spicymini

PLAYBOY: Why are you more fascinated by characters under stress than by those who aren’t?
POLANSKI: I sometimes surprise myself that I don’t ask myself these questions, but I don’t. Perhaps if I did, I would know the answers, but I don’t feel any need for that. That’s the way I am. Perhaps it’s because as a child I had plenty of opportunities to see how people behave under stress. I often think: How would a friend with whom you’ve drunk a lot of vodka and had a lot of fun respond when one morning you plant yourself on his doorstep and say, “Hide me. I’m being chased by the Nazis.” And now he has to decide whether or not to risk his life for your friendship. But it’s difficult for me to judge how much part the war plays in what I create. I don’t think I’m obsessed by what I lived through. I was a child during the war, and children are resilient. Whatever you create, it’s an accumulation of millions of things in you, of what you go through as a boy, as a young man, of what you read, of what you see in the cinema, of the people you know. All these have affected my emotional life. I remember, for instance, that one of the profound experiences of my youth was seeing Of Mice and Men. That has stayed with me. I couldn’t stop thinking about this big, lovely man and his friend, and their friendship, and I thought that if I were ever a film maker, I would certainly try to do something along those lines, something against injustice and intolerance and prejudice and superstition. And I have. These elements are weaved through my films.