A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

Before Joyce and I got to New York, Bob Cowan was already there. He's from Toronto. In fact, he went to the high school I went to, Upper Canada College. And when Joyce and I went to New York on visits, we would see him occasionally. Sometimes we'd drive all night, and we'd park outside his place in Brooklyn and have a nap, then wake him up at eight o'clock. We used to get stoned and start driving, it was very nice. One time I drove all the way from Toronto to New York whistling Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk tunes. But anyway, on one of these visits Bob said, "There's two friends of mine coming over with a film they just made. Do you want to see it?" And it was George and Mike Kuchar. They were nineteen. They had just made

A Town Called Tempest

[1963.].

MacDonald:

A wonderful film!

Snow:

Their accents knocked us out. Anyway, we set up this little 8mm projector and showed the film. And Joyce and I were amazed. It

Page 61

was really, really inspiring. After thatit might have been through Bobwe discovered the Cinematheque screenings. When we were in Toronto, we didn't know there was a genre called ''experimental film." We had seen Norman McLaren's films and not much else. When we were making our own films, we didn't feel like they were part of a big development. Anyway, we started to go to the Cinematheque and to meet people. Ken Jacobs was one of the first. And he was fabulous in those days, really an amazing man.

I was still saying to myself, "You should stop this and just do that, or you're just gonna be a dilettante all your life." I had thought that going to New York would clarify that. In fact, it didn't. I just kept on multiplying my interests.

MacDonald:

You and Joyce were beginning to make films at the same time, and in one instance [

Dripping Water,

1969] you did collaborate. Was there a reason why you didn't collaborate more often?

Snow:

Our work was always independent. We discussed, and looked at work, and helped each other, but we never thought about doing things together. She had her own direction. She was affected by the Kuchar experience in a way that I wasn't. Their work was close to her sensibility in a lot of ways. I was very affected by

A Town Called Tempest

and their other films because I liked the freedom of it and the fact that George and Mike just went ahead and

did

it. It's wonderful, but it wasn't my kind of thing. I think it really opened up things for Joyce. She didn't imitate them, but she had a kinship with their work. I don't know whether you've seen any of her 8mm films, but they're really terrific. I don't know what's happened to them. She was going to get some blown up, but I don't know whether she ever did. When I was starting the first attempt at

Eye and Ear Control,

she was already shooting in 8mm.

MacDonald:

Where does

Short Shave

[1965] fit into all this?

Snow:

I did it before

Wavelength,

and after

Eye and Ear Control

.

MacDonald:

It's a nice film.

Snow:

You like it? I think you know I said in the Co-op Catalogue that it was my worst film. I saw it recently and I think it's good, too. I had worked with the Walking Woman concept from 1961 to 1967. I still had ideas for it, but I decided that it had to stop. And making that film, shaving that beard off, was part of trying to make the change. Actually, I had a big commission, the first I ever hadfor Expo '67 in Montreal. And I decided that would be a nice way to end

The Walking Woman Works

. The Expo '67 piece grew out of the dispersed things that I'd done before, but this was more monumental, in stainless steel. There were eleven parts scattered all over the Expo area. They fit together, perhaps, in your memory; they couldn't all be seen together. So anyway, that was the last of

The Walking Woman Works,

except for her bow-out in

Wave

-

Page 62

length,

which was shot in the same year: 1966, I finished it in January 1967.

MacDonald:

Her appearance in

Wavelength

reminds me of Koko the Clown's appearances in some early Betty Boop cartoons: he's a star in the silent Fleischer Brothers' animations, but in the early Betty Boop sound cartoons, he becomes a bit player and moves into the background.

Wavelength

has become a crucial film in people's writing about the history of avant-garde work. And yet, by the time you made it, you'd done a lot of work of a lot of different kinds, much of which is related to it. When you were making

Wavelength,

did it seem to you that it was pivotal, or was it just another of many comparable moments in your work?

Snow: