A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

The opening subway sound goes on for a very long time and suggests a rush through time. Then it stops abruptly and the doors open, just as you're waking up and as spring is waking out of winter.

Mekas:

I like that noise. It has continued through all the volumes of my film diaries. Also, that was a period when I did a lot of walking, and the street noise was always present.

MacDonald:

I assume that, as was true in

Lost Lost Lost,

the material is more or less chronological, though not completely.

Mekas:

Yes. I had to shift some parts for simple structural reasons. I did not want two long stretches like Notes on the Circus and Trip to Millbrook right next to each other. That would be too much; it would throw the structure out of balance. There had to be some separations. I shifted those longer passages around, but in most cases I didn't touch the shorter scenes; they are in chronological order.

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MacDonald:

The last reel has the John Lennon/Yoko Ono passage. Did you know them?

Mekas:

Yes, I knew Lennon. I'd known Yoko since 1959 or 1960 perhaps. Around 1962 she left for Japan, then decided to come back to New York. But she needed a job, for immigration, so

Film Culture

gave her her first official job in this country. We have been friends ever since. I met John after he married Yoko. When they came back from London to settle in New York, they were quite lonely. On their first night I took them for coffee, very late. We could find nothing that was open until eventually we came to Emilio's on Sixth Avenue. We sat and drank Irish coffee. John was very happy that nobody knew him there, nobody bothered him. But just as we were about to leave, a shy, young waitress gave John a scrap of paper and asked for his autograph. She had known all along who he was.

MacDonald:

Am I correct in saying that at the time of

Walden

you had a sense of the increasing fragility of the things that mattered most to you?

Mekas:

There is a very pessimistic passage of "narration" or "talking" in the Central Park sequence where I say that perhaps before too long there won't be any trees or flowers. But I don't mean for that attitude to dominate the entire film. In general I would say that I feel there will always be Walden for those who really want it. Each of us lives on a small island, in a very small circle of reality, which is our own reality. I made up a joke about a Zen monk standing in Times Square with people asking, "So what do you think about New Yorkthe noise, the traffic?" The monk says, "What noise? What traffic?" You

can

cut it all out. No, it's not that we can have all this today, but tomorrow it will be gone. It

is

threatened, but in the end it's up to us to keep those little bits of paradise alive and defend them and see that they survive and grow.

Of course, there is another side to this, another danger. Even in concentration camps, in forced labor camps, people could still find enjoyment in certain things. Not everybody in the forced labor camps sat with his or her nose to the floor, saying, "How dreadful! How dreadful!" There are moments of feeling, happiness, friendships, and even beauty, no matter where you are. So what I said before could be seen as a justification and acceptance of any status quo. I wouldn't want what I say interpreted that way. Somewhere I would put a limit to what I, or a human being in general, would or should accept. As Gandhi did.

The question is how one is to counteract the destruction. Should one walk around with posters and placards or should one retreat and grow natural food in Vermont and hope that by producing something good, and sharing it with others, one can persuade those others to see the value of what you're doing and to move in a similar direction?

Change can't come from the top. The top, which is occupied by

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various governments, is totally rotten. This civilization cannot be revolutionized, changed: it has to be

replaced

.

MacDonald:

The titles of

Walden

and your other films have evolved.

Mekas:

Yes.

Walden

was originally titled

Diaries, Notes & Sketches

(

also known as Walden

). But now, since I have many other reels of diary material, there is a confusionat least for the labs. When I was using the title

Diaries, Notes & Sketches: Lost Lost Lost,

they kept writing on the cans

Diaries, Notes & Sketches

and skipping the rest. I had no choice but to rethink the titles. All of my film diaries are

Diaries, Notes & Sketches,

but now I call the individual parts only by their specific names:

Walden, Lost Lost Lost, In Between, Notes for Jerome,

et cetera.

MacDonald:

How does what we see in

In Between

relate to

Walden

in terms of time period?

Mekas:

The

In Between