Denmark can be very small, provincial, and mediocre.
— Thomas Vinterberg
The success of 'The Celebration' was like a hand grenade exploding in my face. It suddenly gave me so many opportunities to explore things I had never done before.
When you get a bad review, you hate the writer. It's very painful; whoever says the opposite lies. It's humiliating. Sometimes it comes from an honest place, but most times, it comes from a desire to trash someone.
My whole life has been a very communal experience; growing up in a house full of happy hippies, having dinner parties three days a week, and going to Christiania, I was constantly surrounded by people celebrating community. If you look at the films I've done, they all share that theme.
I think Dogme was inspiring for quite a few peoples and sort of started a digital movement. Personally, I found it extremely uplifting and fantastic making Dogme movies, but I felt I completed it with 'The Celebration.' I think that was the end of the road on Dogme for me. It was as far as I could go.
I shot a Metallica video in Hollywood, and there were, like, 100 people on set. There was even a guy there to put antiseptic gel on my hands. Amazing. If I asked for that on a Danish set, they'd probably kick me out of the country.
I found I am not an anarchistic form creator; I'm intuitive, and I'm trying to figure out a way to explore human fragility.
