Lunch with Think Big

An interview with Mathieu Z’Graggen, director of Think Big

 What inspired you to make the film Think Big? Did you do research on runaways and missing teenagers, or did you base the film on real events?

The film takes place in a sleepy little village in the south of Alsace next to a big Franco-Swiss airport. It happens to be the town where I grew up… Michel’s story, which takes place alongside people who travel, is more or less inspired from real facts and anecdotes, at least at the beginning of the story. However, Michel running away is a personal, undocumented interpretation of the environment which could have triggered this.

 How did you come up with your characters? And how did you conduct casting?

The characters are constructed in the same way as the decors, meaning that they have a realistic basis that is reinterpreted to fit with the slightly offbeat universe I wanted to create in my film. All the actors (some of which non-professionals) are acquaintances, friends or even members of my family (my grandmother!). Despite this, we still held casting sessions because it is always an opportunity to meet new people and hear an initial reading and interpretation of what we have written. That opens doors, and for me, it was an opportunity to test the dialogues and to adapt them… I considered it training in directing actors and it proved to be very beneficial as a first experience.

 The sisters and the mother of the runaway in Think Big don’t seem to realize the state he is in. Do you know if there is any kind of support for young people in crisis like him? Did you look into real-life situations such as this?

The women who surround him effectively have no idea of what they make Michel suffer. They certainly don’t realize that he is going to have to search elsewhere, but the situation is not that catastrophic or dramatic, and I didn’t feel the necessity to attach myself to real events.

 Why did you choose this sequence in the bowling alley? What does this place bring to the story?

The bowling alley is a play area frequented by young people and adults alike. It is not in fact a real bowling alley but a bowling game which is a specialty of the Haut-Rhine region… there are little bowling lanes like this in most of the villages of the region. This one is in Rixheim, the town where the film is set. In the film, Michel discovers in his own town an atypical place frequented by atypical people. Without realizing it, he is already far from home.

 In Think Big, we can almost project a crypto-gay dimension. Do you agree with this? Did you have that in mind while you were shooting?

That’s very funny, I had never heard that particular qualification mentioned. From the writing stage, we wanted the secondary male characters to emit a certain virility as well as charm and tenderness, and it’s true that in working with the actors on that we wondered if Michel wasn’t gay… The question remained unanswered and the film became “crypto-gay”. Ahah.

 During a passage in Think Big, after Michel runs away, we see the way the young hero takes his frustration out on the animals he was supposed to care for. Do you think that individuals susceptible to damaging the environment around them are people in crisis like this boy? Do you think it is possible to identify them before it is “too late”, and how?

Michel urinates in the litter box of one of the cats in the holiday center, and I never saw that as mistreatment or violence… He does it because he has to urinate very badly and there is no other place close by. He simply relieves himself before the confused eyes of the litter box owner.

 Think Big was produced in France. In your opinion, what does French short film production have that the others don’t?

I am going to have a difficult time comparing the French system to others because I have absolutely no idea how it works in other countries… I didn’t know very well how it worked in France to be honest, but I am discovering this and I am very pleasantly surprised by the support from regional institutions for audiovisual and cinematic creation.

In our case, we received a lot of support from the Alsace region, through the Agence Culturelle d’Alsace, as well as the Communauté Urbaine de Strasbourg, which accompanied us during the making of this first film (which is also the first for the production company).

In any case, I feel that there is a real possibility to express oneself through short film, which unites several protagonists: authors, producers, technicians, actors… but unfortunately, there aren’t many means of distribution for short films outside of the festivals.

All the same, short film is not necessarily just a simple step before the feature-length film.