And I've built exercise back into my life. They say a person who wants to lose weight should gradually increase their physical exercise. Well, I'm running every day now. I think the next thing is going to films.
The problem is that I moved back home with my mother, to save money for film and get out of the city. It costs about fourteen cents a second just to shoot and process original film, without making prints. Then my mother decided to be the guardian of my mental health. She used to be in the habit of going out to film festivals with me. At the moment, I hardly have anyone to go with except her. And I'm kind of afraid to say, 'Mom, I'm going out to a film': she'd be disappointed that
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Robertson self-portrait,
December 1991. Top to bottom:
'Depressive,' 'Normal,' 'Manic.'
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I wasn't going with her. I'm dependent on my mother for transportation, since at the moment, I'm not working full-time. But I don't want her to think she has to be my moviegoing companion.
At least I keep the camera going when I'm depressed. It's only been one or two times that I've let the camera go for two months. When I first began the diary, I used to carry the camera every day and take a picture almost every hour. It's less, latelybetween one and four scenes a day.
I'm sorry, you asked a question?
About other avant-garde filmmakers. One reason I asked is because. the reel about your cat Amy's death reminds me very much of Carolee Schneemann's
[197378].
I saw part of that at Massachusetts College of Artabout three or four hours. I remember the scene of her holding her cat and weeping. I felt really guilty when Amy died, and I took a picture of my guilt. When Carolee was filming her diary, she followed everywhere that Kitch walked. I remember coming up to Carolee and saying, 'I must go for a walk with my cat.' I never did that, until Amy was dying. And it came back to me that Carolee had done it. I feel guilty, really guilty about that. Amy was a good old cat.
That's a powerful part of your film.
It does come off well in screening, it's a true story.
I think what comes through in your screenings is your openness. A lot of filmmakers think they're open, but you reveal agony in a way that goes much further than what's usually called 'openness'especially on the soundtrack (your in-person narration is less emotional).
Well, the sound is from that time. It's real. Sometimes I use three sound sources. There's sound on the film, and there's sound on tape at the same time, and I narrate in person. I do worry about saying too much in person because to hear two sound sources might be okay, but three is pretty hard. Usually, I interrupt the flow when the sound is from tape that was done at the same time the images were made. Then it's like you're looking at a photo album with someone, explaining certain pictures you know he or she won't understand.
When you've shown the diary, have you always combined sound-on-film, tape, and in-person narration?
Yes, but at the beginning I was using unedited stretches of original tapes. I didn't know I could take samples from recorded sound. I'm afraid of mixers and fancy laboratories. People were telling me how you have to go very complex with films, and make finely tuned, synchronized soundtracks. I don't do that. If I have tapes for a period of time, I'll simply go through them and pull out anything I find interesting. Then I play that over the stretch of film and see if anything happens that's so completely off that I have to cut out a piece of sound. If you don't go
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trying to make things match up, they'll match up anyway. It's like fate. It's happened to me when I've just played a whole stretch of unedited tape, and it's happened to me with dubbed excerpts. You put little pieces of tape next to film, without looking at the film, and synchrony happensor an interesting contrast.
The sound that goes with Amy's reel is an original stretch of a tape I made when I was just keeping the diary tape along with the diary film. But most of the tapes I've been making lately are dubs of the best of the best.
I have several hundred hours of tape. My problem is that in the last couple of years I've been sending most of my diary tapes away to a guyTom Baker again.
This last year the sound on my camera broke down, but I didn't know because, as usual, I didn't look at the film until a year later. Consequently, in 1989 1 have stretches of film and no sound to put over them. I figure I'll read some of my political letters. A fifty-one page letter should cover up several reels! And the audience will get an idea of the verbal delusions I have. Well, I don't know if they're all delusions. But some of them are pretty farfetched, I'd say.
