How did Godard’s existential portrait of life in Pierrot Le Fou influence Actor?
I think there’s a lot of struggle in the record and I wasn’t thinking about in traditional terms, but I was thinking about it in terms of one of my favorites, David Mamet, and his condensed version of what makes for drama. In essence, what would the character want, and what happens when they don’t get it. Therein is the perfect setup for any kind of drama. I was also thinking about what happens if you get what you want . . . and it’s not what you want [laughs] or it’s not the right thing. Do you think Goddard’s abrupt, impromptu approach in that film, found its way into how you pieced together the album? Yeah, what struck me about that film was just the realistic motion of it in a lot of ways. It’s almost out of sync with linear time. That’s kind of how the brain works, and kind of how life works. You can be walking down the street in one moment, and, then all of the sudden, mentally, you’re absolutely someplace else. It happens in an instant. We are kind of always assessing the inform
