Sia Furler, born on December 18, 1975 in Adelaide, began her career as a singer in her mid-twenties. Their first album was released in 1997, followed by their second three years and a move to London later. Beyond her homeland, however, the great success did not take place for a long time, so that at some point she concentrated on writing songs for other artists. Christina Aguilera, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Maroon 5, David Guetta – they all owe hits to the Australian. As a solo artist, Sia celebrated her breakthrough in 2014 at the latest with the world success “Chandelier”. With “Music” (from February 12th on VoD and from March 5th on DVD) she is now making her debut as a director – and can promptly succeed in this area too. Her debut film has just been nominated for two Golden Globes, for Best Picture in the Comedy / Musical category and for leading actress Kate Hudson. We spoke to her in a virtual interview, during which she was initially surprised at the English of the person she was speaking to. Her tennis coach, she says with a laugh, has a much stronger German accent: “I think it’s really nice!”
Miss Furler, when did you first get the idea that you would like to direct a film?
To be honest, I don’t know that anymore. The first idea for the story that I’m now telling with “Music” came to me around 15 years ago. Much later, I began to enjoy staging when I was working on my music videos for “Chandelier” and Co. together with director Daniel Askill. I really enjoyed it – and as often as these videos were viewed online, I seemed to be doing some things right. I kept looking at Daniel more and more, and along the way, I started turning my ideas into a script with my best friend Dallas Clayton. It took a couple of years, and it took me at least as long to find the courage to actually make a film out of it.
Didn’t you dare?
At least I asked myself a lot of questions. Am I really a director? Or just a singer with a few good ideas? Do people just let me work on the videos to caress my ego or can I really do something? Are they all just crawling up my ass and the real work is actually done by Daniel? At some point I came to the conclusion that I just had to try this out with the film. And alone, not with Daniel as initially thought. Calling him about this was one of the most difficult of my life.
A feature film is something different from a music video. How easy was your new job?
That was a real baptism of fire that I had to pass. But I enjoyed it so much. Every day I came to work more excited and happy than ever before. This unfamiliar task gave me an unexpected, almost manic energy and inspired me enormously. At least during the actual shooting. When it came to editing, things looked different.
Why?
Suddenly all energy was gone, the work in the editing room was draining me. That was really the part of filmmaking that I hated. Which was my own fault, because in my naivete I had shot far too little material. My actors and actresses were all so great that I always said way too early: great, the thing is in the can, on to the next shot. As a result, my editors had far too little to work with. That’s why there was another three and a half years between the end of shooting and the start of the film, which for me was perhaps the most difficult and frustrating time of my life. Because what I saw was good, but not as good as my self-claims and success as a musician should be.
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