplish those three things and, hopefully, succeeded.

(snip snip)

I know it's not a question of the quality of the film, because I think it's some of my best work. I think Jeremy's performance was extraordinary. And Dominique Swain was just an extraordinary find because she had done nothing before. She hadn't acted in her life and she turned in a wonderful perfomance. But, it was the wrong movie at the wrong time. Even in Europe, people were frightened of it.

It was tough editing this film, because for six weeks I had to work with an attorney. That was the result of a law, which essentially said that you couldn't have an adult portraying a minor. That was aimed at Internet, in fact, but it spilled over into films. It meant that the few shots that I had done with a body double were now questionable. There were two scenes that were up for grabs. This lawyer was trying to get me to take them out of the film, and, happily, they stayed in. We were very careful, obviously, because she was a minor. She was fourteen when I first met her, and her mother was always there, and a teacher was always on the set, and we were careflu, as well we should have been.

There was a thing called "the pad" that was kind of a cushion thing that was brought out any time there was any contact between Jeremy and Dominique. I was very concerned about it, and so was her mother. The one that was the least concerned, in fact, was Dominique.

(...)

The Showtime cable network ran the film, and it was released theatrically afterwards. It was an agonizing process, because I thought that, week after week, somebody would pick up the movie for theatrical release. They didn't, and I gradually realized that it wasn't going to happen because there was still fear surrounding the film. Nobody wanted to stand up and be counted as being seen as supporting pedophilia, which is patently nonsense. It's a graphic novel, yes, but taught in universities and colleges all over the world. The movie would have come out easily in the seventies or eighties. It was probably easier in a sense for Kubrick that it was for me.

When I first told my oldest son that I was thinking of doing Lolita, he said to me, "We'll need that like a hole in the head". And I realized that, following Kubrick's footsteps, I would have two strikes against me. But I wanted to do the movie and I think that's a film that will linger."

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