a weird and suspect process to make films based so openly on one's own family.
It seems inevitable that at some time or another your father will see the film. What do you think about that?
I dread it. When I first started working on the stories, I had a lot of anger, obviouslyI even thought about sending a script to him. I had vengeful feelings. But the longer I worked on it, the less I wanted to punish him, and the more I felt I was not doing it so that he would finally acknowledge my experience, but so that I could acknowledge my experience.
The nuclear family is based on a relationship in which one person (the parent) has a lot more power and control than another (the child). Because of this, I think children are constantly having their feelings denied by their parents. If the child is unhappy and the parents can afford to acknowledge the unhappiness, they do it; but if the parents can't acknowledge the unhappiness because it reflects badly on them, they won't. For me, it was a matter of writing these stories so that I could finally say to myself, 'This
happen to me, and this is the effect it had on me,' regardless of his experience. I'm sure he has a very different interpretation of a lot of the stories, which is understandableeveryone sees things from their own perspective, their own history.
By the time I finished the film, I really felt that I was making it so I could understand what had happened
so other people who had the same experience could have that experience acknowledged. I don't think the sole purpose of art is to provide acknowledgment for people, but I think that's one of the things art can do. You can see a film or read
Page 314
a book that in some way corresponds to your experiences, good or bad, and you might feel stronger because you see yourself reflected in it. That's what being in the world is all abouthaving common experiences with other people. I hope that's the effect the film will have.
During the film's coda, we see a home movie image, of you and hear you sing the ABC song. The last words of that song, and of the film, are, 'Tell me what you: think of, me.' Obviously, the song relates to the film in several ways, but is your use of it, on one level, a comment on the whole enterprise of making film? Do you mean that films are attempts to please whatever is left of the father in us and that the audience, which is now going to make a judgment of the film they've just seen, is an extension of patriarchy?
Well, in a way, but that was the joke end of it. When you make a film, you do it to get a response, and presumably most people want a good response. I surely can't imagine making a film and hoping everyone will
it. The conclusion of
was more a way for me to acknowledge my absurd ambivalence. A lot of the stories in the film are about doing things to get my, father's approval, and then at the end in the last story I decide I'm not, going to swim across the lake to please him. I've made a sort of grand gesture of turning, back to shore, swimming back to my friends who will hopefully treat me differently than my father has treated me. But then in the epilogue I turn right around and sing the ABC song, which asks him what he thinks of me! I believe that, to a certain extent, we can transcend our childhood, but in some way we always remain the child looking for love and approval.
I would guess that whether or not men like this film is going to have a lot to do with their ideologies about family. I'm sure it will make, some men uncomfortable; it will expose them.
A surprising number of men have come up, to me afterward and talked about the film from the vantage point of being fathers. That wasn't foremost in my mind when I was making it, but their responses have been interesting: the film brings up a lot of fear in them, a lot of concern about how they're treating their own children. Many of them express a profound hope that they won't do major damage to their kids.
At one point your father takes you to a movie theater and you see this film about people who didn't care about Western culture.
[1960]. I used that film because it was one I remember seeing, but also because: I could address the issue of people who have abandoned civilization. In the story, the time machine transports the main character into the year 20,000 (or whatever). He goes into the library, which no one uses, and sees that the books are just rotting away. The people, oblivious to history, are living a life of pleasure and yet are slaves to green monsters who control them and finally
Page 315
Shot from final alphabetized story ('Athena/Atalanta/Aphrodite')
of
(1990).
eat them. In some ways, I feel critical of the idea of people living a hedonistic life, divorced from serious thought and ignorant of the consequences of history. On the other hand, my experience with my father was that he was absolutely indebted to Western civilization and to the world of books and theory. I wouldn't say that he would defend Western culture against other cultureshe's an anthropologist who's spent a lot of time studying other culturesbut in some more profound way his life is organized around the principles and institutions of Western
