Got a job in the news department of one of the television networks as an apprentice editor. And I started making films. At a
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certain age, anything in the world seems possible, and I leapt into it without a second thought. My first film was
16mm, black and white, sound, feature length, influenced by
[1959]. I worked in the news department during the day and worked on the film at night and on weekends, a pattern that continues to this day. My first show came about through Louis Brigante, who worked beside me in the news department and who was associated with
and knew Jonas Mekas. He was a very kind and good person who helped many young filmmakers. Jonas at that time was showing a lot of independent features, like
[1957],
[1963],
[1960], and many other things in the various fugitive venues of the Cinematheque, which was literally at that time a fly-by-night operation. Sometimes the location would change from week to week with Jonas dodging corrupt cops, avaricious fire marshalls looking for payoffs, and various other harassments. It was a true guerrilla activity. Through his 'Movie Journal' column in
Jonas was a revolutionary commandante, operating from the hills, striking at night and vanishing before the 'authorities' could get there. It was exciting.
Also, I worked at the Film-makers' Co-op for a while, and that was interesting because I got to meet many filmmakers. There was much exchange of ideas and clash of raging egos. For a while at least, there was a strong sense of revolutionary possibility, that anything could happen and was likely to happen. A rough and unrefined situation in many ways. At that time there were no university courses in avant-garde film, no doctoral candidates, no wildest dreams of tenured positions. With a few exceptions, most were poor, cold, and hungry, not to mention insulted and injured and angry. I remember discussions about whether to buy film or food. There were also dilettantes, as there always are: rich kids looking for something to do.
Are there filmmakers you especially remember? Did you know Brakhage? Frampton?
Brakhage would descend on New York from the mountains once a year or so, grandiloquent and Promethean, lightning bolts in one hand and film cans in the other, talking everyone under the tablewhat a talker! And in general burning the place to the ground. It's impossible to overestimate his influence on absolutely everyone: you could run, but you couldn't hide. I remember thinking
[1963] was one of the best films I'd ever seen, and I still think so. I was very impressed by Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland, who were both hilariously intelligent, clear-minded, and highly elevated. They couldn't help but laugh, and it was very contagious. They loved jokes and puns. I often felt they were on the verge of levitation by laughter.
Harry Smith interested me also. I spent many hours back then puz-
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zling over
[1960]. He'd drop by the Co-op from time to time in various states of altered awareness and was often brilliant in conversation; Cabala and Bach, peyote songs and Haida masks, string games and dreamtime, riddles of the Rosy Cross. He was tiny, hunched, gnomic, wizardly, and I was young enough to be in awe of his occult erudition.
Hollis Frampton I met through Michael Snow. He and I had next to nothing in common, and so I saw very little of him.
Jack Smith was around a lot. He was at the height of his infamy then, because of
. A strange figure . . . tall, gawky, long-beaked, storklike. I didn't care for
[1963], but I'd often go to his slide show/performances at the Plaster Foundation of Atlantis, which was wherever Jack happened to be living at the time. They were often wonderful. There was absolutely no demarcation between what was 'performance' and his 'real' life. He was notorious for taking hours getting started . . . in fact things never really did get started. He just lived and you could share that.
He would show things that he'd dragged in off the street, play his favorite records, read aloud from books and newspapers, musing and brooding. You had the feeling that he'd be doing the same thing whether there was an audience or not. He was very political in the truest sense, and the only true socialist I ever met.
and
were political art of a very high order.
I'm unclear about the chronology of your work, but from what you've said to me, there were a good many films, made at the beginning of your activity as a filmmaker, that no longer exist. I remember you telling me about a number of early single-shot films, made as a series.
A lot of my earlier films were destroyed accidentally in 1970; I was working in film as early as 1965. I made
