Sober von Trier dries out as director

Controversial filmmaker comes clean, most of his movies made on cocktail of alcohol and drugs

After 90 days sober, Danish auteur, Lars von Trier admits he was under the influence when he made most of his films.

Von Trier told Politiken that his daily habit of drinking a bottle of vodka a day and taking drugs would allow him to enter a “parallel world” where his ideas would develop.

However, now that he is attending daily Alcohol Anonymous meetings and working on his sobriety he fears he will only be able to make “shitty films”.

“There is no creative expression of artistic value that has ever been produced by ex-drunkards and ex-drug addicts,” he told Politiken. “Who the hell would bother with a Rolling Stone without booze or with a Jimi Hendrix without heroin?”

Von Trier said that his latest film, Nymphomaniac, was the only one he wrote while sober and it took him 18 months to complete; a drastic time difference compared to his 2003 film, Dogville, which he claims he completed on a 12-day substance binge.

Always controversial, this is the first time in three years that the director has spoken to the media after his self-imposed vow of silence after making empathic comments for Adolf Hitler at Cannes in 2011.

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