A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

as I went. I was aware of the structure of Cervantes's work; the transitions, in particular, were important to me. Also, I'd studied some of John Cage's notes and his music and some of Stan Brakhage's films and writings, and some e.e. cummings. But especially, Cervantes. I liked how he would get out of one chapter and into the next. There'd be the name of a chapter and then a subtitle would say, "Of what was said when on the road to. . . ." Then there'd be submaterial indented with space around it where, say, the shepherd's song would be. I liked that shape. I knew I was going to have very unique, disparate materials that had to fit together, and it was going to be quite an assignment. I felt up to it 'cause I had made quite a few films now, and I wanted to make a long film with an interesting form. I wanted to show how in the conquest of our environment in the New World, Americans have isolated themselves from

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nature and from one another. As you may remember, in the Southwest sequences I go way away from the town and film it from out among the cacti and cicadas.

The passage about the pigs in South Dakota being herded around and the guys eating dinner was

not

supposed to be an obvious pun on "piggish eating," which would never have occurred to me. I never think of pigs in that common sense of "piggish" . . .

MacDonald:

You mean you wouldn't insult pigs by comparing them with those guys?

Baillie:

Yeah. So I made a mistake there, because it's always taken that way. It was really just another one of many little devices in that movie to enforce the contradistinction between the guys back here in town, the City Fathers, doing whatever they do to perpetuate this characteristic defensive wall against nature. Anyway, Tseng Ching and I went out and had some adventures, and I recorded a lot of it. We found an old schoolhouse out in Arizona somewhere, where there used to be trails for the stagecoaches and the cavalry, and I found an old out-of-tune piano that she played and I recordedstuff like that.

Then Tseng Ching had to leave for China. I never saw her again. I went back to my folks' house for a while and winter came and that's when I went over the mountains and started the black-and-white section. I used film I had stolen in Hollywood: Tseng Ching and I had gone down to Hollywood before going to the Southwest and shot some film which I never used, and we found some stacks of that old film that Ron Rice used to use, in an alley in a big box. I immediately knew it was for me. So I hit the road with that film and over the mountains from San Francisco it was winter. I'd almost forgotten! I arrived in my Volkswagen with a weak battery, and it snowed and we were stuck in Nevada somewhere. The dog and I had to sleep together to survive! The next morning we ran into an Indian guy who was living with his pony in the basement of a hotel. He got a guy to come out and jump start us. There are so many stories in that film!

Technically speaking, I knew I wanted to have a more sophisticated way of combining imagery, which would somehow be accomplished

after

the original shooting. And I decided this was going to be a long film for two projectors. I didn't like the simple effect of in-camera superimposition. That was just too elementary. I shot a long section in the hills of the San Bernardino Valley one foggy morning. We were camped out. Later, when I started editing, it was used as a separate piece to be projected alongside the other material. I practiced that for a while, then I put it away. In the archives with the

Quixote

material are long segments that were made to go side by side with the material that's in the distribution version of the film. But in the end I didn't combine imagery that way.

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Instead, to make a combined image, I used black Mylar tape. I'd lay stuff down side by side on a light table, and mask parts of the frame, so that later the frame would share two disparate scenes

without

the effect of superimposition. I had to do it manually because I didn't have access to optical printers. And a lot of that had to be taken off again, gradually, because it was a mess, but that's how some of those little effects were done. Lots of the material was put aside because it just wouldn't match up: lots of segments weren't used.

Finally I got the car running better and went north. I wanted to go up to Cutbank, Montana, 'cause that always had the coldest weather; I wanted to be there in the middle of winter. It was so cold that I broke the handle on my tripod while panning in a blizzard. It was crazy. I got up into the Indian reservations and then headed east. I wanted to do something in New York City, but Selma was happening, so I borrowed some money and flew to Selma. I was a day or two behind the terrible beating days that had sent me down there. I got what I could.

MacDonald:

You had no sense at the beginning of the overall route you would take?

Baillie: