The interview with Cory McAbee, an American independent director, was pure pleasure and great folly particularly because it was opened with the unforgettable song ‘We are the Champions’ by the Queen. After the conversation there’s the time for photographers to snap some pictures on the patio of the café, which wouldn’t have been strange if not for the director’s particular request: ‘Let’s all pull angry faces’. This extraordinary encounter finished with a joint search of spiders hiding somewhere in one of the Kazimierz cafes and the director, puzzled with their presence, saying “I’ll take some photos for my daughter”.

The interview was conducted by Joanna Chludzińska.

You are called a Renaissance man. You write film scripts, song lyrics, you compose music (together with your band, The Billy Nayer Show), you are a director, actor, choreographer, you even prepare special storyboards to your films. Is there something you can’t do and you would like to learn?

I can’t speak Polish, or any other foreign language. I’ve always wanted to learn one. I once tried to learn Spanish, but I was hopeless at it. And I have to confess- I can’t drive a car.

There’s enormous fascination with cinema and music in your films. Which of them came first, or maybe they appeared simultaneously?

At first I was fascinated with …. painting and music. Cinema came later, when I started to make my own films. They were animations, I put them on my website. When I was younger, I thought I would begin to like musicals, but whenever I reached for one, I didn’t like it. To be honest, I had many passions when I was young and it’s difficult to tell about each of them. Some of them were quite short-lived.

In one of your interviews you said that your adventure with films started from keeping track of Dennis Potter’s works (he was a magnificent British scriptwriter, musical producer, known for the TV series, ‘The Singing Detective’)

I was just about to mention it. I did keep track of his works because his musicals weren’t like others. I thought I would like to do such things, but differently. I wanted to find my own way, to create something different, unusual. That’s how I made ‘The American Astronaut’. I wanted to add more dynamics to a film, give it a structure just like musicians do with classical rock albums. There’s one scene in this film I adore. When Rocco starts singing and only a shadow of a dancing man appears on a white screen, I feel I’m participating in a great performance. The camera is still but you get an impression that a lot is going on there. and  all of it  captured only in one shot.

We had the opportunity to see ‘The American Astronaut’ here, at the Festival. Your second film, ‘Stringray Sam’, was also shot mostly in black and white. Do you shun color in your films? Why?

There’s a little color used in ‘Stringray Sam’: some boards, requisites, but yes, it’s mostly black and white. I like black and white films. But I’m not going to use such hues in every project, and I’m definitely not going to use them in my next film. Black and white separate the audience from reality, they build a special kind of distance and create a romantic effect.

What are your future artistic plans?

Our new album is coming soon, probably next month. We’ve been playing for 20 years now and I feel like I had a second family. Since the beginning 15 different musicians played in the band, but Bobby Lurie (the drums) and I have always been there. Sometimes it’s a quartet, sometimes a quintet. This year our music is going to be more electronic because I began to use my new autoharp (He got his first one from his father for birthday, when he was still at school.)

As for my next film, I wrote the script a few years ago but I will be able to complete it next year. In the meantime I’m going to prepare a low-budget short film.