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Henry Spencer Ashbee owned the largest collection of pornography and erotica in the world. Born in 1834, he began collecting clandestine material as a teenager and eventually amassed so much that he had to store it in a dedicated bachelor pad at Gray’s Inn, where he would invite fellow pornophiles to peruse the collection every Saturday. Ashbee’s unorthodox hobby went further: he sent in words related to genitals, pornography and bondage to the fledgling Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to be included in its pages.
Ashbee was one of thousands in the late 1800s who answered the OED’s global call to send in terms – along with examples of how the words were used in books and newspapers – for inclusion in the dictionary. The ambitious crowdsourcing project was “the Wikipedia of the 19th century”, says Sarah Ogilvie, whose book, The Dictionary People, profiles a selection of those who contributed terms.
The volunteers were a motley crew. Along with Ashbee, there was Eleanor Marx (Karl’s daughter), as well as vicars, murderers, doctors, astronomers, nudists and vegetarians. Most contributors had seemingly little in common, yet “many of them were on the margins of academia, and they were amateurs and autodidacts,” says Ogilvie. “This may have been an opportunity for them to take part in a project attached to a prestigious university” and be “part of an academic setting that they were otherwise denied access to”.
Ogilvie discovered the volunteers’ identities by accident. In 2014, she was killing time in Oxford while waiting for a visa for a new job in the US, and she had spent the week visiting her favourite spots in the city that had been her home for 14 years. As a lexicographer who had both worked on the OED as an editor and written her doctorate on its history, she decided it was only right to pay one last visit to the dictionary’s archives. Opening a box from one of the shelves, she found something she had never seen before: a small black book tied with a cream ribbon, with a disintegrated spine and discoloured pages.
“I recognised the handwriting of James Murray, who was the longest-serving editor of the OED. Then I noticed that he had written down all the names and addresses of these people. And then I thought, Oh my goodness, these might be the people who sent him in slips,” says Ogilvie. She was immediately “curious and intrigued”, and initially wanted to find out about each person – a process which took about six years. “In my seventh year, I was like, OK, stop the madness, stop the research, now you actually have to tell this story.”
Several of the volunteers that Ogilvie chose to feature in the book suffered from severe mental illness; indeed, three of the four contributors who sent the most slips to Murray spent time in mental asylums (the fourth also had an asylum connection, as an administrator). The top contributor, Thomas Austin Jr, sent 165,061 slips across a decade. “Was it their madness that drove them to do so much dictionary work, or was it the dictionary work that drove them mad?” asks Ogilvie in the “L for Lunatics” chapter.
Ogilvie was “really struck” by one volunteer in particular: John Dormer, who began sending in slips as a teenager and ended up contributing 20,665 words. Murray instantly recognised Dormer’s intelligence, and assigned him “painstaking” tasks, including sorting through hundreds of thousands of slips and identifying gaps in their examples. Seventeen years into his dictionary work, Dormer was home alone one Christmas, having lost his wife a month earlier, and was subediting words beginning with “So-” when he began to hear voices. He became convinced that his neighbours were boring holes in the walls and trying to shoot him. He took a revolver from his desk and went outside, “and all we know is that he was arrested,” says Ogilvie. Dormer was admitted to Croydon Mental Hospital. Following his release, he never sent another slip to Murray.
Researching the volunteers threw up continual surprises for Ogilvie. She was surprised by how many women contributed to the dictionary at a time when many were denied tertiary education. She was surprised by how many volunteers were not from the scholarly elite. And she was not expecting so many Americans to have contributed; the OED is generally considered a “quintessentially British text and product”, but it was in fact a “global project”.
Many volunteers contributed words that had originated outside of Europe. William Minor, an American army surgeon who primarily read travellers’ tales, sent in words such as pilau, pagoda, cockatoo and khan. Minor is the subject of the “M for Murderers” chapter, having shot a man, but he was found not guilty on the grounds of insanity and imprisoned at a Berkshire asylum. There, Minor suffered from hallucinations of sexual assault, and one day in December 1901, taking the knife he used to open leaves of antique books, he opened his trousers, “held his penis and tied a tourniquet around the base of it, and, with all his surgeon’s precision, cut it off,” writes Ogilvie. He survived, and by the time he stopped sending slips in 1906, he had become the fourth-highest contributor, having submitted 62,720 words.
Ogilvie says that she remains “intrigued by the challenges” of writing dictionaries, and in particular the “impossibility” of describing words and meanings in an “objective way”. By the time the OED was finally completed in 1928, 70 years after the crowdsourcing project began, the contributions of 3,000 volunteers had been woven into the dictionary’s 414,825 entries. Speaking at a dinner celebrating its completion, prime minister Stanley Baldwin said of the book: “If ever a work was destined for eternity, that is it.”
Microsoft is ending support for the translation feature in the OneNote for Windows 10 app later this year. It's recommending the newer app instead.
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Key Takeaways
Microsoft is ending support for the translation feature in the old OneNote app for Windows 10 by November 2023.
Users won't lose any data but won't be able to use the translation capability on any text.
Microsoft recommends getting the newer OneNote app from the Microsoft Store, which is regularly updated through Microsoft 365.
OneNote on Windows is a bit of an odd duckling. Depending upon your desktop configuration and use, you may have access to two OneNote apps. The first is the OneNote for Windows 10 - which is based on the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) - and has been delisted from the Microsoft Store. The second is the newer unified version based on the classic OneNote desktop app that comes with Microsoft 365. Now, the Redmond tech firm has announced that it is ending support for translation capabilities in the old OneNote app.
In a Microsoft support document initially spotted by WinBuzzer, the company has announced the deprecation of the translation feature in the OneNote for Windows 10 app. This end of support will officially come into play in November 2023, after which customers who attempt to utilize translation will be greeted with error messages. It is important to note that the app itself is supported until October 2025, even if Microsoft itself doesn't update it or distribute it through its storefronts anymore.
Microsoft has assured customers that they won't lose any data once translation is deprecated, they just won't be able to leverage this particular capability on any piece of text. Users who wish to continue utilizing translation have been recommended to get the newer OneNote app from the Microsoft Store. This app is updated on a monthly basis through Microsoft 365 and is Microsoft's preferred OneNote variant. Alternatively, you can also pay for any of the following subscriptions, since they come with the unified version of OneNote:
Microsoft 365 Family
Microsoft 365 Personal
Microsoft 365 Business Standard
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Microsoft 365 Apps for business
Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise
With the deprecation of translation in OneNote for Windows 10, it's clear that Microsoft is gradually phasing out support for the app in view of the October 2025 retirement in a bid to get more users to migrate to the new OneNote. You can download it from the Microsoft Store or through the dedicated Microsoft portal here.
A Tricolour and Red Hand of Ulster flag hang side by side in listless air from the roof at Stade de Bordeaux. That would have been triggering for some, a kind of blended solution as the official IRFU provinces flag was nowhere to be seen. Returning to the city on the tram a group of Irish fans open the revelry with an out of tune blast of Sean South from Garryowen. With 28 stops to Gare St Jean, that kind of feels like a death sentence until two verses in it melts away to a solo voice in the baking cabin. Next day, the Welsh follow with a song about committing murder as Tom Jones “Delilah” fills the carriage. It was a strange kind of weekend.
Even Johnny Sexton gets in on inverting the narrative when he is asked a question from a French journalist about his kicking game against Romania. Between himself and Andy Farrell, they listen to the translation in their earpieces, then turn and acknowledge each other’s profound cluelessness. A question hopelessly lost in translation. “I thought the French were having a go at me again,” said Sexton improvising. There is some kind of natural cheer spread around when the Irish captain comes out swinging in the interview room.
Sunday
My favourite overpriced eateries are near the station St Jean, an impressive arching structure with about 20 tracks on the south side of Bordeaux. The restaurants opposite are places where the waiters run between tables with sweat dripping from their noses and half the customers are people with suitcases. Everybody is coming, going, or, lost. The station has its own charming layer of grime and bubble of life around it as well as its fair share of traumatised souls wandering around shouting at objects and people. It was here the red vino had to be sent back a day ago. A Saint-Emilion if you must know.
With a zero skillset around wine, rule of thumb is if it causes a gag reflex and fizzes in the glass when it ought not, you’re on safe ground to flap it away. The waiter took the bottle, smiled and then he pointed at the sky. “It’s too hot.” he said. I wondered if they keep slinging lava wine to unwary travellers, who today had mostly red shirts as the Saturday green of Ireland gave way to the Sunday red of Wales.
Six hours and counting on the TGV as we hit Montpellier, Narbonne and Nimes. Photograph: Damien MEYER/AFP via Getty
Monday
So long Bordeaux hot red. Hello Côte d’Azur chilled Rosé. Scotland and South Africa are down here somewhere as the TGV chugs out of the Gare St-Jean ecosystem. Leaving the Golden Tulip Bordeaux Euratlantique for the Le Windsor Jungle Art hotel in Nice you could be forgiven for thinking Irish Times accommodation selection is based on good scoring Scrabble words. Six hours and counting on the TGV as we hit Montpellier, Narbonne and Nimes with another two-hour leg from Marseille to Nice, the yummy bit by the Mediterranean to Antibes and Cannes. A road trip this one.
A highlight is the Marseille St Charles station perched on a hill with steep steps down to the city and somewhere the stadium where Doug Howlett made history at the 2007 Rugby World Cup, when he drew level with the try-scoring record of Christian Cullen. Afterwards, there was a scrum of about 60 people around him, TV cameras, world feeds, the lot. Up popped a Cork voice. How do feel about going to Munster next season, Doug? A 1000-watt smile beamed back. “Just great, mate.”
Tuesday
My place in Nice specialises in wellness stays with a Zen Space located on the fifth floor. Guests can also benefit from a private Hammam. I might sign up for one of them. Not the Turkish bath. Might have stuff to get out after Bordeaux. In Nice barely a day and already overdosing on the self-diagnosed Côte d’Azur leisured cosmopolitan sophistication disorder. All those homeless lads around St Jean with their companion dogs screaming mort at people and asking for the leftovers on your plate.
But today, an upstairs seat on the double-decker TGV to bolt from Nice to Toulon and was like a child again “borne back ceaselessly into the past,” the Riviera chronicler F Scott Fitzgerald might have said. To the Grand Hotel des Sablettes Hilton, and there’s the kid with the black hair from around Dublin’s Sandycove sitting up at the top table in front of the sponsors backdrop. Felix Jones holds court today for the Springboks at their press conference. Suspicion is Rassie is off doing some mad genius experiment in the rugby lab.
Promenade des Anglais, in Nice. Photograph: Sebastien Nogier/EPA
Wednesday
Down to the La Promenade des Anglais to nail down the 10,000 steps. Steaming towards Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on this warm dull morning, I’ve noticed an optimism among the people already standing in the surf or practising their callisthenics. In Ireland we get up, look out the window at the blue sky and wonder will it rain. Here they leave in the morning on an overcast day, go to the beach and expect the sun to come out. Voila, 20 minutes later it obliges. Locals are never wrong. #
That’s maybe why I feel a little self-conscious passing the seafront hotels with their international flags. Blue cotton T-shirts at three for €10 are killers in this heat. Filling with sweat, then falling with gravity they basically try to pull themselves off your back. Slinking up a side street out of view for a salad baguette, bottle of water and Americano to go and the receipt says €12. “Eureka”. Nice just off the main drag might be cheaper than Dún Laoghaire. Good news for fans from Wales and England, who play here this weekend.
No, Mayor Eric Adams and the Chinese government did not team up to build a better New York City, no matter what you might have read on the city’s website.
Earlier this summer, a reporter for a Chinese-language news site noticed something strange about the text on a New York City agency’s website after clicking on the “Translate” button and opting for the Chinese-language translation. What they got back were phrases such as "Building a City Together with the Communist Party of China."
There were more than a few references to "the Chinese Communist Party" on the City Planning Commission overview page when the user opted for a Chinese translation.
"In this way, the Chinese Communist Party and the public can make wise decisions on every project that passes public review," read one of the passages.
Included were links to a history of the Chinese Communist Party and reports issued by the party.
The reporter, who wrote a subsequent story for the publication Sing Tao Daily, notified the city agency, which in turn notified the city’s Office of Technology and Innovation. It uncovered an apparent wrinkle in the city’s efforts to communicate with its ever-growing population of Chinese-language speakers. Google Translate, which serves as the default for all city agencies, had mistakenly converted every reference to the City Planning Commission’s initials, CPC, into Chinese Communist Party.
The same bug also translated “Contact DHS” – as in Department of Homeless Services – into “Contact Department of Homeland Security,” according to Der-lin Chao, a professor of Chinese at Hunter College, who confirmed the account written in the Sing Tao Daily.
City officials quickly made manual fixes to the page and said such errors were extremely rare.
“This is the first time anybody who I work with has encountered an issue like this,” said Casey Berkovitz, a spokesman for the Department of City Planning.
Nonetheless, the mistakes prompted laughs in other corners of city government as well as criticisms from immigrant rights advocates who said the episode points to a bigger problem in language access for immigrant communities.
“This is hilarious,” said Councilmember Shahana Hanif. “Our communities don't feel comfortable utilizing government resources, and one of those reasons is because official government documents and important notices, even if they're translated, the quality of translation is incomprehensible.”
Last year, Hanif pushed for the creation of an Office of Translation and Interpretation within the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, designed to provide interpreters to various city agencies, but saw the effort stall.
“And because we don't have that, this is what you get,” she said.
Google spokesperson Charity Mhende acknowledged in a statement the translation service doesn't always get it right.
“We rigorously train and test Google Translate to provide high quality, free translations in 133 languages for more than 500 million people worldwide," the statement said. "Our automated systems work well the vast majority of the time, but they can sometimes make unintentional mistakes, and feedback helps us improve the technology."
Alina Shen, an organizer with CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, an advocacy group for poor and working-class Asian New Yorkers, said “every CAAAV member has had experiences with inadequate and inaccurate language interpretation” and that poorly translated materials reflected larger problems about how government deals with immigrant groups.
These include the Chinese community, the city's largest Asian subgroup. In 2021, the city was home to over 615,000 Chinese residents, according to the most recent Census survey.
“We know that gaps in interpretation services reflect deeper inequalities about who the city imagines they serve and the limitations to how these communities are allowed to shape the future of the city,” Shen said.
For 15 years city agencies have employed Google Translate, which allows New Yorkers to access information in more than 130 languages, from Afrikaans to Konkani to Zulu. However, some language experts said Google Translate is consistently unreliable when it comes to translating Chinese into English.
“As a professor for the Chinese language, I always warn students not to use Google Translate,” Chao said in an email.
This article was updated with a statement from Google.
Translated puts a spotlight on the role of humans in the advancement of its platform.
The translation platform Translated has been working with AI ever since it was founded in 1999. The tech provides its professional translators with a tool that helps them to work better and faster.
The platform’s brand insights reveal that humans engage in translation every day, often without even realizing it – such as decoding messages through unspoken glances and gestures enabled by our cultures, experiences and beliefs.
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To celebrate these ways that we remember, imagine and interpret based on our unique perspectives, Translated’s multi-market ‘Human Touch’ campaign emphasizes the brand’s ethos that no technology advances matter without the crucial role of people.
Created by creative agency Auge, ‘Human Touch’ is a moving collage of human interactions without the use of language, highlighting everyone’s ability to translate what is not expressed in words.
A team of 48 professional translators from the Translated linguistic pool in 12 countries, rooted in their respective regions, validated the authenticity of the multicultural actors’ body language and facial expressions in the film. They analyzed the impact of gestures on their cultures, discussing meaning, cultural sensitivities and cultural nuances.
‘Human Touch’ will run on paid social channels Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn in 12 markets across the world and on B2B digital channels across Europe and America.
One of the most talked-about movies at this year’s Venice Film Festival was Priscilla, Sofia Coppola’s vividly realized portrait of how 14-year-old Priscilla Presley fell under the spell of Elvis Presley, the rock & roll icon who was 24 when they first met. The filmmaker has earned her best reviews in years for the drama, and its star, Cailee Spaeny, took home the fest’s Best Actress award.
This wasn’t Coppola’s first gondola ride, of course. Twenty years ago, her sophomore feature, Lost in Translation, took the Italian festival by storm, with Scarlett Johansson winning Best Actress and Coppola the Lina Mangiacapre Award, thus solidifying her stature as one of the most exciting young directors around — and forever releasing her from the shadow of her legendary father, Francis Ford Coppola.
Coppola’s film tells the tale of Charlotte (Johansson), a twenty-something college grad accompanying her boyfriend, John (Giovanni Ribisi, an exaggerated version of Coppola’s ex-husband Spike Jonze), a celebrity photographer, on a trip to Tokyo. Since John is preoccupied with his job, as well as Kelly (Anna Faris), a bubbly, airheaded Hollywood actress with whom he’s maintained a flirty relationship, Charlotte is left to her own devices, wandering the vibrant city and her luxury hotel, the Park Hyatt Tokyo, while contending with jet lag, loneliness, alienation, and fear of the future. At the hotel, she runs into Bob Harris (Bill Murray), a faded film star who’s in town shooting a $2 million ad for Suntory whiskey. Despite their significant age difference — Johansson was only 17 and Murray 52 during filming — the two form a unique bond that neither will soon forget.
Lost in Translation was released in U.S. theaters 20 years ago today, on Sept. 12, 2003, but remains a modern-day cinema classic. Made for only $4 million, the film grossed over $118 million at the global box office and was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Original Screenplay, with Coppola winning the last one. Coppola became the first American woman to be nominated for Best Director, and only the third woman ever at the time. And its shoegaze-y soundtrack, featuring the likes of My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Air, and Phoenix (whose lead singer, Thomas Mars, Coppola would later marry), made Rolling Stone’s list of the 25 Greatest Soundtracks of All Time.
Editor’s picks
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Lost in Translation, Coppola spoke with Rolling Stone about the making of the film, wild card Bill Murray, that age gap, and how she “didn’t get much” from it money-wise.
How do you feel about Lost in Translation now? Have your feelings evolved over the past two decades?
It’s hard for me to say, because I can’t really look at it objectively. It just brings back the memories of being there together, and I have such good memories of that time. I showed it to my kids a few years ago when we were going to Tokyo and staying at the Park Hyatt, and that was the first time I’d watched it in a while, and they were like, “Why is she so young and he’s so much older?” I had made it when I was closer to Scarlett’s age and didn’t think that much about it. That was something that they noticed the most.
Was that the first time the Mars-Coppola gang had gone to Tokyo and stayed at the Park Hyatt?
Yeah. It was when Phoenix was playing there. It was before the pandemic, so maybe it was … five years ago? They did a residency in Tokyo. I have so many memories of that hotel, so it was fun to be back there with them.
Are you basically royalty at the Park Hyatt Tokyo now? Do they have the Sofia Coppola Suite?
[Laughs] No. What I love about it is that it hasn’t changed at all — I don’t know in the last couple of years, but they kept all the décor exactly the same, though it doesn’t look run down. It’s all fresh and perfect. They must have tons of that wallpaper in storage. It’s exactly the same. I kept thinking I was going to run into Bill around the corner. And I stayed in the same room that I remember shooting Scarlett in. It was surreal, in that way. And they were very welcoming to me.
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I know how difficult it can be to track down Bill Murray. And I’d read that you’d enlisted Wes Anderson in your quest to get Bill to do Lost in Translation.
I spent a year trying to track him down and asked anybody who might have known him. I’m sure I asked Wes, but I remember Bob Costas, who’s like … a sports guy? I remember seeing him on an airplane and being so desperate that I was like, “Should I talk to him?” I was so obsessed and desperate to track him down. I was leaving messages on his famous 800-number. And then Mitch Glazer, who’s an old friend of Bill’s, I asked him to look at these [script] pages that I had, and he was the one that helped get Bill to look at it.
I heard that until Bill arrived on set there was still a lot of anxiety over whether he’d actually show.
I didn’t know if he was going to show. We didn’t have a contract, and I was there spending money just on good faith that he was gonna show up. And he wouldn’t even tell us his flight number — he booked his own travel, because he didn’t want to have us do it. I had no idea until I got the message: “The eagle has landed.” I was like, “Thank god!” We had a kickoff party, and there’s a picture somewhere of him with a sake cup, and I was just so relieved that he was there.
Sofia Coppola pushing Scarlett Johansson around during filming of ‘Lost in Translation.’ Focus Features/courtesy Everett Collection
And how did you land on Scarlett Johansson, who was only 17 at the time?
The character is supposed to be in her early twenties, and so Scarlett is younger than the character is supposed to be. I can’t believe she was only 17! She seemed so mature. Also, her husky voice makes her seem older. I just loved her from Manny & Lo. And I was kind of thinking about Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in the back of my mind, and her voice reminded me of Lauren Bacall.
Speaking of the age gap between Bill, who was 52, and Scarlett, who was 17 while filming, do you think that would fly if it were made today? I know you said your kids seemed confused by it.
Yeah … I don’t know. I’m not going to think about it. I was just doing my thing at the time it was made. I did notice that watching it with my kids, because they’re teenagers and they were like, “What’s going on with that?” But Bill is so lovable and charming. Part of the story is about how you can have romantic connections that aren’t sexual or physical. You can have crushes on people where it isn’t that kind of thing. Part of the idea was that you can have connections where you can’t be together for various reasons because you’re at different points in life.
The opening shot of the film, which is a close-up of Scarlett’s behind, was based on a painting, right?
It was based on a John Kacere painting. His work all looks like that. It was supposed to be this glimpse of her alone in the hotel room. I probably couldn’t do that today, either.
I had heard that there was some sort of mix-up with the Yakuza while filming and things got pretty dicey for a moment?
Yeah. It was something on the street. Maybe we were on their turf or something? And we had our Japanese crew translating. I wish I had a better story for you, but there was some mix-up where we crossed paths because we were maybe on their turf, and there was some sort of misunderstanding. I didn’t see it, but I believe Lance [Acord, the cinematographer] was off shooting something and it happened.
It’s a recurring theme in your films — young women who are quite taken by older men with Peter Pan Syndrome. Like your recent film Priscilla and her relationship with Elvis.
Maybe she’s more mature and he’s still connected to his child side. Yeah, I definitely think [Elvis] was stunted, but there’s a darker side of it. But … I don’t know. I can’t analyze myself. I think it’s romantic when you have a connection with someone that you can’t be with for so many reasons, but they still see a side of you that maybe someone of your generation doesn’t.
Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson film their final embrace in ‘Lost in Translation.’ Focus Features/courtesy Everett Collection
Do you see any kinship with Groundhog Day at all? It’s almost like Bill’s character is trapped in a Groundhog Day-esque scenario in the hotel with his daily routine, and it takes Scarlett’s character to snap him out of it.
I hadn’t thought about that, but I guess there are some existential similarities there.
Could you talk a little about including Phoenix’s song “Too Young” in the film, and introducing a lot of new people to the band at the time?
I just was a Phoenix fan and love that song, and it seemed to capture that feeling, and that night, and that moment. Thomas sang the song at the end of The Virgin Suicides, so then it became a good-luck thing. I met Thomas on Virgin Suicides, and then my brother Roman did some videos with Phoenix. But I didn’t get to know Thomas well until I lived in Paris while shooting Marie Antoinette.
I read this story about Bill, and I’m not sure it’s true, that during filming he had this book of dirty phrases in Japanese, and he would go around saying them to random people.
Oh yeah! He had a book called Making Out in Japanese, and it was for, like, sailors abroad — pickup lines. He would try them out on the waitress, or someone working at the hotel, and it was funny to watch their reactions. He was a lot of fun. We shot it really quick, and were working crazy hours. We had to move really fast, and he was helping pick up equipment and move it along.
You seem to be fascinated by the idea of a young woman trapped in a gilded cage, whether it’s the Park Hyatt Tokyo, or Versailles, or Chateau Marmont, or Graceland. There’s a fairy-tale element to that.
For hotels, I like that it’s a universe unto itself. You start to see the same people and are suspended from real life in this alternate world with a cast of characters. I always find that interesting. I grew up living on location in hotels, and that experience became its own little world. As far as the gilded cage, I’m interested in the façade and the trappings and then the reality that comes with it.
The autobiographical nature of this one is well-documented, as far as the Spike Jonze of it all, but I’m curious if you ever got an angry call from Cameron Diaz about the movie?
No. It really wasn’t based on her. It was a combination of a bunch of people. It was a type, so it wasn’t a diss on her. Someone else was more the personality of [Anna Faris’ character].
Sofia Coppola directing on the set of ‘Lost in Translation.’ Focus Features/courtesy Everett Collection
Michel Gondry once told a story once about how he angrily confronted you over the film in defense of Spike Jonze. What happened there?
He apologized to me about that. He scolded me at my premiere, but he apologized. I think he was being a good friend. He thought he was defending Spike, but he was putting me down at my premiere. It came out of him trying to be a good friend to Spike.
I have to ask what you thought of Her, which very much seemed like Spike’s not-so-subtle response to Lost in Translation.
Well, yeah … I never saw it! From the trailer, it looks the same too. We have the same production designer. But I haven’t seen it. I know people really like that movie, but I haven’t seen it. I don’t know if I want to see Rooney Mara as me. [Laughs]
I interviewed Richard Linklater once, and we discussed how Dazed and Confused has become such a cult classic, yet he didn’t make a dime off it due to some funny studio math.
I didn’t get rich off Lost in Translation.
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Do you feel you were fairly compensated for it? This is a movie that cost $4 million and made over $100 million at the box office, as well as countless millions in secondary sales. Its poster is in college dorm rooms across the country.
Yeah, I didn’t get rich off it. I didn’t get much from it. That studio system doesn’t work out for the filmmaker so well — for me, anyway.
It’s wild that you can write, produce, and direct a film and still get cut out of the profits.
Yeah. It’s the way that it’s set up. It’s not conducive to the creative team. They deduct marketing forever and it never makes any money “technically.” It’s really frustrating. I would like to figure it out, but I’ve just resigned myself to having other ways to make a living so I can make films for creative expression. I learned that from my dad.
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