Quentin Tarantino discovered Rie Rasmussen when he was presiding over the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. Her short film, Thinning the Herd was nominated for the Palme dOr in the shorts competition. Her first feature film, Human Zoo opened the Berlin Film Festival in 2009, and Tarantino is bringing it to the states.
Rasmussen herself plays Adria, an immigrant from Kosovo in Marseilles. While opening up to an American romantic, Shawn (Nick Corey), Adria remembers her escape from military rape and a crime spree with a former soldier (Nikola Djuricko). Filled with the kind of blood and sex that would strike Tarantinos fancy, its the voice of a woman with worldly thoughts. Standing 511 with Danish features, Rasmussen was a model for Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Dolce and Gabbana and more.
She appeared in the film Femme Fatale and starred in Angel-A. I met her on the Femme red carpet where she laughed at my questions about her height. Again speaking about Angel-A, I recalled her itching to speak out about her passions after years of being paid to stand there silently. So I was interested to see what those artistic ideas would be. To speak about Human Zoo, Rasmussen hung out in the offices of The Weinstein Company, essentially Tarantinos home base. Dressed in all black with leather jacket, she dropped F bombs, talked dirty and got political all in the same breath. Finally, a woman I can talk to.
SuicideGirls: Lets first talk about what Human Zoo means so the people who havent seen it yet can understand.
Rie Rasmussen: I ended up doing Human Zoo because a real story was happening currently in my life. A parallel universe in Denmark where my family adopted a girl named Lihn from Vietnam. Her mother had been sold into prostitution in Moscow and she was from Vietnam. Shed been stuck her entire life where her mom was enslaved and had escaped. Her mom had gotten her out. Lihn made it to Denmark where my parents ended up trying for six years, battling to adopt her. That was when I started thinking about Human Zoo, the human zoo were in. In the film its like the ovarian lottery. How do you win the ovarian lottery where youre born in America, ka-ching, you won. Youre born in Canada, youre pretty all right. If youre born in Mexico, youre looking at a short stick. How is this possible? How is this stupid line, this red line made with blood, sweat and tears, how could that separate me from the fact that I could be a fulfilled individual human being with a soul that matters and know that it matters and can vote and can make a difference in the world? Thats what Human Zoo is about.
SG: When Shawn in the film makes a sarcastic remark to Adria, she doesnt understand why hed lie as a joke. Does that reflect your feelings about sarcastic jokes, that people should just be honest?
RR: When she says, I dont trust you. Why would you say that if you dont mean it? Yeah, for me, a lot of this is autobiographical youve got to realize, because I left Denmark at 15. I came to Huntington Beach, California. First I came to New York for six months. Then I followed a surfer boy to Huntington Beach, California and all of a sudden Im in Jackass: The Movie for real. Really, honestly, because thats where they all came from back then. Back then there was a real live crew of it and this was my experience with American humor and sarcasm. I couldnt understand it. Coming form Europe, it was much more deadpan. The disconnect between the two universes was why I was so attracted to that universe and why it taught me so many lesson and why I grew up so fast out of there. This is the exact thing. Its American to me. I met America basically before MTV had Jackass. That was my interpretation of America.
SG: Doesnt that sarcasm put a distance in relationships? Everyones performing so you avoid honesty.
RR: Exactly and this is what I mean. From 16 and whatnot living in Huntington Beach and driving my first car, a massive Toyota Landcruiser and doing skateboard videos and being around skateboard society, like you see in the movie I had to learn how to fight, physically and mentally. I had to learn how to put up a fight and this is my way of also showing what we teach people. Our environment will teach us how to become adult animals, how to become predators or how to become prey.
SG: As a director, are you able to photograph yourself the way you wish other people would have seen you through the lens?
RR: I think a lot of people, I come into a room and I see people and they see Oh, this beautiful girl. Thats what they think. This is not me saying it. I see something completely different. I see a character, an individual. I see something that I know could come out of me. Obviously youve seen Human Zoo. Yeah, okay, Im 22 pounds heavier but you really get the heaviness of her life. Shes sweet, shes cute, but she has a heaviness in her and a worn out-ness in her later on and a tiredness and a realness that other people when they shoot me, like Luc Besson, Im this otherworldly angel who is alien and six foot tall and absolutely glamorous and gorgeous. Well, I dont see that. I see the broken down soul in Human Zoo with the dried up skin and the dumpiness of her. Yes, so youre very, very right.
SG: It helps to have all this going on inside that you can express, because I can tell you not all pretty girls have that.
RR: [Laughs] Look, my experience is that those generalizations with models, lets call them pretty girls, 80% of the time theyre right. And why? Its not really theyre fault. Its also societys fault. Look at TV. They give them everything. The pretty girl walks into the room and we cant help it. Me too. I cater too. I like a pretty girl. It makes me happy. So she comes into the room, Im going to cater to her, and everywhere that girl goes, shes going to be catered to. And everywhere, everybodys going to try to impress her or give her something or theyre going to have a reaction to her beauty. Therefore, she becomes conceited or dumb or entitled, which is the worst. An entitled pretty girl is just straight up a fucking cunt. But thats what you deal with in these industries of beauty and I understand that. Huntington Beach and these skateboarders and this surfboard community and these guys who were so out of tune with their emotional level and so in tune with their animalistic need to be Im alpha and Im badass, really made me just feel dumb if I wasnt up to the performance level. Im sure for them there was a certain level of looking at a pretty girl doing what I was doing, but I wanted to be just like them. I have a very competitive streak and I have a very tomboyish side so that brought it out in me.
SG: Did you ever hate being pretty?
RR: Look, I look pretty in the photographs. I look pretty in this and that movie, Femme Fatale, Angel-A and I can look pretty going down the street but I can also put on a pair of sweatpants and not look pretty and thats fine. If people think Im pretty, fuckin hell yeah, awesome. Thats great. Use it, be happy about it. Its a gift from the genetic compatibility of my parents and thats what it is and Im stoked.
SG: Dont you think guys like the sweatpants and dumpy look?
RR: You know, when I wear it, if Im in a big T-shirt, like I just walked in and I saw Quentin with all this staff the other day. He said, Oh my God, you look like just a little girl, perfectly cast in the alternative movie. I was like oh, I think a lot of guys respond to that but especially respond to their T-shirt and white panties and their socks. Then its all good.
SG: Does the Suicide Girls type make you happy?
RR: I love tatted up girls. I think its a turn-on. I love sexually empowered girls, if they are. Sometimes sexually explicit girls are just acting out because theyre having a lot of problems and then I feel sad for them. But I love sexually empowered girls. Im from Scandinavia. We were the first country to have female rights for voting. In the 1300s, women could divorce the men and they could take their children with them. So Im coming from a culture where men and women are basically the same size, build and considered equals. So I look at myself as a person. Not is she a cutie girl or is she a tomboy? Im a person. Im a human being and if in front of me is a man or in front of me is a woman and Im attracted to this man or this woman, it has absolutely nothing to do with what gender they come in. So yeah, I think the tatted up girl is pretty fucking hot generally.
SG: Human Zoo does not look like a first time feature. There are some complicated shots like tracking action in several rooms from above the building. How did you achieve those?
RR: Well, Im not a first time film director who hasnt seen film. I am from the Quentin Tarantino school of filmmaking. I have watched movies my entire life. Anything, anytime, anywhere, anyhow. Two a day, three a day, five a day. I also grew up in Denmark, its really dark, its winter nine months out of the year and its horrible, so you escape. I really needed the movies for escaping. Movies taught me. Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, Orson Welles, Carol Reed, Howard Hawks, John Huston, you name it, Jack Hill, they taught me.
SG: Still, havent you seen a lot of aspiring filmmakers who watch a lot of films and dont quite get it?
RR: Funnily enough, a lot of times the ones who dont quite get it havent watched a lot of films. Im not saying thats the only school. Im saying Scorsese and Tarantino did it and it worked for them but theyre brilliant minds.
SG: I know and there are wonderful first time films too, but you know.
RR: Yeah, there are really incredible first time films where youre just so impressed and sometimes thats their only film that theyll ever make thats worth anything. But theres a lot of crappy films and we know that, but thats also part of the beauty of it. Thats also something the Quentin Tarantino school of film taught me is love the bad movies for their best qualities.
SG: What was your vision for the love scene? Its really passionate and he goes down on her, which they never allow
in American films.
RR: The vision was he goes down on her.
SG: So Im not wrong to pick up on that.
RR: No, no. It was quite graphic too. Also, most people dont notice but its one take. Not one cut. None of that cutting to lips and skins and a nipple and the hair. No, no, no. This is what fucking happens. They come in, take off their clothes, he goes down on her, its awesome, it gets a little jumbled and theyre having sex. Theyre fucking and it looks good and thats it. Its one take. Yeah, the point was he goes down on her.
SG: Well, thank you for that.
RR: Yeah, well, Im glad you liked it. Im glad you saw it.
SG: I saw youve photographed Afghanistan. How did that opportunity come about and what were you able to illuminate?
RR: I went with my creative partner who I worked with and Ive known for the last 15 years and I went to Kosovo with him to research in Kosovo. We couldnt shoot in Kosovo because the U.N. is down there. The U.N. security is just ridiculous. But from there I went to Afghanistan because one of the characters in this film is from Afghanistan, an immigrant woman from Afghanistan which is something that happened in my home. When the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, all these Afghans came to Denmark and they would come through my home. My mothers a doctor. She would retrain them, all this kind of stuff. I went to Kabul, I went to Afghanistan to check out what this was because theres an organization called RAWA, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. This is a good thing to put out because its good for them, they need money. They just do female causes in Afghanistan and they do refugee centers on the Pakistani border. They did girls schools during the Taliban because women werent allowed to learn. I have a lot of opinions on that. So then I went to Kabul and I saw them. I had no fucking idea how crazy it was at the time because this was 2007 and it was in Ramadan, it was fall 2007, Iraq was getting under control but it was nuts in Afghanistan but in the press they werent talking about it because it was just going out of control over there. But my sisters husband was part of the Danish U.N. troops going in there. Denmark was very involved in trying to reform Afghanistan, especially when the Danish president became the head of the U.N. So I had some military advice but I went in there and it was nuts. It was fucking nuts.
SG: Its kind of nice to be reminded of Kosovo, because you forget, yeah, we did go to war with them too.
RR: We did, yeah. Bill Clinton did, by the way, bomb this country. In Kosovo, this was the Albanian immigrants in Serbia, in a little conclave where they were actually being. It was a sort of Apartheid because if you were Albanian, Kosovan, Serbian you were not allowed to go out at night. You were not allowed to learn things in school. You werent allowed to write your own language. It was really terrifying, a terrifyingly oppressive, discriminatory little state. It was after Sarajevo. Sarajevo was obviously terrifying with all the rape camps and everything. Good on Angelina for making a film on that because it was terrifying. This is the ex-Yugoslavian region that invented ethnic cleansing. It started there. Ethnic cleansing out of ex-Yugoslavia meant impregnate women from the other culture and either they have your child, or their father or their brother kills them, or they have to kill themselves. This is straight up the truth what happened, and then everything else that came with that violence. There was violence so grotesque I could never show it in a movie. You could never because its humanity at its absolute dark ages.
Rasmussen herself plays Adria, an immigrant from Kosovo in Marseilles. While opening up to an American romantic, Shawn (Nick Corey), Adria remembers her escape from military rape and a crime spree with a former soldier (Nikola Djuricko). Filled with the kind of blood and sex that would strike Tarantinos fancy, its the voice of a woman with worldly thoughts. Standing 511 with Danish features, Rasmussen was a model for Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Dolce and Gabbana and more.
She appeared in the film Femme Fatale and starred in Angel-A. I met her on the Femme red carpet where she laughed at my questions about her height. Again speaking about Angel-A, I recalled her itching to speak out about her passions after years of being paid to stand there silently. So I was interested to see what those artistic ideas would be. To speak about Human Zoo, Rasmussen hung out in the offices of The Weinstein Company, essentially Tarantinos home base. Dressed in all black with leather jacket, she dropped F bombs, talked dirty and got political all in the same breath. Finally, a woman I can talk to.
SuicideGirls: Lets first talk about what Human Zoo means so the people who havent seen it yet can understand.
Rie Rasmussen: I ended up doing Human Zoo because a real story was happening currently in my life. A parallel universe in Denmark where my family adopted a girl named Lihn from Vietnam. Her mother had been sold into prostitution in Moscow and she was from Vietnam. Shed been stuck her entire life where her mom was enslaved and had escaped. Her mom had gotten her out. Lihn made it to Denmark where my parents ended up trying for six years, battling to adopt her. That was when I started thinking about Human Zoo, the human zoo were in. In the film its like the ovarian lottery. How do you win the ovarian lottery where youre born in America, ka-ching, you won. Youre born in Canada, youre pretty all right. If youre born in Mexico, youre looking at a short stick. How is this possible? How is this stupid line, this red line made with blood, sweat and tears, how could that separate me from the fact that I could be a fulfilled individual human being with a soul that matters and know that it matters and can vote and can make a difference in the world? Thats what Human Zoo is about.
SG: When Shawn in the film makes a sarcastic remark to Adria, she doesnt understand why hed lie as a joke. Does that reflect your feelings about sarcastic jokes, that people should just be honest?
RR: When she says, I dont trust you. Why would you say that if you dont mean it? Yeah, for me, a lot of this is autobiographical youve got to realize, because I left Denmark at 15. I came to Huntington Beach, California. First I came to New York for six months. Then I followed a surfer boy to Huntington Beach, California and all of a sudden Im in Jackass: The Movie for real. Really, honestly, because thats where they all came from back then. Back then there was a real live crew of it and this was my experience with American humor and sarcasm. I couldnt understand it. Coming form Europe, it was much more deadpan. The disconnect between the two universes was why I was so attracted to that universe and why it taught me so many lesson and why I grew up so fast out of there. This is the exact thing. Its American to me. I met America basically before MTV had Jackass. That was my interpretation of America.
SG: Doesnt that sarcasm put a distance in relationships? Everyones performing so you avoid honesty.
RR: Exactly and this is what I mean. From 16 and whatnot living in Huntington Beach and driving my first car, a massive Toyota Landcruiser and doing skateboard videos and being around skateboard society, like you see in the movie I had to learn how to fight, physically and mentally. I had to learn how to put up a fight and this is my way of also showing what we teach people. Our environment will teach us how to become adult animals, how to become predators or how to become prey.
SG: As a director, are you able to photograph yourself the way you wish other people would have seen you through the lens?
RR: I think a lot of people, I come into a room and I see people and they see Oh, this beautiful girl. Thats what they think. This is not me saying it. I see something completely different. I see a character, an individual. I see something that I know could come out of me. Obviously youve seen Human Zoo. Yeah, okay, Im 22 pounds heavier but you really get the heaviness of her life. Shes sweet, shes cute, but she has a heaviness in her and a worn out-ness in her later on and a tiredness and a realness that other people when they shoot me, like Luc Besson, Im this otherworldly angel who is alien and six foot tall and absolutely glamorous and gorgeous. Well, I dont see that. I see the broken down soul in Human Zoo with the dried up skin and the dumpiness of her. Yes, so youre very, very right.
SG: It helps to have all this going on inside that you can express, because I can tell you not all pretty girls have that.
RR: [Laughs] Look, my experience is that those generalizations with models, lets call them pretty girls, 80% of the time theyre right. And why? Its not really theyre fault. Its also societys fault. Look at TV. They give them everything. The pretty girl walks into the room and we cant help it. Me too. I cater too. I like a pretty girl. It makes me happy. So she comes into the room, Im going to cater to her, and everywhere that girl goes, shes going to be catered to. And everywhere, everybodys going to try to impress her or give her something or theyre going to have a reaction to her beauty. Therefore, she becomes conceited or dumb or entitled, which is the worst. An entitled pretty girl is just straight up a fucking cunt. But thats what you deal with in these industries of beauty and I understand that. Huntington Beach and these skateboarders and this surfboard community and these guys who were so out of tune with their emotional level and so in tune with their animalistic need to be Im alpha and Im badass, really made me just feel dumb if I wasnt up to the performance level. Im sure for them there was a certain level of looking at a pretty girl doing what I was doing, but I wanted to be just like them. I have a very competitive streak and I have a very tomboyish side so that brought it out in me.
SG: Did you ever hate being pretty?
RR: Look, I look pretty in the photographs. I look pretty in this and that movie, Femme Fatale, Angel-A and I can look pretty going down the street but I can also put on a pair of sweatpants and not look pretty and thats fine. If people think Im pretty, fuckin hell yeah, awesome. Thats great. Use it, be happy about it. Its a gift from the genetic compatibility of my parents and thats what it is and Im stoked.
SG: Dont you think guys like the sweatpants and dumpy look?
RR: You know, when I wear it, if Im in a big T-shirt, like I just walked in and I saw Quentin with all this staff the other day. He said, Oh my God, you look like just a little girl, perfectly cast in the alternative movie. I was like oh, I think a lot of guys respond to that but especially respond to their T-shirt and white panties and their socks. Then its all good.
SG: Does the Suicide Girls type make you happy?
RR: I love tatted up girls. I think its a turn-on. I love sexually empowered girls, if they are. Sometimes sexually explicit girls are just acting out because theyre having a lot of problems and then I feel sad for them. But I love sexually empowered girls. Im from Scandinavia. We were the first country to have female rights for voting. In the 1300s, women could divorce the men and they could take their children with them. So Im coming from a culture where men and women are basically the same size, build and considered equals. So I look at myself as a person. Not is she a cutie girl or is she a tomboy? Im a person. Im a human being and if in front of me is a man or in front of me is a woman and Im attracted to this man or this woman, it has absolutely nothing to do with what gender they come in. So yeah, I think the tatted up girl is pretty fucking hot generally.
SG: Human Zoo does not look like a first time feature. There are some complicated shots like tracking action in several rooms from above the building. How did you achieve those?
RR: Well, Im not a first time film director who hasnt seen film. I am from the Quentin Tarantino school of filmmaking. I have watched movies my entire life. Anything, anytime, anywhere, anyhow. Two a day, three a day, five a day. I also grew up in Denmark, its really dark, its winter nine months out of the year and its horrible, so you escape. I really needed the movies for escaping. Movies taught me. Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, Orson Welles, Carol Reed, Howard Hawks, John Huston, you name it, Jack Hill, they taught me.
SG: Still, havent you seen a lot of aspiring filmmakers who watch a lot of films and dont quite get it?
RR: Funnily enough, a lot of times the ones who dont quite get it havent watched a lot of films. Im not saying thats the only school. Im saying Scorsese and Tarantino did it and it worked for them but theyre brilliant minds.
SG: I know and there are wonderful first time films too, but you know.
RR: Yeah, there are really incredible first time films where youre just so impressed and sometimes thats their only film that theyll ever make thats worth anything. But theres a lot of crappy films and we know that, but thats also part of the beauty of it. Thats also something the Quentin Tarantino school of film taught me is love the bad movies for their best qualities.
SG: What was your vision for the love scene? Its really passionate and he goes down on her, which they never allow
in American films.
RR: The vision was he goes down on her.
SG: So Im not wrong to pick up on that.
RR: No, no. It was quite graphic too. Also, most people dont notice but its one take. Not one cut. None of that cutting to lips and skins and a nipple and the hair. No, no, no. This is what fucking happens. They come in, take off their clothes, he goes down on her, its awesome, it gets a little jumbled and theyre having sex. Theyre fucking and it looks good and thats it. Its one take. Yeah, the point was he goes down on her.
SG: Well, thank you for that.
RR: Yeah, well, Im glad you liked it. Im glad you saw it.
SG: I saw youve photographed Afghanistan. How did that opportunity come about and what were you able to illuminate?
RR: I went with my creative partner who I worked with and Ive known for the last 15 years and I went to Kosovo with him to research in Kosovo. We couldnt shoot in Kosovo because the U.N. is down there. The U.N. security is just ridiculous. But from there I went to Afghanistan because one of the characters in this film is from Afghanistan, an immigrant woman from Afghanistan which is something that happened in my home. When the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, all these Afghans came to Denmark and they would come through my home. My mothers a doctor. She would retrain them, all this kind of stuff. I went to Kabul, I went to Afghanistan to check out what this was because theres an organization called RAWA, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. This is a good thing to put out because its good for them, they need money. They just do female causes in Afghanistan and they do refugee centers on the Pakistani border. They did girls schools during the Taliban because women werent allowed to learn. I have a lot of opinions on that. So then I went to Kabul and I saw them. I had no fucking idea how crazy it was at the time because this was 2007 and it was in Ramadan, it was fall 2007, Iraq was getting under control but it was nuts in Afghanistan but in the press they werent talking about it because it was just going out of control over there. But my sisters husband was part of the Danish U.N. troops going in there. Denmark was very involved in trying to reform Afghanistan, especially when the Danish president became the head of the U.N. So I had some military advice but I went in there and it was nuts. It was fucking nuts.
SG: Its kind of nice to be reminded of Kosovo, because you forget, yeah, we did go to war with them too.
RR: We did, yeah. Bill Clinton did, by the way, bomb this country. In Kosovo, this was the Albanian immigrants in Serbia, in a little conclave where they were actually being. It was a sort of Apartheid because if you were Albanian, Kosovan, Serbian you were not allowed to go out at night. You were not allowed to learn things in school. You werent allowed to write your own language. It was really terrifying, a terrifyingly oppressive, discriminatory little state. It was after Sarajevo. Sarajevo was obviously terrifying with all the rape camps and everything. Good on Angelina for making a film on that because it was terrifying. This is the ex-Yugoslavian region that invented ethnic cleansing. It started there. Ethnic cleansing out of ex-Yugoslavia meant impregnate women from the other culture and either they have your child, or their father or their brother kills them, or they have to kill themselves. This is straight up the truth what happened, and then everything else that came with that violence. There was violence so grotesque I could never show it in a movie. You could never because its humanity at its absolute dark ages.