All language subtitles for Eames.The.Architect.and.The.Painter.2011.LiMiTED.DVDRip.XviD-LPD

af Afrikaans
ak Akan
sq Albanian
am Amharic
ar Arabic
hy Armenian
az Azerbaijani
eu Basque
be Belarusian
bem Bemba
bn Bengali
bh Bihari
bs Bosnian
br Breton
bg Bulgarian
km Cambodian
ca Catalan
ceb Cebuano
chr Cherokee
ny Chichewa
zh-CN Chinese (Simplified)
zh-TW Chinese (Traditional)
co Corsican
hr Croatian
cs Czech
da Danish
en English
eo Esperanto
et Estonian
ee Ewe
fo Faroese
tl Filipino
fi Finnish
fr French
fy Frisian
gaa Ga
gl Galician
ka Georgian
de German
el Greek
gn Guarani
gu Gujarati
ht Haitian Creole
ha Hausa
haw Hawaiian
iw Hebrew
hi Hindi
hmn Hmong
hu Hungarian
is Icelandic
ig Igbo
id Indonesian
ia Interlingua
ga Irish
it Italian
ja Japanese
jw Javanese
kn Kannada
kk Kazakh
rw Kinyarwanda
rn Kirundi
kg Kongo
ko Korean
kri Krio (Sierra Leone)
ku Kurdish
ckb Kurdish (Soranî)
ky Kyrgyz
lo Laothian
la Latin
lv Latvian
ln Lingala
lt Lithuanian
loz Lozi
lg Luganda
ach Luo
lb Luxembourgish
mk Macedonian
mg Malagasy
ms Malay
ml Malayalam
mt Maltese
mi Maori
mr Marathi
mfe Mauritian Creole
mo Moldavian
mn Mongolian
my Myanmar (Burmese)
sr-ME Montenegrin
ne Nepali
pcm Nigerian Pidgin
nso Northern Sotho
no Norwegian
nn Norwegian (Nynorsk)
oc Occitan
or Oriya
om Oromo
ps Pashto
fa Persian
pl Polish
pt-BR Portuguese (Brazil)
pt Portuguese (Portugal) Download
pa Punjabi
qu Quechua
ro Romanian
rm Romansh
nyn Runyakitara
ru Russian
sm Samoan
gd Scots Gaelic
sr Serbian
sh Serbo-Croatian
st Sesotho
tn Setswana
crs Seychellois Creole
sn Shona
sd Sindhi
si Sinhalese
sk Slovak
sl Slovenian
so Somali
es Spanish Download
es-419 Spanish (Latin American)
su Sundanese
sw Swahili
sv Swedish
tg Tajik
ta Tamil
tt Tatar
te Telugu
th Thai
ti Tigrinya
to Tonga
lua Tshiluba
tum Tumbuka
tr Turkish
tk Turkmen
tw Twi
ug Uighur
uk Ukrainian
ur Urdu
uz Uzbek
vi Vietnamese
cy Welsh
wo Wolof
xh Xhosa
yi Yiddish
yo Yoruba
zu Zulu
Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:45,783 --> 00:00:48,718 An artist is a title that you earn. 2 00:00:48,786 --> 00:00:52,278 And it's a little embarrassing to hear 3 00:00:52,356 --> 00:00:53,914 people refer to themselves 4 00:00:53,991 --> 00:00:55,219 as artists. 5 00:00:55,292 --> 00:00:58,125 It's like referring to themselves as a genius. 6 00:01:01,165 --> 00:01:05,499 This was a man who was a Merlin of curiosity. 7 00:01:05,569 --> 00:01:07,560 He was driven by his curiosity. 8 00:01:10,374 --> 00:01:12,467 We weren't sure quite what he was. 9 00:01:12,543 --> 00:01:13,737 Was he an architect? 10 00:01:13,811 --> 00:01:14,903 Was he a designer? 11 00:01:14,979 --> 00:01:16,139 Was he a filmmaker? 12 00:01:16,213 --> 00:01:18,340 But what he was, obviously, 13 00:01:18,415 --> 00:01:20,383 was something we all wanted to be. 14 00:01:22,319 --> 00:01:24,549 I had been trained as a painter, 15 00:01:24,622 --> 00:01:28,319 but when we were working on furniture, 16 00:01:28,392 --> 00:01:30,223 and again in film, 17 00:01:30,294 --> 00:01:33,730 it never seemed like leaving painting in any way, 18 00:01:33,797 --> 00:01:35,822 because it was just anotherform. 19 00:01:35,900 --> 00:01:39,529 She made paintings out of what she was surrounded by. 20 00:01:39,603 --> 00:01:43,437 Everything she touched, she turned into something magical. 21 00:01:43,507 --> 00:01:46,476 Everything that they did in design, she saw as 22 00:01:46,543 --> 00:01:48,101 an extension of her painting. 23 00:01:48,178 --> 00:01:50,408 And everything they did in design, he saw as an extension 24 00:01:50,481 --> 00:01:52,449 of his architecture. 25 00:01:52,516 --> 00:01:55,280 For them, these names like painter and architect, 26 00:01:55,352 --> 00:01:57,013 they weren't job descriptions. 27 00:01:57,087 --> 00:01:58,486 They were ways of looking at the world. 28 00:01:58,555 --> 00:02:01,752 They were introducing people 29 00:02:01,825 --> 00:02:04,919 to look at the world differently. 30 00:02:04,995 --> 00:02:08,192 Life was fun, was work, was fun, was life. 31 00:02:08,265 --> 00:02:12,065 People would say it was childlike behavior, 32 00:02:12,136 --> 00:02:13,865 butwhat's wrong with that? 33 00:02:13,938 --> 00:02:17,237 The Eameses have put all this joy back in life. 34 00:02:17,308 --> 00:02:19,139 You know that modernism, let's face it, 35 00:02:19,209 --> 00:02:22,235 was getting boring. 36 00:02:22,313 --> 00:02:24,781 Had they just designed the furniture, 37 00:02:24,848 --> 00:02:26,748 they'd be in the pantheon. 38 00:02:26,817 --> 00:02:30,719 It's the multifaceted nature of the career 39 00:02:30,788 --> 00:02:34,189 that is extraordinary. 40 00:02:34,258 --> 00:02:37,989 They give shape to America's 20th century. 41 00:03:06,323 --> 00:03:09,520 I came from an architectural office 42 00:03:09,593 --> 00:03:13,461 where there were individual tables with a conference room, 43 00:03:13,530 --> 00:03:15,964 and there was carpet on the floor. 44 00:03:16,033 --> 00:03:17,193 There were lights. 45 00:03:17,267 --> 00:03:19,428 We had drafting tables, and all the equipment 46 00:03:19,503 --> 00:03:21,596 that you needed, et cetera, et cetera. 47 00:03:21,672 --> 00:03:23,867 I walk into Eames Office, 48 00:03:23,941 --> 00:03:25,875 and it was like walking into a circus. 49 00:03:28,312 --> 00:03:33,181 I walked in the door, and of course I immediately thought, 50 00:03:33,250 --> 00:03:35,946 "Got any jobs here?' 51 00:03:36,020 --> 00:03:41,981 I'm just totally blown away by the patina on every surface 52 00:03:42,059 --> 00:03:45,051 of graphics, and there were models everywhere, 53 00:03:45,129 --> 00:03:46,619 and there was just stuff. 54 00:03:46,697 --> 00:03:48,062 I was just overwhelmed. 55 00:03:48,132 --> 00:03:52,296 I saw this incredible apparition 56 00:03:52,369 --> 00:03:54,735 of animation stands 57 00:03:54,805 --> 00:03:57,296 and photographs spread out on tables. 58 00:03:57,374 --> 00:03:59,842 Models being lit for photography, 59 00:03:59,910 --> 00:04:01,275 a screening room, 60 00:04:01,345 --> 00:04:03,245 and a wonderful wood shop. 61 00:04:03,313 --> 00:04:05,110 Saltwater tanks. 62 00:04:05,182 --> 00:04:08,948 There were Eames chairs with Steinberg drawings on them. 63 00:04:09,019 --> 00:04:12,614 Every kind of visual treat you can imagine. 64 00:04:12,689 --> 00:04:15,487 And I thought, "I've come to work in Disneyland." 65 00:04:17,661 --> 00:04:19,629 If you had taken the roof off of it, 66 00:04:19,696 --> 00:04:21,459 you would see that place 67 00:04:21,532 --> 00:04:23,022 changing constantly. 68 00:04:23,100 --> 00:04:25,534 So we'd just go around 69 00:04:25,602 --> 00:04:28,093 and take everything out of the middle 70 00:04:28,172 --> 00:04:30,333 ofthe studio, to put up a movie set 71 00:04:30,407 --> 00:04:33,205 to take pictures tomorrow, and then the next day, 72 00:04:33,277 --> 00:04:36,212 you'd take out all the movie set and put the tables all back up, 73 00:04:36,280 --> 00:04:37,975 and everybody's back at work again. 74 00:04:40,184 --> 00:04:41,947 It was very informal. 75 00:04:42,019 --> 00:04:44,317 I mean, there wasn't ever any kind 76 00:04:44,388 --> 00:04:45,582 of routine. 77 00:04:45,656 --> 00:04:48,216 There were no "regular meetings." 78 00:04:49,793 --> 00:04:52,557 Because I did not have a design degree, 79 00:04:52,629 --> 00:04:55,655 many of the people in the Office thought 80 00:04:55,732 --> 00:04:57,723 I probably shouldn't bethere, 81 00:04:57,801 --> 00:05:00,793 but Charles had a different attitude. 82 00:05:00,871 --> 00:05:03,465 And he said this to me -- 83 00:05:03,540 --> 00:05:07,476 "l can teach you how to draw. 84 00:05:07,544 --> 00:05:11,878 "lf you can think and you can see, 85 00:05:11,949 --> 00:05:15,043 and you can prove that to me, you can work here." 86 00:05:19,590 --> 00:05:23,890 For four decades, 901 Washington Boulevard 87 00:05:23,961 --> 00:05:25,826 in Venice Beach, California, was one of the most 88 00:05:25,896 --> 00:05:28,592 creative addresses on Earth. 89 00:05:28,665 --> 00:05:30,997 Dozens of gifted young designers 90 00:05:31,068 --> 00:05:33,866 cuttheirteeth within the walls ofthe studio. 91 00:05:33,937 --> 00:05:38,670 But the vision for the Office came from the top. 92 00:05:38,742 --> 00:05:42,576 We have to have a place where you can recognize 93 00:05:42,646 --> 00:05:44,307 where you're going when you start out. 94 00:05:44,381 --> 00:05:46,178 Modern design was born 95 00:05:46,250 --> 00:05:48,445 from the marriage of art and industry. 96 00:05:48,519 --> 00:05:51,920 The Eames Office was born from the marriage 97 00:05:51,989 --> 00:05:54,890 of Ray Kaiser -- a painter who rarely painted -- 98 00:05:54,958 --> 00:05:58,325 and Charles Eames -- an architecture school dropout 99 00:05:58,395 --> 00:05:59,987 who never got his license. 100 00:06:00,063 --> 00:06:04,523 "Eventually, everything connects," Charles said. 101 00:06:04,601 --> 00:06:07,297 Furniture, toys, architecture, 102 00:06:07,371 --> 00:06:09,669 exhibitions, photography, 103 00:06:09,740 --> 00:06:11,605 and film were all connected 104 00:06:11,675 --> 00:06:15,042 in the wild, whimsical world of the Eames Office. 105 00:06:15,112 --> 00:06:19,981 Charles and Ray Eames wanted to bring 106 00:06:20,050 --> 00:06:22,348 the most magnificent experiences 107 00:06:22,419 --> 00:06:25,081 that you could have with your eyes 108 00:06:25,155 --> 00:06:28,454 to the largest number of people. 109 00:06:28,525 --> 00:06:30,789 I don'tthinkthere's anything more important 110 00:06:30,861 --> 00:06:32,192 for an artist to want to do. 111 00:06:32,262 --> 00:06:35,129 It was a career that defined 112 00:06:35,199 --> 00:06:37,531 what it means to be a designer. 113 00:06:37,601 --> 00:06:41,002 And it all began with a chair. 114 00:06:41,071 --> 00:06:44,973 Charles, where did the classic Eames chair come from? 115 00:06:45,042 --> 00:06:46,942 Did it come to you in a flash, 116 00:06:47,010 --> 00:06:49,035 as you were shaving one morning? 117 00:06:49,112 --> 00:06:51,512 It sort of came to me 118 00:06:51,582 --> 00:06:55,541 in a 30-year flash, if you want. 119 00:06:55,619 --> 00:06:57,917 TIME magazine called it 120 00:06:57,988 --> 00:07:01,253 "the greatest design ofthe 20th century." 121 00:07:01,325 --> 00:07:03,623 But it didn't start out that way. 122 00:07:03,694 --> 00:07:06,458 It began as a failure. 123 00:07:06,530 --> 00:07:08,725 Responding to a competition 124 00:07:08,799 --> 00:07:11,893 at the museum of modern art in 1940, 125 00:07:11,969 --> 00:07:13,937 two unknown young architects -- 126 00:07:14,004 --> 00:07:17,337 Charles Eames and his friend, Eero Saarinen, 127 00:07:17,407 --> 00:07:21,138 set out to reinvent the very idea of the chair. 128 00:07:21,211 --> 00:07:24,305 The goal is to create an inexpensive, 129 00:07:24,381 --> 00:07:27,509 mass-produced chair which is well designed, 130 00:07:27,584 --> 00:07:31,111 and which is molded to the body, because it doesn't need a lot 131 00:07:31,188 --> 00:07:33,816 of upholstery, which is, "a," old-fashioned, 132 00:07:33,890 --> 00:07:35,824 and "b," expensive. 133 00:07:35,892 --> 00:07:38,053 Upholstery is what Louis XlV did. 134 00:07:38,128 --> 00:07:43,327 Working at the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, 135 00:07:43,400 --> 00:07:45,459 Eames and Saarinen thought they could mold 136 00:07:45,535 --> 00:07:47,264 the new miracle material, plywood, 137 00:07:47,337 --> 00:07:48,599 into two directions at once 138 00:07:48,672 --> 00:07:51,368 to make a comfortable, form-fitting shell. 139 00:07:51,441 --> 00:07:53,671 The critical point 140 00:07:53,744 --> 00:07:56,838 is where that back becomes the seat. 141 00:07:56,913 --> 00:08:00,178 The glues aren't good enough, and the chair splinters, 142 00:08:00,250 --> 00:08:01,478 which means, when you'd sit on it, 143 00:08:01,551 --> 00:08:02,813 itwould be a little uncomfortable. 144 00:08:02,886 --> 00:08:04,877 So they have to upholster it. 145 00:08:04,955 --> 00:08:06,684 Despite failing 146 00:08:06,757 --> 00:08:10,193 at their goal of creating a single-piece plywood shell, 147 00:08:10,260 --> 00:08:14,492 Charles and Eero won the competition. 148 00:08:14,564 --> 00:08:18,295 The irony is that 149 00:08:18,368 --> 00:08:21,166 the chairthat Eames and Saarinen designed, 150 00:08:21,238 --> 00:08:23,536 they couldn't really manufacture. 151 00:08:23,607 --> 00:08:27,668 Even with the upholstery to cover the cracked surface, 152 00:08:27,744 --> 00:08:31,373 no existing machine could successfully mold the plywood 153 00:08:31,448 --> 00:08:33,643 into the shape of the chair. 154 00:08:33,717 --> 00:08:34,945 It couldn't be made 155 00:08:35,018 --> 00:08:37,578 in the way that they claimed it could be made. 156 00:08:37,654 --> 00:08:39,349 They had designed the look of it 157 00:08:39,423 --> 00:08:41,357 without designing the substance of it. 158 00:08:41,425 --> 00:08:45,191 After many unsuccessful attempts, 159 00:08:45,262 --> 00:08:47,321 Eero Saarinen scrapped the project. 160 00:08:47,397 --> 00:08:49,524 But Charles wasn't ready to give up -- 161 00:08:49,599 --> 00:08:52,295 this time, with a new partner. 162 00:08:52,369 --> 00:08:52,402 At Cranbrook, he had become friendly with Ray Kaiser, 163 00:08:52,402 --> 00:08:56,395 At Cranbrook, he had become friendly with Ray Kaiser, 164 00:08:56,473 --> 00:09:00,603 a talented young artist who had helped with the chair project. 165 00:09:00,677 --> 00:09:02,338 I said to Ray one day, 166 00:09:02,412 --> 00:09:05,210 "How did you and Charles get together?' 167 00:09:05,282 --> 00:09:08,217 "Oh! I can't talk about it." 168 00:09:08,285 --> 00:09:09,343 I said, "Well, why not?' 169 00:09:09,419 --> 00:09:11,478 "Well, we just did." 170 00:09:11,555 --> 00:09:15,321 They sparked, and the rest is literally history. 171 00:09:15,392 --> 00:09:16,882 And I think in Ray, 172 00:09:16,960 --> 00:09:18,757 he really found his complement. 173 00:09:18,829 --> 00:09:21,320 But there was a problem. 174 00:09:21,398 --> 00:09:24,094 Charles was already married. 175 00:09:24,167 --> 00:09:27,102 He had moved up to Cranbrook from St. Louis 176 00:09:27,170 --> 00:09:30,833 with his wife, Catherine, and his young daughter, Lucia. 177 00:09:30,907 --> 00:09:38,814 The love letters are Charles's letters to Ray, 178 00:09:38,882 --> 00:09:42,443 because the letters that Ray wrote back to Charles, 179 00:09:42,519 --> 00:09:45,454 Charles destroyed, because he was married. 180 00:09:45,522 --> 00:09:49,288 They show Charles madly in love with her. 181 00:09:49,359 --> 00:09:51,190 There's no doubt about that. 182 00:09:51,261 --> 00:09:53,661 He talks about walking past 183 00:09:53,730 --> 00:09:55,391 the building that she used to live in 184 00:09:55,465 --> 00:09:56,659 and looking up at her window, 185 00:09:56,733 --> 00:09:58,928 and they are very moving. 186 00:09:59,002 --> 00:10:03,439 These letters are talking about 187 00:10:03,507 --> 00:10:09,935 a joined future as artists together. 188 00:10:10,013 --> 00:10:13,278 I think his decision feels made. 189 00:10:13,350 --> 00:10:18,253 Ray certainly felt uncomfortable enough to leave Cranbrook 190 00:10:18,321 --> 00:10:20,619 and go away and think about 191 00:10:20,690 --> 00:10:23,955 what she was going to do thereafter. 192 00:10:26,229 --> 00:10:29,357 Catherine was a very impressive person. 193 00:10:29,433 --> 00:10:31,697 Knowing them both, as I did, 194 00:10:31,768 --> 00:10:35,602 you can see why they didn't stay together. 195 00:10:35,672 --> 00:10:39,938 He really thought he had something to offer the world, 196 00:10:40,010 --> 00:10:43,207 and this was going to be a journey 197 00:10:43,280 --> 00:10:46,181 with a lot of unexpectedness. 198 00:10:46,249 --> 00:10:49,844 This was a journey that might not lead to, uh, success. 199 00:10:49,920 --> 00:10:52,013 And I think that maybe at that point in her life, 200 00:10:52,088 --> 00:10:53,453 this was not necessarily 201 00:10:53,523 --> 00:10:57,789 the place that Catherine wanted to go. 202 00:10:57,861 --> 00:11:00,056 But I think that maybe in Charles's mind 203 00:11:00,130 --> 00:11:04,794 that he had wanted a life where love and work 204 00:11:04,868 --> 00:11:07,598 and life and work were all blended together. 205 00:11:09,840 --> 00:11:12,331 Charles quit his job at Cranbrook, 206 00:11:12,409 --> 00:11:17,403 and, in one last letterto Ray, asked for her hand in marriage. 207 00:11:21,651 --> 00:11:23,118 His future with his new bride 208 00:11:23,186 --> 00:11:27,680 now depended on making the chairwork. 209 00:11:31,428 --> 00:11:34,226 Broke and short on options, 210 00:11:34,297 --> 00:11:37,130 Charles and Ray headed from Michigan to L.A. 211 00:11:37,200 --> 00:11:40,135 to finish what he had started. 212 00:11:40,203 --> 00:11:42,797 Part of this journey to California was 213 00:11:42,873 --> 00:11:44,773 they were both going to figure out 214 00:11:44,841 --> 00:11:48,072 how to mass-produce molded plywood and compound curves -- 215 00:11:48,144 --> 00:11:50,476 which sounds very unromantic, but I think it probably 216 00:11:50,547 --> 00:11:52,572 was pretty romantic, underthe circumstances. 217 00:11:52,649 --> 00:11:56,278 In their two-bedroom apartment in Westwood Village, 218 00:11:56,353 --> 00:11:59,811 Charles and Ray set up a makeshift workshop. 219 00:11:59,890 --> 00:12:02,358 The -- the first to -- 220 00:12:02,425 --> 00:12:04,017 that did the molding, 221 00:12:04,094 --> 00:12:06,585 which was so magic, 222 00:12:06,663 --> 00:12:09,223 we called it by a magic name. 223 00:12:09,299 --> 00:12:11,529 So we called it "Kazam!" 224 00:12:11,601 --> 00:12:15,799 The "Kazam!" machine was a jury-rigged molding device 225 00:12:15,872 --> 00:12:18,534 made out of heating coils and a bicycle pump. 226 00:12:18,608 --> 00:12:22,374 But in 1942, with the nation atwar, 227 00:12:22,445 --> 00:12:27,348 raw materials were scarce, and the "Kazam!" lay silent. 228 00:12:30,620 --> 00:12:34,954 Butwith the setback, there was also opportunity. 229 00:12:35,025 --> 00:12:39,189 The U.S. military needed better splints. 230 00:12:39,262 --> 00:12:42,459 The standard-issue splintwas metallic, 231 00:12:42,532 --> 00:12:44,329 and so the vibration of the two people carrying them 232 00:12:44,401 --> 00:12:46,665 actually would make the wound worse. 233 00:12:46,736 --> 00:12:48,033 Theywould actually be better off 234 00:12:48,104 --> 00:12:50,072 if you grabbed a stick off the ground and tied it to it 235 00:12:50,140 --> 00:12:51,300 than with this amplification. 236 00:12:51,374 --> 00:12:53,604 So Charles and Ray said, "Well, you know, 237 00:12:53,677 --> 00:12:55,907 we're experimenting with molded plywood. 238 00:12:55,979 --> 00:12:58,243 Why don't we try and design a new splint?' 239 00:12:58,315 --> 00:13:01,807 They're trying to make a three-dimensional curve, 240 00:13:01,885 --> 00:13:03,113 kind of a bowl, you might say. 241 00:13:03,186 --> 00:13:04,949 They can't quite do it yet. 242 00:13:05,021 --> 00:13:07,581 So they need holes in the plywood 243 00:13:07,657 --> 00:13:08,783 in order to release the tension, 244 00:13:08,858 --> 00:13:10,291 'cause otherwise it's going to splinter 245 00:13:10,360 --> 00:13:11,349 where they try to do it. 246 00:13:11,428 --> 00:13:12,952 Butworking within the constraints, 247 00:13:13,029 --> 00:13:15,020 what's nice is that this is exactly what you need 248 00:13:15,098 --> 00:13:17,498 for a splint, 'cause you need a place for the bandages to go. 249 00:13:17,567 --> 00:13:21,435 In a rented warehouse space, 250 00:13:21,504 --> 00:13:24,371 their team of skilled designers and craftspeople 251 00:13:24,441 --> 00:13:27,808 made 150,000 splints. 252 00:13:27,877 --> 00:13:30,937 With peace approaching, Charles and Ray 253 00:13:31,014 --> 00:13:33,312 had one thing on their minds -- 254 00:13:33,383 --> 00:13:36,147 applying the lessons of the splints 255 00:13:36,219 --> 00:13:38,687 to the failed plywood chairs. 256 00:13:38,755 --> 00:13:42,782 Thistime, they wouldn't design the look of the chairfirst. 257 00:13:42,859 --> 00:13:45,657 They would never make that mistake again. 258 00:13:45,729 --> 00:13:48,630 They would let the design flow from the learning. 259 00:13:48,698 --> 00:13:51,861 That meant knowing who they were serving. 260 00:13:51,935 --> 00:13:53,095 In Charles's words, 261 00:13:53,169 --> 00:13:54,966 it was always about being 262 00:13:55,038 --> 00:13:57,029 a good host to their guests. 263 00:13:57,107 --> 00:14:01,100 The people we wanted to serve were varied, 264 00:14:01,177 --> 00:14:04,669 and to begin with we studied the shape and postures 265 00:14:04,748 --> 00:14:07,945 of many types -- averages and extremes. 266 00:14:11,054 --> 00:14:12,578 But it was more than just a search 267 00:14:12,656 --> 00:14:15,124 for the best chair design. 268 00:14:15,191 --> 00:14:18,319 Itwas the beginning of the Eames design process, 269 00:14:18,395 --> 00:14:22,092 a process of learning by doing. 270 00:14:22,165 --> 00:14:24,827 In the design of any structure, 271 00:14:24,901 --> 00:14:26,766 it is often the connection 272 00:14:26,836 --> 00:14:30,272 that provides the key to the solution. 273 00:14:30,340 --> 00:14:33,901 "Never delegate understanding," Charles said. 274 00:14:33,977 --> 00:14:37,469 It would become a hallmark of Eames design, 275 00:14:37,547 --> 00:14:39,378 their secret ingredient. 276 00:14:39,449 --> 00:14:41,815 Charles said, yeah, there's a secret. 277 00:14:41,885 --> 00:14:44,877 First you have an idea, then you discard the idea, 278 00:14:44,954 --> 00:14:48,720 then you have 50 other ideas and you discard them, 279 00:14:48,792 --> 00:14:52,250 and then you do several models, and they don'twork, 280 00:14:52,328 --> 00:14:53,886 and you throwthem out. 281 00:14:53,963 --> 00:14:57,399 And the secret is work and work and work and work and work. 282 00:14:57,467 --> 00:15:02,905 The plywood furniture was good to go in 1946. 283 00:15:02,972 --> 00:15:05,099 Charles said of the furniture, 284 00:15:05,175 --> 00:15:10,340 "We wanted to make the best for the most for the least." 285 00:15:10,413 --> 00:15:12,108 That sentiment struck a chord 286 00:15:12,182 --> 00:15:14,742 with the Herman Miller furniture company. 287 00:15:14,818 --> 00:15:18,015 Honest and simple in its use of materials, 288 00:15:18,088 --> 00:15:22,024 the plywood furniture was also affordable for the common man. 289 00:15:22,092 --> 00:15:25,721 Together, they would become one of the great success stories 290 00:15:25,795 --> 00:15:27,660 of the postwar era. 291 00:15:35,238 --> 00:15:38,605 Charles and Ray Eames provide much of the furniture 292 00:15:38,675 --> 00:15:41,508 for a kind of Upper-middle-class, 293 00:15:41,578 --> 00:15:43,011 educated audience 294 00:15:43,079 --> 00:15:44,944 moving to suburbia. 295 00:15:45,014 --> 00:15:47,414 When the Second World War ended, 296 00:15:47,484 --> 00:15:50,476 itwasn't just five years of pent-up demand. 297 00:15:50,553 --> 00:15:52,453 Itwas actually almost 15 years, 298 00:15:52,522 --> 00:15:54,820 because you also have 10 years of the Depression. 299 00:15:54,891 --> 00:15:57,883 And people have much more money, 300 00:15:57,961 --> 00:15:59,792 so if you wanted to sort of do something 301 00:15:59,863 --> 00:16:03,526 differentthan your parents, you boughtthat Eamesfurniture. 302 00:16:05,401 --> 00:16:08,962 And itwas promoted that way. 303 00:16:09,038 --> 00:16:11,029 Everything around the marketing suggested, 304 00:16:11,107 --> 00:16:14,372 "Here is something new for a new society." 305 00:16:14,444 --> 00:16:17,436 And America was a new society in '45. 306 00:16:20,717 --> 00:16:22,878 In the decades to follow, 307 00:16:22,952 --> 00:16:25,113 Charles and Ray scored success 308 00:16:25,188 --> 00:16:28,282 with line after line of Eames furniture. 309 00:16:28,358 --> 00:16:29,791 And their unmistakable designs 310 00:16:29,859 --> 00:16:32,726 became a ubiquitous part of American culture, 311 00:16:32,796 --> 00:16:36,789 right up to today. 312 00:16:36,866 --> 00:16:39,357 Sold for $900, 232. 313 00:16:39,435 --> 00:16:43,997 I think the work retains a real freshness. 314 00:16:44,073 --> 00:16:47,804 Elements of it still inform contemporary design today. 315 00:16:47,877 --> 00:16:49,902 $700. 316 00:16:49,979 --> 00:16:51,105 $2,000. 317 00:16:51,181 --> 00:16:52,170 $2, 100. 318 00:16:52,248 --> 00:16:53,681 $2, 100. 319 00:16:53,750 --> 00:16:55,342 $7,000. 320 00:16:55,418 --> 00:16:57,818 Fair warning, selling...$13,000. 321 00:16:57,887 --> 00:16:59,218 Are we done? 322 00:16:59,289 --> 00:17:00,620 Sold for $13,000. 323 00:17:00,690 --> 00:17:01,952 The rightness of thefurniture 324 00:17:02,025 --> 00:17:05,119 will continue to appeal 325 00:17:05,195 --> 00:17:08,096 to new generations. 326 00:17:08,164 --> 00:17:11,600 The word "Eames" has now become a generic word. 327 00:17:11,668 --> 00:17:16,002 I mean, if you go on eBay, it always says, "Eames era" 328 00:17:16,072 --> 00:17:18,165 blah, blah, blah. 329 00:17:18,241 --> 00:17:20,004 So it's become a word like "Victorian." 330 00:17:20,076 --> 00:17:22,237 Maybe it's, in a way, accurate, 331 00:17:22,312 --> 00:17:24,576 because just like Queen Victoria 332 00:17:24,647 --> 00:17:27,172 represents an attitude, 333 00:17:27,250 --> 00:17:30,879 Eames also embodies a certain approach 334 00:17:30,954 --> 00:17:33,650 to life and to thinking. 335 00:17:33,723 --> 00:17:36,351 By the early '50s, Charles had grown 336 00:17:36,426 --> 00:17:40,055 an outsized reputation as an icon of modernism, 337 00:17:40,129 --> 00:17:42,825 fighting to inject an ethical dimension 338 00:17:42,899 --> 00:17:44,560 into American capitalism. 339 00:17:44,634 --> 00:17:46,295 At that price, the customer knows 340 00:17:46,369 --> 00:17:47,768 exactly what he's going to get. 341 00:17:47,837 --> 00:17:48,826 This! 342 00:17:48,905 --> 00:17:52,966 In MGM's "Executive Suite," 343 00:17:53,042 --> 00:17:54,168 William Holden stars 344 00:17:54,244 --> 00:17:56,838 as a curiously Charles Eames-like 345 00:17:56,913 --> 00:17:58,540 furniture designer. 346 00:17:58,615 --> 00:18:00,082 We'll have a line of low-priced furniture, 347 00:18:00,149 --> 00:18:02,208 a new and different line, 348 00:18:02,285 --> 00:18:04,753 as differentfrom anything we're making today 349 00:18:04,821 --> 00:18:07,381 as a modern automobile is different from a covered wagon. 350 00:18:07,457 --> 00:18:10,722 In the outside world, Charles's reputation 351 00:18:10,793 --> 00:18:12,784 may have grown larger than life, 352 00:18:12,862 --> 00:18:14,727 butwithin the Eames Office, 353 00:18:14,797 --> 00:18:18,233 there was always the lingering question of credit. 354 00:18:18,301 --> 00:18:21,395 There are still some sore issues 355 00:18:21,471 --> 00:18:25,498 among certain people who feel they never were recognized 356 00:18:25,575 --> 00:18:27,668 as much as they should, 357 00:18:27,744 --> 00:18:30,474 but it's a very delicate issue. 358 00:18:30,546 --> 00:18:35,779 The issue came to a head back in 1946 359 00:18:35,852 --> 00:18:38,719 atthe unveiling of the original Eames chair 360 00:18:38,788 --> 00:18:43,487 when the museum of modern art gave Charles a one-man show. 361 00:18:43,559 --> 00:18:48,622 MOMA gives the name Charles Eames, 362 00:18:48,698 --> 00:18:52,532 and this causes a certain tension in the Office, 363 00:18:52,602 --> 00:18:55,298 because it was thought to be a collaborative effort. 364 00:18:55,371 --> 00:18:59,831 It's not that he's swooping in or is doing nothing 365 00:18:59,909 --> 00:19:02,400 and scarfing up all the credit, 366 00:19:02,478 --> 00:19:05,276 but he is not the only designer that was involved. 367 00:19:05,348 --> 00:19:08,374 This happens all the time. 368 00:19:08,451 --> 00:19:10,942 Agroup of young people co-creating 369 00:19:11,020 --> 00:19:14,547 and influencing each other and inspiring each other, 370 00:19:14,624 --> 00:19:16,615 and then the question is, "Who did what?' 371 00:19:16,693 --> 00:19:19,423 One of the last projects 372 00:19:19,495 --> 00:19:22,726 I worked on was "Day of the Dead," the film. 373 00:19:22,799 --> 00:19:25,768 I was down in Mexico helping with thatfilm, 374 00:19:25,835 --> 00:19:27,826 shooting, gathering objects, 375 00:19:27,904 --> 00:19:30,099 and setting the type. 376 00:19:30,173 --> 00:19:32,368 And I wrote, "Assistance in Mexico," 377 00:19:32,442 --> 00:19:35,172 and I wrote the names ofthe people. 378 00:19:35,244 --> 00:19:40,807 So Charles came by my desk and said, "What is that?!" 379 00:19:40,883 --> 00:19:44,910 And I said, "But we worked on it, didn't we?' 380 00:19:48,858 --> 00:19:51,053 I went to New York many, many times, 381 00:19:51,127 --> 00:19:53,493 putting the time life lobbies together, 382 00:19:53,563 --> 00:19:55,463 and Charles never went and saw them 383 00:19:55,531 --> 00:19:57,624 while the things were being constructed, 384 00:19:57,700 --> 00:20:00,601 but I could never say 385 00:20:00,670 --> 00:20:02,934 that I designed anything at the Eames Office. 386 00:20:03,006 --> 00:20:06,737 I never saw anything come out of there that was not 387 00:20:06,809 --> 00:20:10,404 signatured, you know, by him and Ray. 388 00:20:10,480 --> 00:20:14,917 When a product comes out, 389 00:20:14,984 --> 00:20:16,076 it's a river. 390 00:20:16,152 --> 00:20:17,210 It starts at one point, 391 00:20:17,286 --> 00:20:18,878 and it ends at another point. 392 00:20:18,955 --> 00:20:23,221 Many people jump into it along the way. 393 00:20:23,292 --> 00:20:27,922 And everybody contributes a small piece, 394 00:20:27,997 --> 00:20:29,589 but only if they go on after that 395 00:20:29,665 --> 00:20:31,792 to produce a stunning amount ofwork, 396 00:20:31,868 --> 00:20:33,836 I think, are they capable of saying, 397 00:20:33,903 --> 00:20:35,393 "l did this, this, and this 398 00:20:35,471 --> 00:20:37,632 in the Eames Office with no credit." 399 00:20:37,707 --> 00:20:43,373 I think he ran the Office a bit like a Renaissance studio. 400 00:20:43,446 --> 00:20:44,879 You know, there's a master painter, 401 00:20:44,947 --> 00:20:47,142 butthen there are all the other people 402 00:20:47,216 --> 00:20:48,581 who help realize the work. 403 00:20:52,255 --> 00:20:55,486 He may have been exploiting us, 404 00:20:55,558 --> 00:20:58,152 but if you were not stupid, 405 00:20:58,227 --> 00:21:02,163 you were also exploiting that relationship. 406 00:21:02,231 --> 00:21:03,994 I was happy, 407 00:21:04,067 --> 00:21:07,127 being exploited 408 00:21:07,203 --> 00:21:10,331 by a proper master. 409 00:21:14,577 --> 00:21:16,545 The most wonderful work is -- 410 00:21:16,612 --> 00:21:19,775 is the conscience and the talents of a person 411 00:21:19,849 --> 00:21:22,010 who have every right to have their name on it, 412 00:21:22,085 --> 00:21:24,383 even though it's done by minions of other people. 413 00:21:24,454 --> 00:21:27,423 Things good and bad, 414 00:21:27,490 --> 00:21:31,085 he rightfully has his name on them, and they rightfully 415 00:21:31,160 --> 00:21:35,028 are Charles Eames or Charles and Ray Eames products. 416 00:21:35,098 --> 00:21:35,398 Almost always, when there's a successful man, 417 00:21:35,398 --> 00:21:40,358 Almost always, when there's a successful man, 418 00:21:40,436 --> 00:21:43,496 there is a very interesting and able woman behind him. 419 00:21:43,573 --> 00:21:46,041 And a better case could seldom befound 420 00:21:46,109 --> 00:21:47,906 than in Ray and Charles Eames. 421 00:21:47,977 --> 00:21:49,501 Come on in, Ray. 422 00:21:49,579 --> 00:21:51,513 Hello, I'm so happy to see you. 423 00:21:51,581 --> 00:21:53,947 This is Mrs. Eames, and she's going to tell us 424 00:21:54,016 --> 00:21:55,881 how she helps Charles design these chairs. 425 00:21:55,952 --> 00:21:57,214 How do you manage that? 426 00:21:57,286 --> 00:21:59,880 Well, uh, aside from serving 427 00:21:59,956 --> 00:22:02,652 as an extreme in the testing, 428 00:22:02,725 --> 00:22:05,694 there are a million things, 429 00:22:05,761 --> 00:22:09,754 but, uh, I think the most difficult thing 430 00:22:09,832 --> 00:22:12,130 is to keep the big idea, 431 00:22:12,201 --> 00:22:15,466 to be able to look critically at the work. 432 00:22:15,538 --> 00:22:20,271 Arlene Francis is clearly having a hard time 433 00:22:20,343 --> 00:22:24,177 with this husband and wife working together. 434 00:22:24,247 --> 00:22:26,977 You know, this is the era of "Mad Men," 435 00:22:27,049 --> 00:22:28,607 as we're watching now. 436 00:22:28,684 --> 00:22:30,345 This is not fitting. 437 00:22:30,419 --> 00:22:35,356 And Charles Eames is trying to promote Ray Eames, 438 00:22:35,424 --> 00:22:37,949 as saying that, "We collaborated on this." 439 00:22:38,027 --> 00:22:40,655 Well, uh, Ray -- Ray was a painter. 440 00:22:40,730 --> 00:22:43,927 Ray worked here in New York with Hans Hofmann for a long time, 441 00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:45,490 which is a pretty good start. 442 00:22:45,568 --> 00:22:47,798 I actually thought Charles was more embarrassed 443 00:22:47,870 --> 00:22:48,894 than Ray. 444 00:22:48,971 --> 00:22:50,802 Ray is hidden away. 445 00:22:50,873 --> 00:22:55,310 Charles is being highlighted, the great male designer. 446 00:22:55,378 --> 00:22:57,573 It's a very interesting moment 447 00:22:57,647 --> 00:23:00,844 of American sexual politics in the 1950s. 448 00:23:00,917 --> 00:23:03,408 Uh, I wonder if you're going to maybe take us through 449 00:23:03,486 --> 00:23:05,852 and show how -- how the Eames chair has developed. 450 00:23:05,922 --> 00:23:07,685 And, Ray, shall we let Charles do it, 451 00:23:07,757 --> 00:23:08,849 or do you want to help with it? 452 00:23:08,925 --> 00:23:10,187 Please, please. 453 00:23:10,259 --> 00:23:12,625 No, you see, as I told you, she is behind the man, 454 00:23:12,695 --> 00:23:13,753 but terribly important. 455 00:23:13,829 --> 00:23:15,490 Thank you, Ray. All right, Charles -- 456 00:23:15,565 --> 00:23:18,796 The feminist conscience had not been yet raised. 457 00:23:18,868 --> 00:23:23,931 Ray would always stand behind Charles. 458 00:23:24,006 --> 00:23:28,534 And on camera or in interviews, she said hardly anything. 459 00:23:28,611 --> 00:23:31,444 Her warm but quiet conversation 460 00:23:31,514 --> 00:23:33,982 shrank to total silence before the camera, 461 00:23:34,050 --> 00:23:36,883 but her impact on Eames' work spoke for her. 462 00:23:36,953 --> 00:23:40,081 She sat like a delicious dumpling in a doll's dress, 463 00:23:40,156 --> 00:23:42,386 concentrating on a sweep of subjects 464 00:23:42,458 --> 00:23:45,825 which would seemingly choke a computer. 465 00:23:45,895 --> 00:23:47,726 People always made the mistake 466 00:23:47,797 --> 00:23:51,255 that Charles and Ray, it was two brothers. 467 00:23:51,334 --> 00:23:53,393 They were a married couple, 468 00:23:53,469 --> 00:23:56,267 while at the same time, they were partners 469 00:23:56,339 --> 00:23:58,739 in whatever their design effort was. 470 00:23:58,808 --> 00:24:03,074 Ray felt, I think, 471 00:24:03,145 --> 00:24:06,512 deeply enraged and hurt, on occasion, 472 00:24:06,582 --> 00:24:10,541 when it was assumed that it was 473 00:24:10,620 --> 00:24:14,386 actually just Charles's business 474 00:24:14,457 --> 00:24:16,516 and it was the office of Charles Eames, 475 00:24:16,592 --> 00:24:19,390 not the office of Charles and Ray Eames. 476 00:24:19,462 --> 00:24:23,262 It was Charles who was in charge, 477 00:24:23,332 --> 00:24:25,698 but the body of work would not have been the same 478 00:24:25,768 --> 00:24:27,736 without Ray's contributions, 479 00:24:27,803 --> 00:24:32,035 and how you separate that out, I don't know. 480 00:24:32,108 --> 00:24:35,271 If the public saw Ray as little more 481 00:24:35,344 --> 00:24:37,904 than the devoted wife supporting her husband, 482 00:24:37,980 --> 00:24:41,472 Charles saw a talented artist who had participated 483 00:24:41,550 --> 00:24:44,610 in the birth of abstract art in America. 484 00:24:44,687 --> 00:24:47,815 Her mentor was the German abstract expressionist 485 00:24:47,890 --> 00:24:49,619 Hans Hofmann. 486 00:24:49,692 --> 00:24:52,820 Hofmann is one of the great catalytic figures 487 00:24:52,895 --> 00:24:54,522 in American art. 488 00:24:54,597 --> 00:24:59,034 He starts a school in New York City in '33 489 00:24:59,101 --> 00:25:02,264 with at times no more than a dozen or two students. 490 00:25:02,338 --> 00:25:06,297 They, together, are the seed out of which 491 00:25:06,375 --> 00:25:08,935 the new American art really grows. 492 00:25:14,183 --> 00:25:16,515 He was getting ideas from people 493 00:25:16,585 --> 00:25:19,679 Iike Mondrian, Paul Klee, Kandinsky, 494 00:25:19,755 --> 00:25:22,451 but he was communicating them 495 00:25:22,525 --> 00:25:27,827 not as textbook learning, but as this incredibly visceral 496 00:25:27,897 --> 00:25:29,626 sensation. 497 00:25:29,699 --> 00:25:34,159 And I have talked to people who remember him 498 00:25:34,236 --> 00:25:37,399 walking into the studio and looking at a drawing of theirs 499 00:25:37,473 --> 00:25:39,703 and tearing it down the middle 500 00:25:39,775 --> 00:25:43,506 and then taking the two parts and moving them. 501 00:25:43,579 --> 00:25:46,446 And then suddenly something that had been very static 502 00:25:46,515 --> 00:25:47,812 was dynamic. 503 00:25:49,618 --> 00:25:52,519 So I think it's there that Ray learned 504 00:25:52,588 --> 00:25:55,921 some, at least, of this wonderful capacity that she had 505 00:25:55,991 --> 00:25:59,154 for collaging, for juxtaposition. 506 00:25:59,228 --> 00:26:02,095 She could move things around very, very easily 507 00:26:02,164 --> 00:26:05,622 and beautifully and find form, 508 00:26:05,701 --> 00:26:09,865 and find form in relation to other form. 509 00:26:14,009 --> 00:26:17,843 Ray knew what was art 510 00:26:17,913 --> 00:26:19,540 and what was not. 511 00:26:19,615 --> 00:26:25,110 And Charles depended on her aesthetic genius. 512 00:26:25,187 --> 00:26:30,215 And she would put objects on shoots 513 00:26:30,292 --> 00:26:33,921 that would just bring the whole thing to life. 514 00:26:35,731 --> 00:26:40,464 By putting the stack of black wire chairs 515 00:26:40,536 --> 00:26:43,664 naked with the wooden bird 516 00:26:43,739 --> 00:26:45,604 with the little wire legs, 517 00:26:45,674 --> 00:26:50,008 gave you a very different feeling about those chairs. 518 00:26:52,114 --> 00:26:54,776 Charles could not deal with the idea 519 00:26:54,850 --> 00:26:57,512 that any of the furniture would have color on it. 520 00:26:57,586 --> 00:26:59,611 If you put a palette of colors in front of him, 521 00:26:59,688 --> 00:27:01,679 they just-- like he couldn't handle it. 522 00:27:01,757 --> 00:27:04,191 It just went over his head. 523 00:27:04,260 --> 00:27:06,785 He deferred to her completely on color sense. 524 00:27:06,862 --> 00:27:09,854 She saw everything as a painting. 525 00:27:09,932 --> 00:27:12,457 She had these enormous eyes that were -- 526 00:27:12,535 --> 00:27:14,901 they were open like this all the time. 527 00:27:14,970 --> 00:27:18,167 And I think Charles was very dependent on that. 528 00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:20,640 You could just hear him say, 529 00:27:20,709 --> 00:27:22,609 "Ra-ay!" 530 00:27:22,678 --> 00:27:24,543 Which meant, "Come and help!" 531 00:27:24,613 --> 00:27:26,843 At the Library of Congress, 532 00:27:26,916 --> 00:27:30,408 Ray's letters to a traveling Charles 533 00:27:30,486 --> 00:27:32,511 show herfastidious attention to every detail 534 00:27:32,588 --> 00:27:34,215 of their life and work. 535 00:27:34,290 --> 00:27:37,054 When she writes to Charles in Paris 536 00:27:37,126 --> 00:27:40,493 and she's talking about the slides that he's just taken, 537 00:27:40,563 --> 00:27:43,054 and she has this sketch showing how she 538 00:27:43,132 --> 00:27:46,727 and Sandro and Don Albinson have changed the chair. 539 00:27:46,802 --> 00:27:49,293 And then she's going on about thefilms, 540 00:27:49,371 --> 00:27:51,305 and she's going on about Elmer Bernstein. 541 00:27:51,373 --> 00:27:53,967 Then she tells him all the places to shop in Paris 542 00:27:54,043 --> 00:27:55,476 and where to get his shoes 543 00:27:55,544 --> 00:27:56,772 and where to get her gloves 544 00:27:56,846 --> 00:27:58,905 and whatthe stitching should be like on the gloves 545 00:27:58,981 --> 00:28:02,940 and howthis perfume by Balmain is $55 an ounce here, 546 00:28:03,018 --> 00:28:06,283 but it's cheaper in Paris, "and please get it for me." 547 00:28:08,624 --> 00:28:10,489 It's as if they were one individual 548 00:28:10,559 --> 00:28:13,392 with two different special areas, 549 00:28:13,462 --> 00:28:15,293 and a lot of it was unspoken, 550 00:28:15,364 --> 00:28:17,594 just eye -- eye contact. 551 00:28:17,666 --> 00:28:19,293 A nodding of something -- an idea 552 00:28:19,368 --> 00:28:21,336 thatthey both would agree on. 553 00:28:21,403 --> 00:28:25,066 So that's how you begin to separate 554 00:28:25,140 --> 00:28:27,904 their artistic personalities and their contributions. 555 00:28:27,977 --> 00:28:30,571 Butthe separating them isn't the important part. 556 00:28:30,646 --> 00:28:33,706 It's what they created together. 557 00:28:33,782 --> 00:28:36,478 That's why it's so good. 558 00:28:41,190 --> 00:28:44,091 Perhaps the greatest Eames design of all 559 00:28:44,159 --> 00:28:47,356 was the image of Charles and Ray. 560 00:28:50,132 --> 00:28:53,192 Their playful self-portraits, eccentric dress, 561 00:28:53,269 --> 00:28:56,033 and quotable quotes all contributed 562 00:28:56,105 --> 00:28:58,938 to the endearing picture of a happy, modern couple 563 00:28:59,008 --> 00:29:01,442 absorbed in the challenges of their work. 564 00:29:01,510 --> 00:29:05,503 Charles and Ray were cultural icons, 565 00:29:05,581 --> 00:29:11,417 buttheir public face masked a deep desire for privacy. 566 00:29:11,487 --> 00:29:15,184 After long hours at 901, 567 00:29:15,257 --> 00:29:17,589 they would retreat to the home they built 568 00:29:17,660 --> 00:29:20,128 in Pacific Palisades. 569 00:29:20,195 --> 00:29:23,892 Charles and Ray were their own community, 570 00:29:23,966 --> 00:29:27,925 and we were in the satellite group. 571 00:29:28,003 --> 00:29:29,630 And so was everybody else. 572 00:29:29,705 --> 00:29:37,669 I had no sense that they were trying to keep out 573 00:29:37,746 --> 00:29:40,715 the outside world or anything else. 574 00:29:40,783 --> 00:29:43,877 They had created a world and a lifestyle 575 00:29:43,953 --> 00:29:46,820 thatjust required them to go 576 00:29:46,889 --> 00:29:49,915 in this tunnel from their house 577 00:29:49,992 --> 00:29:52,893 to the work, you know, back home again, 578 00:29:52,962 --> 00:29:56,193 sowhat you surround yourself with and the choices you make 579 00:29:56,265 --> 00:29:58,426 about where you live and how you live 580 00:29:58,500 --> 00:30:01,060 and the artifacts you have, 581 00:30:01,136 --> 00:30:03,229 they're all based upon trying to create 582 00:30:03,305 --> 00:30:07,867 a seamless environment and a seamless life. 583 00:30:07,943 --> 00:30:13,404 Originally, the house was designed by Charles 584 00:30:13,482 --> 00:30:15,382 with Eero Saarinen as part of 585 00:30:15,451 --> 00:30:19,148 the influential case study housing program in 1945. 586 00:30:19,221 --> 00:30:24,022 But Charles and Ray were not ones to let a good design rest. 587 00:30:24,093 --> 00:30:27,756 Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen designed a house 588 00:30:27,830 --> 00:30:30,128 that we now call the Bridge House, 589 00:30:30,199 --> 00:30:31,689 and it was forthis site. 590 00:30:31,767 --> 00:30:33,234 It would have cantilevered from the hillside 591 00:30:33,302 --> 00:30:36,135 out into the middle of the meadow. 592 00:30:36,205 --> 00:30:38,503 One of the ideas of the house was to use technologies 593 00:30:38,574 --> 00:30:40,201 that had come out of the war effort. 594 00:30:40,275 --> 00:30:42,402 So all the parts of this house 595 00:30:42,478 --> 00:30:44,446 were off the shelf. 596 00:30:44,513 --> 00:30:48,176 But the Bridge House was never built. 597 00:30:48,250 --> 00:30:49,342 After World War ll, 598 00:30:49,418 --> 00:30:50,885 there were major material shortages, 599 00:30:50,953 --> 00:30:52,386 and it took about two or three years 600 00:30:52,454 --> 00:30:54,183 to even get the parts thatthey had ordered. 601 00:30:54,256 --> 00:30:56,383 And in that time, Charles and Ray 602 00:30:56,458 --> 00:30:57,618 fell in love with this meadow. 603 00:31:02,164 --> 00:31:06,191 We spent all -- all our spare time here. 604 00:31:06,268 --> 00:31:09,829 Began to think itwould be criminal to put that house 605 00:31:09,905 --> 00:31:11,896 in the middle ofthe field. 606 00:31:14,743 --> 00:31:16,472 Charles realized, 607 00:31:16,545 --> 00:31:20,208 "Oh, we're making the classic architect's mistake." 608 00:31:20,282 --> 00:31:22,147 You find a beautiful site, 609 00:31:22,217 --> 00:31:25,709 and you plunk a house in the middle of it. 610 00:31:25,788 --> 00:31:27,983 With the meadow in mind, 611 00:31:28,057 --> 00:31:30,855 Charles and Ray redesigned the Bridge House 612 00:31:30,926 --> 00:31:33,588 and began construction. 613 00:31:33,662 --> 00:31:35,926 It was relatively quick, 614 00:31:35,998 --> 00:31:41,197 because they were relying on some form of prefabrication, 615 00:31:41,270 --> 00:31:44,706 of bringing materials to the site 616 00:31:44,773 --> 00:31:47,765 and assembling them. 617 00:31:47,843 --> 00:31:52,280 On Christmas Eve, 1949, 618 00:31:52,347 --> 00:31:54,747 Charles and Ray moved in. 619 00:31:59,588 --> 00:32:01,988 The Eames house in Los Angeles 620 00:32:02,057 --> 00:32:04,855 on that bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean 621 00:32:04,927 --> 00:32:09,864 is surely one of the great buildings ofthe 20th century. 622 00:32:09,932 --> 00:32:12,799 Known to architectural historians 623 00:32:12,868 --> 00:32:15,029 as Case Study House Number 8, 624 00:32:15,104 --> 00:32:18,301 it is the archetypal modern house. 625 00:32:18,373 --> 00:32:21,240 Or at least, it started that way. 626 00:32:21,310 --> 00:32:23,972 The Eames house as it was first made 627 00:32:24,046 --> 00:32:26,776 is very different from what it became 628 00:32:26,849 --> 00:32:28,874 as they lived in it through the years 629 00:32:28,951 --> 00:32:32,512 and as it acquired all their little touches. 630 00:32:32,588 --> 00:32:33,885 I think people miss that 631 00:32:33,956 --> 00:32:35,856 unless you've really been there and been inside of it. 632 00:32:35,924 --> 00:32:37,289 Now, do you remember this? 633 00:32:37,359 --> 00:32:38,485 Do you remember this? 634 00:32:38,560 --> 00:32:40,528 I do. I do. 635 00:32:40,596 --> 00:32:43,895 Uh, I don't remember this one here, 636 00:32:43,966 --> 00:32:47,834 but there was at least one at the Office. 637 00:32:50,472 --> 00:32:53,566 Modern design has this sort of clich� of being 638 00:32:53,642 --> 00:32:56,304 the, you know, the homes of super villains. 639 00:32:56,378 --> 00:32:57,606 Very hard-edged things. 640 00:32:57,679 --> 00:32:59,613 You can't have, you know, your Pepperidge Farm cookies 641 00:32:59,681 --> 00:33:01,842 on the kitchen counter, because that's going to ruin, 642 00:33:01,917 --> 00:33:03,612 you know, this perfecttableau 643 00:33:03,685 --> 00:33:05,152 of this perfect life that you live. 644 00:33:05,220 --> 00:33:07,051 But you would never look 645 00:33:07,122 --> 00:33:09,852 at the Eames House and think that. 646 00:33:09,925 --> 00:33:13,520 The container for your life can be simple, 647 00:33:13,595 --> 00:33:16,029 but that doesn't mean your life has to be simple. 648 00:33:20,102 --> 00:33:23,503 What was in the house was a combination of things 649 00:33:23,572 --> 00:33:26,405 that one hadn't seen before. 650 00:33:26,475 --> 00:33:29,137 There was a tumbleweed hanging from the ceiling. 651 00:33:29,211 --> 00:33:31,839 Well, now you can see a lot of tumbleweed around 652 00:33:31,914 --> 00:33:33,745 in people's houses, but in those days, 653 00:33:33,816 --> 00:33:35,010 itwas. 654 00:33:35,083 --> 00:33:38,416 And nearthe tumbleweed hanging from the ceiling, 655 00:33:38,487 --> 00:33:40,614 there were two Hans Hofmann paintings 656 00:33:40,689 --> 00:33:43,556 suspended from the deck of the roof. 657 00:33:47,963 --> 00:33:50,193 The floorwas just another canvas for Ray, 658 00:33:50,265 --> 00:33:52,233 the ceiling was just another canvas, 659 00:33:52,301 --> 00:33:56,237 a sofa was a canvas for a collage of objects. 660 00:33:56,305 --> 00:34:01,333 She would have entirely all of her famous 661 00:34:01,410 --> 00:34:03,344 blue and white dishes stacked up. 662 00:34:03,412 --> 00:34:06,643 But she would have little red hearts or little red accents. 663 00:34:06,715 --> 00:34:08,842 And it was all perfect. 664 00:34:12,087 --> 00:34:13,714 I went to dinner 665 00:34:13,789 --> 00:34:16,690 at Ray and Charles's house one night, 666 00:34:16,758 --> 00:34:20,250 and it came to dessert. 667 00:34:20,329 --> 00:34:22,661 So what they had arranged for dessert 668 00:34:22,731 --> 00:34:25,529 was three bowls of flowers 669 00:34:25,601 --> 00:34:28,195 thatthey put in front of you 670 00:34:28,270 --> 00:34:31,433 to admire, so it was a visual dessert. 671 00:34:31,506 --> 00:34:34,339 I was really off with that, 672 00:34:34,409 --> 00:34:36,309 I can tell you. 673 00:34:36,378 --> 00:34:39,711 I was really -- because I hadn't eaten much. 674 00:34:39,781 --> 00:34:42,375 I was saving up for the -- so I'm looking 675 00:34:42,451 --> 00:34:44,681 atthese stupid flowers, you know, 676 00:34:44,753 --> 00:34:47,688 and I'm saying, "What the hell is wrong with these people?' 677 00:34:47,756 --> 00:34:49,383 You know, so I got in my car, 678 00:34:49,458 --> 00:34:51,949 and I drove out to the nearest Dairy Queen. 679 00:34:52,027 --> 00:34:56,657 "Take your pleasure seriously," Charles said, 680 00:34:56,732 --> 00:34:59,530 and that's exactly whatthey did. 681 00:35:04,273 --> 00:35:06,639 Every time 682 00:35:06,708 --> 00:35:08,335 the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus 683 00:35:08,410 --> 00:35:11,868 would come to town, we would all get out our cameras 684 00:35:11,947 --> 00:35:13,778 and our ectochrome, and we'd go 685 00:35:13,849 --> 00:35:16,943 running downtown, and we'd photograph the circus. 686 00:35:20,522 --> 00:35:22,547 And he said, "Photograph." 687 00:35:22,624 --> 00:35:23,784 "What?' 688 00:35:23,859 --> 00:35:26,293 He said, "Anything you want. Just photograph." 689 00:35:26,361 --> 00:35:28,761 And a couple of people of the audience 690 00:35:28,830 --> 00:35:30,058 were there to feed you. 691 00:35:30,132 --> 00:35:31,463 It's like a machine gun, 692 00:35:31,533 --> 00:35:33,831 somebody was feeding you the cartridges. 693 00:35:33,902 --> 00:35:37,497 And I took a lot of pictures. 694 00:35:37,572 --> 00:35:40,837 What impressed him was how everybody knew their place, 695 00:35:40,909 --> 00:35:42,638 and sometimes they had 696 00:35:42,711 --> 00:35:45,236 two or three different tasks thatthey had to do. 697 00:35:45,314 --> 00:35:50,377 The circus looks like a free-for-all 698 00:35:50,452 --> 00:35:53,580 and is absolutely a model of constraints. 699 00:35:53,655 --> 00:35:59,560 And for Charles, this was one supreme example -- 700 00:35:59,628 --> 00:36:02,529 "the performance." 701 00:36:02,597 --> 00:36:07,557 "Never let the blood show," he would say. 702 00:36:07,636 --> 00:36:10,764 And this went back to his philosophy 703 00:36:10,839 --> 00:36:14,138 of no good design, no good performance 704 00:36:14,209 --> 00:36:17,406 without restrictions, without restraints, without rules. 705 00:36:17,479 --> 00:36:20,505 He goes to the circus, and he just 706 00:36:20,582 --> 00:36:22,709 is overwhelmed by the richness 707 00:36:22,784 --> 00:36:24,308 of everything, you know, 708 00:36:24,386 --> 00:36:25,819 the costumes and the wagons 709 00:36:25,887 --> 00:36:27,252 and the tent. 710 00:36:27,322 --> 00:36:28,653 And he comes back, and he's trying to -- 711 00:36:28,724 --> 00:36:31,352 you can't turn a circus into a piece of furniture, 712 00:36:31,426 --> 00:36:33,917 but he's desperately wanting to. 713 00:36:33,996 --> 00:36:38,160 Charles and Ray did not turn the circus into a chair, 714 00:36:38,233 --> 00:36:41,566 butthey did turn the Eames Office into a circus. 715 00:36:54,883 --> 00:36:56,544 He wasn't embarrassed at all 716 00:36:56,618 --> 00:36:59,280 about what it is that he was doing. 717 00:36:59,354 --> 00:37:01,254 You know, he felt really confident about, 718 00:37:01,323 --> 00:37:02,984 "Yeah, this is a toy shop. 719 00:37:03,058 --> 00:37:04,457 This -- I'm just having fun here. 720 00:37:04,526 --> 00:37:06,824 And, you know, somehow or other, you guys bring me money 721 00:37:06,895 --> 00:37:09,227 and tell me to go ahead, and I'm going to." 722 00:37:09,297 --> 00:37:13,734 Royalties from Herman Miller gave Charles 723 00:37:13,802 --> 00:37:17,135 the freedom to move beyond his reputation 724 00:37:17,205 --> 00:37:20,003 as a designer of modern furniture. 725 00:37:20,075 --> 00:37:22,305 Herman Miller was always after him 726 00:37:22,377 --> 00:37:25,710 to do more chairs, and he would do chairs every now and then, 727 00:37:25,781 --> 00:37:29,615 but I don't think he liked to think of himself 728 00:37:29,684 --> 00:37:31,049 or have others think of him 729 00:37:31,119 --> 00:37:33,917 as the chair designer. 730 00:37:53,308 --> 00:37:55,367 I was a film critic, 731 00:37:55,444 --> 00:37:59,904 and that gave me an excuse to go down to 901. 732 00:38:01,750 --> 00:38:05,584 I fell in love with the whole concept of 901, 733 00:38:05,654 --> 00:38:06,916 which was a kind of 734 00:38:06,988 --> 00:38:10,321 Renaissance art workshop, where they did everything. 735 00:38:10,392 --> 00:38:12,826 At the time, he was considered 736 00:38:12,894 --> 00:38:16,489 a kind of cutesy, pass� little filmmaker, 737 00:38:16,565 --> 00:38:19,762 but no one had ever written about the films. 738 00:38:36,651 --> 00:38:39,711 Eames films are their own genre, 739 00:38:39,788 --> 00:38:43,246 the product not of a film studio concerned with profits, 740 00:38:43,325 --> 00:38:45,816 but of a curious mind yearning to communicate 741 00:38:45,894 --> 00:38:48,556 the complex beauty of everyday objects. 742 00:38:51,299 --> 00:38:55,633 We've never used film as an art form. 743 00:38:55,704 --> 00:38:59,003 We just use film as a tool. 744 00:39:03,178 --> 00:39:05,043 They were, at heart, 745 00:39:05,113 --> 00:39:08,640 a kind of mixture of vanity and self-expression. 746 00:39:08,717 --> 00:39:11,185 They only had one obligation, and thatwas 747 00:39:11,253 --> 00:39:13,016 to satisfy Charles. 748 00:39:13,088 --> 00:39:15,249 Much of our energy 749 00:39:15,323 --> 00:39:17,723 is like the guy in Vaudeville that has 750 00:39:17,792 --> 00:39:19,623 the plates going, and he's 751 00:39:19,694 --> 00:39:22,822 intent on getting 30 plates spinning at one time, 752 00:39:22,898 --> 00:39:24,195 but part of the process is 753 00:39:24,266 --> 00:39:27,064 quickly being aware of the ones that are winding down, 754 00:39:27,135 --> 00:39:29,103 and keeping them spinning. 755 00:39:30,906 --> 00:39:32,965 One of the titles that began to circulate 756 00:39:33,041 --> 00:39:34,440 between all the employees 757 00:39:34,509 --> 00:39:37,205 was the Eamery, because it was like this place 758 00:39:37,279 --> 00:39:40,112 where everyone was driven to work all the time. 759 00:39:40,182 --> 00:39:42,810 It was 24/7, 760 00:39:42,884 --> 00:39:44,408 365. 761 00:39:44,486 --> 00:39:46,954 Going to the Eames Office 762 00:39:47,022 --> 00:39:49,422 and watching people at their desks 763 00:39:49,491 --> 00:39:51,686 was like watching people take their brains out 764 00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:55,025 and knead them like dough. 765 00:39:55,096 --> 00:39:58,497 People that came from the outside 766 00:39:58,567 --> 00:40:01,866 couldn't believe that this was the way things were done, 767 00:40:01,937 --> 00:40:06,397 but itwas a delicious agony. 768 00:40:06,474 --> 00:40:10,501 Itwas like a temple for me. 769 00:40:10,579 --> 00:40:12,979 Many of us understood very well 770 00:40:13,048 --> 00:40:19,385 thatwe were very poorly suited for employment 771 00:40:19,454 --> 00:40:21,319 in certain kinds of jobs. 772 00:40:21,389 --> 00:40:26,224 We were very well suited to be thete. 773 00:40:26,294 --> 00:40:30,731 Charles had a terrible time interacting with people. 774 00:40:30,799 --> 00:40:33,267 Several times, I hired people, 775 00:40:33,335 --> 00:40:34,893 and they would be there like three days, 776 00:40:34,970 --> 00:40:37,131 and he'd come to me and say, "l just can't stand that guy. 777 00:40:37,205 --> 00:40:38,365 Get him out of here." 778 00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:40,965 And I never did know what it was 779 00:40:41,042 --> 00:40:43,169 that he saw in that person 780 00:40:43,245 --> 00:40:45,008 that he could just not work with them. 781 00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:49,608 I happen to have a sort of interest in language 782 00:40:49,684 --> 00:40:53,848 as a means of communication, which I like to believe 783 00:40:53,922 --> 00:40:56,049 can be simple and direct. 784 00:40:56,124 --> 00:41:00,493 Charles, I would say, didn't subscribetothat. 785 00:41:00,562 --> 00:41:06,159 Uh, no, we have to -- you know, the only thing is, uh, Perry, 786 00:41:06,234 --> 00:41:10,603 we have to have some sort of a background before we do this, 787 00:41:10,672 --> 00:41:13,004 because one sort of begins to -- 788 00:41:13,074 --> 00:41:16,942 His speech wasn't yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda. 789 00:41:17,012 --> 00:41:19,776 It was stop and go, and stop and go. 790 00:41:19,848 --> 00:41:23,443 No, you -- you let me -- cut this, let me re-- let me -- 791 00:41:23,518 --> 00:41:27,614 He had this incredible ability 792 00:41:27,689 --> 00:41:29,987 to surround every subject 793 00:41:30,058 --> 00:41:33,425 with a little cloud ofwords. 794 00:41:33,495 --> 00:41:35,360 We -- we were hoping to -- 795 00:41:35,430 --> 00:41:38,365 there were two -- there were several things. 796 00:41:38,433 --> 00:41:39,559 There was, uh... 797 00:41:39,634 --> 00:41:40,862 You finally got the message 798 00:41:40,935 --> 00:41:44,837 at the end of about 15 or 20 minutes of wondering, 799 00:41:44,906 --> 00:41:46,771 "Whatthe hell is he talking about?' 800 00:41:46,841 --> 00:41:50,572 It finally dawned on you that he was telling you 801 00:41:50,645 --> 00:41:51,976 you were an absolute clown 802 00:41:52,047 --> 00:41:53,844 becausethere's something wrong. 803 00:41:53,915 --> 00:41:57,442 This one is going to have something to do 804 00:41:57,519 --> 00:42:00,317 with what I think of as the new covetables. 805 00:42:00,388 --> 00:42:05,325 He appeared one day at a conference at UCLA, 806 00:42:05,393 --> 00:42:10,831 and he started to speak, and it just ran right off the track. 807 00:42:10,899 --> 00:42:13,595 Looked up, and he said, "I'm sorry. 808 00:42:13,668 --> 00:42:16,466 I just -- isn't going to work today." 809 00:42:16,538 --> 00:42:18,836 And somebody said, "No, no!" 810 00:42:18,907 --> 00:42:20,772 So he said, "Well, give me a minute." 811 00:42:20,842 --> 00:42:22,810 He put his head down. 812 00:42:22,877 --> 00:42:25,903 And everybody waited. 813 00:42:25,980 --> 00:42:27,777 And it took about two minutes. 814 00:42:27,849 --> 00:42:29,646 And he raised up. 815 00:42:29,718 --> 00:42:31,879 And he just took off. Boom. 816 00:42:31,953 --> 00:42:34,421 Reams of paper. 817 00:42:34,489 --> 00:42:36,719 What you do with a ream of paper 818 00:42:36,791 --> 00:42:41,751 can never quite come up to what the paper offers. 819 00:42:43,231 --> 00:42:45,927 He knew where his center was. 820 00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:48,901 And there are not a lot of people that can do that. 821 00:42:48,970 --> 00:42:51,165 I -- I have buttons that get pushed, 822 00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:54,037 but I don't know where my center is. 823 00:42:54,109 --> 00:42:57,738 For Charles, knowing where his center was 824 00:42:57,812 --> 00:43:00,406 meant working for powerful clients 825 00:43:00,482 --> 00:43:02,916 without compromising his ideals. 826 00:43:02,984 --> 00:43:06,385 And making a film to represent the United States 827 00:43:06,454 --> 00:43:09,355 in communist Russia in 1959 828 00:43:09,424 --> 00:43:12,359 would put that philosophy to the test. 829 00:43:17,031 --> 00:43:18,794 At the height of the Cold War, 830 00:43:18,867 --> 00:43:19,925 the American government 831 00:43:20,001 --> 00:43:21,366 and the government of the Soviet Union 832 00:43:21,436 --> 00:43:25,532 decided to hold joint expositions. 833 00:43:25,607 --> 00:43:29,600 The United States would show what America was about 834 00:43:29,677 --> 00:43:31,269 to the Soviet public, 835 00:43:31,346 --> 00:43:35,783 and the Soviet Union would show what they were about to America. 836 00:43:35,850 --> 00:43:38,341 And one of the centerpieces were a series 837 00:43:38,420 --> 00:43:40,411 of American kitchens, 838 00:43:40,488 --> 00:43:42,115 and it was there that Khrushchev and Nixon 839 00:43:42,190 --> 00:43:44,886 had their so-called Kitchen Debate. 840 00:43:44,959 --> 00:43:48,759 There are some instances where you may be ahead of us. 841 00:43:48,830 --> 00:43:50,798 There may be some instances -- for example, 842 00:43:50,865 --> 00:43:52,924 color television -- where we're ahead of you. 843 00:43:53,001 --> 00:43:55,026 But in order for both of us -- 844 00:43:56,237 --> 00:43:57,534 For both of us to benefit -- 845 00:43:57,605 --> 00:43:58,902 for both of us to benefit -- 846 00:43:58,973 --> 00:44:01,999 But the U.S. Information Agency 847 00:44:02,076 --> 00:44:05,443 decided that they had to show Russians more about America 848 00:44:05,513 --> 00:44:08,209 than just cars and household appliances. 849 00:44:08,283 --> 00:44:13,846 The idea is that Charles and Ray will make a film 850 00:44:13,922 --> 00:44:17,858 "Glimpses of the USA." 851 00:44:17,926 --> 00:44:19,257 How could you make the world 852 00:44:19,327 --> 00:44:21,158 as we see it in the United States -- 853 00:44:21,229 --> 00:44:23,094 how could you make it really credible 854 00:44:23,164 --> 00:44:24,961 to an audience like that? 855 00:44:25,033 --> 00:44:28,833 We could've shown the greatest freeway in the United States. 856 00:44:28,903 --> 00:44:31,531 If we'd shown one picture and they'd gone, 857 00:44:31,606 --> 00:44:32,937 they'd say, you know, 858 00:44:33,007 --> 00:44:35,407 "They've got the great freeway interchange, 859 00:44:35,477 --> 00:44:36,739 but we've got one at Minsk, 860 00:44:36,811 --> 00:44:38,836 and we're going to build one at Smolensk, 861 00:44:38,913 --> 00:44:40,881 and we'll have two, and they have one." 862 00:44:40,949 --> 00:44:44,385 But in the redundancy of the multi-imagetechnique, 863 00:44:44,452 --> 00:44:46,511 in something like 12 seconds, 864 00:44:46,588 --> 00:44:50,581 I think we showed 120 freeway interchanges. 865 00:44:55,063 --> 00:44:56,792 People were sent all overthe country. 866 00:44:56,865 --> 00:44:58,628 Friends were called to take images 867 00:44:58,700 --> 00:45:01,760 so that it looked nationalistic. 868 00:45:01,836 --> 00:45:03,770 It couldn't look specific and regional. 869 00:45:03,838 --> 00:45:06,932 It had to be national and egalitarian. 870 00:45:09,077 --> 00:45:10,942 Charles said -- wanted pictures 871 00:45:11,012 --> 00:45:12,343 of people setting off for work, 872 00:45:12,413 --> 00:45:15,940 children coming from school, coming up from the subway. 873 00:45:16,017 --> 00:45:17,882 And freeways. 874 00:45:17,952 --> 00:45:19,817 So I did my first, 875 00:45:19,888 --> 00:45:22,186 you know, helicopterflights, 876 00:45:22,257 --> 00:45:24,225 sort of strapped in, leaning way out. 877 00:45:28,997 --> 00:45:33,434 I think the State Department had sort of envisioned 878 00:45:33,501 --> 00:45:35,992 having lots of troop marches. 879 00:45:36,070 --> 00:45:37,560 And Charles said he'd do the film, 880 00:45:37,639 --> 00:45:42,975 but he didn'twant to have it reviewed before it was shown. 881 00:45:43,044 --> 00:45:45,535 The government really didn't have any idea 882 00:45:45,613 --> 00:45:47,080 whatwas happening. 883 00:45:47,148 --> 00:45:48,945 We would have these showings 884 00:45:49,017 --> 00:45:52,418 for the guy who would represent the government, coming out. 885 00:45:52,487 --> 00:45:54,421 It seemed like each time, 886 00:45:54,489 --> 00:45:58,084 itwould just get going, and then it'd go blank. 887 00:45:58,159 --> 00:46:02,255 And we'd say, "That's as far as we are right now." 888 00:46:02,330 --> 00:46:05,663 And he'd say, "Well... 889 00:46:05,733 --> 00:46:08,224 Yeah, I guess it looks okay. 890 00:46:08,303 --> 00:46:09,702 I don't know." 891 00:46:09,771 --> 00:46:11,432 So he'd go away. 892 00:46:14,776 --> 00:46:17,142 Well, as Charles said, sometimes 893 00:46:17,211 --> 00:46:19,304 if you don't ask for people's opinions, 894 00:46:19,380 --> 00:46:20,677 then they don't give them to you. 895 00:46:20,748 --> 00:46:21,942 They just got there the day before, 896 00:46:22,016 --> 00:46:23,108 and I think by that time, 897 00:46:23,184 --> 00:46:24,378 the USlAwas just relieved 898 00:46:24,452 --> 00:46:28,013 that there'd be anything to show. 899 00:46:28,089 --> 00:46:31,718 You know, and here you have this giant effort 900 00:46:31,793 --> 00:46:32,953 that'd gone into building the building 901 00:46:33,027 --> 00:46:34,654 and putting the screens up, 902 00:46:34,729 --> 00:46:38,290 and tickets being -- all of that happening. 903 00:46:38,366 --> 00:46:40,561 And he's waiting till the very last minute. 904 00:46:40,635 --> 00:46:42,330 It's just kind of his nature. 905 00:46:42,403 --> 00:46:44,166 Right at the end, 906 00:46:44,238 --> 00:46:45,762 he would suddenly appear, 907 00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:48,400 and itwould look like itwas effortless. 908 00:46:48,476 --> 00:46:49,738 He'd say, you know, 909 00:46:49,811 --> 00:46:53,110 "This is just a little something we've been doing." 910 00:46:53,181 --> 00:46:55,342 You know, and there'd be blood all over the floor 911 00:46:55,416 --> 00:46:57,611 from the thing, you know? 912 00:47:00,521 --> 00:47:02,648 When we look atthe night sky, 913 00:47:02,724 --> 00:47:05,488 these are the stars we see -- 914 00:47:05,560 --> 00:47:09,553 the same stars that shine down upon Russia each night. 915 00:47:09,631 --> 00:47:13,727 We see the same clusters, the same nebulae. 916 00:47:13,801 --> 00:47:16,361 And from the sky, it would be difficult to distinguish 917 00:47:16,437 --> 00:47:18,735 the Russian city from the American city. 918 00:47:18,806 --> 00:47:21,866 If you're going to communicate 919 00:47:21,943 --> 00:47:24,605 with 3 million Soviet citizens, you need to say something true. 920 00:47:24,679 --> 00:47:26,772 You can't just show off you've got 921 00:47:26,848 --> 00:47:28,816 better weapons or this or that. 922 00:47:28,883 --> 00:47:31,716 You've got to try to speak from the heart, and they did. 923 00:47:41,629 --> 00:47:43,290 Was it propaganda? 924 00:47:43,364 --> 00:47:45,491 Goodness, yes, have you seen it? 925 00:47:45,566 --> 00:47:48,194 Yes, it's, it's selling the U.S., 926 00:47:48,269 --> 00:47:52,433 and it's selling, I think, a very sanitized USA. 927 00:47:56,511 --> 00:47:59,002 Of course it was propaganda. 928 00:47:59,080 --> 00:48:03,847 They were Cold Warriors. 929 00:48:03,918 --> 00:48:05,249 The difference is they -- 930 00:48:05,319 --> 00:48:07,378 I believe they genuinely believed it. 931 00:48:12,927 --> 00:48:17,193 One of the interesting things was how to end this. 932 00:48:17,265 --> 00:48:20,428 Charles had this idea of a jet plane. 933 00:48:20,501 --> 00:48:24,665 Ray still felt this might be a bit hard-edged, a bit -- 934 00:48:24,739 --> 00:48:27,299 could have military implications. 935 00:48:27,375 --> 00:48:30,867 We never had an ending, and one day Ray walked in 936 00:48:30,945 --> 00:48:33,880 and said, "Forget-me-nots." 937 00:48:33,948 --> 00:48:36,212 Charles said, "Okay, forget-me-nots." 938 00:48:42,490 --> 00:48:44,151 Forget-me-nots, 939 00:48:44,225 --> 00:48:46,693 the universal symbol of friendship, 940 00:48:46,761 --> 00:48:50,162 translates directly into Russian, 941 00:48:50,231 --> 00:48:52,756 Nezabudki, "forget me not." 942 00:48:52,834 --> 00:48:55,325 They described Nikita Khrushchev 943 00:48:55,403 --> 00:48:58,736 with tears running down his cheeks. 944 00:48:58,806 --> 00:49:04,574 So you have this wonderful sort of double ending 945 00:49:04,645 --> 00:49:09,173 of the simplicity of a flower, butthen this "Forget me not." 946 00:49:09,250 --> 00:49:12,947 And it worked like the best Hollywood movie. 947 00:49:13,020 --> 00:49:17,252 The Moscow show made Charles and Ray newly famous, 948 00:49:17,325 --> 00:49:21,284 not as designers of furniture, but as communicators. 949 00:49:21,362 --> 00:49:25,458 Communicators who used images ratherthan words. 950 00:49:36,878 --> 00:49:38,869 Charles was very wary of words. 951 00:49:38,946 --> 00:49:40,140 It's not about writing a script. 952 00:49:40,214 --> 00:49:42,648 It's about a sequence of images 953 00:49:42,717 --> 00:49:43,979 that can tell a story. 954 00:49:44,051 --> 00:49:47,509 In the Eames film "Tops," 955 00:49:47,588 --> 00:49:50,682 there are no words, just pictures. 956 00:49:53,661 --> 00:49:57,995 In a way, the film is a kind of an essay 957 00:49:58,065 --> 00:50:01,796 aboutthe nature and meaning of a top. 958 00:50:04,639 --> 00:50:08,439 In the beginning, it's all aboutwinding up, 959 00:50:08,509 --> 00:50:12,536 getting started, putting it together, 960 00:50:12,613 --> 00:50:14,843 assembling the materials. 961 00:50:14,916 --> 00:50:17,407 And then it's aboutthrowing them, 962 00:50:17,485 --> 00:50:19,612 seeing how they work, what they do, 963 00:50:19,687 --> 00:50:23,248 how they dance, how they spin, how they sing, 964 00:50:23,324 --> 00:50:27,124 whatever it is that their meaning is. 965 00:50:28,963 --> 00:50:32,330 But then you come to one moment 966 00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:35,801 where there's an architectural plan on thetabletop, 967 00:50:35,870 --> 00:50:40,307 a blueprint, and what spins 968 00:50:40,374 --> 00:50:43,810 is a thumbtack, and you realize 969 00:50:43,878 --> 00:50:48,815 you have suddenly gotten directly into the essence 970 00:50:48,883 --> 00:50:52,319 of what it means to be a top. 971 00:50:55,623 --> 00:50:59,559 Things have meaning, things have personality, 972 00:50:59,627 --> 00:51:04,326 things express ideas. 973 00:51:04,398 --> 00:51:09,700 Many designers were and still are happy with 974 00:51:09,770 --> 00:51:13,536 the manipulation of objects. 975 00:51:13,608 --> 00:51:17,908 Hewas only truly deeply happy 976 00:51:17,979 --> 00:51:21,142 manipulating an idea. 977 00:51:21,215 --> 00:51:27,245 Beginning in the 1950s, the idea ofthe computer 978 00:51:27,321 --> 00:51:30,688 triggered fear in the minds of Americans. 979 00:51:30,758 --> 00:51:33,693 People were seeing computers, 980 00:51:33,761 --> 00:51:35,524 and there was a worry about them. 981 00:51:35,596 --> 00:51:38,622 And this notion of the electronic brain 982 00:51:38,699 --> 00:51:40,132 feeds into fears that we're 983 00:51:40,201 --> 00:51:42,396 going to be taken over by machines. 984 00:51:44,171 --> 00:51:47,732 At the time, computers were synonymous 985 00:51:47,808 --> 00:51:50,800 with just one company -- lBM. 986 00:51:50,878 --> 00:51:52,505 What was lBM's product? 987 00:51:52,580 --> 00:51:55,811 Big vacuum tube machines, huge room-size machines, 988 00:51:55,883 --> 00:51:58,477 building-size machines, so that 989 00:51:58,552 --> 00:52:01,749 the average individual was feeling an alien, 990 00:52:01,822 --> 00:52:05,883 science-fiction type invasion of my privacy. 991 00:52:05,960 --> 00:52:07,393 How do you combat that? 992 00:52:10,998 --> 00:52:13,228 lBM turned to the Eames Office. 993 00:52:13,301 --> 00:52:16,464 To overcome the computer's PR problem, 994 00:52:16,537 --> 00:52:20,598 Charles and Ray set out to humanize it. 995 00:52:20,675 --> 00:52:24,076 Properly related, it can maintain a balance 996 00:52:24,145 --> 00:52:27,205 between man's needs and his resources. 997 00:52:27,281 --> 00:52:28,612 It's done in this, 998 00:52:28,683 --> 00:52:30,514 what to us today looks really corny -- 999 00:52:30,584 --> 00:52:35,351 but at the time, this was thoughtto be radical -- 1000 00:52:35,423 --> 00:52:38,915 to do a film for a science company, like a cartoon. 1001 00:52:38,993 --> 00:52:42,019 Something has now emerged that might make 1002 00:52:42,096 --> 00:52:44,860 even our most elegant theories workable. 1003 00:52:44,932 --> 00:52:47,196 And you go from the abacus. 1004 00:52:47,268 --> 00:52:50,704 As human problems become more complex, 1005 00:52:50,771 --> 00:52:53,501 people invent more complicated machines 1006 00:52:53,574 --> 00:52:54,836 to solve those problems, 1007 00:52:54,909 --> 00:52:58,743 and the culmination of that is the computer. 1008 00:53:00,481 --> 00:53:02,608 This is a story of a technique 1009 00:53:02,683 --> 00:53:05,743 in the service of mankind. 1010 00:53:05,820 --> 00:53:08,618 It's not going to take over the world, 1011 00:53:08,689 --> 00:53:10,350 it's not going to be robots. 1012 00:53:10,424 --> 00:53:13,154 It's the logical evolutionary progression 1013 00:53:13,227 --> 00:53:17,823 of man developing products to solve problems. 1014 00:53:17,898 --> 00:53:21,425 Charles's visionary interest in computers 1015 00:53:21,502 --> 00:53:24,994 helped to bring lBM into the Eames Office stables. 1016 00:53:25,072 --> 00:53:28,098 But it was not expertise that made Charles and Ray 1017 00:53:28,175 --> 00:53:30,803 indispensible to the rapidly growing company. 1018 00:53:30,878 --> 00:53:31,379 You sell your expertise, 1019 00:53:31,379 --> 00:53:33,939 You sell your expertise, 1020 00:53:34,015 --> 00:53:36,006 you have a limited repertoire. 1021 00:53:36,083 --> 00:53:39,484 You sell your ignorance, it's an unlimited repertoire. 1022 00:53:39,553 --> 00:53:40,952 He was selling his ignorance 1023 00:53:41,022 --> 00:53:43,456 and his desire to learn about a subject. 1024 00:53:43,524 --> 00:53:44,923 And the journey -- 1025 00:53:44,992 --> 00:53:47,961 of him not knowing to knowing -- was his work. 1026 00:53:52,666 --> 00:53:55,931 Over two decades, Charles and Ray would complete 1027 00:53:56,003 --> 00:54:00,235 dozens of projects, large and small, for lBM. 1028 00:54:00,307 --> 00:54:04,038 But perhaps the most bold was their pavilion 1029 00:54:04,111 --> 00:54:07,478 for the 1964 New York World's Fair, 1030 00:54:07,548 --> 00:54:10,949 a 1.2-acre experimental space 1031 00:54:11,018 --> 00:54:15,011 celebrating the role of computers in everyday life. 1032 00:54:19,226 --> 00:54:20,887 I was drawing the stuff 1033 00:54:20,961 --> 00:54:23,521 as fast as he could conjure it up, 1034 00:54:23,597 --> 00:54:25,292 and they came up with this idea 1035 00:54:25,366 --> 00:54:29,564 of putting thattheater up on top of these trees. 1036 00:54:29,637 --> 00:54:31,901 And so I knew they were going to have these plungers 1037 00:54:31,972 --> 00:54:34,099 going into the ground -- they are going to move, 1038 00:54:34,175 --> 00:54:36,040 you know, 400 people up on this ramp. 1039 00:54:36,110 --> 00:54:38,772 And I knew, as a designer, I knew I was going to 1040 00:54:38,846 --> 00:54:42,441 have to figure out some way to make all that happen. 1041 00:54:42,516 --> 00:54:46,885 And he's just so excited about this thing. 1042 00:54:46,954 --> 00:54:49,548 And I'm just standing there like that. 1043 00:54:49,623 --> 00:54:51,318 And I said, "Charles, this is just nuts." 1044 00:54:51,392 --> 00:54:54,418 And he says, "Yeah, and no one had told us not to do it." 1045 00:54:57,331 --> 00:55:01,324 For the show in Moscow, they had used seven screens. 1046 00:55:01,402 --> 00:55:07,068 But at the lBM Pavilion, there were 22. 1047 00:55:07,141 --> 00:55:10,372 Charles was very big on making people feel welcome. 1048 00:55:10,444 --> 00:55:14,107 You don'tjust get them in an auditorium and showthe film. 1049 00:55:14,181 --> 00:55:16,046 You have a host. 1050 00:55:16,117 --> 00:55:18,642 But, uh, it was very hard. 1051 00:55:21,755 --> 00:55:26,920 Everything you said not only had to be memorized and rehearsed, 1052 00:55:26,994 --> 00:55:28,427 but it had to be timed, 1053 00:55:28,496 --> 00:55:30,487 so when you pointed to this screen, 1054 00:55:30,564 --> 00:55:33,431 what you were talking about appeared on this screen. 1055 00:55:33,501 --> 00:55:35,969 And the same with that screen and all the others. 1056 00:55:36,036 --> 00:55:40,200 Butthe problem was, 1057 00:55:40,274 --> 00:55:42,970 the host had a nervous breakdown. 1058 00:55:45,346 --> 00:55:47,644 As Charles and Ray's reputation 1059 00:55:47,715 --> 00:55:49,342 as visual communicators grew, 1060 00:55:49,416 --> 00:55:52,078 so did their list of corporate clients. 1061 00:55:52,153 --> 00:55:53,211 N is for... 1062 00:56:06,367 --> 00:56:09,666 Westinghouse, Boeing, and Polaroid 1063 00:56:09,737 --> 00:56:11,864 all trusted the Eames Office 1064 00:56:11,939 --> 00:56:14,737 to solve their problems. 1065 00:56:34,395 --> 00:56:38,354 When the Office was hired by Alcoa 1066 00:56:38,432 --> 00:56:39,694 to show off the uses of aluminum, 1067 00:56:39,767 --> 00:56:42,930 they built a solar-powered Do-Nothing Machine, 1068 00:56:43,003 --> 00:56:46,200 which did exactly that. 1069 00:56:46,273 --> 00:56:49,265 That was in the golden years, 1070 00:56:49,343 --> 00:56:52,369 when the heads of corporations would speak, 1071 00:56:52,446 --> 00:56:55,006 a chair away from the designer. 1072 00:56:55,082 --> 00:56:57,744 So that if you needed to talk to somebody, 1073 00:56:57,818 --> 00:56:59,911 you talked to the decision maker. 1074 00:56:59,987 --> 00:57:04,390 You didn't talk to a manager who talked to a director 1075 00:57:04,458 --> 00:57:06,085 who talked to a chief director 1076 00:57:06,160 --> 00:57:07,821 who talked to a vice president 1077 00:57:07,895 --> 00:57:09,658 who talked to a senior vice president 1078 00:57:09,730 --> 00:57:11,755 who talked to an executive vice president 1079 00:57:11,832 --> 00:57:14,323 who was allowed to talk to God. 1080 00:57:14,401 --> 00:57:18,770 Almost never was there a dissenting voice. 1081 00:57:18,839 --> 00:57:21,637 We trusted his decision making entirely. 1082 00:57:21,709 --> 00:57:24,769 So his freedom to do and to explain 1083 00:57:24,845 --> 00:57:26,472 and to conceive and execute 1084 00:57:26,547 --> 00:57:29,107 was almost unparalleled. 1085 00:57:29,183 --> 00:57:32,118 They didn't have contracts. 1086 00:57:32,186 --> 00:57:33,653 They had a handshake. 1087 00:57:33,721 --> 00:57:37,452 All those huge projects were done on a handshake. 1088 00:57:37,524 --> 00:57:39,924 "We're going to give you the best product, 1089 00:57:39,994 --> 00:57:42,929 butwe can't tell you what it's going to cost." 1090 00:57:42,997 --> 00:57:44,794 And for lBM 1091 00:57:44,865 --> 00:57:48,198 and for Polaroid, and for Herman Miller, 1092 00:57:48,269 --> 00:57:49,566 it was okay. 1093 00:57:49,637 --> 00:57:52,970 And for Charles, 1094 00:57:53,040 --> 00:57:56,441 these gentlemen's agreements went both ways. 1095 00:57:56,510 --> 00:58:02,107 The budget for "Mathematica" was $150,000. 1096 00:58:02,182 --> 00:58:06,118 It actually ended up costing $300,000, 1097 00:58:06,186 --> 00:58:09,519 and Charles paid for the $150,000 1098 00:58:09,590 --> 00:58:11,285 that itwent over budget. 1099 00:58:11,358 --> 00:58:13,758 Sothe whole thing aboutwhatthings cost 1100 00:58:13,827 --> 00:58:15,886 and trying to keep it within the budget 1101 00:58:15,963 --> 00:58:17,692 and meet the clients, he didn't care about -- 1102 00:58:17,765 --> 00:58:21,861 he cared about it, but he just, he couldn't stop himself. 1103 00:58:24,271 --> 00:58:27,934 Charles and Ray's career began with a utopian notion 1104 00:58:28,008 --> 00:58:31,409 of providing low-cost, high-quality goods to the masses 1105 00:58:31,478 --> 00:58:33,446 through industrial production. 1106 00:58:33,514 --> 00:58:35,482 But they never viewed their work 1107 00:58:35,549 --> 00:58:37,983 for corporate titans as selling out. 1108 00:58:38,052 --> 00:58:40,919 They wanted to work for the Google of their time, 1109 00:58:40,988 --> 00:58:44,151 and they did, and it allowed them incredible experimentation. 1110 00:58:44,224 --> 00:58:46,522 And they believed they could have a bigger impact 1111 00:58:46,593 --> 00:58:49,687 on everyday life by working forthe bigger company. 1112 00:58:59,506 --> 00:59:01,872 lBM shared Charles's concern 1113 00:59:01,942 --> 00:59:06,208 that American kids were falling behind in math and science. 1114 00:59:06,280 --> 00:59:09,010 And as usual, they gave the Office free rein 1115 00:59:09,083 --> 00:59:10,516 to address the problem. 1116 00:59:10,584 --> 00:59:12,779 Maybe, Charles felt, 1117 00:59:12,853 --> 00:59:14,718 a film could help. 1118 00:59:14,788 --> 00:59:17,723 We begin with a scene one meter wide, 1119 00:59:17,791 --> 00:59:19,759 which we view from just one meter away. 1120 00:59:19,827 --> 00:59:22,159 Now, every ten seconds, we will look 1121 00:59:22,229 --> 00:59:23,890 from ten times farther away, 1122 00:59:23,964 --> 00:59:26,797 and our field of view will be ten times wider. 1123 00:59:26,867 --> 00:59:29,427 "Powers of Ten" would become the best known 1124 00:59:29,503 --> 00:59:33,769 of all the Eames films, viewed in countless classrooms 1125 00:59:33,841 --> 00:59:37,140 and copied freely by filmmakers around the world. 1126 00:59:37,211 --> 00:59:40,203 Everyone has seen "Powers of Ten." 1127 00:59:40,280 --> 00:59:42,578 They may not have seen the version Charles did, 1128 00:59:42,649 --> 00:59:43,911 but they have seen 1129 00:59:43,984 --> 00:59:46,885 one of the countless rip-offs ofthat film. 1130 00:59:46,954 --> 00:59:50,117 Ten to the sixth, a one with six zeros, 1131 00:59:50,190 --> 00:59:52,920 a million meters -- soon the earth will show 1132 00:59:52,993 --> 00:59:54,153 as a solid sphere. 1133 00:59:54,228 --> 00:59:57,595 Nobody had done a movie like that. 1134 00:59:57,664 --> 01:00:01,430 How can you fail, doing a cosmic zoom 1135 01:00:01,502 --> 01:00:04,164 in and out from all that is? 1136 01:00:04,238 --> 01:00:06,672 And so the concept is, all by itself, mind-blowing. 1137 01:00:06,740 --> 01:00:09,038 The trip back to the picnic on the lakefront 1138 01:00:09,109 --> 01:00:11,907 will be a sped-up version, reducing the distance 1139 01:00:11,979 --> 01:00:15,415 to the Earth's surface by one power of ten every two seconds. 1140 01:00:15,482 --> 01:00:17,541 It's "Ch-ch-ch-ch-shoo," 1141 01:00:17,618 --> 01:00:20,143 excessive information, dizzying information. 1142 01:00:20,220 --> 01:00:22,654 Ten to the ninth meters, 1143 01:00:22,723 --> 01:00:24,850 ten to the eighth... 1144 01:00:24,925 --> 01:00:27,689 Like in a chase sequence in a movie, 1145 01:00:27,761 --> 01:00:29,752 everything is going by so fast, 1146 01:00:29,830 --> 01:00:32,298 it forces the observer to choose the information 1147 01:00:32,366 --> 01:00:33,355 that's truly important, 1148 01:00:33,434 --> 01:00:34,958 which is the car or the person 1149 01:00:35,035 --> 01:00:36,229 that is running away from you -- 1150 01:00:36,303 --> 01:00:37,770 i.e., the idea. 1151 01:00:37,838 --> 01:00:40,830 One. We are back at our starting point. 1152 01:00:40,908 --> 01:00:42,899 Eames was aware that, in fact, 1153 01:00:42,976 --> 01:00:44,466 that this was somewhat dizzying, 1154 01:00:44,545 --> 01:00:45,807 and that it wasn't possible 1155 01:00:45,879 --> 01:00:47,710 to get all of this information across 1156 01:00:47,781 --> 01:00:50,113 in a single viewing, and that was fine. 1157 01:00:50,184 --> 01:00:52,846 What he probably didn't know 1158 01:00:52,920 --> 01:00:56,151 was that he was also looking into the future 1159 01:00:56,223 --> 01:00:58,123 of audio-visual perception. 1160 01:00:58,192 --> 01:01:01,252 The pace at which we receive information today 1161 01:01:01,328 --> 01:01:07,198 is as fast as he was doing back then. 1162 01:01:07,267 --> 01:01:10,862 As a single proton fills our scene, 1163 01:01:10,938 --> 01:01:13,133 we reach the edge of present understanding. 1164 01:01:13,207 --> 01:01:16,404 As time went on, 1165 01:01:16,477 --> 01:01:21,540 Charles became more and more and more interested in ideas, 1166 01:01:21,615 --> 01:01:24,379 especially science and mathematics. 1167 01:01:24,451 --> 01:01:30,253 Ray was less engaged. 1168 01:01:30,324 --> 01:01:35,990 I mean, I'm no mathematician, and I'm no -- not an architect, 1169 01:01:36,063 --> 01:01:39,226 I'm not -- I haven't had certain training, 1170 01:01:39,299 --> 01:01:45,636 so I just try to help in the way that I -- in any way I can. 1171 01:01:45,706 --> 01:01:48,436 I don't stop to think whether I can. 1172 01:01:48,509 --> 01:01:50,943 I just go as far as I can. 1173 01:01:51,011 --> 01:01:54,174 And if I -- 1174 01:01:54,248 --> 01:01:59,777 if I can't, I can't. 1175 01:01:59,853 --> 01:02:01,753 I think Ray may have suffered 1176 01:02:01,822 --> 01:02:03,517 from a feeling of marginalization, 1177 01:02:03,590 --> 01:02:06,354 because some of those last projects 1178 01:02:06,426 --> 01:02:10,328 were heavy on ideas and not as heavy 1179 01:02:10,397 --> 01:02:15,926 on the kind of visual richness that was Ray's forte. 1180 01:02:16,003 --> 01:02:18,665 She's no longer as instrumental 1181 01:02:18,739 --> 01:02:20,036 in the entire thing. 1182 01:02:20,107 --> 01:02:21,631 She can apply an aesthetic, 1183 01:02:21,708 --> 01:02:23,471 she can dress a set, and so on, 1184 01:02:23,544 --> 01:02:27,310 but, um, she's no longer as central. 1185 01:02:27,381 --> 01:02:31,750 Ray's exquisite taste, her eye for form and color, 1186 01:02:31,818 --> 01:02:34,150 made her indispensible to the Office. 1187 01:02:34,221 --> 01:02:37,520 But it could also be aterrible burden. 1188 01:02:43,630 --> 01:02:47,589 I remember peering into Ray's office 1189 01:02:47,668 --> 01:02:49,568 only once or twice, 1190 01:02:49,636 --> 01:02:53,470 because when the door opened and I looked into it, 1191 01:02:53,540 --> 01:03:00,343 I thought, "l don't everwant to look in there again, 1192 01:03:00,414 --> 01:03:03,542 because it's a little frightening." 1193 01:03:07,888 --> 01:03:10,982 Ray had a little room, smallerthan Charles's, 1194 01:03:11,058 --> 01:03:13,185 directly across the hall from his, 1195 01:03:13,260 --> 01:03:16,093 thatwas just absolutely jammed 1196 01:03:16,163 --> 01:03:18,723 with all of her little pieces of paper 1197 01:03:18,799 --> 01:03:20,391 and all of her little slides 1198 01:03:20,467 --> 01:03:21,764 and all of the little notes 1199 01:03:21,835 --> 01:03:23,632 that people had mailed to her 1200 01:03:23,704 --> 01:03:26,138 and that she was mailing to them. 1201 01:03:26,206 --> 01:03:28,231 And she would go in and find things. 1202 01:03:28,308 --> 01:03:29,536 She would say, "Oh, I have one," 1203 01:03:29,610 --> 01:03:31,339 and she would disappear into the room 1204 01:03:31,411 --> 01:03:34,039 and come out with the perfect kite. 1205 01:03:34,114 --> 01:03:37,982 Or she'd go in and find the perfect scarf or something. 1206 01:03:38,051 --> 01:03:40,576 Shewould go, and she would fuss with it, 1207 01:03:40,654 --> 01:03:42,815 and change it one day, 1208 01:03:42,889 --> 01:03:44,880 and the next day, she would look at it again 1209 01:03:44,958 --> 01:03:46,585 and change a little something else. 1210 01:03:46,660 --> 01:03:49,288 And I think over the years, 1211 01:03:49,363 --> 01:03:52,696 the perfectionism did get in the way. 1212 01:03:52,766 --> 01:03:55,826 In a way, it crippled her. 1213 01:03:55,902 --> 01:03:59,895 Here is oh, a picnic basket, a drawing of a basket. 1214 01:03:59,973 --> 01:04:01,804 Up in Seaview Village, 1215 01:04:01,875 --> 01:04:03,365 so probably Deborah Sussman. 1216 01:04:03,443 --> 01:04:06,970 It's a letter from Lily Saarinen. 1217 01:04:07,047 --> 01:04:08,173 That's cool. 1218 01:04:08,248 --> 01:04:09,579 Look at that, I've never seen that. 1219 01:04:09,650 --> 01:04:10,674 There we go -- 1220 01:04:10,751 --> 01:04:14,016 "Dearest Queen of all Pack Rats." 1221 01:04:14,087 --> 01:04:16,851 I think it was almost a nervous tic with her. 1222 01:04:16,923 --> 01:04:19,016 She was constantly making notes, 1223 01:04:19,092 --> 01:04:22,391 and usually on the back of Benson & Hedges wrappers. 1224 01:04:22,462 --> 01:04:24,453 This is one of the wrappers, 1225 01:04:24,531 --> 01:04:26,089 and on this side 1226 01:04:26,166 --> 01:04:28,191 she designed something that looks very reminiscent 1227 01:04:28,268 --> 01:04:30,736 of some of herfabric designs. 1228 01:04:30,804 --> 01:04:33,272 And you turn it over, and you see it's a Benson & Hedges. 1229 01:04:33,340 --> 01:04:36,138 And on this side are notes she made 1230 01:04:36,209 --> 01:04:39,872 for lighting ofthe puppet shows 1231 01:04:39,946 --> 01:04:41,743 at the lBM pavilion. 1232 01:04:41,815 --> 01:04:44,249 You'd find them everywhere. 1233 01:04:44,317 --> 01:04:45,841 They'd drive you crazy. 1234 01:04:45,919 --> 01:04:48,581 And they could say, "Buy soap," 1235 01:04:48,655 --> 01:04:50,589 or "Liver and onions for dinner,' 1236 01:04:50,657 --> 01:04:53,649 or they'd have very elaborate ideas. 1237 01:04:53,727 --> 01:04:55,957 She had her suits made, 1238 01:04:56,029 --> 01:04:59,021 and they had pockets that went all the way to the hem. 1239 01:04:59,099 --> 01:05:00,532 So whatever she wanted to keep, 1240 01:05:00,600 --> 01:05:02,431 she would just shove in the pockets. 1241 01:05:02,502 --> 01:05:05,528 So what would happen with these notes? 1242 01:05:05,605 --> 01:05:07,402 Well, for a time, she asked the staff 1243 01:05:07,474 --> 01:05:09,567 to try to type them up, and I think it became 1244 01:05:09,643 --> 01:05:11,702 too overwhelming forthe staff. 1245 01:05:11,778 --> 01:05:14,178 It was such an avalanche of notes. 1246 01:05:14,247 --> 01:05:18,047 Ray didn't communicate like everybody else does. 1247 01:05:18,118 --> 01:05:20,245 She expected that you 1248 01:05:20,320 --> 01:05:22,982 pre-understood what she was talking about. 1249 01:05:23,056 --> 01:05:25,854 The people who didn't make the effort 1250 01:05:25,926 --> 01:05:28,895 would sometimes use the epithet "Crazy Rayzy," 1251 01:05:28,962 --> 01:05:31,556 simply because they didn't understand her. 1252 01:05:31,631 --> 01:05:35,328 But Ray is not crazy. She's brilliant. 1253 01:05:35,402 --> 01:05:37,996 And Ray had a lot of competition 1254 01:05:38,071 --> 01:05:39,629 for Charles's attention, 1255 01:05:39,706 --> 01:05:46,407 which I don't think anybody ever really gave her credit for. 1256 01:05:46,480 --> 01:05:50,610 That everybody wanted Charles and not Ray. 1257 01:05:52,686 --> 01:05:57,020 He was the guy that the lBM executives would call. 1258 01:05:57,090 --> 01:05:59,615 He was the guy that you went to 1259 01:05:59,693 --> 01:06:01,752 to discuss the projects intellectually. 1260 01:06:01,828 --> 01:06:05,958 He was very charismatic. 1261 01:06:06,032 --> 01:06:08,728 Charles was extremely charismatic. 1262 01:06:08,802 --> 01:06:09,996 He was very charismatic. 1263 01:06:10,070 --> 01:06:11,162 He was very handsome. 1264 01:06:11,238 --> 01:06:14,537 He was very handsome and very charismatic. 1265 01:06:14,608 --> 01:06:17,202 I know that word is really overused, but he was. 1266 01:06:17,277 --> 01:06:20,508 And especially very charismatic to women. 1267 01:06:25,652 --> 01:06:27,483 He reminded me of Henry Fonda, 1268 01:06:27,554 --> 01:06:31,786 and I met Henry Fonda one time, and I told Henry Fonda this, 1269 01:06:31,858 --> 01:06:33,120 that I thought they looked alike, 1270 01:06:33,193 --> 01:06:34,820 and he said, "That's a compliment." 1271 01:06:34,895 --> 01:06:38,194 I mean, he had these dimples, 1272 01:06:38,265 --> 01:06:40,392 and he -- "Aw, shucks," kind of guy. 1273 01:06:42,636 --> 01:06:46,003 He was handsome and smart, and cool. 1274 01:06:46,072 --> 01:06:48,540 So, you know, that's a kind of lethal combination. 1275 01:06:48,608 --> 01:06:50,803 It was the vision. 1276 01:06:50,877 --> 01:06:52,742 It was the personality. 1277 01:06:52,813 --> 01:06:54,246 It was the charm. 1278 01:06:54,314 --> 01:06:56,214 It was the unexpected. 1279 01:06:56,283 --> 01:06:57,409 It was the person. 1280 01:06:57,484 --> 01:07:01,250 This is just a small selection 1281 01:07:01,321 --> 01:07:03,312 of letters that I went through 1282 01:07:03,390 --> 01:07:08,225 to find things that pertain particularly to the work. 1283 01:07:08,295 --> 01:07:12,391 "ln the next few weeks, I must pull together a preliminary film 1284 01:07:12,465 --> 01:07:15,229 for the 'Franklin and Jefferson' show." 1285 01:07:19,673 --> 01:07:22,733 And then the rest is personal. 1286 01:07:28,248 --> 01:07:31,945 I think their marriage, 1287 01:07:32,018 --> 01:07:37,320 it was a mystery to everybody, in a way. 1288 01:07:37,390 --> 01:07:41,690 They were emotionally extremely bonded. 1289 01:07:41,761 --> 01:07:48,462 But he found excitement and thrills outside of Ray, 1290 01:07:48,535 --> 01:07:51,333 and outside of the Office, 1291 01:07:51,404 --> 01:07:56,467 which was really crushing to her. 1292 01:08:00,313 --> 01:08:03,043 I met him when he was on the visiting committee 1293 01:08:03,116 --> 01:08:05,346 forthe architecture department at M.I.T. 1294 01:08:05,418 --> 01:08:08,478 and I was a young assistant professor. 1295 01:08:08,555 --> 01:08:11,251 Charles said, "Let's experiment 1296 01:08:11,324 --> 01:08:13,792 with some films on art." 1297 01:08:17,631 --> 01:08:22,694 I have many, many letters, extraordinary letters. 1298 01:08:22,769 --> 01:08:25,294 Because we didn't live in the same city, 1299 01:08:25,372 --> 01:08:28,705 we tried to see each other as we could. 1300 01:08:28,775 --> 01:08:31,039 He had come to London, 1301 01:08:31,111 --> 01:08:34,478 and I was there, and I could not get away. 1302 01:08:34,547 --> 01:08:36,879 And he said, "l will come and stand in front of the house 1303 01:08:36,950 --> 01:08:40,181 at a certain time," and l slipped out of this 1304 01:08:40,253 --> 01:08:42,278 ratherformal dinner, 1305 01:08:42,355 --> 01:08:46,086 and there he was, and we just looked at each other. 1306 01:08:52,699 --> 01:08:57,193 We had a very profound love for each other. 1307 01:09:00,473 --> 01:09:04,842 He wanted very much for us to get married 1308 01:09:04,911 --> 01:09:08,210 and to have a child, 1309 01:09:08,281 --> 01:09:10,374 and to close -- he wanted to close 1310 01:09:10,450 --> 01:09:11,974 the Eames Office in Venice, 1311 01:09:12,052 --> 01:09:13,917 which he found very burdensome, 1312 01:09:13,987 --> 01:09:17,479 and for us to open an office together in New York. 1313 01:09:22,262 --> 01:09:24,924 And I made a decision -- 1314 01:09:24,998 --> 01:09:26,898 and I don't know if was the right decision -- 1315 01:09:26,967 --> 01:09:29,401 that I couldn't do it to Ray. 1316 01:09:29,469 --> 01:09:31,403 Because I had a friendship with her, 1317 01:09:31,471 --> 01:09:34,269 but above all because they had been together so long, 1318 01:09:34,341 --> 01:09:38,471 and I knew how much she depended on him. 1319 01:09:38,545 --> 01:09:41,912 And I said, "l can't do it." 1320 01:09:46,920 --> 01:09:50,617 Ray dealtwith it very privately. 1321 01:09:50,690 --> 01:09:53,784 Shewas hurt deeply, 1322 01:09:53,860 --> 01:09:56,693 but shewasn't the kind of person 1323 01:09:56,763 --> 01:10:00,290 who would have said, "It's me or her." 1324 01:10:00,367 --> 01:10:05,202 I don't think she wanted to leave. 1325 01:10:05,271 --> 01:10:10,368 I think itwas something that she had to accept. 1326 01:10:10,443 --> 01:10:12,138 This wasn't the era 1327 01:10:12,212 --> 01:10:15,443 of easy-come, easy-go relationships. 1328 01:10:15,515 --> 01:10:20,452 There was too much shared life and community, 1329 01:10:20,520 --> 01:10:23,785 and the fact that he, you know, 1330 01:10:23,857 --> 01:10:27,293 had other relationships outside of the Office... 1331 01:10:29,562 --> 01:10:32,656 he seemed to be constructed that way. 1332 01:10:32,732 --> 01:10:37,294 But there is a position that I think is nonsense, 1333 01:10:37,370 --> 01:10:40,498 which is to say that because Charles was having 1334 01:10:40,573 --> 01:10:43,133 a relationship with somebody else 1335 01:10:43,209 --> 01:10:45,769 that he couldn't then carry on a collaboration with Ray. 1336 01:10:45,845 --> 01:10:47,710 I mean, that clearly didn't happen. 1337 01:10:50,450 --> 01:10:53,647 In fact, Charles and Ray were about to collaborate 1338 01:10:53,720 --> 01:10:55,779 on the largest, most complex project 1339 01:10:55,855 --> 01:10:58,551 the Office would ever undertake. 1340 01:11:00,226 --> 01:11:03,855 For the nation's bicentennial celebration in 1976, 1341 01:11:03,930 --> 01:11:06,125 the Eames Office designed 1342 01:11:06,199 --> 01:11:08,394 "The World of Franklin and Jefferson," 1343 01:11:08,468 --> 01:11:11,369 a traveling show made up of three films, 1344 01:11:11,438 --> 01:11:15,397 40,000 words translated into four languages, 1345 01:11:15,475 --> 01:11:18,535 and thousands of photographs and objects, 1346 01:11:18,611 --> 01:11:22,411 including a stuffed bison. 1347 01:11:22,482 --> 01:11:25,781 When "Franklin and Jefferson" opened in Paris, 1348 01:11:25,852 --> 01:11:29,379 it was seen by 50,000 people in two months. 1349 01:11:29,456 --> 01:11:32,857 More than a thousand visitors saw it each day 1350 01:11:32,926 --> 01:11:34,655 in London and Warsaw. 1351 01:11:34,727 --> 01:11:36,661 But when it came to New York, 1352 01:11:36,729 --> 01:11:40,290 the reception was different. 1353 01:11:40,366 --> 01:11:43,961 When it appeared at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1354 01:11:44,037 --> 01:11:47,564 The New Yotk Times reviewed it, and the headline was, 1355 01:11:47,640 --> 01:11:51,838 "What Is This Stuff Doing at the Met?' 1356 01:11:51,911 --> 01:11:53,003 It was one of the first times 1357 01:11:53,079 --> 01:11:55,343 the Eameses were ever criticized. 1358 01:11:57,817 --> 01:11:59,842 It had an enormous amount of text. 1359 01:11:59,919 --> 01:12:03,013 Nobody could have possibly read it all, it was so dense. 1360 01:12:05,859 --> 01:12:08,020 This show was a bit picky for me, 1361 01:12:08,094 --> 01:12:10,062 too many little objects that I would remember none. 1362 01:12:10,130 --> 01:12:11,563 It was too many things to see. 1363 01:12:11,631 --> 01:12:13,098 I can remember about ten things. 1364 01:12:14,801 --> 01:12:17,668 He knew so much about all these things, 1365 01:12:17,737 --> 01:12:20,672 he couldn't edit out something. 1366 01:12:20,740 --> 01:12:23,732 These are things of the period 1367 01:12:23,810 --> 01:12:25,903 and of the time, from MountVernon. 1368 01:12:25,979 --> 01:12:29,107 They were all so interesting to him, 1369 01:12:29,182 --> 01:12:30,945 and he was familiarwith them, 1370 01:12:31,017 --> 01:12:32,985 and he could see all these connections. 1371 01:12:33,052 --> 01:12:35,316 But you can't keep it all in your head 1372 01:12:35,388 --> 01:12:36,821 if you're not that familiarwith it. 1373 01:12:39,459 --> 01:12:42,257 You could call it clutter, butthat's not 1374 01:12:42,328 --> 01:12:43,727 what Charles would have called it, 1375 01:12:43,796 --> 01:12:46,458 because clutter is just stuff that's 1376 01:12:46,533 --> 01:12:50,230 dropped and abandoned and forgotten and leftthere. 1377 01:12:50,303 --> 01:12:51,770 It was dense, 1378 01:12:51,838 --> 01:12:53,829 and it was complex, 1379 01:12:53,907 --> 01:12:56,501 but there was a mind at work 1380 01:12:56,576 --> 01:12:57,975 placing itthere. 1381 01:12:58,044 --> 01:13:01,070 Whether you as the recipient 1382 01:13:01,147 --> 01:13:04,139 were willing and able to accept that is another question. 1383 01:13:06,419 --> 01:13:08,284 They're pushing up against the envelope 1384 01:13:08,354 --> 01:13:10,151 ofwhattechnology could do, 1385 01:13:10,223 --> 01:13:13,249 because they're trying to give the visitor 1386 01:13:13,326 --> 01:13:16,489 a hypertext experience, 1387 01:13:16,563 --> 01:13:19,191 but they're doing it in physical space. 1388 01:13:19,265 --> 01:13:20,596 And it doesn'twork. 1389 01:13:20,667 --> 01:13:24,034 They are anticipating 1390 01:13:24,103 --> 01:13:25,730 what the computer can do today very easily 1391 01:13:25,805 --> 01:13:29,206 with layering text and giving you at different levels. 1392 01:13:29,275 --> 01:13:33,006 So it's a failure, but it's an honest failure. 1393 01:13:37,150 --> 01:13:39,880 The criticism of "Franklin and Jefferson" 1394 01:13:39,953 --> 01:13:41,716 hit Charles hard. 1395 01:13:41,788 --> 01:13:44,689 The "Franklin and Jefferson" show 1396 01:13:44,757 --> 01:13:46,657 was an exhausting show 1397 01:13:46,726 --> 01:13:48,489 because it was huge, 1398 01:13:48,561 --> 01:13:52,395 and I think sort of the machinery of doing that 1399 01:13:52,465 --> 01:13:54,660 was just tiring. 1400 01:13:54,734 --> 01:13:55,802 I saw Charles at his happiest 1401 01:13:55,802 --> 01:13:58,464 I saw Charles at his happiest 1402 01:13:58,538 --> 01:14:01,029 when he was getting to do a lot of photography. 1403 01:14:01,107 --> 01:14:04,907 And he was very engaged directly on the creative process 1404 01:14:04,978 --> 01:14:06,411 of doing the photographs -- 1405 01:14:06,479 --> 01:14:09,676 which led me to the idea that maybe he felt 1406 01:14:09,749 --> 01:14:12,411 he was missing something, you know, 1407 01:14:12,485 --> 01:14:14,112 because he had had the transition 1408 01:14:14,187 --> 01:14:17,054 to more of an executive position at the Office. 1409 01:14:17,123 --> 01:14:20,786 It was very hard for him, because he didn't really have 1410 01:14:20,860 --> 01:14:22,987 a successor, 1411 01:14:23,062 --> 01:14:26,828 and for the years that I was there, he was always 1412 01:14:26,899 --> 01:14:29,094 Iooking for the perfect person. 1413 01:14:29,168 --> 01:14:31,329 It was a battle one day 1414 01:14:31,404 --> 01:14:35,500 with the lBM representative, Mike Sullivan, 1415 01:14:35,575 --> 01:14:38,476 and Mike said, "Why don't you shutthis down?' 1416 01:14:38,544 --> 01:14:39,841 And he said, "I'd like to." 1417 01:14:39,912 --> 01:14:41,641 And Sullivan said, "Whatwould you do?' 1418 01:14:41,714 --> 01:14:46,344 And he said, "I'd just travel and shoot." 1419 01:14:46,419 --> 01:14:49,980 "But," he said, "l don't know what to do about Ray, 1420 01:14:50,056 --> 01:14:52,650 and closing the Office." 1421 01:14:52,725 --> 01:14:55,694 He was tired, and he was, 1422 01:14:55,762 --> 01:14:58,196 I don't know if it was his heart, but he was cold a lot. 1423 01:14:58,264 --> 01:15:00,926 I brought him one morning -- it was a Saturday morning, 1424 01:15:01,000 --> 01:15:02,797 and I'd made applesauce cake or something, 1425 01:15:02,869 --> 01:15:04,359 and I brought it to the office, 1426 01:15:04,437 --> 01:15:07,099 and I handed it to Charles wrapped in tin foil, 1427 01:15:07,173 --> 01:15:09,664 and itwas still warm, and he took it, 1428 01:15:09,742 --> 01:15:11,232 pressed it to his chest, 1429 01:15:11,311 --> 01:15:13,108 and he was thrilled to have that warmth 1430 01:15:13,179 --> 01:15:15,841 just sort of on his chest. 1431 01:15:31,464 --> 01:15:36,163 I was out of the office the day that he died. 1432 01:15:36,235 --> 01:15:40,968 It was, in a way, it was expected. 1433 01:15:43,743 --> 01:15:47,008 It just didn't seem possible. 1434 01:15:47,080 --> 01:15:49,844 I mean, I knew that some people that Charles worked with, 1435 01:15:49,916 --> 01:15:52,510 men in the East, wept. 1436 01:15:55,088 --> 01:16:03,188 He was such a dominant force in the lives of designers that... 1437 01:16:04,964 --> 01:16:09,663 it was like there was suddenly a big empty hole. 1438 01:16:14,173 --> 01:16:16,198 There are still days 1439 01:16:16,275 --> 01:16:18,709 when I'm driving down the highway, 1440 01:16:18,778 --> 01:16:22,043 thinking about things, and I think, 1441 01:16:22,115 --> 01:16:24,606 "Why did you die? 1442 01:16:24,684 --> 01:16:27,778 I'm notthrough with you yet! 1443 01:16:27,854 --> 01:16:32,484 I haven't finished asking you the questions I wanted to ask." 1444 01:16:39,132 --> 01:16:43,466 He was the most important person in my life. 1445 01:16:45,571 --> 01:16:49,268 I mean, he could be, he could really be tough, you know, 1446 01:16:49,342 --> 01:16:51,810 but he... 1447 01:16:55,348 --> 01:16:57,782 he was an extraordinary person. 1448 01:17:05,091 --> 01:17:08,083 After Charles died, 1449 01:17:08,161 --> 01:17:09,788 suddenly Ray was 1450 01:17:09,862 --> 01:17:11,625 the head of the Office. 1451 01:17:14,200 --> 01:17:16,168 She gathered everybody around, 1452 01:17:16,235 --> 01:17:19,864 and she talked about her goals and what she wanted to do, 1453 01:17:19,939 --> 01:17:23,375 and how she needed our help. 1454 01:17:23,443 --> 01:17:26,435 And it was really very powerful, 1455 01:17:26,512 --> 01:17:28,309 because she had never donethat before. 1456 01:17:28,381 --> 01:17:32,841 But she felt this huge burden about carrying on the name 1457 01:17:32,919 --> 01:17:34,682 and carrying on the Office. 1458 01:17:34,754 --> 01:17:38,713 And I think it was killing her. 1459 01:17:38,791 --> 01:17:41,055 And I said, "Come on, Ray, why don't you 1460 01:17:41,127 --> 01:17:44,153 just close the Office, and let's go and paint." 1461 01:17:44,230 --> 01:17:46,630 And she said "No, that's all in the past. 1462 01:17:46,699 --> 01:17:48,564 I can't do that anymore." 1463 01:17:52,138 --> 01:17:53,537 Without Charles, 1464 01:17:53,606 --> 01:17:56,939 activity in the Eames Office dwindled, 1465 01:17:57,009 --> 01:18:00,376 until it was time to finally close 901. 1466 01:18:03,115 --> 01:18:05,379 Ray focused on the painstaking work 1467 01:18:05,451 --> 01:18:08,443 of cataloguing the voluminous 40-year output 1468 01:18:08,521 --> 01:18:11,615 of the Eames Office. 1469 01:18:11,691 --> 01:18:15,252 Nearly 350,000 photographs 1470 01:18:15,328 --> 01:18:17,819 and half a million documents had to be organized for shipment 1471 01:18:17,897 --> 01:18:21,196 to the Library of Congress. 1472 01:18:24,770 --> 01:18:27,637 But over the years, a new generation 1473 01:18:27,707 --> 01:18:30,369 Iifted Ray from Charles's shadow, 1474 01:18:30,443 --> 01:18:33,503 discovering in her exuberant design sense 1475 01:18:33,579 --> 01:18:37,310 a refreshing alternative to the austerity of modernism. 1476 01:18:39,585 --> 01:18:42,349 And Ray seemed to finally find her voice 1477 01:18:42,421 --> 01:18:47,552 as one of the most influential women of American design. 1478 01:18:47,627 --> 01:18:50,391 Best for the most for the least, 1479 01:18:50,463 --> 01:18:52,454 that was always the principle. 1480 01:18:52,532 --> 01:18:54,466 That's why we became interested 1481 01:18:54,534 --> 01:18:55,796 in mass production. 1482 01:18:55,868 --> 01:18:59,770 At that point, 1483 01:18:59,839 --> 01:19:02,774 women began to point to Ray. 1484 01:19:02,842 --> 01:19:04,332 You know, "lf there are two Eameses, 1485 01:19:04,410 --> 01:19:05,877 why aren't they both credited?' 1486 01:19:05,945 --> 01:19:07,242 And now, of course, they are. 1487 01:19:26,399 --> 01:19:31,336 She kept saying, in the hospital, "What day is it?' 1488 01:19:31,404 --> 01:19:35,363 And I would say, "It's Wednesday the 18th." 1489 01:19:35,441 --> 01:19:37,466 And she would say, "Oh." 1490 01:19:37,543 --> 01:19:38,976 And then the next time I would come, 1491 01:19:39,045 --> 01:19:41,377 then she would say, "What day is it?' 1492 01:19:41,447 --> 01:19:42,539 "It's Thursday." 1493 01:19:42,615 --> 01:19:43,946 "Oh." 1494 01:19:48,921 --> 01:19:52,789 I think she wanted to die on the same day as Charles 1495 01:19:52,858 --> 01:19:57,227 because it sort of symbolized their being one. 1496 01:20:01,767 --> 01:20:08,229 Her last statement was one of being with Charles. 1497 01:20:25,524 --> 01:20:30,223 This guy and that guy could trade places. 1498 01:20:30,296 --> 01:20:32,890 There's probably an Eames chair 1499 01:20:32,965 --> 01:20:35,593 Iiterally in every single issue thatwe've published. 1500 01:20:35,668 --> 01:20:36,692 You know, you could go 1501 01:20:36,769 --> 01:20:38,600 from the DAX to the DSS to the LCW, 1502 01:20:38,671 --> 01:20:40,502 you know, you'll get thiswhole range. 1503 01:20:40,573 --> 01:20:42,370 Clockwise just a little. 1504 01:20:42,441 --> 01:20:43,430 Just a little. 1505 01:20:43,509 --> 01:20:47,138 Thefurniture still has a quality 1506 01:20:47,213 --> 01:20:48,475 that every young designer 1507 01:20:48,547 --> 01:20:50,481 is searching for, because of the amount of thought 1508 01:20:50,549 --> 01:20:52,244 that's been put into it 1509 01:20:52,318 --> 01:20:56,448 by everyone whose hands touch the project. 1510 01:20:56,522 --> 01:20:59,582 I think you see that optimism of the American spirit 1511 01:20:59,659 --> 01:21:01,889 in their design. 1512 01:21:01,961 --> 01:21:03,690 It provided just a great blueprint 1513 01:21:03,763 --> 01:21:05,458 for how we could live our lives. 1514 01:21:07,867 --> 01:21:09,630 What furniture designers 1515 01:21:09,702 --> 01:21:12,637 ever have produced 40 to 50 pieces of furniture 1516 01:21:12,705 --> 01:21:16,141 that have been in production for five decades? 1517 01:21:16,208 --> 01:21:19,507 Butthe other thing is the sheer joy, 1518 01:21:19,578 --> 01:21:21,443 that aspect of play. 1519 01:21:21,514 --> 01:21:25,109 No one else, I think, had that combination 1520 01:21:25,184 --> 01:21:28,119 of the pragmatic and the aesthetic. 1521 01:21:28,187 --> 01:21:30,348 Seven... 1522 01:21:30,423 --> 01:21:33,392 They loved to say, "We don't do art. 1523 01:21:33,459 --> 01:21:35,484 We solve problems." 1524 01:21:35,561 --> 01:21:36,619 It's the process. 1525 01:21:36,696 --> 01:21:38,357 It's, how do we get from where we are 1526 01:21:38,431 --> 01:21:41,093 to where we want to be? 1527 01:21:41,167 --> 01:21:42,725 Grasp the rear of the viewfinder... 1528 01:21:42,802 --> 01:21:45,327 Charles and Ray were always looking to the future. 1529 01:21:45,404 --> 01:21:46,894 They weren't sort of sitting around, 1530 01:21:46,972 --> 01:21:48,872 telling war stories about organic furniture. 1531 01:21:48,941 --> 01:21:50,169 What they were doing is like, 1532 01:21:50,242 --> 01:21:52,403 "What's the nextthing?' 1533 01:21:52,478 --> 01:21:55,447 They were there 1534 01:21:55,514 --> 01:21:57,539 for the major moments in American history, 1535 01:21:57,616 --> 01:22:00,016 and they were really the pioneers of the information age. 1536 01:22:00,086 --> 01:22:02,884 The visitor can try out the computer 1537 01:22:02,955 --> 01:22:04,616 as a carrier of information. 1538 01:22:04,690 --> 01:22:07,318 The breadth of the work is extraordinary, 1539 01:22:07,393 --> 01:22:11,295 but there is also a unifying theme of beauty 1540 01:22:11,363 --> 01:22:14,594 and a desire to reach a broad audience. 1541 01:22:14,667 --> 01:22:17,397 So if it was pulled forward a little bit? 1542 01:22:17,470 --> 01:22:19,995 Every designer owes them some amount of debt, 1543 01:22:20,072 --> 01:22:24,008 but at the same time, part of that debt should be to kind of 1544 01:22:25,000 --> 01:22:28,000 Take what they did and move beyond it. 111681

Can't find what you're looking for?
Get subtitles in any language from opensubtitles.com, and translate them here.