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And the impact of the film as a happening was already getting lost from filming for so long. And there was the rental of the camera and the practical aspect of the shooting schedule. At a certain point I just said, 'Oh well, the number's conceptual anyway, so who cares. It's enough!'
I assume that when you did the early Fluxus version of
you just followed people walking across an apartment. For the long film you'd built a machine to do the filming, which allowed you to film in more controlled close-up; we can't see around the sides of the bodies the way we can in the earlier film.
Well, in the first
I was pretty close too. But, as you say, it wasn't really perfect. In London we did it almost perfectly. My idea both times was very visual. All my films had very visual concepts behind them in the beginning. I mean
has many levels of impactone being politicalbut originally I simply wanted to cover the screen with one object, with something that was moving constantly. In the course of seeing films, I had never seen a film where an object was covering the screen all the way through. There's always a background. The closest you get to what I mean is like some macho guy, a cowboy or something, standing with his back to the screen, but you always see a little background. The screen is never covered; so I thought, if you don't leave a background it might be like the whole screen is moving. I just wanted to have that experience. As you say, it didn't work in the early version, but it was the first idea I had for the film actually.
And also, the juxtaposition of the movement of the four sections of the bottoms was fascinating, I thought.
reminds me of Eadweard Muybridge's motion photographs.
Oh I see, yeah.
Was the finished film shown a lot?
Well, I finally got an OK from the censor and we showed it in Charing Cross Road. Then some American Hollywood producer came and said he wanted to buy it and take it to the United States. Also, he wanted me to make 365 breasts, and I said, if we're going to do breasts, then I will do a sequence of one breast, you know, fill the screen with a single breast over and over, but I don't think that was erotic enough for him. He was thinking eroticism; I was thinking about visual, graphic conceptsa totally different thing. I was too proud to make two breasts [laughter]. I think there was an attempt to take the bottoms film to the United States, but it was promptly confiscated by the censor
At customs?
Yes.
There's a mention on the sound track that you were planning to do other versions of that film in other countries, and the film
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ends with the phrase, 'To Be Continued.' Was that a concept for other films, or were there some specific plans for follow-ups?
Well you see, all my films do have a conceptual side. I have all these scripts, and I get excited just to show them to people because my hope is that maybe they will want to make some of them. That would be great. I mean most of my films are film instructions; they were never made actually. Just as film instructions, I think they are valid, but it wouldn't be very good if somebody makes them. I don't have to make them myself. And also, each film I made had a projection of future plans built into the idea. If somebody picks up on one of them, that's great.
At the time I was making films, what I felt I was doing was similar to what
[1975] did later. I wanted to involve the audience directly in new ways.
How did
come about?
When I went to London, I still kept thinking about the idea of smile, so when I had the chance, I decided to do my version. Of course, until John and I got together, I could never have rented a high-speed camera. Well, maybe if I'd looked into it, I could have. I don't know, but I thought it would be too expensive.
Did you know Lennon well at the point when you did
?
Yes.
Because I wondered whether you made the film because you wanted to capture a certain complexity in him, or whether the complexity that's revealed in that seemingly simple image is a result of what the high-speed camera
