Kaybedenler Kulübü Yolda, yönetmeni Mehmet Ada Öztekin Kampüs’te
In our 90th issue, the guest of our Inspiration page is Mehmet Ada Öztekin, the director of the movie Kaybedenler Kulübü Yolda. We had a nice conversation with Öztekin about the film, the cinema of the country, loss and of course Kadıköy.
You have a life story that started with radio broadcasting and continued as a translator. Afterwards, you achieved many successes as a director. How did you start directing?
I actually wanted to be a screenwriter first. At that age, you consider the script as a form of text, like writing a novel or a poem. But when I managed to educate myself a little bit and started writing screenplays, I realized that it was really about building a world, then entrusting that world to someone and watching the world built by the person you entrusted it to. Here you want to build that world yourself with a little bit of a cheeky feeling. Anyway, when you research, you see that this is the way it is in the world. So it’s a choice to write a script and not direct. Of course, this is not the case in Turkey. In Turkey, this line diverges very sharply. They might look strange if the screenwriter wants to direct. For example, abroad they ask the screenwriter if they want to shoot. When the screenwriter says I want to shoot, it’s not even discussed. We may want to do everything ourselves. My decision to become a director actually started as a result of such a process. At first I started working in commercials. I realized that the best use of the techniques of this business is in commercial production. Gradually I started to work my way up in production. I was an assistant director for a long time. Then I started shooting commercials. I started shooting drama with my first short film, Kaybeden Öyküler 1 – Burukacı.
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Let’s continue with “The Losers Club”. What do you think made The Losers Club a cult movie? What do you think was the magic that made it so memorable for the audience?
The most important point was that everyone was really alone. Because the age of consumption is moving very fast. The movie was about people in the city and alone. Nobody chooses to be alone. We make it look like we prefer to be alone to look cool, but loneliness is a bad thing no matter what. It is not something to enjoy. But everyone is playing. Nobody is showing their true face and it is getting bigger day by day. Especially with social media being so involved in our lives, those masks have started to increase. When we made the first movie, these masks were more transparent. Now there are masks made of clay and mud on people’s faces. People who shout at each other on social media cannot even say hello when they come face to face. In this way, society is becoming isolated. The first movie coincided with the beginning of that period of isolation. All this was still a long way off when the radio program was made in the 1990s. A very small percentage were just beginning to experience this depression. The concept of urban depression had not yet been expanded, it was just beginning. But by the time we started making the movie in the 2010s, there was social media, people had started to stay indoors. The age of consumption accelerated and masks began to thicken. And when someone else tried to show what was under that mask, I think that they owned it in a subtle way. It is actually honest to ask a woman who calls the radio at 00:00 at night, “Have we slept with you before?” It showed that everybody is actually very lonely, and secondly, people like what cheapens and simplifies too much the extraordinary, the untouchable. In other words, men who are very comfortable talking about a taboo subject are actually a safe zone for him. The thing is that the two men oversimplify sexuality. Therefore, women react more here. That’s why it has grown so much. That’s why I tried to focus the second movie here. The character Sevda therefore became like them. We drew a woman who wants to get rid of her burdens. That’s why the first movie got a lot of attention. But of course it also had a philosophy. He also had concerns within that philosophy.
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“Nobody actually chooses to be alone. We make it look like we prefer to be alone to look cool, but no matter what, loneliness is a bad thing. It’s not something to enjoy.”
The script of The Losers Club is like a dictionary. The phrases in the movie have become a household word. The first one was published. Do you have such a project for the second movie?
Yes, we will publish the book of the second movie. I even had a moment like this. After the first movie came out, I went for an interview and when they asked me “how are you?” and I answered “standard”, everyone laughed a lot. For a moment I didn’t understand what they were laughing at. That’s when I realized that it had entered everyday terminology.
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How did your paths cross with Kaan and Mete?
Kaan and I have been friends for 23 years. I came to Istanbul when I was 19. I was 20 when I met Kaan. I had applied for a job at Kelepir Bookstore and we met there. Then we started living together and that armchair life began. We lived together for about ten years. I met Mete through Kaan.
Right here we would like to ask the following question. We heard that you are the real-life counterpart of the character played by Rıza Kocaoğlu in the movie.
Yes, I am that character. The character of J Murat emerged through me. Already when they were living together, the philosophy of the movie started to emerge. But as I mentioned, because of the situation of the sector at that time, when I went with a script that told the story of a radio host, they were not warm to the idea. They said it was too sophisticated, it was incomprehensible. I would occasionally go to the radio and listen to it. The dialogues there were like listening to a beautiful poem. Then when the movie came out, they were all very surprised. But they were also happy.
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Let’s move on to the movie Losers Club on the Road. How did you decide to make the movie? After the first movie, did you feel uneasy about the possibility of expectations being too high?
When we decided to make the movie, we talked about it amongst ourselves, but sometimes you have to cover your ears or you can’t handle it. I had a problem in the second movie to tell the story from my point of view. Tolga Örnek had done a very good job in the first movie, but he had narrated Kadıköy from an outsider’s point of view, from an eye that did not live there. As those of us who live there, we wanted to tell what those men felt and thought on a deeper level. I actually had something to say. I think I was able to express this in the movie. This is not a sequel. Only the characters are the same, Kadıköy is the same. Here I wanted to tell it from a woman’s point of view. I wanted to describe that society and the feelings we experienced through the character of Sevda. Kaan and Mete are characters that everyone wants to have in their lives, that they fall in love with but never want to continue together. Here we wanted to go out a little bit and look through the eyes of Sevda. That’s what the journey in the movie is about. A life in the South, where everything starts out so brightly, turns cloudy and darker as they get closer to their own land, and so does the sky in the movie. It is facing reality. When you go to the South and lie on the beach, that is not the real life. The character Sevda is also experiencing this.
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The history of cinema is full of cult road movies. What are your favorite road movies?
In fact, there are so many. I could immediately answer David Lynch – The Straight Story, Dennis Hopper – Easy Rider without a doubt and Carlos Sorin – Historias Minimas.
They talk about two categories: box office films and art films. The first is said to have problems with quality and the second with “boredom”. What is your opinion on this?
I don’t find this distinction very accurate. For example, when a director says I’m going to make an art movie, you sit down and talk about it. But if someone else comes and says I have started painting and I am thinking of having an exhibition in France, our reaction is very different. Because painting is a matter. It is an art. It is not like painting a wall, even painting a wall is a different experience. But when they say they will make an art movie, we don’t have such a reaction. But you can’t suddenly decide to make an art movie. So you can’t wake up one morning and become Tarkovsky. So it is true that it is boring, because it is not done by competent people. In order for a movie to be an art film, its director must have made serious efforts, made many experiments, and gained the identity of an artist. The art movie comes from the artist. Therefore, it is normal for it to be boring, it is normal for it to be wrong and erroneous. There are good movies and bad movies. One can argue about the intellectual level of a movie. You can’t, for example, release a Derek Jarman movie and expect everyone to understand it. Or you can’t question why there are fewer viewers. Because watching these movies requires an intellectual background. Just as we cannot expect everyone who looks at a very powerful painting to understand it. This requires an accumulation. So there are good movies. I hope one day I will be able to make an art movie. For example, Amores Perros (Shattered Loves and Dogs) came to the festival. The festival was a great success and the movie was released worldwide. Then the DVD came out. The movie sold millions. Here, too, it started out as a festival film, an art film and made billions of money. Are we going to call this movie a blockbuster or an art movie? It’s just a good movie. Therefore, it also found its audience.
Some directors like to work with the same actors. We can see many examples of this in the past. We can see the same actors in your recent TV series and movies. Is there any particular reason for that?
You don’t choose a player just because you get on well. He’s a good player and you get along well. Otherwise it is not right to work with a player just because you get along well. But having it both ways of course makes a director’s job very easy. The most important thing for us is to reflect that character in the best way. Of course, there are sweet reproaches about this. But I don’t have a rule that I have to work with this team. Sometimes the actor can manipulate you while writing a script. The actor can inevitably come and settle in your head at that time. For example, Innaritu, the director of Biutiful, said that he would not have made the movie if Javier Bardem had not agreed. He says he wrote it all to her. It wouldn’t have happened without Bardem, maybe it would have happened, but he created him in his head. It’s the same for me sometimes. I like working with Timuçin Esen, Nejat İşler, Mehmet Günsür, yes. We can meet again with the same cast in a project. But as I said, that character has to fit them perfectly. It would be a tragedy to attempt something that cannot be done on a whim.
“Today, when we watch the first minutes of a movie, even if we assume that we don’t hear any sound, we can immediately tell whether it is a Northern European film, a French film or a German film. Because it has a frame, an understanding, a visual language. But Turkish Cinema doesn’t have this. Because there is no such thing as Turkish Cinema.”
It is said that there is a tradition of cinema in our country since Yeşilçam. How do you evaluate the state of the country’s cinema in the recent period?
Unfortunately, there has been no Turkish cinema in our country since the 1960s. Today, when we watch the first minutes of a movie, we can immediately tell whether it is a Northern European film, a French film or a German film, even if we assume that we have never heard the sound. But there is no such thing as Turkish Cinema. In the 1960s, when it reached worldwide power, Turkish cinema shone with its village realism. But when he became a worldwide celebrity, movies started to be made on demand. Films were shot in three days and four days. As recently as the 1980s, there were no movie theaters in 25 provinces. When I said I wanted to make movies in the 90s, when I said I wanted to make movies, movies were not being produced. The sector was heading towards extinction. In other words, there was no such thing as Turkish Cinema existing and producing 60 movies a year. Now we are back to the same situation. We started making the same movies over and over again. In this way, the sector will try to recover before it learns the same lesson again. Because we have a situation where everyone acts individually. You can’t blame the audience here. The audience should never be blamed. It’s not right not to make different movies because the audience doesn’t watch them. Today, Turkey is the second largest importer of TV series. That means we have a market. From this point of view, one should not think simply about how many people have seen a movie. If we can do it in TV series, we can do it in cinema. The formula for this lies in the groups of associations working together, thinking together and supporting each other. Yes, comedies are taking up a lot of space right now and movies in other categories may not find a place for themselves. I mean, it’s not that movies are not being made because they are not being watched that much. That’s why the audience cannot watch it. People can’t access the movies. These formulas need to be developed and supported with funds. Filmmakers abroad are united as a community and support each other to keep their culture alive.
What would you like to say about the criticism of the movie?
There is actually an American saying: “Bad criticism breaks a lot of hearts, it breaks a lot of hearts. And good criticism is never good enough.” For the first time I was able to stay away from criticism with this second movie. I haven’t read much except for one or two reviews. Of course, criticism comes even if you stay away. The biggest criticism has always been that it’s not like the first movie. If we had made it like the first movie, they would have criticized it as the same as the first movie. As I mentioned before, I had something new to say and that’s why we decided to make the movie. If we had made Kaybedenlerler Kulübü Yoldain 2012-2013, yes, it would have been a commercial concern. It could be said that it was made based on the intense interest in the first movie. Probably if we had released it at that time, the box office would have been completely different. But it would have been against the philosophy of the movie to approach The Losers Club with a commercial concern and make a second one. We wouldn’t feel morally good. This is a completely different movie. We didn’t do it as a comparison. Its criticism is not like the first movie, it is a good criticism for me. For me, it is a good criticism to say that there is too much Kadıköyism in this movie. Because Kadıköy has always been a cultural center. It became a center where literature and music were abundant and talked about. Even talking about it is a good thing.
Finally, we would also like to get your opinion about cinema education in our country. Yes, important directors have been emerging recently, but most of them are not coming out of the academy. What would be your recommendations for our university students who study cinema and television and want to make their career in cinema?
I think the general problem is reading. Because we need information. It is like having an opinion without knowledge or writing without living. Technically, this is one of the easiest jobs in the world. Because there’s a team underneath. It’s not like lifting an airplane. You see the technique of this work in schools. Therefore, it is necessary to read and live. It is necessary to travel and observe. When I was working with the British, I asked about the age groups in the profession. In England, they said that if an assistant director becomes an assistant director at the age of 32-33, he is a young assistant director. Before the age of 35, unless you have a very specific story of your own, I think it’s a bit early, because to be a director you first have to have lived. We cannot come to that experience just by learning the technique without experiencing it, without observing it. Directing is the ability to express an emotion. To be able to convey that emotion to an actor. Therefore, my advice is to read a lot, write a lot. They should shoot something all the time. Short films can be made even with a cell phone. I advise them to practice as much as they can.
Interview Erkmen Özbıçakçı – Tuğba Badal
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