Wednesday, April 21, 2004


Lars Von Trier trivia:

• He's phobic and has a fear of hospitals, fires, large crowds, death, and various forms of shellfish.
• He won't fly, take a boat, or get on a train. He rides around Europe in a RV.
• He's making a three-part saga about life in America – of which Dogville is a part – although he's never been to the U.S. and says he has absolutely no desire to come.
• His name didn't originally have a "von" in it. He added it when he graduated film school so he could be like Erich von Stroheim.
• When he won a prize at the Cannes film festival in 1991, he tossed it into the Mediterranian Sea.
• In his Cannes acceptance speech, he thanked Roman Polanski, president of the jury, by calling him a "midget."
• When his mother was dying of cancer and confessed on her deathbed that she'd had an affair (and Lars may have had a different father), he went to her house and smashed all of her possessions.
• Every time he starts work on a new script, he ceremonially dunks it into a teacup that once belonged to the famous Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer.
• At his office every morning, he requires that his interns raise a flag and play a special song with flutes and drums.
• His office has a pool in the middle and Lars routinely strips naked in front of his employees to go for a swim.