BOCKRIS: Is that how you write?
SOUTHERN: No, that’s how I advise people to write. I advise them to work like that and they can’t go wrong. The work can even be bad and then the editor can rewrite it, but if you can turn out 365 pages of stuff, as long as it’s clean copy, you’ve got a novel a year! After two years you’ve got two novels behind you, and then advances start rolling in, so you’ve got to keep up that pace. You’ve got to keep up that damnable pace of one page a day, which is not too unreasonable when you think of what football players have to go through, especially if you have your own typist. You can do it longhand and your typist can type it up, with you saying, “Make sure it’s just one page.”
BOCKRIS: The only person who could come close to you as a satirist is Lenny Bruce. What do you think he would say if he lived today?
SOUTHERN: Well, he often did say, “It is only corruption and injustice that allows somebody like me to make a living.” My God, there’s enough going on that he could satirize now: the whole abortion thing, the damnable Shamir – that Grand Yahoo …
BOCKRIS: People miss you, Terry, and they want to know why they aren’t reading new books by you anymore. Looking into the next decade, can we expect to see a lot more of Terry Southern in the 1990s?
SOUTHERN: [Realizing that the interviewer is too thick to respond to the serious side of Southern’s nature, Southern seizes upon his prior offer to represent himself as the Workaholic Writer, and launches into a routine.] Yes! Norman Mailer once accused me of being a workaholic. He said, “Hey, can you slow down? Boy, are you cooking, you’re smoking. Will you please slow down?” And Norman Mailer’s no Mr. Sloth.
BOCKRIS: As a matter of fact, when I came into your quarters, I noticed a large typewriter next to your armchair. Apparently, even when you’re relaxing you might want to type …
SOUTHERN: Well, if I should suddenly get seized …
BOCKRIS: After your great expedition into the film world, we’re now happily looking forward to the return of Terry Southern into literature.
SOUTHERN: Yes, apart from the reprint of Red-Dirt Marijuana, with a new introduction by George Plimpton, I’m currently completing A Texas Summer, a hard-hitting novel.
BOCKRIS: Do you have plans for a series of novels?
SOUTHERN: Yes, now that I have a real facility for writing quickly, having written against deadlines, my new regime will be a novel a year.
BOCKRIS: So your intention is to go straight ahead.
SOUTHERN: Straight ahead, yes – no looking back and no darn breaking with this work ethic. What if I get into the Book-of-the-Month Club? What would Genet say about that?
BOCKRIS: He’d be happy to hear that you’re going to commit to a novel every year starting in 1990.
SOUTHERN: I’m promising that; I personally pledge that to you. I’ve never had good writing habits. You can say that I’ve been remiss and will shortly get back to the grindstone. God knows there’s a demand, and it would be unreasonable of me not to respond to this demand. Let’s assume that the price will be right, Vic.
BOCKRIS: You are a man who will respond to a letter.
SOUTHERN: I will indeed.
BOCKRIS: If someone sends in the right offer, you’ll be there?
SOUTHERN: I’ll be there with bells on, and wearing several hats.
Nicolas Roeg is another maverick, like Southern, who was associated with Jagger, Bowie, etc via the films he made (Performance, The Man Who Fell to Earth). Among the greatest living film makers, he has been forced to support himself by making commercials, because he refused to kowtow to the Hollywood system, and because of his outspoken criticism of its creative book-keeping. If you ever get a chance to see a film by this man do not fail to take it. You will be well rewarded.
13
I Would Have Been A Soldier: An Interview With Nicolas Roeg
I found Nicolas Roeg leaning on The Blue Bar of New York’s poetic Algonquin Hotel at 6.35 one Friday evening in 1977. He was wearing a black and white check cowboy shirt, corduroy jacket and jeans over highly polished pointed high heel cowboy boots. In front of him on the bar hovered a precarious mound of documents ranging from a xeroxed catalogue of the Russian Film Archive to a 100 page love-letter-in-progress stuffed into a dog-eared manilla envelope. Next to him sat a beautiful young girl with a Botticelli face.
Born (1928) and raised in England, Roeg entered films as soon as he’d done his military service, starting as a clapper and quickly becoming a widely respected and successful cameraman. His first film (Performance with Mick Jagger) shocked the film-world, was heavily censored, confiscated by the US customs and blocked by its own producers for two years, but immediately became a classic on its release in 1968. Walkabout, Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell To Earth followed, earning Roeg a reputation for innovation, the unexpected, and controversy, but a confirmed place among the most important film makers of his time because he manages to reach a large audience while remaining true to his own visions.
At 49, Nicolas Roeg maintains the spirit of a lyric, vagabond poet (his speaking voice is reminiscent of Dylan Thomas although he claims to be famous for a dull monotone rumble). He next plans to make Illusions starring Sissy Spacek and Art Garfunkel. But when I met him, he was in New York to direct a commercial for Revlon, and, typically, had no idea whether or when he was flying to London or LA, but in a series of rapid phonecalls from his hotel, and a studio where he was viewing rushes of the previous day’s shooting, he agreed to give High Times his last evening in New York.
After getting to know each other in the bar, and making a date to meet the girl with the Botticelli face for a late dinner, we took the elevator to the 11th floor and his elegantly appointed suite. While Roeg made a series of phonecalls to friends around the world, I plugged in my tape recorder and attempted to create an appropriate atmosphere by re-arranging the furniture and scattering a few books (Short Letter, Long Farewell by Peter Handke and From A to B and Back Again by Andy Warhol) on the coffee table. At a nod from Roeg, I switched on the tape recorder, and this is what we said.
VICTOR BOCKRIS: Are there only a handful of really good film makers in the world today?
NICOLAS ROEG: There are a lot, but only a handful are being looked at because film is a very young art. Have you read Mankiewicz’s book All About Eve? In the preface he writes about the actor and where did action begin? One day in a deep dark cave everybody was sitting in their bearskin, leopard or tigerskin clothes and someone shrieked out, got up, stuck two feathers up his ass and danced around and behaved like a chicken. And then he went back and sat down and put on his tigerskin trunks. The next night someone said: “Why don’t you do that again?” He said – “What!” And that’s where acting is. It’s not learning about projecting. Performing is a very serious thing. It begins in the cave when someone says “I’ve had it! I’d just as well run around and look like a chicken.” I like the performer, and the nearest thing to a great performer is the balladier. It’s not really so far away from its roots. The balladier’s job was to tell stories and sing ballads. Richard Couer De Lion was saved by the balladier … I was asked about David Bowie: I’d spent twelve hours with him when we first met and when I went back to Los Angeles someone in the studio said: “Well, it’s very interesting, but can he act?” I said “But this man has had 40,000 people spellbound on his own, sticking a finger in the top of his trousers. What actor could command 40,000 people to look at them because even David says he’s not Joan Sutherland. They’re coming for his performance and what he has to say. They wouldn’t come for Warren Beatty. So what do we mean by actor?”
BOCKRIS: Is there any way you can describe the difference between working with Jagger and Bowie?
ROEG: I think that’s an amazingly static question. It’s a question that I’m sure every woman – and damn it why not say this – is asked about their different men. Every woman is continually asked: “How can you go out with a little thin guy and also a big strapping guy?” I don’t know. Th
ey’re both interesting. There’s no answer to that.
BOCKRIS: But don’t you find that some actors tend to turn you on more than other actors?
ROEG: Of course. But at the time, it’s like a love affair. You know, is it true? Were you really in love with him? Were you really in love with her? You can never say yes of course I was. You just say – “Not like you” – because the new one is the new one. Actually your question, to an individual like myself, is very much like life and can be applied to life. Which actor did you prefer? Which love did you prefer? Well I don’t know. You fall in love two, three, four times, maybe twenty times, fifty times, one hundred and fifty times, three thousand times … it doesn’t matter. I now love you. Let that suffice. I now am making this film. Let that suffice. All my energy is going into that. I mean, what past films meant are rather like love affairs. I wouldn’t make a comparison between Mick and David. At the time they meant everything to me.
BOCKRIS: Does it give you a strange feeling to see actors or actresses you’ve worked with in other people’s movies?
ROEG: Yes it does. Well, with Julie Christie it’s a little different because I’ve known her a long time and I’ve worked in a lot of films with her, but since Don’t Look Now, I think I would get jealous if I saw her in somebody else’s film. I’ve been very lucky with the artists, because somehow the ones I thought would be absolutely right for the part after writing it, all agreed. With Sissy Spacek, for example, who’s agreed to be in my next film Illusions (playing opposite Art Garfunkel), I first saw pictures of her. I’d seen Badlands and I was thinking about the girl. I went to see Carrie and then I met her. I’d already talked to her when I saw Three Women in Cannes. I thought she was wonderful and it confirmed my thoughts. She’s extraordinary. We talked and talked. She knows the person who is in Illusions very well indeed. And to have an actress of that calibre, who is still at the point of developing her range, not playing the part that she’s so right for is sad not only for me but for the movie business (Roeg has wanted to make Illusions for a year but is caught in a financial, legal bind). But I think if you really concentrate hard enough on something it will come true. But most people don’t want a lot of things to come true, they want them to stay static. Don’t rock the boat.
BOCKRIS: Did you see Mick Jagger in his other films?
ROEG: I saw Ned Kelly again recently on television. It’s an excellent film, very underestimated. He’s very good.
BOCKRIS: Did he indicate to you whether he was going to continue acting?
ROEG: He’s reached an extraordinary position, Mick, hasn’t he. Actually in his life, I suppose, he has everything materially that he needs. It’s not publicised much, but he leads quite an extensive social life and I think he sort of gets satisfaction from that. He’s got other things that give him satisfaction, to quote one of his songs. I’m only satisfied by one thing.
BOCKRIS: You’re only interested in film?
ROEG: I’m interested in other things, but film’s the only thing that gives me satisfaction.
BOCKRIS: That’s what keeps you going?
ROEG: That and love.
BOCKRIS: I was wondering whether you saw various themes running through all your work?
ROEG: Yeah, you can’t do a lot of things in life, you only really repeat yourself. You’d always like another shot at something. But you don’t think about it, you don’t change what you get, you can’t find the finite. I always think in terms of some kind of love story and I just continue to make love stories really, I suppose, because it’s an exciting human condition. What amazes me is that a lot of ‘clever’ people, especially critics, say “Oh, not another love scene.” You never hear them say “Not another walking scene, not another eating scene, not another fighting scene.” It’s always a lovemaking scene that is ‘another one’. And that’s a much more interesting thing to be shooting than eating I think and a lot more can be said between two people. In fact it’s very close to the edge of all contact. It’s the greatest contact, so you get into very difficult acting. It’s much easier to do other things than act love scenes.
BOCKRIS: You have that famous scene in Don’t Look Now between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. I was told that you actually had them making love in that scene.
ROEG: That’s not true. They could have if they’d wanted to. I would have let them … It’s rather flattering that people think they did.
BOCKRIS: How often are you in love?
ROEG: All the time. Yeah, I’m a sucker. I’m a sucker for it. Passion.
BOCKRIS: Which is your most successful film? Which made the most money?
ROEG: I really don’t know the answer to that. I’ve got percentages in all my films and I’ve never seen one single check. And not one of them has lost money. Without arrogance, I know that a lot of people have seen Don’t Look Now, a lot of people. I don’t know anyone of the age of 28 who hasn’t seen Performance, but the studio tells me that it’s still losing. It doesn’t really make sense, unless you realise that there is something between the shifting of the economic situation. Everybody in life has two aspects of their personality: desire and need. Desire is one thing, need is another. Corporations have a desire that a film makes good, and their need that it should. And if you have a whole mass of product you shift your need to desire and your desire to need and you balance your books. Well, that’s a kind of legitimate thing, but I’m totally disinterested in it. Performance is supposed to be a minimarket: “Nobody has seen that film, nobody went you see …” And then I keep bumping into people who’ve seen it. I guarantee the guy in the lift has seen it. And yet it didn’t make money. How do you work that out? You know, The Big Balloon made $12,000,000 … Well, beautifully, one must ignore that, because they know too it’s a game. And that’s why I’m staying in The Algonquin in a suite, because my movies lost all that money.
BOCKRIS: Was one of your films outstandingly difficult to make compared to the others?
ROEG: The Man Who Fell To Earth was the most demanding. I left a lot behind me when the film was finished. I was trying to do something with the syntax of film that at the time was very difficult to explain to the crew. The artists were wonderful. They realised what I wanted, but there wasn’t time to help the crew to understand, and it made it a very isolated experience because gradually one found oneself cut away from any kind of observation from people who were close to you.
BOCKRIS: Is it true that there was a scene in the uncut version (the American distributors cut 22½ minutes from Roeg’s original) where Candy Clark peed down her leg when David Bowie revealed himself as an alien?
ROEG: That’s right. I’ve no idea why they cut that out. I don’t think they liked it, but it’s something that happens. “I peed myself with fright” is a phrase that has its roots in truth. It was a charming thing, she just “phizz!” did it wonderfully. And it was really a moment of absolute truth, it was such a big shock that a physical thing happened. BAAH! (Roeg throws himself back against the wall.) She almost flew against the wall.
BOCKRIS: Do you think fear is a major activating factor in people’s lives in the United States?
ROEG: Yeah. I think it’s a very interesting word, fear. I’ve never really heard someone say that before. I hate to say yes, because then one could rush off with a whole series of thoughts about why did I say yes, but … yeah, and then I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I suppose fear is a part of a lot of other emotions, isn’t it? It’s part of what makes people keep in a continual state of discontent. That’s one aspect of its ability. What’s that marvelous quote: “The only enemy I fear is time.”
BOCKRIS: Do you ever get worried that you won’t make another film?
ROEG: No. Because I think if it has to be it has to be. I really don’t care to just go on shooting movies.
BOCKRIS: How old were you when you directed your first movie?
ROEG: I’ll tell you something that my last movie was about: time. And the curious thing is this question is rather nice b
ecause of the obsession with time in the present day world, because actually it is a present day issue. Time is going. We’re fading as fast, or as slowly, as we decide. Chatterton was dead at 21. Chatterton committed suicide and all his poems were scattered, half were burned. Shaw never wrote a play before he was 44. How old was I? How long had I been here? I’d been around for 36 years. For 36 years I’d been doing things. How old was I?
BOCKRIS: Why do you take so long between each movie? (Roeg has waited two years between each of his films, filling in his time and pocket directing commercials for Revlon.)
ROEG: After I finish a film, I get into a foolish state and I do foolish things. I recognise the stupidity of it, but I suppose I’m thrashing around trying to find some other aspect of the human condition I find I want to broaden myself with, to move about and around and to try and find a metaphor for. Because I like to try and hang onto things that particularly interest me. I’m not really what is pigeonholed as a director. I could just take a job directing, but I don’t want to. I love making films, I feel most alive and I don’t lead a foolish and stupid life. In between projects I can be very foolish. I’m stupid. But to encourage people into making films is a very difficult affair. They really want a man who takes a job and says he will direct their film. But having been a cameraman I could have stayed a cameraman to do that job because I love films and I would have photographed the things. John Huston said that film making is really a rather melancholy affair because you lose so much of yourself if you really put it into the film. You’re continually being drained. So I suppose I get nourished in between films by behaving stupidly, waiting for something, waiting for Godot. I’m damned if I know.
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