BOCKRIS: Why are your films controversial?
ROEG: Something makes people uncomfortable about the underlying subject matter. However much it’s covered up in terms of plot, the underlying truth is almost pagan. The premise of the thing makes people a bit uncomfortable. It makes me a bit uncomfortable.
BOCKRIS: What makes your films relate so specifically to the anxiety of our times. It seems like they portray the anxious edge.
ROEG: If you keep on and on about something – which I tend to do in my own life – you tend to reach the point of being close to crazy. I mean really intensely crazy, on the verge of madness in the tradition of Strindberg. I feel very sympathetic to people who get into that state. In Performance, for example, we had a scene where we wanted to use a real Magritte painting. We knew two or three people who’d got Magrittes and we wanted to borrow them, but they wouldn’t lend their paintings. I was determined to get it. So we talked to the studio and the studio said, “Oh, that’s quite ridiculous.” And I said “We can rent one from a gallery, I know what gallery we can rent it from.” And the guy said, “Are you crazy? You can get a print. Rent a Magritte! That’s really … you don’t know what you’re doing.” I said, fuck it, I am going to get it on that set. We are going to have a real thing. We don’t want to photograph a print. So all right, if they won’t get it we’ll rent it ourselves. We rented it. When that painting came on the set it changed the atmosphere of the set. And Mick had a look … because the print wouldn’t have done it. It was behind him. He takes down a fake painting and puts up the Magritte. Even the prop man was … “Cor, 40,000 pounds.” It created a tension. I mean, Mick was performing in front of it and it gave a different tone … I believe that’s true. We rented real diamonds for Anita Pallenberg to put on. It gives a different tone when someone feels the weight of them as opposed to the painted paste. They give a person a different authority than fake things do. Everybody says “Look at this, 180,000 pounds!” It’s very different than saying – “Here’s your diamonds dear. They’re supposed to be real.” It changes the performance.
BOCKRIS: What’s been the strongest personal influence on your life that’s affected you as a film maker?
ROEG: I’m not being facetious when I say this: I had a lot of Italian and French meals in Soho in London that changed my attitudes towards life and loving and affections. I guess it’s only people that change your mind. It’s all to do with human exchange. That’s the biggest influence on me. When I thought about film, I thought about how I would want to see people behave on film.
BOCKRIS: Do you have any particular cinematic influences that you’re aware of?
ROEG: I’m being influenced by this conversation! Actually, no. To be influenced by something is to copy and no one wants to intentionally be a copyist. I’ve got a lot of children, I’ve got dozens of children all over the world, and if I said to one of them “Did you trace it?” that’s the most insulting thing I could say. Are you influenced by things is like saying are you copying someone else. Of course not. I’m only a child.
BOCKRIS: What was the first job you had when you left school?
ROEG: I was a pilot. I loved flying. Actually, you’re the first person I’ve ever told that I flew. I liked the idea of parachuting.
BOCKRIS: What’s it like?
ROEG: Very pleasant. Adrenalin is a nice thing to have. And I remember coming to the conclusion that it only runs in the veins once in a while when I was about 16: I climbed to the top of an Olympic Board in a place called The King Alfred Swimming Baths in Brighton to have a look. And there was this little girl that I was particularly fond of and she was swimming away. As I was standing on the edge just having a look with no thought of doing anything she shouted “Hey Nick, Nick!” And I knew that I had to do it, or else climb all the way down … and she was lying on her back waiting. I said fuck it and dived off. The thrill of it was desperately exciting.
BOCKRIS: You once said, you didn’t mind your children watching television a long time because they’d learn to read stories through pictures. Do you think film will ultimately replace literature?
ROEG: How can I say this without appearing as outmoded as – oh damn it, why shouldn’t I say it: McLuhan is only now beginning to be understood. The end of the Gutenberg Galaxy is the end of the press. Film makers aren’t related to literature. I had a conversation once when I was working on this film script with Harold Pinter. We were having a drink during work and he said “Now look here,” in an earnest voice, “what would you have been, Nick, if you hadn’t been in films?” And I said “Well, it’s a question I’ve often pondered to myself. It’s easy for you, you know, because you’re a writer. And so in the eighteenth century you would have been a writer, and what would I have been? I would have been a soldier, or an adventurer, a fellow who runs the church.” The thing is, I’m not that static within these particular set of angles, but I guess I’d have been a soldier.
After the interview I made a fool of myself attempting to continue the interview in the back of a Checker cab and at Elaine’s, where Roeg was trying to carry on with the girl with the Botticelli face (whom he had apparently met when she was six), who had come into his suite in the midst of the interview making it hard for both of us to concentrate. They finally got rid of me, but I felt bad about having cut into her time with him so invited Roeg to tea with William Burroughs at my flat two weeks later. The characters in the following transcript are identified by their initials: LM = Legs McNeil (cartoonist and writer for Punk magazine); NG = Nick Roeg (don’t know why he is identified as G rather than R); Bockris = Victor Bockris; PB = Peter Beard (like Clark Kent, an anthropologist, writer and genius); JG = James Grauerholz (William Burroughs’ secretary); WB = William Burroughs; BG = Bobby Grossman (the photographer).
LM: Did you like working with Bowie?
NG: Yes I did.
LM: Do you like him?
NG: Very much, yeah. He’s a very good fellow.
LM: Really? Well like I really want …
NG: He has a wonderful … he’s a great guy.
LM: Really? Seems like a real charmer.
NG: He’s a very very extraordinary … very strange and different kind of human being. He’s a great charmer, also very cold and not … what is really attractive about him is he has no (Peter flushed the toilet and all conversation is drowned out by flushing toilet like Concorde landing) sentiment at all so that you’re not … He is at the moment now … that’s it. You can’t charge it.
BOCKRIS: Candy Clark isn’t in New York now is she?
NG: No.
BOCKRIS: Peter said he met her the other night at Elaine’s.
NG: I know he didn’t.
PB: (Screaming from bathroom where toilet is still roaring) WELL NICOLAS WHO WAS IT MAN? IT WAS THE OTHER ONE YOU’RE CONSTANTLY TALKING ABOUT!
NG: Oh God.
BOCKRIS: It was this girl he met at Elaine’s and I was trying to tell him who it was.
NG: It wasn’t Candy. I spoke to Candy today.
BOCKRIS: It wasn’t Julie Christie, it wasn’t Jenny Agutter. Who was it?
NG: I don’t know. It’s Peter that met her. I didn’t meet her.
BOCKRIS: WHAT DID SHE LOOK LIKE? PETER! I have Candy Clark’s new publicity shots I got in the mail today.
NG: Really?
BOCKRIS: Oh yes. Come here. They’re on my wall.
NG: Well David Bowie is an excellent guy. (We walk into my room to look at photographs of Candy.)
JG: Well is one of you guys going to get it together to get out Punk Number Nine?
LM: Um …
WB: Well?
LM: Soon.
WB: What’d’ya mean by soon?
LM: Well … we’re in between money.
JG & WB: YEEEEAAAAHHH …!!!!????
LM: Some guy offered us $50,000. The guy that bought CHERI and some other magazines. So we might go with him. I don’t know though. You know.
JG: Somebody’s trying to buy you?
&nb
sp; LM: Well not buy us, but … but … in … you know. Who knows? But these people are always talking you know. TALK TALK TALK
(Doorbell rings.)
JG: American Express is taking you over?
NG: (Strangled voice in distance from next room) But I was in that picture! I mean, they cut me out Peter … they cut me out!
(Enter Bobby Grossman.)
BOCKRIS: Oh Hi Bobby! Come on in (introductions).
PB: (Coming back into living room from bedroom.) He’ll know who it was because as soon as I was introduced to her it was one of these girls that you’re constantly rapping about so I said “Urh … I know all about you. Don’t worry.” And she said “OOOAAAAAWWWHHH, NICKLAS ROEG EYH?” In whatever accent.
NG: (Drily) She has a Texan accent. Candy’s got a Texan accent.
PB: It wasn’t Candy then.
NG: Someone else. It almost makes my heart want to stop when I realise that.
WB: (Talking about Graham Greene) It’s a good book. It’s got a strange shape. He’s suddenly saying you’re a bad Catholic. That’s a very good book.
NG: I’m interested you liked Brighton Rock because that’s very rare because that’s an overlooked book in literature. Hands up who’s read Brighton Rock? Good! Excellent! Go to the top of the form. And stay there till I come for you.
JG: What is that one about?
WB: It’s about boys – seventeen-year-old boooooiiiyys. With razor blades strapped on their fingertips or something. I never got into that razor blade thing exactly …
NG: That razor blade …
LM: He’s like a punk.
WB: Very very punky. He was in London …
LM: They’re all English punks.
JG: Yeah. English punks.
NG: They have punks in California. But it’s rather like Tamla Motown. Do you really believe that it’s punk? I don’t believe it.
(I have been in the bathroom during the last segment of conversation and now the explosion of the toilet commences again drowning out all conversation.)
WB: Do you know a writer named Jack Munro?
NG: Who was that?
WB: Well he was sort of the original punk and his father called him Punky. He died in 1948, he had a very serious motorcycle accident hitting somebody who was on a bicycle and …
NG: Well punk is a very good word. It’s an old English word …
LM: I mean Shakespeare used it.
JG: What is the origin of this?
NG: It originally meant prostitute.
LM: That’s right.
BOCKRIS: That was Shakespeare’s use.
NG: No, punk is a very old English word.
WB: For a prostitute?
NG: Yes. It’s in the dictionary. Very good.
LM: But no one used it, you know, it was nothing before we did the magazine.
NG: Actually in fact it used to be used in the Forties in the movies.
LM: Oh right … right. Oh well they use it every night on TV after these big chase scenes on TV they say … you know they can’t say you silly motherfucker I’m gonna knock the shit out of you …
NG: So they say punk …
LM: Yeah right, then they bring him down to the …
(END SIDE TWO OF TAPE/SWITCH TO SIDE THREE.)
NG: I guess it must have different connotations in America. I love the subtle differences in the language. Americans are able to cut it down and make it much slicker where we say lift you say elevator.
BOCKRIS: I agree. That’s good. Elevator’s much more … I don’t know.
NG: It’s quicker.
BOCKRIS: Yeah?
NG: Than lift?
BOCKRIS: Yeah much quicker. Somehow.
NG: Where you say automobile we say car.
WB: You say underground.
NG: Tube we say.
WB: Yeah, Tube. How did that get … tube? I don’t know. It doesn’t look like a tube at all the underground. It isn’t shaped like a tube. It’s sort of like that (making shape with hands).
NG: I came over on the Concorde.
LM: Was it good?
NG: Incredible.
LM: Is it real skinny?
NG: It’s very small, but it’s quite amazing. It’s quite thrilling. Three and a quarter hours … and it’s travelling at the speed of a bullet.
LM: Wow!
BOCKRIS: It’s not. It’s not travelling at the speed of a bullet.
WB: No, it’s …
NG: It is travelling at the speed of a bullet.
WB: It’s travelling at the speed of a rather slow bullet, a bullet with not much muscle and a lot of …
NG: It’s travelling at fifteen hundred miles an hour.
BOCKRIS: That’s the speed of a regular bullet?
WB: No, it’s a …
NG: That’s a …
BOCKRIS: It’s not a machine gun.
WB: No, it’s the speed of the old black powder bullets.
NG: It’s a bullet.
WB: Yes.
NG: So I mean it’s marvelous to think that a bullet is just travelling along with you. Mind you it’s not a bullet coming the other way.
WB: If you were hit by this thing you wouldn’t even be able to see it because it was coming towards you so fast.
NG: When you think that this airplane … if a fighter from the Second World War went after it the bullet couldn’t catch it.
LM: REALLY?
NG: It would just tap it da da da da da da da.
WB: Hmmmmhmmmmmhmmmmmmhmmmmmhmmmm
NG: And then it just goes tee tee tee tee tee teeeee that’s amazing, it’s beautiful. All those people in those black helmets with straps and goggles.
LM: Do they have stewards and like everything? Are they good looking on the Concorde?
NG: They’re extra good looking.
This is an extract from Making Tracks with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, soon to be republished in the US and UK.
14
Blondie On The Bowery, By Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and Victor Bockris
This crazy artist-magician we’d met called Eduardo invited us to rent a floor of his three-story loft building on the Bowery three short blocks from CBGB’s; it was time to move from Thompson Street, and Chris abandoned his war zone crash pad on First.
We had the first floor, Eduardo lived on the second, and, for the first few months the third floor was empty. The Bowery was unheated funk, but the space was heaven. There was enough room for Chris and me to live, rehearse, and run the complex business of booking Blondie. The building had fittingly been a sweatshop, a doll factory employing child labor, which accounted, we figured, for a lot of the inexplicable things that happened there other than those caused by the actual physical inhabitants. The place was packed with poltergeists. After the doll factory it had housed Louis DeSalvo’s private club. There were bullet holes in the windows of the back room, which had massive iron shutters that could have stopped a tank, even though the front of the building was completely unprotected. A famous philosopher’s girlfriend, who was a very nice lady in great shape, with the Lauren Bacall look, had originally let Eduardo have this great space, and he asked us to move in when she moved out. But about a month or so after we moved in he started a downhill slide. He would go into a fake biker number, which involved not washing for days and sleeping in a piss-soaked bag with his boyfriend Alex. He worshipped piss and would piss into beer bottles, leaving half full ones all over his floor.
The cats, who moved from Thompson Street to the Bowery with us, were the first to suss out Eduardo’s number. They just ran up to his floor and pissed and shit all over his drawings and paintings. He was a talented artist too and we liked his stuff a lot, but he was, like so many people who inherit money, incapable of doing anything with his own art. He was gone, but he was definitely an inspiration. He evidently inspired the cats too, but in their case only to greater heights of secret shitting and pissing. His floor of the house was basically a toilet. Despite this, our place on the Bowery became a
center of action as the punk scene quickly began to develop.
First of all New York Rocker came out, edited by Alan Betrock, who produced our first demos and with whom we’d done various projects. He played an important part in shining some publicity onto the groups and keeping the whole scene exciting. Then near the end of ’75 Punk magazine appeared and topped everything off. Editor John Holmstrom, and his living cartoon creature Legs McNeil, were two more maniacs running around town putting up signs that said “Punk is Coming! Punk is Coming!” We thought, here comes another shitty group with an even shittier name, but when we went out to the news stand one day there was this new comic rock mag that everyone loved immediately; it was always funny, very hip, and had lots of good pictures. I remember walking from the 82 Club past Phebe’s to CBGB’s one night with Legs, who was decidedly drunk on screwdrivers and started leapfrogging the parking meters. He did them all but when he jumped over the last one he just went, Nnnnnnnnnwwwwwwww bang! Landed on his head making such a loud cracking noise that everybody in the restaurant stood up and looked. But Legs got up, said “Aaaaaaahhhhhhaa! Aaaaah!” and we helped him down the street. I don’t know how he kept walking he was so fucking drunk. Punk became an organic part of the whole scene, as it was the most interesting magazine in the world when it came out. It was very cool to be in it, too. Chris contributed photographs frequently after the first issue. John once put a leather jacket and sunglasses on Jonathan, one of the dogs at CBGB’s, and interviewed him asking, “How do you like it down here?” “It’s horrible,” Jonathan said. “It stinks of dog shit.” Punk was a lot sharper than the other fanzines before it eventually collapsed under financial and personal strains.
We used to get some of our clothes on the street. New York has gorgeous garbage sometimes. Leather jackets, suits, and boots could be found in excellent condition. As a matter of fact, the famous zebra print dress that I posed in for an early poster was originally a pillow case rescued from the garbage by Eduardo.
I was feeling great for the most part during this period. We hung out and got along well with most of the other people/groups on the scene like Richard Hell, The Heartbreakers, Ramones, Miamis, and Dictators. Most of them thought of us as an opening band and they thought I was cute, but never thought we’d get anywhere. I was still using props, like for ‘Kung Fu Girls’ I had some nine-foot-high cartoon monsters Eduardo painted, which I kicked through, jumping à la Bruce Lee.
Beat Punks Page 15