You’d be forgiven for not seeing much in Jens Haaning’s “Take the Money and Run,” an art piece that appears like a blank canvas at first glance. Certainly, that’s what the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in the artist’s native Denmark saw upon its unveiling, wondering where the $70,000 that they had loaned him for the piece had gone. The money was to be directly invested into the work — quite literally when what Haaning had pitched in his proposal was to put the money on display to reflect the money that cultural institutions such as the Kunsten Museum had at their disposal to compare with the general salary for an Danish worker for an exhibit on labor conditions, but when both frames arrived empty, the question arose whether Haaning’s work was creative or criminal.
As a court battle was set into motion with the Kunsten Museum trying to reclaim the cash they had put into the work, director Ole Juncker knew that there was potential to have at least one unquestionable piece of art emerge from the piece when tracking Haaning through the ordeal was no doubt going to be interesting. The result, taking its name from the controversial piece, is that and then some when it doesn’t only have the twists and turns of a juicy legal thriller, but true to Haaning’s intent, the response the piece sparked became a part of the art as the notoriety of what he had done created a potential feeding frenzy around the auction of the piece as it became so well-known, with bidders valuing the blank canvases for what they represented rather than what they actually were.
However, following the irascible Haaning, a notorious prankster who once set up cabs in Berlin that would tell jokes in the streets that only the Turkish community could understand and staged a working massage parlor inside a museum during one of his exhibits, wasn’t going to be easy and Juncker fashions a thrill ride where it can seem as if both the filmmaker and the audience is hanging on for dear life when Haaning is more than happy to take up any media requests connected to the case even as the threat looms that something he’ll say could damage him and rather than see the potential sale of “Take the Money and Run” as a way out of calamity, the thought of a windfall leads him to broaden his ambitions even when there’s no guarantee the money will come through and the process is strung out.
Whether Haaning is a genius or a madman gives “Take the Money and Run” plenty of gas and with the film’s premiere this week at the Tribeca Festival, Juncker spoke about how he was able to hold on long enough to bring his story to the screen as well as how the international attention to the artist’s case brought the film into focus and sensitively depicting his bipolar condition.
How did you get involved in this crazy adventure?
I just heard about the story about this artist doing something that nobody’s done before in the media and then for a couple of months, we didn’t know if [Jens] would pay back the money [even] when the exhibition ended. And then when it ended, it was very clear he would not pay back the money and then I contacted him. At that time, I think maybe around four other filmmakers had contacted him and he told me, “I’ll just say yes to everybody.” But some people didn’t get the projects financed and I think he ended up liking me the best, so that’s how I got involved and I just thought this story is so crazy that something must happen, so I then followed him for two-and-a-half years in the aftermath. In the beginning, the museum threatened to sue him but he didn’t think it would happen and actually I didn’t either. But after a couple of months into filming, then suddenly came the letter from the court that now it was real.
It does look like Jens loves the media. When he’s engaging everybody, was it interesting to see the case evolving and being covered [elsewhere] versus what you were capturing on your own?
Of course. One of the attractive things about it was it got a lot media attention worldwide, not just in Denmark. He was called up by New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, the UK and that was also very interesting to see how such a small action could blow up in this modern media.
One of my favorite sequences in the film is the radio show that he’s doing where you were able to use Verite footage to amplify what he was feeling. What was it like to create that sequence, just using what you had within the frame?
Yeah, this scene at the radio studio where he has some mental meltdown, I wanted to get people’s reaction to him, because I got used to his behavior very fast, but he’s not an average guy, so it was important to me to also capture the radio host who has some amazing expressions as he was going a little bit mad in the studio. I wanted to show people my version of what is going on inside his head, and I can’t say if I’m right about it, but I wanted to be very close, so you really could feel his mental state. It was planned that I should have a director of photography, but it was so uncertain when we were filming, not because of his mental health, but he canceled so many times on the day of or the evening before the filming and I thought okay it’s going to be too expensive to pay a DP if eight out of 10 shooting days are cancelled, so I ended up filming the whole documentary myself, but I enjoyed it.
In the beginning, I was very focused on the case. Will he get to keep the money? Will he make a whole lot of money from this art piece? But as I dove into the story, it became more obvious that I had to be more focused on his personal character and what is happening inside his head, because his bipolar disorder affects his life so much and my focus changed during the filming. In the beginning, I was thinking maybe I won’t focus too much on the mental health issues because that’s also a cliche that artists are dealing with a lot of crazy stuff inside their head, but I [realized I] had to go into that too.
You’re able to show things you might not otherwise be able to get into with animation as well. What was that like to work with?
Yeah. I never worked with animation before, but since the artist is kind of a wild person, the editor and I were [saying] we should try everything we want and then we can take away things if it’s too much afterwards, but we shouldn’t limit ourselves in the creative process. So as I was thinking about how he is bipolar, [I wondered] how can we show what’s happening in his brain? You really can’t, and maybe animation could help us. Also, in the court case, we weren’t allowed to film, but we could make an animation. We would’ve loved to do a lot more, but it’s so costly and time-consuming. I think one-and-a-half minutes of the entire film is animation, but somehow it gives us a feeling of how Jens is.
This takes so many wild twists and turns, was there anything that took this in a direction you really didn’t expect or you know send you down a path you were really surprised by?
A single event I can’t come up with, but I was thinking all along, why don’t you just make a deal with the museum? They clearly want to, but [Jens] didn’t and the whole time I could see how this was really hard for him. He’s thinking it’s not worth it, but the art piece itself was more important than his own well-being and that was difficult for me to understand – that you can be so uncompromising that you want to sacrifice your own well-being over an art piece – but many artists would be like that and that was quite interesting for me to how much they actually put into it.
I’d consider you an artist as well and when this brings up so many provocative ideas about what is the value of art, was this a place that you could express any of your own experience through this story?
Maybe. Everybody working within the art world, making film or fine art have some struggles, and getting financed is always a big thing. As we were filming this, we had to run around and get money from here and there, but I’m not in a situation as this artist [Jens is] at all. At least here in Denmark, the film business is a more sustainable way of living than the fine art world.
“Take the Money and Run” will screen at the Tribeca Festival at the AMC 19th St. East 6 on June 9th at 5:30 pm.