Scan Magazine | Cover Feature | Ulrich Thomsen
ing a story and writing it down, and so I did.” All the work around it, however, was a steep learning curve for Thomsen. He initially got some funding for the film to be produced in Germany, but when co-funding fell through it seemed like the total budget was far too big and the expectations to get famous actors too high. This was before Thomsen got the part in Banshee, so eventually he took a step back, decided to get some perspective, and ended up getting the role of Kai Proctor and heading to America. Once the rights for the German project ran out, Thomsen went for plan B and called his old friend, indie producer Steve Bakken. “I said to him, ‘I can’t pay you or anything, but do you want to produce this with me?’, and he did. Then we Googled how to make an indie film. I was probably professionally ready by the time we were done – then I was like, ah, I get it now!” It seems apt to suggest that he was inspired by the Danish Dogma tradition. “I guess I am – I was brought up with it,” he ponders. “There’s never enough money for big-budget movies in Denmark, so over the years I think we perfected that arthouse thing.”
A sausage as a peacemaker The plan is to bring In Embryo to festivals this year, but Thomsen is already onto the next project after getting a taste for directing. “I’m working on a comedy actually, a script I wrote that I want to shoot this year. It’s about sausages and friendships, a sweet comedy about racism,” he explains, so excited he does not seem to notice how odd it sounds. “There’s this guy who has a theory that the sausage is peaceful by nature, that you can’t fight when dealing with sausages. So he wants to open a sausage stand.” Thomsen, it turns out, knows a lot about sausages, and he is convinced that the irrational anger and hatred that feed racism can be curbed using the sausage as a peacemaker. “Deep down, the movie is about racism,” he laughs. “When you see it, you’ll understand.” There is a loud bang and Thomsen excuses himself. “Sorry, I have a thing with craftsmen. I don’t trust them, so when 38 | Issue 86 | March 2016
I hear drilling in my wall…” he says. He is back in his Copenhagen home where he lives with his wife and two children – when he is not away filming that is. “I guess it’s an agreement between me and my wife – I go away for five or six months, but then I’m back and I’m not really going anywhere at all. It’s what I do and what I’ve been doing my whole life. I can’t change that,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Of course it’s fun as well, and when the kids were small they’d come to all these interesting places to hang out. It’s a nice way of living; I find it less of a problem and more of a great job with nice perks!”
Ulrich Thomsen with Trine Dyrholm in The Commune. Photo: Ola Kjelbye