Fun and insightful interview with the actors

thank you for posting this

I also wanted to thank you for translating and posting this. Really glad I got to read these interviews. Danke sehr!

"He shall be an adder on the path, to bite a horse's heel"

Thanks for your great work.

Thank you for translating. Very interesting.

I'm with the others - thank you so much for the translation. I've been using Google to translate as many articles as I can find, but it doesn't do a very good job. This was a breath of fresh air - your English was terrific.

At the moment I am using Amazon Turk to get the audio commentary from the Blu-ray translated in to English. It's not going very well, but if I get anything like a result, I'll post it on the board.

This is the rest of the second interview that was only available in a print magazine. I translated it because I'm happy that you are interested in the movie. I hope you enjoy it. :-)

MÜLLER: Have you ever thought about where you are the most different from each other? Max, in what points have you trouble understanding Hanno at all?

RIEMELT: I can't say at all. It's more that I admire how he's so structured and fights for things. I function differently. I like to view at things separately. Hanno on the other hand has his head full with every information and carries it with him everywhere.

MÜLLER: You mean that he looks at his life as a whole whereas you live in the moment?

RIEMELT: It's definitely that in certain moments he always keeps a clarity while I like to cast it off sometimes.

MÜLLER: Is this also about dicipline?

RIEMELT: I wouldn't mistake it for dicipline. I'm diciplined as well. I only look at the things separate from each other and want to keep the single moments as pure as possible. That's boon and bane.

KOFFLER: And I'd like to have more of that sometimes. Or more again, of the ability to let go and live for the day and not always question everything. Well, I had a wild time in my life, very early and very extreme, and someday I pulled myself out of that consequently. Since then I'm searching for a down-to-earthness inside me, because in work and also in life I always have the fear that things are slipping from my grasp. The fear of the groundless.

RIEMELT: Of the loss of control.

KOFFLER: Right. And to see that Max can do both, let go and still stay in control, that's nice to see. Then I gladly let myself be taken along with him.

MÜLLER: Kidnapped.

KOFFLER: Yes, exactly. Kidnapped, seduced, and pulled into the free fall. But afterwards I have to get back to the shore quickly.

MÜLLER: In the first love scene in the woods Kay, the character of Max, downright assaults Marc, the character of Hanno, and afterwards the dynamic between the two changes completely. Marc then downright claims what Kay offered him.

KOFFLER: Yes, when you don't live out something for a long time and then get a taste of what was forbidden, then it's like a liberation, then you need more of it. And Marc also doesn't know how long the offer will stand.

RIEMELT: There's a big clumsiness and naivete in this of course. It's like a kid in a candy store that's eating sweets until its stomach hurts.

KOFFLER: And Kay, Max's character, draws him over to him: Don't think about tomorrow! Live in the moment!

MÜLLER: And now we're back to the topic...

KOFFLER: And then he's taking the moment and stumbles so hard with doing so. Because lo and behold: of course the moment always has an effect.

MÜLLER: Absolutely! One of my favorite moments in the movie is when Max asks you if you ever thought about going away and make a fresh start somewhere. Have you two ever thought about doing this?

RIEMELT: In my case it's that my work gives me the certainty that I'll get out regularly, so that the longing for a place or a country doesn't even come up. There was once the idea to move to a friend in London to work on motor scooters. But this disappeared into thin air.

MÜLLER: Awesome, to work on motor scooters...

RIEMELT: Yes, to do something different. Because since I was 13, 14 I've always done the same. Played many different roles, always jumping into something and then out again.

MÜLLER: Which can be very schizophrenic.

RIEMELT: Oh well...

MÜLLER: Well at that age...

RIEMELT: Yes, I conditioned myself early, that's why it isn't that hard for me anymore. I also don't fall into such a big hole after the shooting anymore. I can enjoy the time between shoots very well.

MÜLLER: I didn't understand that sentence to be about some kind of move, but about the wish to change one's life and to get involved with something new.

KOFFLER: That's a heavy question. Because sometimes the art, the work and life are connected so much like you have never thought before. Well, I'm in my early thirties, and my life is changing radically at the moment. Do you experience this sometimes, that you play a character and suddenly you have this thought: 'Wait a moment, that's not possible that I of all people am playing this exact role right now!'.

MÜLLER: Absolutely.

RIEMELT: That partly comes from taking your job seriously. When you deal with a certain topic acutely you start seeing it everywhere.

KOFFLER: Frightening. Then you can't tell if life adjusts to the role or the role to life... My character Marc for example loses his former life and family in the movie, and absurdly after the shoot the same thing happened to me. I didn't expect it, but I lost my established life after the movie. And all you're thinking then is: crass!

MÜLLER: That's super extreme. I'm getting goosebumps.

KOFFLER: And regardless of the fact that the movie is about the love between two men, 'Freier Fall' is also about how a young man with family has to sort out his life completely anew. And that was a conflict that caught up with me so bad that it's totally absurd. And because of that 'Freier Fall' has another level for me privately.

MÜLLER: This topic isn't totally new to you either, Max?

RIEMELT: Yes, absolutely. And to reconcile all this is getting harder and harder. That what you experience and who you get to know has so much influence on you, I simply underestimated that. You look at life designs and let yourself be inspired by them and at the same time you become unsure about what you live and what you think is right. I had it very easy, because at a certain point things just kept being offered to me. I just had to say yes or no. And I can't help but ask what would be if it wouldn't have worked out that well, when I would have come up myself with what I wanted to do.

MÜLLER: What your life design would be?

RIEMELT: Yes. And I'm very unsure about that, more specifically, I just wouldn't know.

MÜLLER: That's basically also the topic of our generation. I asked myself recently if I know anybody who's in a functioning relationship that's working towards something. Don't know any.

KOFFLER: Do you have any friends with a child who are still in that relationship?

MÜLLER: Well I know no more than one.

KOFFLER: Recently I was at Max' and we're looking around and realize: 'Wait a moment, are we really five fathers here? And are we really five fathers who aren't together with the mother of their child?' It seems to be a total normality. And I haven't yet found out if that's good or what that means. If our society and our idea of family maybe is changing completely. And if the generation of children that are growing up right now will have a totally different concept of family than we have. Maybe everything will be more free.

MÜLLER: Do you actually always have to hurt to be happy? I thought about if the life decision that you make...

KOFFLER: Who are you talking about? The roles, the characters?

MÜLLER: No, in private life. But in the movie it's practically the same: To be happy he has to hurt her. He discovers the love to this man, and he has to go this way to find his happiness. And she stays behind, hurt.

KOFFLER: I don't know if for him it's primarily about finding happiness. It's more that Marc, because of his experiences with Kay, can't go back to his previous life. But he doesn't know what will happen then. First he has to free himself from his former life.

RIEMELT: To find happiness, I believe, you have to be relatively consequent. I, for instance, am a person much in need of harmony, and that's exactly what's very hard for me. Of course there are always more diplomatic ways to get your feelings across, but if you want to accomplish clarity, you can't avoid injury. But these aren't injuries that you do deliberately.

KOFFLER: And often there's not the courage to say that you simply don't know what's going on with you.

RIEMELT: Because you want to protect yourself.

KOFFLER: And I'm asking myself: 'What are we protecting ourselves from?' You can see it in the movie as well, when Marc is trying to say what's going on with him.

MÜLLER: 'It's so tight inside.'

KOFFLER: 'It's so tight', he doesn't find the right words, the interpretion of his wife is there already, so he reacts strange again, he's got the feeling that he's being misunderstood, she has the feeling that he doesn't open up, bam, bam, bam. That is the way of human communication where I'm thinking: *beep* Don't say anything! Words gone!'

RIEMELT: Because everybody comes from their own reality, their own logic.

MÜLLER: Because it's so diffcult to imagine that there's an other reality.

KOFFLER: Yes, unfortunately you always view the world only with your own eyes... It's so funny to me that we're talking ourselves into a rage here.

MÜLLER: We're good at that, aren't we? And I think it's great that you have such long hair now, Hanno, and that it sticks out instead of lying sludge on the head.

RIEMELT: But then there's a lot of hairspray in it.

MÜLLER: By the way, the kiss at the hospital, and then Marc's mother who comes around the corner, that's so crass. That's this moment where you wished the ground would open and swallow you up.

KOFFLER: And how the mother, Maren Kroymann, is looking out of the elevator, this expression. At that point there's always this murmur flowing through the theatre: 'Geez!'

MÜLLER: But then the movie is also so incredibly funny. But Hanno thinks it's only me who finds it funny because I know you two...

KOFFLER: I don't think the movie is funny, not at all.

MÜLLER: But Max, tell me, you had lots of fun, I can see it in the movie.

RIEMELT: Of course, but the atmosphere is quite heavy, which doesn't mean that we didn't have fun shooting.

MÜLLER: Well, the scenes in which Max provokes you...

KOFFLER: Yes, Max' glances are quite... Well, I can laugh about it when I distance myself from the story, when I see how Max is playing it. But when I put myself into Marc's shoes, the laughter is sticking in my throat.

MÜLLER: It's the little moments in between that are so much fun. And I believe I wasn't the only one in the audience who laughed. For example when Max comes around the corner with the joint and you say: 'You're not serious, are you?' And you mean it like that, because to you it's completely absurd to smoke a joint in the police academy. But Max doesn't even respond to that. He doesn't respond to you at all because he knows you'll take a pull anyway.

KOFFLER: You mean it's obvious for Max' character Kay.

MÜLLER: Okay, it's obvious for Kay. He knows that he can wrap you round his finger and that you will cross this line with him, because you both have crossed it already. He knows this, and that's so exhilarating.

KOFFLER: What, he knows it already?

RIEMELT: You only think that because you know us and adjust us with our roles.

KOFFLER: Yes, you adjust it. You already start laughing because Max comes around the corner and flirts with Hanno. Jette, you don't have the required distance, haha. Look, there's Hanno! And there, Max! Aren't they hilarious?

MÜLLER: Well I wouldn't have imagined that the interview would end this way. Hahaha!








Watch Blackfish (2013)

So, as promised another interview with Hanno and Max, this time from the gay magazine 'Männer' and providing some information that I'm sure will entertain you. The german version can be found here: http://m-maenner.de/2013/05/wir-haben-uns-lieb/


Inaugural question, boys, are you fond of each other? (PrivateBozz note: actually the interviewer uses the german term 'sich liebhaben' which isn't easy to translate; it's kind of a childlike version of 'love each other' and often used by parents when they tell their children that they love them, then they say 'Ich hab dich lieb' instead of 'Ich liebe dich')
(both are laughing)
Koffler: If we are what?
Riemelt: If we are fond of each other/love each other.
Koffler: Well, yeah.
Riemelt: You can say that.

And you have known each other for ten years, right?
Riemelt: Yes, we were shooting 'Hallesche Kometen' together back then.

But you haven't been friends that long, have you?
Riemelt: No, we only became real friends when we shot 'Auslandseinsatz' in Morocco together two years ago, a movie about young soldiers. That was hard, not only physically, but the atmosphere on set was also a little like summer camp and it was a lot of fun to spend time with Hanno. During the shootings, but also generally, when you had free time together and got to know Marrakech. And that's how friends for life find each other.
Koffler: But we already knew each other, respected each others work and liked one another.

Was the fact that you are friends good or bad for the shooting of 'Freier Fall'?
Koffler: In retrospect it would almost have been a requirement even, because I can't imagine playing it with anybody else. It was ideal.
Riemelt: For me there wouldn't be an alternative to Hanno either. Of course you could play this with an other colleague as well, technically, but to convey being in love in a believable way requires a certain form of familiarity that you can't create at a moment's notice.

Do you find each other handsome?
Koffler: Well, Max is a very handsome colleague, a fine man.
Riemelt: And Hanno doesn't have bad breath.

Is that the requirement for believable gay love scenes: to not have bad breath?
Riemelt: You have to think practically there. (grins)

Hanno, were you scared to take another gay role after 'Sommersturm', where you played a confident gay man, because you might get typecast?
Koffler: Nonense. First, it's been a long time since 'Sommersturm', and second I start by looking how interesting the material and the role are, how good the script is, and how much I can apply myself to it. And with 'Freier Fall' I just found the story great. There is someone who questions himself, completely, discovers himself anew, also with a new, just awakening sexuality, makes first experiences in that department, and subsequently asks himself questions about his identity. What body parts he has to deal with specifically didn't matter to me. I found the script amazing, the story great, the developing triangle constellation extremely fascinating, but didn't worry about it maybe being a gay story again. It's not about that.

Max, while shooting the movie you said in another interview, I quote: 'I'm playing a gay cop currently, complete with *beep* totally awesome.' Was it awesome?
Riemelt: Things like that you also say to provoke. But it was actually awesome, yes. I've wanted to play a gay man for a while.

Why?
Riemelt: Not for 'having played a gay once', but to get into such a character and get it across in a believable way, from inside myself. Also to widen my range, and because as an actor it's about to be able to be at home in every character, that's obvious. You don't want to be typecast as the womanizer. But I didn't look for a gay role by hook or by crook, it took a while until something fit. Because I didn't want to play a character who's a poncey cliché (PrivateBozz note: I don't know if that's the right word, he uses 'tuckig', which is meant to describe the overly effeminate way some gays are acting) and has to show the audience every five minutes through some idiotic action that he's gay. I wanted a character who has this sexuality, but in whom I can nevertheless find myself. And when I read the script of 'Freier Fall' for the first time there were many points where I recognized myself in Kay.

Where exactly?
Riemelt: In his teasing of Marc, whom he winds up because he likes him. In Kay's character, that seems relatively quiet and laid back, but has turmoil inside. There's a lot of me inside of this.

The sex scenes in the movie are very well done and totally believable, which is rare in movies featuring gay characters. Why is that?
Koffler: Whe tried out a lot, even though we didn't have that much liberty regarding camera and light because of the almost Dogma-esque conditions. Everything was supposed to be natural.
Riemelt: But in the end a movie comes to life at the editing table as well, and there I think it's very important that someone like Monika Schindler edited the movie, who made it work for both genders, because it's not gay or hetero but simply beautiful and intimite.

Do you find these scenes erotic yourselves, when you watch them?
Riemelt: I find them very aesthetic and on this level really beautiful, but not erotic. I'm not into the bodies of other guys, because I'm hetero after all, but I can see quite well if the interaction of the male bodies in front of me is working. And that it does.

Was it strange to play that, especially since you're good friends?
Koffler: On the contrary. Here it was important as well to know each other well. Because then it's much easier to let yourself go while you're playing, because you simply feel very safe. It's not only with the love scenes that we both don't like to make compromises in our work. And there it was good that we could trust each other, but also our director Stephan Lacant.

Max, did it bother you that your character is always the one that's passive during sex?
Riemelt: I don't see it like that at all. I talked about that with the director, and in our understanding I'm letting it happen, but at the same time I'm in control, because I am the experienced of the two. For Marc this is all new, it's not that he can just straight on... Kay introduces him to the things they do together...he calls the shots, because he is...

The word you are searching for is 'Powerbottom'?
Koffler: I always knew you are something like that. What was the word again?
Riemelt: Powerbutton.

Bottom.
Riemelt (laughs): Powerbottom. You learn something new every day. I didn't know that.

Would I be wrong if I said that Kay is the one who wants Marc first, but Marc is the one who falls in love with Kay first?
Riemelt: If you want to see it that way, yes of course it can be like that.

How did you play this emotional curve?
Riemelt: You don't know what will be decided at the editing table afterwards anyway, you can have the most beautiful thoughts, during editing there's reshuffle and you're out.
Koffler (laughs): I'd like to contradict colleague Riemelt there. You do set up the role in a certain way.
Riemelt: Yes, of course. But it's still decided during editing what glances are kept and what are not, and that can decide how the characters come across and if the focus in a certain scene is somewhere else suddenly than you've thought.
Koffler: That's right.

Does Kay seduce Marc?
Riemelt: Of course, he does. But not really in a conscious or platitudinous way. It's just a program that's running, paired with a very real interest in the person and an incredible sexual attraction. Love comes later, but it's a smooth transition...
Koffler: You can't separate sexuality and love anyway.

Many gay men would object here.
Koffler: I don't believe that you can separate that.

So you're only sleeping with women that you love?
Koffler: Well, in that moment.
Riemelt: Aha. (laughs).
Koffler: There are many variations and variants, in love as well as sexuality. I still wouldn't want to separate that.

If you want to separate is a different question.
Koffler: But I really don't believe that you can separate this.
Riemelt: I think it's important that there remains a secret. I can't rationalize it down like this, unriddle it. For me there are many factors involved that I don't want to disentangle because something might get lost...

Why doesn't the story of 'Freier Fall' have a Happy Ending?
Koffler: It does not?
Riemelt: It's a matter of opinion, I like it that the question isn't fully answered. This is what makes the movie so thrilling after all.
Koffler: That's simply how it is in life: the big crises hurt, but hidden inside of them also lies the significant personal development. Welcome and farewell. That's like it is in the movie as well. Marc has to say goodbye to some things, beliefs, habits, has to question things, but with doing so he widens his actually extremely narrow horizon enormously. After the story with Kay he'll never ever say: 'You belong into that category, and you in that one.'

Throughout the whole movie I was asking myself if the character is actually gay.
Koffler: Is that so important? I especially like the fact that it isn't clear.
Riemelt: That's the approach of the movie after all. Can and do you always want to say it so clearly, aren't there hundreds of grey scales, isn't it actually much more differing? Aren't feelings and sexuality much more complex than: 'You slept with this person, so that's your inclination, so now you are this and that.' These distinct deductions and labels are something I have problems with.
Koffler: I like it that the movie macerates this and deals with it differently.

Is this why it's important that only far into the second hour of the movie someone is asking Marc the question weather he's gay?
Koffler: The question is important, because of the consequence that arises from it. Hopefully the audience ask themselves the question: What if he would be? What would this mean for his life, his relationship, his fatherhood? Is only the one possible? Is everything else then not able to happen anymore? If they take some of these questions with them and answer them new for themselves, then that's something already.





Watch Blackfish (2013)

I don't know, man...I just get the feeling these two actors developed something off-screen, too. Just read between the lines of some of their responses to the interviewer. Just my intuition but there seems to be something going on. More than just friends.