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HOMELAND
SECURITY
an
interview with James Benning after the world premiere of Sogobi at
the Berlin Film Festival 2002, completing his California Trilogy
El
Valley Centro 2000
Los
2001
Sogobi 2002
When
did you decide on making a trilogy on California?
I
knew I was going to make a trilogy in the middle of Los, and I
made that film using the exact structure as El Valley Centro, so
I knew that the third film would follow the same structure. The basic
idea at first was to make a wilderness film that wouldn’t have any evidence
of mankind in it, but I kind of ‘gave in’ to that because as I went around
it was hard to find true wilderness any more. I easily could have given
you 35 shots that had no people in it, and no evidence of human life,
but I kept finding mysterious things in the middle of nowhere, so I decided
to add some of those things.
How
did you find the locations?
I
drove round a lot, but then I also hiked a lot, because a lot of the things
are a way back in the middle of nowhere. Some of them were actually, kind
of dangerous – like with the snowstorm, that was very cold, and I was
in very deep snow. I didn’t realise quite how cold it was. The opposite
was the sandstorm, where it was 120o Fahrenheit in that valley that day,
and I just hiked maybe a mile off the road, but I was pretty much delirious
when I got to do the shot – I had my camera all taped up with masking
tape so that the sand wouldn’t destroy it, and I got back to the car and
I couldn’t even remember if I did the shot, or what the shot was, so I
went to the closest restaurant in the valley, and I took all the tape
off, and saw that the film actually had run through the camera. So I thought,
well, I’d better do it again, because I’m not sure what I got. And I thought
I’d take more water, and be more prepared for the second time. But actually
the same thing happened again. I thought, oh I can’t do this three times,
so I just thought one of the two shots would be fine, and it was – it’s
actually the first shot that you see in the film. Those kinds of things
were maybe a little more ‘on the edge’ than when I filmed in the Central
Valley, or in Los Angeles.
With
certain of the more picturesque images in Los, did you see them
and decide to return on a sunnier day?
No,
I’m very familiar with that area, it’s actually not too far from where
I live. It’s in the Antelope Valley, which is about 40 miles north of
my house, and every spring the fields just get full of orange poppies.
That was one of the shots I knew I wanted to include in the film.
How
does the shot of the logged trees fit in with the other Sogobi shots
of landscapes?
Well,
it’s the landscape piled up, isn’t it… It’s a logging operation, and the
harvesting of wood that comes out of the Sierra mountains. I thought I
should include that, because it’s part of the commerce of wildlife. It
references back to the other two films, which have more mechanical things
happening in them. So I wanted to include at least one shot that would
do that.
What
was the time-span of making the films?
All
three films took about 10 months to shoot – all three started in November,
and I finished in September, because I wanted to get the four seasons
in there.
How
strictly did you apply the mathematical structure of the previous films
in the Trilogy, such as the idea of having 35 shots?
It’s the same
structure – all three films have 35 shots, each shot is two and a half
minutes long. I wanted to present landscapes over a period of time, because
the only way one can understand landscape is through time. Landscape
is actually a function of time. If I show something for two and a half
minutes and not much happens, you learn that. From a still photo
you wouldn’t know if there was activity or no activity. So I was very
interested in recording these still images that would have very little
movement – the beginning idea was to present 35 of those shots with very
little movement at all, so it would be an extremely minimal experience
watching the film but it would accumulate into an interesting space that
would happen, a kind of meditative space. I didn’t stay with that, because
I realised that in the first two films I had cross-referencing: there
were ships that were in both, and a billboard, so I decided to keep that
running structure through all three films so you have reoccurring images
in different places. There’s cattle in all three films – in El Valley
Centro you see cattle in a huge cattleyard that’s about 2sqm of solid
cattle, thousands and thousands of cattle as far as the eye can see. And
then in Los the camera is right in the cattle pen at a meatpacking
company in Los Angeles, and the cattle there are waiting to be slaughtered
– they can already smell the blood of the cows that have gone before them,
and there’s a kind of agitation in that shot. And then in Sogobi I
wanted to show cattle that were out in the wilderness – a kind of “If
I were a cow, that’s where I would want to be” kind of place…
What
was the shooting ratio, in terms of film shot and film used in the finished
versions?
The
first two films I actually I shot the same amount of rolls of film – I
used hundred-foot sixty-mm rolls of film which are two minutes and 47
seconds, then I cut them to 90 feet which is exactly two minutes and thirty
seconds. So I could I could slide the shot from the head to the tail a
little bit to adjust the timing. The first two films I shot 48 rolls but
I only developed 37 of them, because sometimes I made another shot right
after [in the same location] I thought was better, and sometimes something
happened in the shot so I knew it wouldn’t do, wouldn’t make a good shot.
So I ended up with 37 for the first two films, then I selected 35 of those.
In this films I shot over 130 rolls of film, mainly because I like being
in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to present
this film – it was going to be very minimal, or what. I had enough footage
to cut the film either way, to select very minimal shots if I decided
to do that.
What
was the editing process?
With
the first two films I took a slide from each shot and put them on 35mm
slides, and then I edited it on a slides to get the order – mixing them
around in a “poor man’s Avid” fashion. With Sogobi I did the same
thing, I had 130 slides and I was going to do it that way. But I spent
a couple of weeks in Korea this summer – I was going to do the editing
when I was there, but I forgot to bring the slides with me. On the way
over, I realised I didn’t have the slides, so I edited the film from memory.
I wrote out 35 cards and I wrote down the first 35 shots I could remember
– I thought ‘Those must be the good ones.’ And then I edited those just
on cards. When I got back from Korea I actually cut the film that way
and it’s pretty much the order that you saw tonight. I might have changed
a few shots. That actually made it easier because it was easier to throw
things away when you forgot that you had them…
I
shot, and I would have them developed immediately, and I’d look to see
what I had, but when I ended up with 130 shots my first decision was to
make a more minimalist version [than the finished one]. This is still
very minimalist, what I have here, but I was going to make something that
was even more minimal – every shot would have very, very little movement
in it. I thought, in relationship to the other two films, that could be
an interesting conclusion to those films, which have more ‘action’, and
have people. But then I decided to include some of those things in Sogobi,
because I also want these films to stand on their own, so they can be
shown separately. Although for a while, I would like to have them shown
as a trilogy… ideally one after the other, with maybe a 15-minute break,
so you can actually experience the accumulation of 105 images - the first
35 being rural images, the second 35 being urban images, and the last
35 being images from the wilderness – and see how you re-read each film
as you see the next one.
Were
you alone when you drove around? What camera do you use?
I
use an electric Bolex which has a motor built in – a small camera. And
I do everything myself, from buying the film at Kodak to cutting my own
negative. I don’t have a crew – I shot all these shots in synch sound,
but I also take added sound at the location, so I can also post-synch
if I want to remove some sounds that I don’t like. So I set up the camera
and the shot – generally I set up the tape-recorder first, and take sound
first, then do a synch-sound, and maybe then take some sound after that.
It’s a matter of doing one thing and then another, and turning the camera
on and waiting. It’s fairly easy when I don’t have any camera movement,
to be able to do sound and image at the same time.
Have
you never considered using a different size of film than 16mm – super
16 or 35mm perhaps?
They
should be 70mm of course, but then I couldn’t make the film. Because most
of the images in all three films are somewhat stolen. A lot of times I’m
illegally on land – I’m doing things where I have to go in very quickly
and get out of there very quickly. Especially when I’m in the middle of
a military installation, or a cement quarry – those kinds of places where
they don’t like you filming there. It would be difficult to steal those
kinds of images. I certainly agree that in a cinema this big 16mm starts
to break down, especially when images are held for two and a half minutes
and you’re begging for the best possible projection you can get. I also
want to keep making films cheaply – all three of these films were made
for less than $15,000. I want to make films at that cost or less… I kind
of find it criminal when it costs more than that, because there are better
places to put money.
How
do you fund the films?
I
teach, and I do visiting-artist things. Occasionally German television
is very kind to me – they just bought the trilogy, so now I’ll be be able
to make three, four, five, six – maybe even ten more films. Even though
I argued with them, saying that they won’t work on TV, unless you can
get people to sit and turn on the television and sit 30 inches away and
look. Television doesn’t have the same kind of presence as film
does – to be in a dark room you concentrate a lot more than when you watch
on the TV screen, and the refrigerator’s over there, things like that…
makes you think about other things. But I’m very very happy for their
support. It’s something that would never happen in the US.
If
money is always a pressure, why not use video?
Then
they’d be video… I don’t know, maybe digital video or high-definition
could be a way I could work. Perhaps with projection improving they would
actually look better that way. I have to think about that, because it’s
still a different kind of image. It’s made differently, doesn’t have grain
in it. I would have to work with it for a while to find out how to use
it. It’s something I’ve been thinking about. Working with 16mm labs, and
showing films now, 16mm projection gets worse and worse and worse every
year. Some places you go that haven’t used it for three years, and it
hasn’t been cleaned in eight. You put a $1,400 dollar print on it and
wreck it in one screening… it’s unbearable. So it’s kind of near the end
I think, 16mm – I might not have a choice, actually.
You
mentioned that the Trilogy has been bought by German TV. I was given to
understand that you didn’t allow the films to be shown outside of cinemas.
Occasionally
my work has been on TV. It’s something I haven’t encouraged but because
film-making is so expensive, and because television offers me a way to
make more films I agree to it a few times. But in the 30 years that I’ve
been making films I’ve had films on TV in the US three or four times.
German television in the early 80s bought a film of mine and then they
produced a film, and now they’ve bought the trilogy and also the two films
I made before that – Four Corners and Utopia. They’re going
to do a five-film screening.
But
none are available to buy on video on DVD at the moment.
That’s
true. I’m thinking, because film prints are so fragile, and eventually
it’ll be difficult to get 16mm even projected, I’m thinking of doing some
tests to see if I can get really good DVD quality and see what that might
look like. I could archive it that way – I know DVDs have a shelf-life
too, but you can make clones of them, if you keep up with it you should
be able to have the same quality. I suppose you might lose in the long
run if you make a clone of a clone of a clone of a clone…
But
if it’s digital, the information can’t corrode, no matter how many generations
are involved.
I
think that’s true, so it would provide a way to archive these. All film
is eventually perishable. Film printed in the late 70s and early 80s on
Kodak stock have all turned magenta already, because they had a very bad
film stock for about four or five years. I’m in the process of reprinting
all those films now, and as long as they have fresh prints it would be
a good time to make DVDs of those.
I
was thinking more in terms of the public, because it’s often difficult
to see your films.
If
I thought that the DVDs had a particular standard then I would do that.
It would make it a lot more democratic, wouldn’t it. As of now, a “privileged
few”, if you’re in the right place, get to see my work. It’s something
I’ve never been concerned with, because I’ve never really made films for
an audience I’ve really made films to define my own self better, to understand
myself better. I thought by making films I could look at things that affect
my life.
And
do you feel you’ve succeeded in doing that?
I’m
still on that quest… but I think I know myself a lot better now than when
I first started it.
Do
you have faith in film to provide the answers you seek?
For
me it’s not necessarily the film, but the process of going through to
make the film, that I learn from. The film is kinda like the residue of
that process. And that’s what I hope affects other people – obviously
some of the process is captured in the film. That’s where the strength
of my films lies.
Is
this why they so often take the form of journeys – either the ‘static
shots’ travel across California in the Trilogy, or the motorbike ride
in North on Evers?
I
think so. I’m very interested in place itself, and the difference of place
– a journey is necessary to make those kinds of comparisons. I think journey
is a way to put things both in political and social perspective.
Hearing
you talk of seeking answers, and journeys, some people might speculate
about a spiritual dimension – which I suspect you’d reject.
Well,
with a small ‘s’, I would perhaps agree.
I
presumed the non-availability of the films on video and DVD was an issue
of control – that you didn’t like the idea of viewers being able to pause,
rewind, fast-forward… that these films must be viewed in a specific order.
It’s
more about the way people relate to a video screen. They don’t
sit and watch the screen like they would if they sit in a theatre. My
films demand your attention – and a really strong attention for them to
work, and effort. But now that people have DVD players and larger TV sets,
you can sit in front of a TV and almost, if you want, you can almost have
a film experience. But I think it takes training and I think that the
kind of casual viewing of television has affected anything played on a
video screen. That can break down now, though – perhaps I need a note
on the DVD case saying ‘It would be appreciated if you would watch it
like you wanted to look at everything in it, and concentrate on the film,
and try to cast aside any kind of casual viewing that you would generally
do with television while you’re eating a sandwich and drinking a beer.
The
other innovation of DVD is the director commentary – would that be anathema
to you?
I
would never do that… I do talk after screenings of my films, and I think
it’s helpful for audiences, but ultimately I want the film to speak for
itself. Which I think is really ironic with these three films, which have
no language in them at all… to then provide language after seems kind-of
contradictory to me.
You’ve
just premiered Sogobi here in Berlin, and your relationship with
the Berlinale stretches back to your first feature.
Yes,
11 x 14 which was shown here in either ‘77 or ‘78… It was my first
feature-length film. I probably lost about a third of my audience that
day, they walked out. Which doesn’t happen these days, and my films are
maybe, more demanding now. 11 x 14 was perhaps more demanding at
the time it was made – a ten-minute shot was a long shot in 1977.
Is
this why the Trilogy has premiered in Berlin?
I’ve
always had a great relationship with the Forum, and I really admire that
they collect films that they show, and have an archive, and show the films
later. 11 x 14 still screens although I would think their copy
is bright pink at this point!
The
Forum is known for its avant-garde selections. Do you accept the term
‘avant-garde’ as a description of yourself as a film-maker?
I’m
certainly not a mainstream film-maker, and certainly am an independent
film-maker, because I do everything myself. From buying the film at Kodak
to cutting the negative. I don’t think ‘avant-garde’ is necessarily a
negative term, I wouldn’t disagree with it. But “advance-guard” of what,
I guess is the question.
Experimental
is also a strange term – we should surely know some results of these experiments
by now…
Of
course, every film is an experiment, so that’s kind of a foolish title
to qualify films. But mine are… different. I’ve always been interested
in creating new forms, and a different way of speaking. But not in reaction
to dominant cinema, because it’s kinda like saying an artist and an accountant
both do the same work because they both use pencils… We’re that different,
though I’m not saying they’re the accountant and I’m the artist, I’m just
saying that we’re that far apart. I don’t work against Hollywood
– I rarely go and see Hollywood movies. I see ‘em on airplanes, but without
the sound because I listen to music. So I’ve seen every Julia Roberts
movie ever made, without sound.
Within
– or outside of – the avant-garde, which film-makers have made an impact
on you and your work?
When
I first started working, structuralist film-makers were very big – certainly
Hollis Frampton, and Michael Snow were great influences on me. At first
I was totally confused by Wavelength, but I knew I really liked
it and I had to watch it a number of times. I still think it’s one of
the best films ever made, an incredible film… Both of them have ideas
about what film can be, and then they make films about those ideas. So
that was very rewarding for me to see that kind of thinking. Today I look
at all kinds of films, I like Claire Denis very very much – Beau Travail
is a beautiful film. I’m also a big fan of a young artist, a photographer
who makes films, Sharon Lockhart. She had a film here two years ago that
was one thirty-minute shot of an audience watching the camera… it was
filmed on the stage in Brazil where Fitzcarraldo begins, the opera
house that was built with rubber money. She filled the audience with local
people who kinda mapped the different regions of the city. She had ‘em
somewhat in the same proportion from each area, and they took seats as
they would, probably according to where they were from.
Michael
Mann apparently always personally seats the people who attend screenings
of his films when he’s there – Orson Welles told him there are only four
seats in any cinema.
There
is – right in the centre, about one-and-a-half times the diagonal of the
screen, that’s where I try to sit. It’s an amazing place to sit.
What
is your relationship with photography? Do you take photographs?
I
did some photo silkscreening many years ago, so I was interested in the
photographic image, and then colouring the image by hand-colouring. So
that’s somewhat affected the way I make images now – how I frame, how
I look at colour. It’s an interesting process to mix your own inks, and
put in colours into the photograph that way, but I’m not really a photographer.
In
Sogobi certain shots recall Ansel Adams. Or do you align yourself
more with someone like Robert Frank?
Of
course Robert Frank is one of my heroes… but I don’t think my photographs
are like his at all. I admire what he looks at, and how he looks. I like
one of his videos very much, called Home Improvements – he’s a
master of making images in that film, and dealing with the personal, which
is something that I try to do to.
With
the Trilogy, where the personal would seem to be at least one remove away,
do you see the work as personal in that way?
I
think they’re highly personal because they’re investigations of things
I’m interested in – I’m interested in work, and who does work, and who
makes money off that work, and who participates in the profits and who
doesn’t. El Valley Centro is very much trying to negotiate that.
I’m interested in place, so I’m interested in the Valley as a place, in
Los Angeles as a place, and wilderness as a place, and how those places
are somewhat distinct, but at the same time they have connections.
Did
your interest in California develop after you moved there after living
in Milwaukee for so long?
I
lived in Milwaukee for the first 18 years of my life, then I moved every
year for 20 years. I lived in Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, southern California,
upstate New York, back to Wisconsin and away again.
A
deliberate strategy?
Some
of it was, some of it was things blowing in the wind, and going towards
desires and away from rainstorms… but it was very valuable because it
gave me lots of experience in different places. I lived in a hunting cabin
for a year in the Adirondack Mountains, and I lived on a cattle farm in
Missouri for a year… followed the migrant stream, worked with migrant
workers for a year… lived in a black-white ghetto doing neighbourhood
organising. It politicised me, my travels.
But
always within the US?
Yes.
Was
that a deliberate strategy also?
Yeah,
mainly because I only speak English, and I feel uncomfortable when I can’t
communicate very directly.
I’m
surprised you don’t speak German, being from Milwaukee and coming to Berlin
so often.
It’s
funny… I was born during World War II, so in Milwaukee, Germans at that
time kind of denied their heritage, and stopped passing the language on.
My mother and father could speak German – not real fluently, but they
could have passed it on. My brother and I never learned German at all…
Places like ‘New Berlin’ were called ‘New Berlin’ after
the war started, so even the language were, like, perverted.
Has
being from Wisconsin made a specific impact on you as an artist?
Oh
yes, oh yes, I’m a product of the midwest, I think it’s a really down-to-earth
place, and I learned to be pretty straightforward from being there. I
try to be pretty direct – I think my films are pretty direct because of
that. They don’t try to be purposely complicated. I think they’re complicated,
but I don’t try to make them… oblique.
Being
from Wisconsin, did you feel that you had to make a film about Ed Gein
– Landscape Suicide – because so many have been made, either directly
or indirectly, on the subject by people from elsewhere?
My
daughter and I were taking a train to New York, I’d been visiting her
in Milwaukee. She bought a Rolling Stone magazine and there was an article
in there about the cheerleader who got killed – that’s the first part
of Landscape Suicide. She said ‘this really scares me’ – and it
was kindof a scary article. She was 13 at the time, and it made be wonder
if I’d had that kind of experience when I was that age. And I did – the
headline in the Milwaukee Sentinel was ‘Cannibalism in Wisconsin’,
and Ed Gein became the perfect boogeyman for kids my age at around 13.
The way we responded was with nervous jokes about cannibalism, lady-fingers
and goofy stuff. That’s how that film got made, because of her discovering
this article that was scary. Then I got the transcript of the young girl
who killed the cheerleader and I read that, and in that confession the
interviewer, who’s trying to get the confession out of her, keeps implying
that there might have been something to do with the killer being a lesbian.
And my daughter being a lesbian – and knowing she was a lesbian from a
very young age – I think she felt that’s what the scary part was, that
it must have been some kind of sexual deviancy that cause this murder.
I keep telling this story, and I keep saying I have to ask her about that,
but I never got round to doing that.
Is
that the closest you’ve ever come to making a ‘horror film’?
Sometimes
people rent the print of Landscape Suicide and show it with horror
films, and then the people who come walk out because they’re not getting
a horror film, but it’s horror to me…There’s a lot of notorious movies
kind of based on it – The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Psycho,
Robert Bloch, who wrote the novel, he lived very near there. Not Plainfield,
but where the trial took place – maybe Warsaw. I think he actually attended
the trial.
Another
Wisconsin thing that influenced me was Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death
Trip – it didn’t occur to me when I made Deseret and used newspaper
articles about Utah, that there was such a close parallel to Wisconsin
Death Trip.
You’re
a geographical film-maker, but also a mathematical and political one.
In which order would you put those? Are they descriptions you would accept?
I
think mathematics influences my work… just because they have a rigid structure
doesn’t make them mathematical films. But I studied mathematics and I’m
very aware of the kind of thinking that you use when you work in higher
mathematics, and becomes quite abstract. Not even higher mathematics,
even – there’s 1,000 different proofs for one particular theorem, maybe
10,000… and some of them are so beautifully elegant, because they’re very
simple, or very graphic. I like the idea that there are many solutions,
but a few that stand out as being totally elegant, and it’s the kind of
thing I try to work with when I make a film, to find the elegant solution
to a problem. In a more direct way, my structures are… arithmetical.
There’s
clearly a great interest in angles.
Yeah,
and symmetry. I always love to say, when I’m in Berlin, that I’m very
much influenced by Fascist architecture.
That
must go down like a ton of bricks.
(Laughs)
They don’t want to hear that. But I love symmetry – Chantal Akerman’s
films are so symmetric too, and I love them… she uses symmetry and then
maybe does something to disrupt that symmetry, which I also try to do
through some kind of choreographed movement. Or drawing attention to one
side of the frame, even though it’s very symmetric.
Is
it something like the Blakean idea of ‘fearful symmetry’ – as with the
Fascist architecture and all its negative connotations: order being imposed…
Well,
just because they’re Fascists doesn’t mean that the architecture isn’t
brilliant at times. It’s funny being Berlin, and you go and look at some
of these things that were built in the thirties as huge monuments – now
they look really small, almost pathetic, compared with these new buildings
here, though they’re so much more elegant. I like ‘em as kind of miniatures
of what they used to be – the Olympic Stadium is quite amazing, but now
they’ve put a top on it.
What
about the political element – to me, that’s the primary motivation, certainly
with El Valley Centro and Los.
That
comes from my travels earlier, when I was doing political work at a grass-roots
level. It became very apparent to me that this was something I could exhaust
my life with, and I hadn’t even begun to define who I was. So I stopped
doing that kind of work, and I started making films to look at my own
life. At first, I thought I had to make really apolitical films, because
if I wanted to do politics I should go back and do what I was doing before.
And by doing things that are much more aesthetic I could define my life
more – but I quickly realised that my aesthetics developed forms that
were somewhat radical, and that’s political in itself. To make people
look at a screen different I think is a really radical position to take.
So even though I was making apolitical films when I made 11 x 14,
it became really a political film because of its structure. And then what
I didn’t realise was that I was documenting a culture in the mid-west
– any culture has political overtones too, so this ‘apolitical film’ that
I made, now, when I look at it 30 years later I see it as something very
political. And as I made more and more films I became much more interested
in looking at different histories, and putting my life in a larger context
and then politics came back into the films in a more direct way. Though
I still try not to be completely dogmatic with my politics, even though
I think it’s quite evident that they’re fairly left wing.
It
would be hard to read the Trilogy as a rightist, reactionary tract…
Well,
liking Fascist architecture, I have to balance it a bit (!).
The
left-leaning is evident in Los and El Valley Centro but
less so with Sogobi, which presents nature much more in the raw
– and nature isn’t of itself political.
Until
it gets attacked.
But
nature isn’t really attacked in most of Sogobi… shouldn’t this
be the first of the Trilogy rather than the last?
It’s
purposely the last one because it shows that there’s something still left,
but it might not last that long. After you see the first two, you know
that it’s going to be scraped away… There’s evidence of that already –
the cement quarry, where they’ve torn out half of the mountainside now.
You see a convoy of military marine vehicles going through the desert,
and one has to wonder ‘What in the hell is going on back here? What are
they preparing for? What are they doing? What kind of perverse activity
is actually going to happen?’ It looks very clandestine, these things
driving in the middle of nowhere. Then there’s the shot as simple as the
one where Highway 14 is cut through the side of a mountain, exposing the
San Andreas fault – showing the disregard for landscape. It’s the irony
of the road being cut through, and showing the fault-line that looks very
angry.
Some
people have compared your films – erroneously, I would say – with Koyaanisqatsi
and its sequels.
I’ve
seen the first one many years ago, and I was never a huge fan of that,
maybe because I just get pretty bored when I see timelapse… it seemed
overly simplistic to me, but it’s been many years since I saw it, so perhaps
it’s a great film and I misread it.
Is
it true that you deliberately avoid going to Los Angeles as much as you
can?
I
just don’t have a need for it, it’s too spread out. I go to see friends,
but I don’t have much of a need. I’d much rather drive the other way,
I can drive to the desert in 45 minutes, or the mountains, or at the ocean,
or I can hop on my motorcycle and be at all three of those places, a nice
leisurely drive through backroads. I’d rather do that than go to the city.
Before I moved to the LA area I lived in Manhattan, so I had eight years
in a huge city. I love New York, but I didn’t want to move to LA and look
for New York there. It’s a different place.
With
Los, it’s as if you’ve moved away from the countryside towards
the city, and are approaching its borders – maybe like a medieval city
with gates and walls. Los feels like you’re probing those walls,
and I was expecting this third film to jump over and into the middle of
the city much more.
Los
does jump in, in a few places
– the joggers in Santa Monica…
Is
there a practical reason for not doing more in the middle of LA itself,
in that your camera would attract more attention in a fully urban environment?
I’m
pretty good at taking my camera out shooting and getting out of there
before they know I’m there. Though I was stopped in one shopping centre
in downtown LA, for using a tripod. I had to shoot that without a tripod,
so I taped the camera to railing that was there. That was actually a better
idea anyways, because the people didn’t notice it – if I’d been on out
the pavement with the tripod they’d have been looking at the camera. I
was told that ‘professionals’ can’t film there without permission, and
apparently you’re not a professional when you take it off the tripod…
You’ve
mentioned the military movements in the desert, and the ecological destruction
in various parts of the wilderness – the current Bush administration,
which seems actively anti-environment, must be a nightmare for you.
Yeah,
and it was bad before that, too. We always have a right-wing government
– business runs America. Sure, there’s lip-service to those kinds of things,
but both Clinton and Al Gore owned oil stock. Al Gore owned oil stock
in South America where they were devastating particular Indian lands,
and he continued to hold that stock while he was running for president.
So you know where his heart is, you know.
So
you reckon his image as an environmentalist is a sham?
I
think so, yeah, if you write a book one way and live another, what do
you believe in? If I wrote that book then I wouldn’t own stock that’s
devastating really spiritual lands for people who claimed it thousands
of years ago.
Do
you vote?
I
don’t. I voted when I thought there were candidates. In spirit I was for
Ralph Nader, but I have problems with him too, because he has a career
as a consumer advocate, and I’m pretty much anti-consumer. I think that’s
one of the reasons we’re in trouble, because we consume too much. Rather
than making cars safer, we should get rid of cars, perhaps.
Have
you been following the Enron case with glee or horror?
It’s
horrible for people who lost their savings… I feel for those people… But
what’s more horrible is that they’ll probably get away with it. One of
‘em killed himself already, but I’m sure others will just be forgotten,
take their millions.
Do
you ever feel tempted to make a more conventional documentary on such
subjects, or are you now firmly occupying a different kind of space?
I
admire people who try to do things that will cause political change to
better this world. I admire that, but at this point I’m much too selfish
for that. I’m much more interested in making films that make me understand
life more, and hopefully that changes things. In an indirect way.
I think I can be more passionate that way. When I look at documentaries
that address issues I think need addressing so many times the way they’re
made is so corrupt I almost want to change sides (laughs)… change my religion,
you know… they’re so dogmatic in their approach, so overly conventional,
so conservative in their style, it somewhat contradicts its own message.
I’m of course generalising, but what I see in those kinds of films is
that their goal is to be self-satisfying because they’re ultimately trying
to entertain. You watch, and say ‘Now I know that, and I can forget
about it.’ There’s no thought after the film’s over, you’re just satisfied,
it doesn’t agitate, it doesn’t make you want to do anything about it.
I’m sure maybe one or two people might be changed, though…
Have
you seen any films that succeed in energising people, making a difference
in that way?
I
think maybe films like those of Haroun Farocki, the German documentary
film-maker… they provoke, so that when you’re finished you have to really
think about the subject.
What
about a Hollywood film like Erin Brockovich, which is ostensibly
radical because of its anti-corporate stance, even though it’s been made
by a corporate film company?
And
ultimately, it’s a Julia Roberts movie - the star surfaces rather than
the issue… it’s a weird process. Again, it’s self-satisfying entertainment
– a much better film made by Hollywood was Silkwood. I actually
liked that film quite a lot for a Hollywood film – it took a political
stance that wasn’t overworked, and made you think. Films like that, or
The China Syndrome, they wouldn’t be made today, I don’t think.
What
are you working on next?
I’ve
made a film every year for five years, so I’m going to take a little break,
and try to show some of that work. Four Corners and Utopia never
really got appropriate screening, they were kind of cast aside… I could
work on the Trilogy. I have a huge project planned, but I’m putting that
off, I’m not sure whether that’s feasible or not. It’s to travel around
the perimeter of the the continental United States in one year, going
an equal distance each day, which turns out to be about 55 miles, and
doing one one-minute shot a day, or ending up with one one-minute shot.
Starting on the northern border on the first day of winter, December 21st,
and going clockwise around so the north is in winter, the east coast is
spring, the southern coast and Mexican border in summer, and the west
coast is autumn.
Made
up of static shots like the Trilogy?
Probably.
I would also like to steal conversations each day – at least a minute’s
worth of a good conversation, that would be put on as sound over maybe
two-thirds of the shots. So there’d be a continuing dialogue, or monologue,
that would travel around the border and it would have its own language
and its own accent, and point of view. So I could compare the Canadian
border to the Mexican border, and the east coast to the west coast, and
small towns to big towns, and rural areas to populated areas. It would
take a year to do to it, and it would be six hours and five minutes to
be shown all in one section.
And
do you have a title?
I
had a working title when I wrote some proposals … Circling Sweetgrass,
because the town that I would start at in northern Montana is Sweetgrass,
Montana. I doubt if I’ll end up with that title but I like it.
‘Homeland
Security’ is a current buzz phrase that might fit… Are you planning to
do any more narrative films afterwards?
I
think all my films are narrative films. I never stopped having narrative
concerns. I could use actors again, maybe, I don’t know. But I think the
trilogy is a narrative, there’s recurring themes and images, stars in
it – different ships, tumbleweeds.
So
if someone was approaching your work for the first time, where would be
a good starting point?
I’d
probably tell ‘em to watch 11 x 14 so they could start at the beginning
and work their way… north.
interview*
conducted by Neil Young, Berlin, February 2002 – during Berlin
Film Festival
transcript
written up 7th August, 2003
*includes
interpolated excerpts from comments made by Benning during a public question-and-answer
session following the screening of Sogobi
For the short
version of this interview click here.
by Neil
Young
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