For Berger, however, everythings going just fine.
And the first thing he said no to was what life seemed to have in store for him.
I come from Wolfsburg, a fairly small city in Germany, he says.
Edward Berger on the set of his new filmConclave.Philippe Antonello
They build Volkswagen cars there, and thats all they do.
You get a proper job.
Still, they were an arts-leaning family, and they encouraged Berger in his love of theater.
I always loved movies, too, but I didnt have a clue how they were made.
I thought the actors made them.
They had a film course, he recalls, and people were walking around with cameras.
It was the first time I realized how you make a movie.
His teenage awakening, however, wasnt likeThe Fabelmans.
I started slowly, not like Spielberg re-enacting movies.
I had a Super-8 camera and a video camera.
It was all awfully terrible and not full-time.
It was obviously a metaphor for Germany.
His fathers instincts proved right.
I went for the first day, which was a prep course in math.
I sat and listened to it and thought, Thats not for me.
So, I left and went to that art school in Braunschweig.
Id watched a lot of independent movies in school, and New York was the independent hub.
Anthony Bregman, now an acclaimed producer, opened it.
It was a tiny company that employed just eight people.
I started as an unpaid intern, says Berger.
I did photocopies and errands for three months, and that turned into my first job.
It was, like, $2,400 a week or some insane amount of money.
I started stuttering, and I said, I cant do it.
If Id taken it, I wouldnt be a director today.
Berger, quite correctly, knew it was time to go.
It was the best time, he says.
But you also felt you were at the end of it.
I had an apartment on the Bowery, and the Angelika Film Center was around the corner.
There was a film market there every year or so.
Most of them ended up with a massive credit card bill and an unsold movie.
Like Fritz Lang before him, Berger decided to go home.
I went back one summer and thought, Wow, life is happening here, and itscheap.
I also thought, Im not American; what am I doing in New York?
I dont have a story to tell there.
It was about a kid growing up in Berlin who ends up in a knife fight in the subway.
I forget what happens in the end.
I think he dies.
Immediately, he hit a rock.
I realized I didnt have anything to say afterward.
It was shallow, he sighs.
It did OK, but it was just mediocre.
Television was a good place for him to learn that, but a dangerously seductive one.
You get opportunities with actors that youve grown up with, which is amazing.
Lets do the next one, and itll be better.
So, you put all your heart and soul into it and you make another television movie.
Now, I learned a lot about directing in that time.
But after 10 years, I realized if I continued doing that, Id just be a television director.
I had a crisis, he says.
I couldnt finish it, so I played soccer with my son in the garden instead.
And one Sunday afternoon, I saw a kid walking by with a backpack.
My kid said, Oh, thats Jack.
Hes in my class.
Stop complaining about your stupid script and write another one.
It was the first script Id read in Germany that felt international, he says.
It was an urge, he says.
We wanted to tell that story and share it.
We wanted to speak of our youth and the feelings wed grown up with.
The guilt and the shame.
It all went into that movie.
Looking back, does he see a pattern?
Different projects pull me in different directions, he says.
Im not catering to an audience.
AfterAll QuietI thought, you know what?
Next time, I want to make something entertaining.
At the end ofAll Quietits just silence.
Lets go have a drink.
Ill probably want to do something different again.
