A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

you'd been filming for a long time. Had it gotten to the point where you were deciding in advance that you wanted to go film this or that for specific film? It's clear that you decided to go to the circus several times for

Notes on the Circus

.

Mekas:

No, I didn't plan. I just recorded my reactions to what was happening around me.

Notes on the Circus

originally I thought I'd get it all the first time. But I got involved in the circus and went three or four times. I decided in advance to film Peter Beard's wedding, but when I arrived, I discovered that my Bolex wasn't working. Peter happened to have a Baulieux camera, so I used that. I had never used it before, so it was very risky.

MacDonald:

What is your connection with Peter Beard? He's very prominent in the diaries.

Mekas:

I had met him before

Hallelujah the Hills

. He was the cousin of Jerome Hill, whom I knew by that time. We became friends during the shooting of

Hallelujah the Hills,

and the friendship has continued.

MacDonald:

In the first reel you say, "I make home moviestherefore I live," a line that's quoted a lot. Had you seen much home-movie making?

Mekas:

No. I hadn't seen much 8mm until the Kuchars came on the scene. They brought a few others out into the open. Many millions of cameras were floating around in the country for home-movie making, but no one saw the footage. We did attend amateur club screenings in the late fifties.

MacDonald:

All your films are involved with social rituals, but

Walden

seems particularly involved with the specific social rituals that are often the material of home movies: weddings especially.

Mekas:

There are a lot of weddings in my diaries. A wedding is a big event in anybody's life; it's colorful and there's always a lot of celebration. As a child, I remembered for years my sister's wedding. Where I come from, weddings go on for a week or two. Occasions like that attract me. There are, of course, no such weddings here. But I film them anyway, hoping to find the wedding of my memory. There are also places to which I keep coming back. One is the Metropolitan Museum. On Saturday and Sunday lots of people sit on its front steps. There is something unique about this and for years I've kept going back, trying to capture the mood that pervades it. I think I finally decided I've gotten what I wanted and I'm not going back again. The autumn in Central Park is also something unique and for years I kept going back to it, but now I think I've gotten that. Winter in Central Park also. And I've filmed a lot of New York rains.

During the period when I was shooting the

Walden

material, I wanted to make a diary film of a teenage girl just leaving childhood and entering

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adolescence. I was collecting diaries and letters of girls of that age, and making many notes. I wanted to make a filmactually, a series of three or four films, one of a girl fifteen, one of a woman and a man twenty-five; then forty-five; then sixty-five. I never progressed beyond the notes. But on several occasions I took some shots with three or four girls whom I thought I would use in that film. I always filmed them in the park. Some of the young women were friends of friends. I don't even know some of their names. But that's the reason for the repeated shots or sequences of young women in the park.

MacDonald:

During the making of

Walden

did you try different types of music with different imagery?

Mekas:

By then I was carrying my Nagra or my Sony and picking up sounds from the situations I filmed. There is a long stretch where I did not have any sounds, so I had John Cale play some background music. It's very insistent, constant sound that goes on for fifteen or twenty minutes. There is no climax; it's continuous, with some small variations.

MacDonald:

It works very intricately with the imagery. There are all sorts of subtle connections. Even within the slight variations, a slight motion in the sound may be matched by a parallel motion in the imagery.

Mekas:

I should reveal a secret: that John Cale sound is tampered with. I doubled the speed. It didn't work as it was. I tried different sounds for different parts. I made many different attempts. Sometimes I had two or three televisions going simultaneously, plus phonograph records and a radio. As I was editing, I was listening and trying to hit on chance connections. The tape recorder was always ready so I could immediately record what might come up.

MacDonald: Walden

begins with the sound of the subway.

Mekas:

There's a lot of subway and street noise in

Walden

. It's a general background in which all the other sounds are planted.

MacDonald: