This is Jim McAndrew for camera three today camera three welcomes to most exciting new film directors Agnes Varda and Susan Sontag in a discussion of their work and the condition of the modern cinema we shall see excerpts from their films miss vardas lions love and miss Sontag duet for cannibals both of which have been accorded the honor of being shown at the 7th annual New York Film Festival there are interesting similarities and differences in the work of these two filmmakers duet for cannibals is Miss Sun tags first film she being primarily known as a literary critic and an unsentimental observer of the state of contemporary culture lines love is not Miss vardas first film she is French and yet she made this film in America Miss Ann tag is American but she made her film in Sweden both films might be described as being interested in the grotesque and yet both might also be described as political both are quite certainly films that could not have been made 10 years ago unraveling some of these matters with Miss var done with Sonntag is another camera 3 guest today Jack Krol senior editor of Newsweek miss Farr died when Jim said the word grotesque you reacted sharply to that would you deny that your film has anything to do with the grotesque yeah well answer that if you would please why don't see why I mean the word grotesque means something in art at least means something yeah and I think these two movies are very classical well I have a feeling that at least in the case of your film lions love perhaps one is thinking about the people the stars as we my few Wow Viva Jim Radu and Jerry Rodney are not contest people at all they have long hair and they live like free people I think doesn't mean let's let's identify them Viva of course is his most known as one of Andy Warhol's so-called superstars yes and rag knee and Rado are the authors of hair yes they wrote it and they act acted in the place and you would not you would not call them grotesque not at all no no and yet obviously for some people especially Viva and even rag knee and radar are marginal people or people that one would not encounter in the normal course of it well there is such a thing and that's why maybe it's very interesting to do a movie about them and try to show them in their normal you know every day in this life could could you give us briefly a kind of what's the storyline of lions love young actors I mean after the new breed of actors come to Hollywood they want to to succeed to well to make a career or something there and they live together in a very nice and quiet conjugal life manager to are you in a minute well looks always a little dirty no it's just three people together I guess and on the other hand a director Shirley Clark but who is it woman director comes also in Hollywood to try to make a deal and make a movie and she stays with them they invite him they find her to stay and all the story happen it's not a story in fact it's a chronicle I would say happens the in June 68 when Bobby Kennedy was campaigning in California and well he was shot and he died so it's just a week in California in June 68 and it's mainly a film about stars starts to be political stars to be a star stars of the old hollywood you know it the really sort of smell of the big thirties so that what you think bobby kennedy political figure is in a sense a star as much of a star in his way as Harlow well let's say them that Viva and rag knee and Rado are perhaps a new kind of star for most American film goers why don't we take a look at these new kinds of stars and see what happens to them in your there we have these these non grotesque people with the racist positions I'm sorry it's a what kind of position assist racist II you may miss you find that some people are so different that's just the way I'd like to talk about that for a moment because as I'm sure you know and as Susan Sontag certainly knows because you've written about this kind of thing in the arts the Andy Warhol film and your famous essay on camp and so forth for a lot of critics no but I mean of the underground film and the non establishment film and so forth well then let me ask the both of you it as you know of course for many maybe most critics establishment to have critics let's say the gradual and yet in some sense sudden and rather astonishing entrance and influence of people like Warhol and and performers such as Viva these people have started to very strongly influence the mainstream in filmmaking and in culture generally here they are they used to be on the margins and on the fringes and we're seen by a very limited type and number of people and suddenly we find them in your film and this upsets a lot of people and being the devil's advocate here you hear why should we be interested in these people what is the significance of this kind of person and of their characteristic experience for us I think it's a question of some importance and I'd like to hear what both of you have I disagree completely with you jack because I I think one of the things that I like best about Agnes's film is it's one of the few films that I've seen in a long time where I recognize real people and far from being grotesque what's one of the as I said one of the interesting things about the film is that there really are lots of people like this and that the film shows them whereas most people you see in movies have very little relation to real people that isn't bad either I mean that's one of the conventions of art the relation of art to real life is very complicated and very ambiguous well let me say again I'm playing the devil's advocate here for what it's worth and a verge Hollywood movie you don't see real people either mainstream people or marginal people you see ideas that that people have about what people are supposed to be or what are the way people are supposed to be represented and also the language public make people speak I mean I'm not the best to speak it I mean I'm not the best one to argue about the way of speaking yes just the way people speak in the real life is rarely represented among all those barriers are being more and more broken down aren't they in film it was about time yeah I mean just take a very simple thing like the fact that people traditionally in films don't interrupt each other when they talk you say your line then the other person says his line and so on where's everybody there have been some pioneer directors who have tried to bring that Enquirer Orson Welles for example I'm sure you remember in Citizen Kane was almost the first Hollywood director I can think of who did that so well but perhaps it I think would be interesting to bring your film in at this point because I think it's the other side of the coin in miss Vardis film we have viva we have Jerry Ragan e Kim Rado very special people indeed although very real people now in your film do it for cannibals we have on the other hand people who on the surface appear to be in the mainstream we have Bauer who is some sort of political philosopher or pundit professor what up whatever he may be you have the young man and his mistress you have Bauer's wife on the surface John Kenneth Galbraith author shlessinger if you will and yet as the film develops and as we get to know these people more and more especially Bauer especially the philosopher the political scientist whatever he is we find that behind the seemingly normal or mainstream surface there are convolutions and all sorts of interesting things that when one would not see in the public dimension so perhaps that is one point where these films come together well in a sense the the older couple Bauer and his wife they're actors I mean they in in the story of the film he's a political refugee a political leader well and the wife was you know his wife from his Italian work but one of the possible ways of looking at the film is that this is that they're really actors if this is over the role that they're playing in this relation with the younger couple and and they don't know what they're like at all so that the surface while it's realistic is not at all necessarily genuine and they Carolee carry this role playing about is extremely far as one can whereas the younger Trump was tweeted quite quite realistically there there are lots of people like that well even to the point of questioning what is life and what is death you find Bauer and his wife shifting back and forth until one can hardly be certain at the very end of the film who is alive and who is dead now this is really carrying role playing to an extreme so I think in both of these films you have people who are so caught up and involved with role playing they want to be stars as you said say they want to be stuck but the interesting to me about acting or not but the point is that they are the same if they were stars alibied themselves they are trying to be themselves and they make it I mean clearly enough and loud enough so they would become normal real stars I think in Agnes's film the people are actors but what's interesting about them is that you know as actors they're no different they would act themselves that's rory's anyway what I like in Susan's story it's about this come on Davis nice nice and it is really interesting the this it's not the way you live it's the way you intend to spoil people okay exactly and your film you have these these people living together and eventually in Susan's film you have Manasa cap innocent before people come together in a very disquieting way and perhaps were to take a look at such a scene right now from Susan's film already character piece in a meaningful City dearly sue political dissident in a year in a revolution uncommon did something ever tt-tell officiant you feel otherwise all right come on Martin only come back later sock you behave redlener be permanent Allegra that's rad Martin if you you did later in teen delete quintanilla the way turtle to told yeah forest Lauren's cold for were yet in it back to me till every Sunday England Nataly real enough for tilde shipping along iman every that nice quality Lauria none for more and Don's are a bit scary goodness a longer well let me ask you it's a very strange movie politics yeah I think it's it's strange politics is involved in some way one is forced to think about that category and as Miss varda has advice and therefore virtue I suppose but you mix up all the human categories in a in a fascinating way the sexuality of these people the ideology of these people are played with and I think a unique fashion and although it's the gauche aspossible question what why what's going on here well you're really asking several questions at the same time as far as the politics goes I just picked that background to locate the story in other words it's not a political film and it assumes a certain political miliar which I mean since I made the film in Sweden it's even more realistic more just for Sweden Stockholm let's say from perhaps for New York loved ones can certainly find similar circles in any big city like New York or London or Paris and but what's important in the film or the material of the film is is the relationships between the people within that situation or in that background it doesn't necessarily have to in a story about people involved in politics the basic story is the relationship of the two couples I think that for many people who have never really thought about what lies behind the facade of a public person of a political figure oh I'm not trying to say that I know that you're trying to say people are frauds no no I wasn't thinking of fraudulence at all but there's something behind a public facade I think one tends to think of people who seem to seem to exist primarily in the public eye as somehow a separate subspecies they are public effigies and one is sometimes shocked when brought nose to nose with as in the case of the Kennedys in various ways these are living human beings with all as I said before all the labyrinthine convolutions that that belong to to us into characters in a novel by Dostoevsky and for me that that's a powerful point I think you may not have have meant to make that point in your film but I think it's no accident that you do have an ideological character yes because the attraction of the of the the younger couple to the to the man to Bauer is because they admire him he's a hero of theirs and for his ideology or his ideology of course they don't even think about what he's really like as a person and they resist thinking about it as long as possible because they want to go on admiring and one follows their confusion their shock their revulsion and and their perverse attraction to this on the other hand in your movie yes the same point I mean maybe the three actors who look so fancy so daring so you know hippy type and so on if you start to try to know them understand them there are finally very quiet people I mean I don't want to make it so I think developers very attractive yeah yes but I mean they are not so freaky that they that then they look like yes lutely and that's maybe something nice too and you show that by the way in which they react to these awful and very extreme events the assassination of Bobby Kennedy the shooting of Andy Warhol you know I mean you know the political thing here comes through a little box which is the TV and nobody now now right now nobody can be out of the world world like it was possible 20 years ago because of the tea there's no escape even in that little plastic so a lot of people and you know a lot of people are not interested in politics and they don't even want to know to match but they have to know because of the TV so maybe that's that's one point where certain kind of people who are not interested in politics are composite confronted confronted with something happening and Wow they have reaction not so much I mean not but in a reaction is a personal reaction they're moved by Kennedy as a person as a person and then they go back to their way of living in fact interested in the the mixture of two different worlds as political world and private really private life and I think something like that in a completely different way is is happening in your movie I also I think that well in the early part of the program you denied having written about Andy Warhol and so forth what I was thinking you remember a piece you wrote in in partisan review you talked about tale and Mead and Tiny Tim do you remember yes Esmond Jackson no I'm about to make a point you said if I if I remember correctly I think you had the ghastly luck to be doing drama criticism at that point in your in your past sins that I'd rather forget and you said if I recall correctly you remembered a performance by Taylor Mead and a play by frank O'Hara I think and you remember performance by Tiny Tim this is much before he's become the Tiny Tim I think it was at page three and you remember to play by Rosalind Jack so I think of his home movies and I think you said the thing you liked about all three of these things was the authenticity of the people Tiny Tim was himself he was an authentic person Taylor Mead was himself do you recall that you did and that's why I brought up this this category before I think Viva fits into you you would probably say the same thing about Viva was I've changed a lot and I don't feel very connected with those those essays that I wrote a long time ago but I would say if I think about the way I looked at say Tiny Tim in 1962 or whenever I first he's changed and what but the way I looked at people like that like Tiny Tim and Taylor Minh and the way I look at Reva and the two boys in Alice's film I looked I mean years ago when I first saw people like that if we can put them all together I looked at them as as images I didn't look at them as real people and I liked the clarity of the image and the audacity of the image and a kind of warmth behind it you know but when I saw Agnes is film I really liked them as people they were they didn't represent hippies or people freaky or something they just seemed very attractive sympathetic people and its really surprises me that that people have another reaction to this this is this is exactly the point I was going to make we see that in the Woodstock phenomenon people's minds are being changed stock reactions are being replaced by the reality of it because the reality is developing it's increasingly being shoved in all of our faces all of us are being forced to change our minds in one way or another late movies are late I mean everything happens in its own own time that's one way to look at it but the point I want to I want to make is this business about the authenticity of the person which seems to be the bedrock category common to all sorts of different people different filmmakers different artists different ideologues and I think it's something that that one one becomes aware of in completely different ways in mr. Voridis film and in your film but I would like for perhaps the last point in the program I think perhaps the most important point I think that ties in with another point it's been remarkable to me looking at the films in the the seventh New York Film Festival how this theme of Apocalypse seems to pervade almost all of them films from practically every country where films are made from France from the u.s. from Sweden from Poland Eastern Europe even from America the sense of on the one hand finally finding the authentic person or realizing that this is the search that has to be made and at the very same time being conscious of this completely impending disaster Marguerite Duras film which I saw the other night your film in a sense and even your film where you see the apocalypse on television both of you about that you're both international people you travel around the world you're intellectuals it's bad word you're women that's a good word I'd like to ask you both to comment on this what is this mood why do we all think there is a smell of disaster what is the disaster because it's really so I mean because every bit of evidence that you get gives you that sense what people are writing about ecology look at maybe em look at a hundred years war in Vietnam look of it look at the war in Laos what do you think is going to happen specifically that's that's not really fair but you think about why things are bad and one has a feeling they're gonna get worse as people it knows out but now there's no way to just to be light and say you know let's make a comedy about Hollywood off let's make it just a sexy so that your movies but underneath it's not so funny movie is not so funny but underneath it's funny I guess Suzanne is agreeing with me we don't make it agrees we don't want to make Statesman about the destruction of contact with young people you feel it even more I mean I think Agnes and I having lived into our adult lives are still not quite as pessimistic as 16 and 17 year olds are we really don't think they're going to live to grow up well what do you think do you have any hope are we going to continue to sit in our little plastic apartments and look at these assassinations on on television because in a way these three actors I mean these three characters in my movie in fact they are fighting in their way in their way of being so true they are fighting against a certain kind of maybe plastic civilization I don't I'm not making yet they're fighting against internal breakdown as well as external disaster aren't they maybe and maybe the hope is just to be you know to be what I call that our thanks today to Agnes Varda and Susan Sontag for being with us and for talking about their films lines love and do it for cannibals respectively our thanks to to Jack Krol senior editor of Newsweek this next week this is Jim McAndrew for camera three.
