There's no animal behavior that is not performance. That's all we do. Whether you're in front of the camera or behind it, you're always acting, always performing. I've sometimes employed my image as an actor on the screen, an actor portraying my-'self.' Who is better qualified, after all? Performance art as such doesn't really interest me.
In the sequences you mention, what's really at work is extracting visual power from something quite common and ordinary. Motto: 'make it jump!' Con brio!
seems, even more than earlier films, a demonstration of the range possible for a 16mm camera and black- and-white filming. What have you been doing since that film? It feels so much like a culmination of your career as filmmaker that I can't help but wonder whether it presages a major pivot in your direction, back toward color perhaps.
It's not a culmination, at least I hope not. It's a good piece of work. A lot of my life went into it. Taken with
it's almost an encyclopedia of black-and-white possibilities, but the possibilities are endless. In a way, I feel I've just begun to work in that medium. There are many, many more things I want to do. I love black and white for its severity. By comparison color seems almost sentimental, and the range of color stocks that are available now is very limited. I'm still mourning Kodachrome II. Most of the things I've seen in color recently would have been much more interesting in black and white. Anyway, I'm very sensitive to color, and I have very strong feelings about individual colors, so that working in black and white frees me from a lot of restrictions.
Since finishing
I've been working on a long black-and-white film with sound, called
. It seems like all I do is work. There isn't any occasion when I'm not working in one sense or another, and there's no such thing as finished.
At times during
I get the sense that you're consciously demonstrating that cinema can do, comparatively easily, much of what the other arts struggle to accomplish. Sometimes, particular segments of the film remind me of the work of particular painters and kinds of paintingthe sequence of light on the drinking glasses reminds me of certain superrealist painters (Janet Fish, for exam-
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ple); the street corner sequences where we see multiple layers of imagery through the glass and reflected in it remind me of, say, Richard Estes; the sequences along the sidewalks, sometimes of Ray K. Metzker. I don't claim any expertise in the contemporary fine arts, but I wonder if you keep up with what's going on in painting, photography, the arts in general, and whether to some extent, sequences in
were homages or challenges to particular artists or kinds of work?
I try to keep up. I have a great appetite for images of all kinds, so I'm always looking for what I might devour. Like any other food, there's a lot of poor quality and very little that's really good. You can starve in the midst of plenty.
I'm aware of the work of some of the people you mention, and I think that some of it is pretty good, but certainly no homage was intended. Living in a city like New York, multiple reflections in windows are an everyday occurrence, all you have to do is look. The light on the glasses I saw one day when I was washing dishes and simply shot it, no more and no less.
At the end of
there's a funny little coda, where we see the shadow of your arm as you flex your muscle. It seems a fitting conclusion to the film, which, so far as I'm concerned, proves that you can 'play' the 16mm camera and black-and- white film with more ingenuity and dexterity than any other filmmaker. The making of the muscle seems a frank recognition of what you have indeed been able to accomplish; there's nothing in it of youthful egoit's more a simple refusal to be falsely modest, almost as if to say to the viewer: 'I'm a little amazed at what I can do, too, but there's no point in my pretending that I'm not excited about what I've learned over the years and what I can accomplish with this camera!' Is that what you had in mind in the final shot?
No, although you're most gracious and generous! That gesture was actually made by the limb of the tree whose shadow you see in that shot, not by me. It was an unusual occurrence, to be sure, and I was fortunate to be standing there with my camera.
Some general questions: Do you go to conventional films often? Are there particular commercial films or filmmakers you especially admire?
Rarely, these days. I live some distance from the city, and it's difficult for me. I still enjoy Robert Bresson.
[1970] is one of my favorite films. I like
[1969] a lot, too. And I'm still interested in Godard. I thought
[1985] was good. And Wim Wenders
[1987] was interesting.
How much avant-garde film do you see? Are there particular filmmakers you make a point of keeping up with?
