This weekend, the victim Casey went on “A Current Affair” to tell his side of the event: the years of bullying he endured before he finally fought back. Which might have even been fine, if it had been left there. But then the bully (and eventual victim) Richard Gale was given his 15 minutes on the national television show “Today Tonight” to cry to the world, and this whole story spun out of control.

The thing is, we do feel bad for Richard. But we didn’t need the young teen paraded around on TV as an example of “violence-begets-violence” to feel sorry for him. As Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote when this video first went viral:

The “little twerp” has had his name and whereabouts revealed multiple times on Facebook and elsewhere. And however despicable his actions toward Heynes may have been, there’s zero satisfaction in considering that a 13-year-old is now finding himself the target of harassment, threats and potentially worse. Frankly, if you truly enjoy watching a scrawny 13-year-old boy getting thrown on the pavement like a rag doll, that 13-year-old bully isn’t the only cruel one.

The popularity of the video spoke for itself: the only thing this interview does is play into our bloodlust and disguise it as empathy. Yes, bullying is a problem that needs to be addressed, but not by making a sacrificial lamb out of a 13-year-old messed-up kid who already got what was coming to him. Why was the video interesting in the first place, if it wasn’t for the Spartan excitement we felt when the tormentor became the tormented? Justice had already been doled out. Case closed.

Parading these kids around and turning them into sound bites might satisfy the part of us that never got over the humiliation of high school, but it doesn’t help the kids, and it certainly doesn’t prove anything to a child except that fighting is wrong unless a camera is rolling, in which case it might get you an interview on television.

I’ve spent all day walking around listening to your song “A Song for My Father.” I don’t know if I’m hung over or what, but that song’s really spoken to me today. It has this “Cat’s Cradle” vibe to it.

Tim Heidecker: I found when I’m hung over I’m always a little extra emotional, a little depressed. I’ve been known to cry.

Davin Wood: I think Tim’s mentioned before how that song comes the closest to something that’s relatable to most people. There shouldn’t be anything inherently silly about any of the melodies, but some of the lyrics have a little more humor to it. “A Song for My Father” is pretty sincere.

Do you think your fans are going to have a hard time relating to some of the more sincere parts of the album?

TH: I think some of them will. I think we have a wide swath of different kinds of fans, and a lot of them have taken it pretty well. They weren’t expecting it, but I think the best thing we can do is present things our fans wouldn’t expect. A lot of people, it’s not the music they assumed we’d like.

DW: I think “Tim and Eric” fans in general have learned not to be surprised by anything.

Except sincerity?

DW: The sincerity is key, it’s a necessity. It wouldn’t be worth doing to just make fun of an era of music. It’s just not that funny unless you actually have some love for it.

I notice a lot of these songs — as soft rock ballads tend to do — tell these stories with pretty cohesive narratives. Like “Weatherman” is about a car crash, “A Song for My Father” is about a boy and his dad, and “Life on the Road” is the classic tale of “the lonely life of an entertainer man.” Do you approach these stories the same way you approach sketch writing?

TH: Each song was written so far apart from each other, either at a guitar or a piano. I don’t think we ever thought, “We want to write a song about this,” we just started toying around with the music. Sometimes it was just nonsense words, but early on we realized that all the songs had these cultural reference points to them. For “Life on the Road” we just thought of that classic entertainer: that pathetic, whining, “how hard is life” kind of rock star. So there is a process that goes into it, but it’s not too deliberate.

DW: It was a really organic process, years in the making. Tim set up a little studio office in his house with a piano, and we had been working on a song, I think it was for Aimee Mann to sing for “Tim and Eric.” (The song ended up as “Heart.”) So during that session, we started messing around with this other tune (what eventually became “Weatherman”) and it made us laugh, but we knew it would never be on the show. And it grew from there. We thought, “Hey, we should be doing more of this stuff,” but it didn’t really fit into the show’s style of comedy. So whenever we had a weekend open, we’d just go over to Tim’s and work on it. We’d invite people over to collaborate, which is how we ended up getting Rilo Kiley’s Jason Boesel on drums, and their bassist Pierre de Reeder to produce the album. I can’t speak more highly about them.

Tim, you went to Temple University, right? Did you find Philly had a really good underground soft rock scene?

TH: No, no, no. When I was in college in Philly, there was a lot of post-punks … hardcore … like, rock. Sixties, retro, proto-Strokes kind of bands. Nothing like this.

I think they’re still around there, by the way, those proto-Strokes bands. But now they are post-Strokes.

TH: Ha, yeah. I was in a band in high school and college and I always had a love for music, but I didn’t go to a conservatory or anything like that. I was fairly self-taught. My comedy and my music were always swapping out one for the other.

Do you feel that way now, like you are swapping out comedy, or the show, for this album?

TH: Well, it’s just a different thing, really. This was always more of a hobby. We’re pretty serious about the music, but we’re pretty serious about making funny too. Although it might not seem that funny to a lot of people, it makes us laugh a lot.

It’s a much subtler form of humor than the show. I think the funniest part of the album to me is that you start it off with this huge audience applause, and you’re saying, “Thank you, thank you,” before introducing “Cross Country Skiing.” And when you’re done it’s like this swell of applause again, like you guys are Simon & Garfunkel doing “Concert in Central Park.” And I thought, “Wait, did you guys even hold a concert, ever?”

TH: No, it was totally canned (applause). Everything is very staged, and that’s a conceptual bit. Like, how pompous and pretentious can we be by starting our first track with cheering and applause? I think an early idea was that this band has been around for awhile, so you’d think to yourself, “Oh, when was this taped? Have I heard this before? Who is this by?” Just kind of throwing those questions out there.

To be honest, a lot of the bands that you’re emulating in this album have pretty goofy lyrics anyway. Kind of inadvertently funny and overwrought.

DW: Oh, totally. I never knew if it was just me and I just misunderstood the lyrics, but when John Mellencamp sings, “Don’t need to look over my shoulder to see what I’m after?” Uh, what? What does that even mean?

I was reading on Stereogum your list of favorite yacht rock songs, and you were saying how amazing and ridiculous the videos are for some of the songs that inspired “Starting From Nowhere.” You and Eric Wareheim have both directed music videos before, do you have plans to do something for this album?

TH: No. I don’t. Because it’s so much money and time, and we’re making a movie right now for “Tim and Eric.”

Oh yeah, you guys just got funding for “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie.“

TH: Yeah, the movie’s in production right now, and I really wanted this record to be its own thing. I actually said on Twitter that if anyone wants to make a music video for any of these songs, by all means go ahead and I’ll retweet you. I think other people could do a better job of making a music video of these songs than I could. I don’t want to dress up in a corduroy suit and have to pretend I’m somebody … it’s a weird thing. It’s not a character I’m doing, but it’s sometimes not to be taken seriously.

DW: I can’t think of a lot of visual imagery for these songs that wouldn’t put it right in the clichéd category.

Maybe this goes back to what I was saying about your fans, but for the people out there who don’t watch “Tim and Eric,” who only know about you from that crazy interview you did for Conan or something … what would you want them to know about this album?

TH: I would tell them that you’re allowed to enjoy it and appreciate it at any level you feel comfortable with. You can enjoy it completely earnestly, you can enjoy it for the music, you can enjoy it for the humor, or you could ignore the humor and take me at my word: that what I’m singing about is honest and true. So, you know, use it however you wish. It is my gift to you.

“Starting From Nowhere” is available for purchase on Amazon.
 

I shouldn’t have been worried. Neil Strauss was more wary of me than I was of him. “You scare me as an interviewer,” he says after I express my own trepidation. “Because the kind of person that is bad socially — and I’m not saying you are, but you did say you were awkward socially — but really trusts their fingers, they are scary to talk to. You don’t know what they’re thinking, and you don’t know what’s going to happen after they go home and get in touch with how they really communicate.”

So with it established that we both freaked the other one out a little bit, I attempted to interview one of the most established interviewers in the world.

Long day?

Yes. It’s not like it used to be. Before you just did some press and went home. Now you’re making viral videos … Twitter, Facebook, the mailing list. There’s satellite radio, there’s Internet radio …

So how do you think that changes the process of connecting with someone, both as an interviewer and as a subject?

It sucks as the interviewer. Most of the stuff in the book never would have happened nowadays because you don’t get the same access. They [the celebrities] don’t need the journalists as much. Now they can just tweet and Facebook to their fans as exactly the type of person they want people to think they are, versus what I try to do in my Rolling Stone profiles, which is to show who they really are.

Over and over in this book, the stars you interview keep saying, “Oh, I never told anyone this,” or “I can’t believe I’m showing [a journalist] this side of me.” 

I do realize there is a mutual seduction process at work. They want me to like them, so who knows, maybe they say those types of things to make me feel like the interview is special. I’m always petrified before interviews, even now. They are really stressful, and take tons of prep work.

I remember you telling Zac Efron that maybe he doesn’t party as hard as co-stars because he comes from a nuclear family, and I was like, “Wow, this guy has really done his homework.”

Yeah, well, Zac is easy, he’s had a short career. There have been times when I’ve almost turned down the profile with huge, mainstream artists because I haven’t wanted to go memorize and immerse myself in their entire recorded career.

You have an interesting style of interviewing people, where it comes off less like you have a series of questions you want answers to, and more like you decide what direction to take things in after listening to them talk. A lot of times this ends up with the stars asking you for your opinion about them. Is there a secret to getting these heavily guarded people to confide in you?

The three successful keys to a good interviewer is being nonjudgmental, being naturally curious and deep listening. And that’s not just hearing what people say, but feeling out the words, the pauses and those sorts of things as you decide where to dig in deeper, where people are being sincere and real.

You have that infamous Britney Spears interview in your book, where you used some of the techniques you picked up in “The Game” on her. How often do you use the skills you learned from Mystery and the pickup artists when talking to famous people?

I use it all the time, but that just adds on to what I just said is fundamentally true about how to get a good interview. What “The Game” added was two things: one, in harder interviews how to get people to open up, and two, a way to understand and connect with someone. So I would run the routines I learned in order to get a stranger, someone you just met, to become someone you know and who knows you better. Male or female, doesn’t matter.

Guys and women?

Yeah, because it’s not like you’re trying to, uh … have sex with them, or anything like that. It’s more like, um … Sorry. It’s more like a phase of seduction.

Can you give me some examples?

The White Stripes, when I interviewed them, were closed off, were really closed off. I did this thing called eliciting values. It’s basically asking these three questions to find out what somebody’s core motivating goals are. If you check out “Rules of the Game,” it’s in there, under “routines” section.

What are the three questions?

I feel like if I explain them to you, it would be boring. Another example would be Madonna: I was just another guy who showed up to interview her, you know, and we’re on her private plane. It’s going OK, but then I thought, “What if I pull the lying game on her?”

The lying game?

I think it was the lying game, yeah. It’s where you can tell when someone is lying, they don’t even need to speak, you can tell when people are just thinking lies. And Madonna got really into it, and it really bonded her stylist and her manager, and everyone just became more interested. They all just enjoyed the experience. They think, “Oh, a journalist is coming, it’s going to suck,” and they have to be on good behavior because they’re going to be judged, they’re going to be written about. And now they’re just having fun, and they are learning about themselves and they’re like, “This is awesome.”

Is there anyone who has been entirely nonreciprocal to this approach?

Not really. And one last thing about being a good interviewer: The biggest mistake I could make as a journalist would be trying to prove myself to them. To say, “This is why I’m special too.” You want them to be focused on themselves, not you.

So if you were me, and you were interviewing Neil Strauss, what techniques should I be using on you?

I don’t know. I don’t think you’d need to use any. I’m pretty talkative.

Would you like to interview Charlie Sheen? I feel like you’d be able to get something out of him that these other interviews haven’t. They’ve been lobbing such softballs at him.

When I’m doing an interview, I am not lobbing hardballs or softballs, because that is the worst fucking way to do an interview. It’s good for TV because it makes you look like a good reporter, but what happens when someone lobs a hardball? You duck. What I’m doing is creating a safe space, where people can communicate. What I want to know is what motivates him. I don’t care about what his behavior is, I want to know why he’s doing it. Not things like, “Do you guys all sleep in the same bed?” I mean, good question, funny question, but it’s the icing on the cake. To me, the cake is finding out what makes him tick. When I just did an interview with Howard Stern for Rolling Stone, I made him draw a map of childhood and examine that. Through that map, we examined his psyche.

The last thing I’ll say about Charlie Sheen is that I’ve been telling HarperCollins for two years that I want to ghost-write his book with him. But Charlie Sheen has become less interesting to me now, because you used to know he had this dark side, but it was covered up. And now it’s like his dark side has taken over.

It’s almost managed.

And here’s the crazy thing about culture. One week he’s talking about warlocks and tiger blood, the next he’s making a video for Funny or Die parodying those things he just said. That’s how fast our culture moves now.

Have you ever considered doing a fiction book? Your satire pieces are really funny insights into pop culture.

No, because I feel like there is this time-sensitivity thing. Like, if I don’t write about this pickup community now, someone else will. If I don’t do my anthology now … Plus, my nonfiction books are all based on literature. So that Mötley Crüe book (“The Dirt“) is based on William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying.”

Faulkner, really? You couldn’t pick anything a little more … accessible?

I’m sure that most Mötley Crüe fans don’t recognize it, but to me, it’s how I formed the book. I think it’s important if you go from low[brow culture] you take from high, and if you go from high you take from low.

Do you ever feel like a rock star whenever you get to these speaking events?

No, because a rock star is inaccessible, and I’m accessible. I feel like rock stars feel a sense of entitlement, whereas I just feel a sense of good fortune. Which is funny, because if you go back to my book’s theory, that quality would make me a terrible star. Because people who have been stars for a long time and held on to their fame feel entitled to it. They believe that God wants them to be famous, or it’s their destiny. Versus people who get famous and feel like they got lucky, that they don’t belong there … they tend to not stay there as long. Jack White kept telling me at the MTV movie awards “I don’t belong here, I feel like I’m in outer space,” whereas the Christina Aguileras and Britney Spears of the world are still going.

Maybe that’s because those who aren’t comfortable with fame opt out of it.

I’m not saying it’s inherently good or bad, I’m just saying it’s a characteristic of someone who is famous.

So you’re saying you have no faith in being Neil Strauss, the rock star?

No faith, and no desire.

So this tau thing, which is a unit of measurement for a rotation, might be taking over for Pi soon enough, much to the chagrin of middle-school teachers everywhere who are going to have to go out and buy new textbooks.

But we can’t let Pi Day slip away from us so soon! After all, if we wait until 2015, we will experience a once in a lifetime, Halley’s Comet-like Pi-sperience ! Check it out:

Everyone knows pi day is March 14th, but any true nerd realizes pi is not 3.14, but rather an irrational constant which continues infinitely in decimal expansion. Starting at 9:26:53 (.589… sec) AM, the longest extended Pi Day of our lives will come into action. The date, at the AM and PM hours, will be ” 3/14/15 at 9:26:53.589. Days like this only come once in a lifetime!

So in order to keep Pi alive, we need to do our part. Whether that’s creating elaborate domino effects in the shape of our favorite irrational number…

composing Pi into a tonal arrangement like musician John Blake has…

or even watching Darren Aronofsky’s black and white creepfest “Pi”…

We must join forces to keep the only other holiday where gorgoing yourself on cake is acceptalbe. Either way, Pi must survive. Now, can someone pass me the key lime?

But even before the journey begins, the journalist’s 10-year-old son has joked that she’s decided to fall in love with James, and her behavior around him is oddly imperious and demanding. When a cafe proprietor in some picturesque village makes the obvious assumption — that she and James are married — Binoche’s character pounces on it: It’s been 15 years, my husband works all the time, I never see him, we fight a lot. James returns from making a phone call to persons unknown (perhaps his real wife or girlfriend) and gradually gets dragged into the game. As the pair continue their odyssey through a Tuscan afternoon, sparring like a couple who really have been together 15 years, the movie’s real question comes into focus: How does a forgery or copy of a relationship compare with the so-called real thing?

On one level, “Certified Copy” is exactly what it looks like — an elegant, wistful and picturesque tale of two ships passing in the Tuscan sunlight, somewhat in the mode of “Before Sunrise” or “Cairo Time.” It’s by far the most audience-friendly movie of Kiarostami’s career, and the first one that’s likely to draw numerous Western viewers who’ve never heard of him and never seen an Iranian movie. But you could also call it, well, a clever copy of that kind of film, with lots of other things going on under the surface. This story bristles with ideas and intelligence, and offers tremendous emotional highs and lows; the longer you stick with it, the more mysterious it gets. Ultimately, Kiarostami isn’t just inquiring into the nature of love, marriage and relationships, he’s probing the porous boundary between stories and reality.

When I met Binoche a few months ago in her Manhattan hotel room (around the time that “Certified Copy” premiered at the New York Film Festival), she explained that the film was the end result of a circuitous collaboration with Kiarostami. Even in the rarefied world of upscale French cinema, built around a tradition of ethereal, untouchable screen goddesses, the woman known to the Parisian media as La Binoche is a special case. She has certainly appeared in Hollywood movies — her only Oscar came for “The English Patient” in 1997, and she was nominated again opposite Johnny Depp in the schmaltzy 2000 “Chocolat” — but she has said no far more often than yes.

Beginning with her breakthrough performance in Philip Kaufman’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” in 1988, Binoche has spent most of her career making high-prestige art films with adventurous directors, with little or no regard for their commercial potential. Cinephiles around the world will never forget her magnetic leading performances in the late Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Three Colors” trilogy, but she’s also worked with Jean-Luc Godard (“Hail Mary”), Patrice Leconte (“The Widow of Saint-Pierre”), Leos Carax (“The Lovers on the Bridge”), Michael Haneke (“Caché”), Hou Hsiao-hsien (“The Flight of the Red Balloon”), Amos Gitai (“Disengagement”) and Olivier Assayas (“Summer Hours”). She recently finished shooting American director Dito Montiel’s thriller “The Son of No One,” is developing a new film with Assayas, and has reportedly been cast in David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s “Cosmopolis.”)

What strikes you most about Binoche in person — after you get used to sitting in the same living room with Juliette Binoche, that is — is how sincere and earnest, even how vulnerable, she is. I don’t mean that we became terrific friends in a 20-minute conversation. She is French, after all, which implies a degree of formality that’s roughly 250 percent of the American norm. But Binoche, looking handsome and almost fragile in a tailored black pantsuit, gives off no hint of bogus pretension or of the diffident, superior boredom that emanates from other French movie stars. (You can probably guess who I’m talking about.) She listens carefully, laughs often and occasionally grabs hold of the conversation with the same ferocious intensity she brings to the screen.

I get the impression that making “Certified Copy” was the end of a long process between you and Kiarostami. How did it begin?

It was in the air when I met him several times in different places, at [screenwriter and producer] Jean-Claude Carrière’s place and at the Cannes festival. Then I did an interview with him. I filmed him, and at the end of the interview he said, “This interview was a really bad idea, but come to Iran.” [Laughter.] I said, “OK, OK, fine, maybe I’ll come.” About a year later, I really started to think about it. I thought I would love to know what was really going on there, after reading about all the Iranian bad people, you know, and all the politics. It turned out that I could get a visa. I was very surprised that I could get there. And I really discovered a completely different country than I imagined, than I was reading about in the media.

I’ve heard that from other people too. But what do you mean, exactly?

The joy inside the houses! They’re very much like Italians. They love life, they enjoy life, they’re full of culture. They have a great sense of themselves. And, you know, that area is, how do you say it? The curdle of civilization?

The cradle.

Yes, the cradle of civilization. They’re very aware of the power of their poetry, of their artistic strength and awareness. So discovering that was really — you know, we describe them as these retarded, ancient men who want to control women. And, hello? That happened quite a while ago, everywhere in the world. [Laughter.] Of course I’m against it, the veil thing, but it takes time for men to be aware. Of, you know, their fear, which is bringing more fear.

Well, since you mention the veil, I have to ask you about the recent law in France, which forbids Islamic women from wearing it in many public situations. How do you feel about that?

You know, we come from a different history. The revolution in France really places things on a different scale. The fact that the French policy really comes out of the revolution, the idea that everybody has to be the same — égalité, fraternité, liberté — which is, between us, a whole debate. From an outside point of view, it’s very hard to understand that. It’s not about pushing Muslims away from their beliefs. It’s like, everybody’s the same, and if you’re going in the swimming pool, you’ve got to be the same as the others. If you put yourself in the swimming pool completely covered, that puts that kid away from the others, away from the group.

Yeah, we have a more pluralistic tradition in the United States, although it’s safe to say that’s in question right now too. OK, so you went to Iran with him. Then what happened?

There was a sort of quid pro quo. When I arrived at the airport in Tehran, there were photographers and video cameras everywhere, and I was shocked: Wow, why did Abbas do that? Meanwhile, he was thinking: Wow, why did Juliette do that? We didn’t expect that. What happened was that there was a journalist on the plane who saw me and phoned some friends, and then it spread out, and the next day there were stories on the front page of the newspaper: Abbas and Juliette have a film together! Abbas was in trouble, because he thought: I have no film with you, and if the government is unhappy with that, I might be in difficulty. So I had to do tons of interviews the next day and the following day, saying, “We have no project! We have no film together!”

After two days of doing that, he started telling me this story about going to Tuscany with this lady who drove him around and started talking to him as if he was her husband. He gave me so many details! I was just taken aback by the story and how fascinating it was. He could see that, and as I was listening he was making up the story, I think. At the end of it, he said, “Do you believe me?” and I said yes. And he said, “No, it’s not true. It didn’t happen.” Of course I laughed, and I laughed for several days after that. I couldn’t believe he made me play along, emotionally, like this. After that it still took a while, but he said to me: “Find a producer, and we’ll make the film.”

This was the first time he’s made a film in the West. Was that a big adjustment for him, as you saw it?

I think the fact that we made it in Italy was better for him, because it feels closer to his own country in many ways. He had already done workshops in Italy and made a short film there, so there was already a space for him to work in Italy. He felt kind of comfortable there. It might have been more difficult somewhere else, but now I think he’s ready for that. His next project’s going to take place in Japan, because it’s become very difficult for him to work in his own country.

Yes, it’s a strange situation. He’s easily the most internationally famous Iranian director, and he can’t really make films there. But tell me about working with William Shimell, who had never acted in a film before. Because most of the film is just the two of you, which is a lot of pressure on a newcomer!

Yeah, I could see that it was very difficult sometimes, almost like vertigo for him. You jump into that space, and there’s a lot of tension that comes with that. You have to be precise and be free at the same time. How do you combine those two worlds? After a while, I’d say after two weeks, I really saw him differently. I wanted to make sure he was fine, and not panicking too much! We filmed chronologically, and you see him grow as well, as the story moves along.

It’s interesting, I think this lady is telling him so many things. She’s telling him off, she’s pushy, she’s needy, all of that. He’s, like, subdued most of the time, he doesn’t answer back that well. He’s wondering what kind of situation he’s in. There’s something parallel between what William went through and what the character goes through.

This is a movie about people who have just met who start to pretend that they know each other well. You might call it a fiction about pretending, or a film where actors play people who are acting.

Well, as for me, it had to be always true. That’s a big theme we went through, Abbas and myself. He said to me: “Actors! They fake all the time! They don’t live emotion, it’s not true. Even though they cry, they cry for the film. It’s not like life, when you’re in real pain.” I said: “No, Abbas. You’re really recreating life and you’re really feeling the pain. It’s not technical, it’s heartfelt.” I could see that he didn’t agree, and it really didn’t matter to me, because he doesn’t know. So why do I need to battle? I didn’t want to go through big discussions about it. So I just smiled and thought, we’ll see.

Actually, I think what he discovered through the shoot was how emotional it was. I don’t think he expected that. Most of the time, the way he edits a film, it’s quite flat until the end, when the emotion comes in through the construction of the story. The story gives the emotion, not the actors going up and down and revealing their inside worlds. But as we made this one, we discovered that emotion could also give the film a shape in a different way. Theme-wise, this was wonderful. Between the man and the woman, the woman is exposing herself emotionally and the man is more controlling and thoughtful. But it’s also interesting that the woman in the film is Abbas as well. He raised his children on his own, and he knows what that’s like. So he never separated himself from her.

We only know one of the characters’ names, and we don’t know anything about their past. I mean, she’s got a child, so there’s that, obviously. But there’s almost nothing else.

I think for Abbas it was like Adam and Eve. You don’t know about Adam’s past, or Eve’s past. They are newly created.

You know, when the film premiered at Cannes, some people actually thought that there was a reality shift at some point. Maybe they actually are married, and either they’re pretending not to be at first or we’ve, I don’t know, gone from one universe into another. I don’t see it that way, but it’s an intriguing idea.

Yeah, and Abbas leaves it that way, which I like. It’s not about that — it’s not about choosing a side, whether they’re married or not married. It’s about the inside world, where you can imagine being married to someone you just met. So we’re more in that world, where she takes what’s inside her as real. Whether it’s true or not true, a copy, a reality, an original — that doesn’t matter in the end. It’s like: Can you see me? Can you hear me? Can you love me?

Talk about the moment when they first start to play the game together, pretending to be married. What happens in that scene?

It starts in the cafe, when the bartender asks her a question about him as a husband. He doesn’t know what to answer and turns to her, and she’s so angry. He’s not getting involved! He doesn’t know what to say. She catches him not playing the game, not being responsible, and it hits something in her: Oh, men! Men are not responsible! [Laughter.]

Anybody who’s ever been married is likely to identify strongly with that scene. [Laughter.] You know, you’re running the risk of playing someone who’s not likable all the time here.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Maybe not even most of the time! At least at the beginning of the film, at least, she’s pretty manipulative.

She’s manipulative, and she wants to be right all the time. But not at the end. At the end of the movie, there’s a moment where she becomes like a little girl.

Oh, I agree. I mean, people will have to see it for themselves, but I think at the end of the movie the audience will fall in love with her, just as the man does. Let me ask you quickly about your career trajectory of working with all these great directors, from Kieslowski and Godard through Haneke and Hou Hsiao-hsien and all the others. You’ve made other kinds of films too, more commercial films, but it’s quite an impressive list.

You know, I had a mother who loved the fine arts, and I was really educated by her. When I was 15, she sent me to see Tarkovsky’s films, Dreyer’s films, Rossellini’s films. I was educating myself very early on, with great directors, with film and theater. So for me it’s always been a continuation of that, that love of vision, of artists, and explorations of the human heart. Ideas, feelings and experiences. For me, it’s the same impulse. As an actress you also want to try other gears, other worlds, because you don’t know them, but you always come back to the world you’re really here for.

I also feel responsible, as an actress, to choose directors I really admire. It’d be easy, you know, to do more commercial films. There’s more money, more fame, more of whatever you want. But to find directors where you feel like: Oh! Artistically there’s a challenge there. Maybe people don’t know about them, but that doesn’t matter. I want to explore something with them. I have to say that it fulfills something in me, that at the end of it I say, “I’ve been through an experience with them, something I’ve never done before.” It’s all about exploration and sharing something with someone. And enjoying it, although it can be quite traumatic along the way. There was a lot of joy in Abbas’ film; we laughed all the time. I mean, it was concentrated and there was intensity. But there was joy as well.

“Certified Copy” is now playing in New York, with wider national release to follow. It’s also available on-demand from many cable and satellite providers.