Original subtitles

[Orson] Are you loading?

Go.

What?

Yeah, put them in.

Don't whisper to me.

There's no secret about-

Yeah, let's get over, let's get over here.

Huh, John.

Right.

All right, are you ready?

Gary you're kind of circling.

So let's stay close.

[Gary] Circling, circling.

[Orson] All right.

[Connie] I'm sorry. - That's okay.

[Orson] Are you fellas ready?

Are you going?

[Gary] Yeah.

[Crew member] Are you marking, Gary?

[Man] A-mark.

[Orson] Hello?

Ready with the slates?

[Connie] Yeah.

[Orson] Let's put them in it.

And let's not ask nice, let's just do it.

[Gary] Rolling.

[Orson] You have to move over and see the slate

and move back.

[Man] OCA ABC.

[Bob] Speed

[Crew member] This is yours, John, right here.

[Gary] Rolling.

[Orson] No, no, Gary knows.

You know.

[Connie] Ready, Gary?

[Gary] Yes. - [Crew member] I'm not ready.

[Gary] Rolling.

[Connie] Roll two-A-X.

[Crew member] You got it John?

[John] No. - [Gary] I'm rolling.

[John] There's too much reflection.

Okay.

I got this slate.

I got to have it flat now.

[Crew member] Two-Baker-X.

[Orson] Have you got any booze with that?

All right.

Yeah.

Gin and tonic.

[Orson] I read it in an interview.

That's a terrible way to begin questions.

But you're always, things you said to the newspaper people.

But you said that you believe that movies have

to be about something.

You mean that in a social sense or political sense?

This is a real heavy question to start out.

Well, they have to be personal films, I think,

and I think somebody, if they're involved now

in something they're going to be involved in, politics,

I'm not sure about,

but that's going to have to deal

with human relationships, and-

[Orson] There isn't any story or any drama

about human relationships in a way,

you know what's even a corny one is human relationships.

I think it's how deep you want to go with it

or how deep the director

is willing to go into his own investigation of himself,

whether it's really him, he's picturing or not.

[Orson] A movie can, in other words,

the real kind of yard stick in the movie is, for you,

how true the picture is to the filmmaker?

How true he is to the picture.

Or how good the picture is?

No.

I mean, Diego Rivera for example,

was a social commentary artist.

[Orson] Yes.

And very primitive, agitprop, kind of various agitprop.

Right.

I think that's the area I'm going to unfortunately,

or fortunately, fall into.

I can't-

[Orson] But what's wrong with that?

I don't see anything wrong with that.

It's just that, what do you think in general terms,

is the question?

In other words, when you think about a movie,

and, or about movies, and you say it's good,

how deep a picture is.

You know?

I just, I think that a film has to be personal.

It can be personal and it can be "Last Year At Marienbad,"

or it can be personal.

It can be-

[Orson] Was "Last Year At Marienbad" a personal picture?

Well, it was to me, I mean, I saw it.

Yeah.

I felt that they went, I'm not sure what they got,

but they went in, they went in deep looking.

And then "8 1/2" is a personal-

[Orson] So it doesn't matter if you don't come back

with it as long as you feel that the trip has been made.

Yeah.

I'm a much simpler, I'm involved

in much simpler things than that.

I...

[Orson] How do you mean that?

What you want to say is simpler than Marienbad?

I would say that nothing on Earth

could be simpler than Marienbad.

Well, it's simpler in the Cocteau sense

of the word, I think.

But it's still an abstraction to me.

Whereas sitting down and eating dinner

is not an abstraction.

But sitting down and eating dinner

when you're suddenly cutting the ace of spades

or something becomes another kind of eating dinner.

Is that-

[Orson] Yeah, I got that.

You know, but you don't have a rule about movies.

In other words, I don't want to seem to gather

from what you said that, it's how far somebody goes.

It can be how true somebody goes, to themselves

or to their convictions, which, or both or anything.

I'd like to pin you down.

Yeah.

[Orson] I don't believe anybody can let everything

in under their tent.

Everybody rejects something.

That's good.

Nobody's really Catholic.

Why do you, what are you, where are your limits?

Not for your movies, but what you look for in a movie.

Well, I saw "The Damned" for example, you know?

Visconti's film, did you see?

[Orson] No, how did you like it?

I liked that movie very much.

I would say that if I had a director

that I was really involved with,

let's take a European director role rather than American,

I would say that Buñuel, like "Viridiana,"

I find a very personal film.

[Orson] Oh, sure.

But at the same time, it's not saying go to the left

or go to the right.

But it's saying, look at this,

look at these various places

where all these things are happening.

You know, it's not necessarily just against the church,

but it's saying, look at the church in this light.

[Orson] Well he's very Catholic, you know,

he's a great religious guy.

I think, really.

He's either-

[Orson] He attacks the church from inside.

Not out.

Yeah.

Do you think he's really a Catholic?

[Orson] Oh, yeah.

Oh boy.

Really? - [Orson] Oh boy.

I thought he was a communist.

That's sort of like a Che Guevara story.

Is there an economist here?

And he raised his hand thinking, they said a communist.

[Orson] I don't know that.

That's great.

[Orson] No, but they, you see,

you can be a communist and a Catholic.

It's only in America that

that comes as a surprise to people.

And I think he's a Catholic

who doesn't go to church and thinks he's damned,

but is a Catholic.

And he will tell you that the whole thing is a bag of shit.

But oh boy, is he a Catholic.

But a Catholic through environment.

I mean, through his youth.

[Orson] A deep conviction, too.

I think he feels cast out.

[Gary] Rolling.

[Connie] Three-A.

[Gary] Three-B-X, three-B-A, pardon me.

[Orson] I don't know if you've got, there's a,

were you more intolerant of,

did you have more kinds of movies you were against

when you were a kid than you are now?

I am.

I'm getting to like more kinds of movies.

Well, it's so difficult to make movies that

it's very easy never to have made a movie

and to hate all movies except for a very few.

But once you've made a movie realize

how much work is involved, I think almost

anybody who gets any kind of movie at all made

is really way ahead.

[Orson] It's so hard.

Or it's hard work.

Well, it's the editing, the editing gets to be-

[Orson] Don't you think in some ways it's awfully easy?

I love the creating the idea.

I love the shooting it, I love the casting of it.

I love the doing, you know.

But when it gets down to the editing of it,

it becomes like having a child,

and suddenly cutting its arms off and putting its eyes out.

[Orson] Because you missed the good things that go?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And also because it's so personal,

I mean, it's just, it gets heavy.

[Orson] I don't know.

It seems to me that you can only make a movie

by taking out all kinds of beloved things.

Otherwise it doesn't have any shape.

Oh, there's no question.

[Orson] Yeah, there's no movie making, imagining it

and realizing it and all that is sort of happy social event.

And the really creative job is the dirtiest one,

it's in an empty dark room.

Is that what you mean by hard work?

No, I think the movies are made on the set,

but they're later made, remade in the editing room.

I mean, the editing is very important.

There's no question about it.

But I think there's a certain magic to shooting it

that that people have or they don't have.

But the shaping of it becomes the really difficult part.

Even after you get the picture up,

I mean to then shape it into that piece of film

that you're going to put out,

that's a little magic too, I guess.

[Orson] Yeah.

Well, it's the real work, that's for sure.

You shoot an awful lot?

For "Easy Rider," I 35 had hours and

for "The Last Movie" I had 40 hours of film.

[Orson] Yeah, that's a lot to get through.

Yeah, and a lot of really,

the things that are really, you know,

like beautiful landscape,

which just don't make the story go on.

You know?

And yet I hate to give them up, you know.

[Orson] I'm lucky.

When I go in a cutting room, I go in as the enemy

of the film I made, I can hardly wait

to take out the beautiful shots.

Wow.

[Orson] I do.

I don't have any affection for a single foot of film.

That's very important.

That really is important.

[Orson] You know, go, go.

All I can say to it, if it doesn't, you know,

my weakness is that I think the point,

the audience's point of boredom

is much shorter than maybe it is.

And my movies are too dense and too rich

because I'm so easily bored in a movie theater

that I'm afraid everybody else is.

I think, I think it's a very great quality.

I mean, it really is, because you can really fall

in love with it.

And an audience doesn't...

I don't want

to put down audiences, but they're really-

[Orson] No, no.

Yes, I think you should put them down.

Let's get into that.

I think we should put down audiences.

It's the individuals in the audience who are valuable.

Not that group of people who happened

to have gone into a lighted auditorium where so much money,

there's no beautiful, magical virtue to a congregation

of people, not for a movie, which is a dead piece of film.

Don't put down people, but what the, you know,

fuck the audiences.

It's strange because when I made "Easy Rider,"

I saw it in the South

and I heard people cheering the ending,

cheering the fact that the guys

were shot off the motorcycle.

[Orson] Literally cheering.

Yeah.

Saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

And at UCLA, right where it was playing near UCLA,

they stood up and screamed, "Kill the pigs."

[Orson] Same place.

No, this is now at UCLA.

And the other's in the South.

At the end, when we get killed, you know,

"Get the pigs, kill the pigs."

I thought, my God, you know?

[Orson] What's an audience?

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, I didn't mean either one of those things.

[Orson] Of course you didn't.

And I dig that completely.

But doesn't that get us to an interesting point?

In other words, isn't it true

that a movie maker does not make a movie for his audience?

Yeah.

But at the same time, I don't know.

I think maybe my design will change.

But I was hoping that,

I believe that there's a tremendous power in movies.

You can put people in a dark theater

and really have their minds, if you don't get too hung up

on your beautiful shots or, but I mean-

[Orson] It has nothing to do with beautiful shots.

But I'm saying, you really can have their minds

for a while with you, but-

[Orson] Yes, I think that puts it very,

you can have their minds because

in a way you do possess them if you-

Yeah, in a strange sense, yeah.

[Orson] But does that mean you make the movie for them?

Don't you have to, in other words,

you have to-

You have to make the movie for you,

but hopefully there will be a communication between you

and that audience, if you're working in an area

where you're trying to make a social commentary

kind of movies.

[Orson] Would you hope, this is a kind of

infantile question, but most good answers

come from idiot questions.

Would it be your hope that you could make a picture,

which would reduce the amount of cries

of enthusiastic applause to the notion

that the guys get it from the rednecks?

Would you hope to change that a little?

You think movies can change such a thing?

I think my symbolism is a little

too subtle for most people.

Unfortunately.

I meant for them both to be outlaws.

[Orson] Well, that's clear, isn't it?

For the guys who are riding the bikes are also outlaws,

but it does not justify them being killed

at the end by these other outlaws.

[Orson] I thought everybody could see

that except an idiot redneck.

I don't think very many people,

the young kids supposedly think that Peter

and I are some tremendous heroes that uh-

[Orson] I guess they do.

Ride through the night and smuggle dope and get it on.

You know?

[Orson] But is that symbolism?

You say that-

Well, no, I meant, I mean to go into more, I mean,

the graveyard sequence, the LSD trip and the graveyard,

that was full of symbolism to me,

personal kind of symbolism to me,

which I don't think that anyone

but probably I can relate any of that to like,

you know, anything that has to do with the story.

[Orson] But isn't that right?

Shouldn't there be more in a movie

than any one audience can get?

Otherwise, isn't it going to be too poor a meal?

I think so.

Well, I was getting, we have a-

[Orson] Okay, let's go on.

We have a big dinner sequence in the movie

that I'm doing now, which I wanted to be very boring.

Oh, this man is talking about he worked his way up

from the gutter and has this broom factory

and how he's making millions off the broom factory.

And he's making all these corny jokes about

when I picked this boy up, he was clinging

to his last straw, you know,

and that kind of just boring, boring man telling jokes.

But it's all those dinners that we've sat through.

You know?

[Crew member] Three-Apple-X.

[Orson] Is to do a boring.

You got your slate?

[Crew member] No.

[Orson] Why not?

[Orson] Is to do a scene, and in which you're supposed

to tell the audience that this is boring.

And on one side you want to entertain them

and yet tell them it's boring.

Because if you bore them and you're really boring them.

It's a fascinating kind of paradox.

On the other hand, there's a bad-

[Man] Three-Baker-two.

[Orson] Using boredom as a dramatic subject

I think is no good because the way Antonioni does.

I think a boring dinner party's a proper thing to do.

But to take boredom as a social plight,

as worthy of two hours' attention,

I really don't go along with.

I think the best film, yeah.

You see I only became a director because I wanted

to get more pretty ladies.

You see?

And that's really what I'm involved in.

I'm not involved in-

[Orson] Sure.

You are.

You're right.

The movie that Antonio made, "La Notte"?

Did you see that?

I thought that he achieved something there

where I was still being entertained.

I went to see a "L'Avventura" seven times.

I still haven't seen the movie.

I went to sleep every time.

And I enjoyed what I was seeing.

And I went, but I couldn't stay awake.

[Orson] Why don't we try that microphone

down underneath so we don't have it right in his face-

Don't stop, do it.

That's right.

I don't know.

I didn't like it even before I fell asleep, but,

and there's the beautiful shot guy, you know,

if he's got a beautiful shot, boy.

And you watch the girl go down the road, and you say,

he's not going to carry her the whole way.

He carries her all the way.

She goes out of sight and then we have 30 frames.

You just can't believe it.

I know, yeah.

He's incredible.

But "La Notte" got to me.

I think he achieved whatever, I like the idea that

he makes you experience the time.

You sit in an audience, you're going, oh come on.

He's looking for his wife.

He goes in, he turns on the water tap.

He turns on the fan, puts down the newspaper.

He goes outside, ask the neighbors,

have you seen his wife, no he hasn't, comes back,

turns the water off, turns the fan off,

picks up the newspaper, and you're saying,

oh, come on, come on.

But then you start experiencing which I think,

whether he has achieved it fully

or not as a very important level to motion pictures

that you experienced the time that these people are,

he makes you feel the boredom.

He makes you feel the time that they experienced

on the screen, I find that really interesting in his movies.

[Orson] And I don't understand it as a human problem.

[Gary] Mark it.

[Connie] Four-A.

[Orson] I get exasperated rather than bored.

Boredom, I've always got somewhere to go in my mind,

that, not something bugging me.

Do you think boredom is a big problem?

I guess it's got to be now, with more leisure.

I think we directors don't have any left.

I haven't been bored for so long.

I don't know.

I just keep trying to like not be bored.

So.

[Orson] Well, if you meet Antonioni

you would understand what his problem is.

He's got a nervous twitch.

[Orson] Well, it's not only a nervous twitch,

he is a nervous twitch.

You know that he must be bored.

There's nothing that could entertain.

There's no life.

There's no juice.

I think juice is awfully important.

And to transmit to an audience the feeling of juicelessness

is a really dull scene, it seems to me.

Do you think that it's just enough

to give an audience a share in an experience like boredom?

Or as long as they share an experience,

that's already some kind of accomplishment.

I'm not arguing-

You've gone through a day or two days

or three days where suddenly everything seems

to fall into place, like as a drama?

I mean, you know where suddenly

you say you get on an airplane, you fly to New York,

you get off, and three days later you come back

on the airplane, but everything that happens

to you in that trip, even putting down the luggage

or picking up the luggage, seems to be dramatically sound.

I mean, that it works and you suddenly come out of it,

and you land back and you say well,

this is the end of the movie.

I've just made a three day movie.

This could be a movie.

[Orson] Now, why do you think that is?

Is it rhythm?

Yeah.

It's rhythm.

And also the emotional things that happen, the strangeness

of the happening, or

[Orson] Or you see them as strange,

even though they aren't sometimes.

Don't you ever have that feeling?

I think when it really works, it really works.

It seems to be almost like maybe a mystical kind

of experience that you go through where things happen,

dramatic situations happen that seem to fit

so perfectly that it's almost

beyond the fact that you really had anything

to do with it except that you were going through it.

That's what's exciting to me in a movie.

And that doesn't seem to, I mean,

I don't think that that's boring.

There's too much going on all around us

too many kinds of scenes going on all around us

for us to have an excuse anymore to really bore an audience.

Except if we overindulge in our cutting.

[Orson] Yeah.

Anyway, overindulge.

If we're in touch with what's going on, we can walk in

and out of orgies, and we can go anywhere.

There are no really limitations to what kind

of experience you can show.

You can show a person in your film.

[Orson] Well, you use orgies.

But how about the limitation of an extremely small

and fairly meaningless life?

Even three days?

See what I mean?

I'm not arguing, I just want to hear that.

Because orgies are easy-

I said that as an example of one side,

but then you can go to the man, was it Vitelloni?

The old man with the dog, that tried to get rid of his dog?

De Sica's film?

That was, God, that was such a moving film to me.

And here was a simple man who couldn't take care of,

couldn't get his old age pension

and he had to get rid of his dog.

When he stood in front of the train with the dog,

the dog got excited, ran off.

He walked with the dog.

He's upset about the dog and the train missed him.

And he gets, makes friends with the dog again

and walks off with the dog.

And none of his problems have been solved.

He still can't feed the dog.

That's a very simple kind of-

[Orson] Yeah, but-

But the dog gets sympathy.

[Orson] It's an awfully good,

strong story, isn't it?

Boy meets dog.

There's a story.

How about when it isn't a story,

and it's just your three days

in which everything seems to be right.

Are three days seasoned with events,

like orgies or losing a dog that you love.

All of those things are right away-

Already we've got two scenes.

That's two scenes already we have.

[Man] Already we've got two scenes.

You've got two scenes, you've got a movie.

It's too much.

Cut it down.

I don't know whether they'll go for both at once.

[Orson] Which way are you going?

Gotta make up your mind.

[Hopper] I'll go for the orgies, I think this time.

When I'm older, I'll get to the old man and the dog maybe.

[Orson] Well, I don't know.

I guess it'd be better for the old man

to make the orgies pictures and the young fellas

to do the dog pictures.

I would agree with that too.

I think I'll probably actually get,

I'm doing the old man and the dog now.

I will get in the orgies later.

[Orson] I think there's a certain enthusiasm

that goes with impotence.

You know, Jesus, that's all you've got.

You know.

That scene you're gonna shoot.

The zoom is your only friend.

I never thought of it that way.

The other day I was doing a scene with this young boy,

he's doing a thing called "Adventures Of The Lamp,"

which I think is a great title.

And he's sort of traveling around the country

with Pierre Clementi and a whole bunch of French actors.

And they came up to the house and he wanted

to do a scene with me and this girl.

So I went in with a camera, still camera,

I was going to take photographs of her.

And I talked to her and asked her

why I had to have this camera to ask her

to take her clothes off.

And why this device, why did I have to use this?

Why was it all right?

What if I put the camera down and just said,

take your clothes off, I want to look at you?

She said she couldn't do that.

And I said, but it's okay for me to take pictures.

Right?

She said, well, yes.

And I said, wait a second, what is that?

Why can't I just look at you?

I don't want to really take pictures of you.

I just want to look at you nude.

But she couldn't understand that and finally fled the scene.

I was left alone with my camera.

[Orson] But she has a point, just for the fun of it.

She has a point because the camera dignifies her act.

Of course, of course.

[Orson] You don't need the camera but she-

But yet we really both do, because what

if she hadn't taken her clothes off?

[Orson] Without the camera.

Right, without the camera.

Then you'd have a girl like this.

It's terrific.

[Orson] Or a big beaver shot.

Oh yeah, 3-D beaver.

[Orson] What is that?

Did you make up that to improvise that story

for the picture?

Yeah.

[Orson] It's good.

I liked it.

Thank you.

[Orson] And the picture is made up of improvisation?

Yeah.

He had people like Bo Diddley, which is fantastic.

I really have no idea what the movie's about.

I'm not sure he does, but yeah,

the whole movie is completely improvised,

but improvised scenes, you know,

I really don't know what it's about.

It's not really important, I'm not sure,

but I really felt very sorry for the boy

because 25 he's years old and he's using all

of his own money.

Terrific.

[Orson] Why be sorry for him?

Oh, well, it's probably going to cost

about a half a million dollars.

[Orson] Well.

I guess he didn't like money very-

[Orson] But maybe he loves movies.

He loves movies.

I don't think he's ever made a movie, but he loves them.

[Orson] Maybe that's why he loves movies.

It's going to be a really healthy experiment for him.

[Orson] And is what he has what he's spending?

Yeah.

There may be a lot more where that comes from, I'm not sure.

His grandfather made something.

To drill an oil well, you have to have this thing.

So

[Orson] That's Howard Hughes.

You've got your names mixed.

Howard-

[Orson] Howard Hughes's the guy

with the thing you drill an oil, sorry,

are there two things you got to have to drill-

Does Howard Hughes have a son?

That would be interesting.

[Orson] Howard Hughes-

25-year-old son?

[Orson] Howard Hughes's father invented something

without which you can't drill for oil.

And that's where the Hughes money comes from.

'Cause they leased it.

And the oil.

You don't think he has a 25-year-old son, do you?

[Orson] Human?

No.

I'm not sure this boy was human.

No, his name is Francois Duval

or something like that.

[Orson] Where's he gone now?

He's in Cuba, New Mexico, I think.

Shooting.

[Orson] Shooting still.

He's still shooting.

He's been shooting for four months.

He's got some really talented, I think Pierre Clementi

is a great actor.

Terrific guy.

But I didn't-

[Orson] What don't you like?

You are too, I want to see,

I want you to rage against something.

Oh, I can't rage against anything

after I heard that record of yours.

[Orson] What?

The one with the, "And Johnson beget" and, that's great.

I love it.

[Connie] Five-A.

Five-B.

[Orson] I don't know.

You said you were mixed up

about the audience reaction to "Easy Rider."

In one part of the country you had the rednecks

telling you, you can take that lamp right through.

Take it out the other way.

I don't know, the way I read it,

we've got a new switch here.

We've got, I come from a, I must've made eight movies

where the heavies were the guys that sold the dope.

And you seem to feel a little surprised

that the reaction in Southern California was, kill the pigs.

So what else did you expect, for Christ's?

Well, I just wanted to say that,

that I think that we're a country full of outlaws and that-

[Orson] You want to change that?

I just wanted to question it.

I don't think that the boys getting tax free

dollar smuggling cocaine is any different

than their fathers taking their money into Swiss banks.

I don't see the difference.

That both are-

[Orson] You mean cheating the American tax structure

is no worse-

Than cheating the Americans tax structure.

[Orson] No, no.

In other words, you're saying that to do Uncle Sam out

of some tax money is just as bad

as to supply people with junk.

Yeah.

Worse if you have munition factories.

[Orson] Yeah, you see what you're doing though?

That's what all you lefties do.

Suddenly a munitions factory got into this.

Now everybody doesn't have a munitions factory.

You're the first person who's called me leftist

since John Wayne.

[Orson] Well-

I was wearing a red shirt at a party

and he came up and said, "Ah, gone red, huh?"

I said, yeah, yeah, I've got a red shirt on.

[Orson] What do the lefties say about you?

I don't know.

I don't know any.

[Orson] You're putting me on.

I don't know.

Well, I mean, you can't talk

to leftists these days, can you?

I mean, they don't,

they don't admit to it, do they?

[Orson] How do I know?

I'm an old man goes home at night after I shoot a movie.

Every once in a while I stop on the corner

of Sunset Boulevard and buy a dirty paper.

I don't know what this left stuff is, as opposed

to the days when I used to be number one on their shit list.

I don't know.

The FBI comes to my house and tells me

who they are and tells me not to see them.

[Orson] Not to see the FBI?

No, not to see the left.

The communists. - They tell you not to.

Yeah.

There's an old man who lives in the area

where I live up in the mountains

and he was with Roosevelt and he is a communist

to the FBI and he was on a Roosevelt's cabinet

and he claims to be a socialist.

But I was told by them the other day not

to have anything to do with the man,

not to see him or anything,

because they were starting to suspect me.

[Orson] You were told by the FBI?

Yeah.

[Orson] They advised you-

They're trying to protect me.

You know?

[Orson] Isn't that nice of them?

So they can take 70% of my money.

[Orson] Well, kid, all I got to say is that what we want

to do is to protect you from those people.

That's right, right.

[Orson] But I figure we could get 70% of your money

without protecting you.

Probably.

I don't feel secure enough to talk about anything political.

I don't really-

[Orson] That isn't a cop out?

I don't think it's a cop out at all, you know,

I just don't think it's the time to talk about politics.

[Orson] Now isn't?

Yeah.

You don't need a weatherman to know

which way the wind blows, you know?

That's Bob Dylan.

[Orson] Who's he?

He's a songwriter.

[Orson] Well, you see what I feel about it is,

I'm a fella that likes the kids because they are violent.

I don't like the kids because they're kids.

I like the kids because they've got fight.

10 years ago they didn't, I couldn't stand them.

Suddenly, in my old age, I'm beginning

to dig them a little bit,

because they're starting to make bombs,

and I'm an old fashioned nihilist.

I always hated the commies,

because I'm a non-organization man.

I hated the Kremlin, I hate Washington.

So that's where I stand, and I happened

to be on the Franco side of the war

because I had some chums who needed

to be flown out of Jerez and I had a private plane

and I took them.

Then I went back, the other side, I went to Madrid

and spent three nights with Ernest Hemingway

and that confirmed me in my political views.

I returned to Franco's side.

I think both sides were wrong, but I am now forever stamped

as a fascist.

I'm not a fascist because I like the States very much.

Now you know who you're talking to.

But none of these things interest you.

They do an awful lot of people for whom you are a spokesman.

I make movies, you know.

I made one movie, I'm making my second,

it's all in the movies.

[Orson] Everything's on the screen you want to say

It's getting there, it's going to get there.

[Orson] I don't mean everything you want

to say you have put on the screen,

but I mean what you want to say you prefer

to say on the screen than in life, is that it?

I think it's easier that way.

[Orson] You bet your sweet cheeks it's easier.

Everything I've wanted to say I've said on the screen

and it isn't much because

as far as I'm concerned a social message

is always a message so primitive, essentially.

[Dennis] I think that's true.

[Orson] More primitive than any Diego Rivera

that you were quoting before.

I haven't got anything that I, Hannaford,

to put on the screen that's a bright thing

to say because if I'm going to get subtle enough

I haven't got a story.

Yeah, well.

[Orson] But I'm not scared that,

does it worry you that you might

turn off a section of the audience?

You reduce what you say politically because you want

to keep a large audience.

I want to show people what they are

and so I want to draw in the people

that would not necessarily come to see my movies.

In other words, I believe in the theory

that if you make, that there's a father

and son basic hatred, which I think is healthy.

That if you show the son something,

he will bring the father and say,

"Look, see, see what you are, see what you've done to me."

[Connie] Six A.

So I'm trying to, I'd like to get John Wayne's audience

in to see my movies.

[Orson] I think you did get some of them, you must have.

But I really want them to come see "The Last Movie,"

because "The Last Movie" is really about them.

It's about Kansas, about where I came from,

where I was raised.

It's the kind of naive American

who believes everything the government tells him

and who believes that he's really a good man

and he's really,

he's really involved.

But he isn't involved.

And he really believes the American Dream,

that everybody, that all he really wants

is a simple little adobe

but you could buy the whole top of that mountain

for about a dollar an acre.

He wants a ski resort and a hundred-room hotel.

Eight swimming pools.

[Orson] But isn't it true, can't you get there?

I don't think this man will ever have that,

and I don't know why he admires it.

Because he can't get it together enough to ever get that.

And when he gets it, what does he have?

There won't be any people for his hundred-room hotel anyway,

where he wants to build it.

So it's all a dream, but it's the American Dream.

If you get rich, you're really way ahead of it.

[Orson] Not just if you build a big empty hotel

you've got it made.

If you're rich, you get ahead of it.

In other words, his dream is really of money.

Am I putting words in your mouth?

No, I think that most Americans feel there

is a possibility they can become president if their skin

and their religion is the right color or whatever.

[Orson] Well, I think we're going

to have a black president pretty soon.

So the American Dream

that you can't have a black president turns out

to be a dream too, maybe.

I hope so, you know.

[Orson] Might be a good way to keep them in their ghettos

by having a black president.

Might work.

[Orson] That's the way it happens.

Now your movie is about that but it's also

about making a movie, isn't it?

Well, it's about the reality level

of the Victorian concept that like what's really going on.

In the beginning, drama started as a tribal,

communal thing where everybody participated in the ritual.

And then with the Greeks, it changed into putting people-

[Orson] Now who told you that, just a minute,

who told you it changed back then?

I told myself.

I'm not a reader.

At one point, but basically the church, I think,

really got into the thing of like,

"Here, we are experiencing this, this is what you're

to look at, you sit in an audience and you feel the people,

that man just lost his mother and you feel

so sad and you cry for that man that lost his mother."

But in reality it's an actor doing a very good job

that's making you cry, or the story or whatever.

[Orson] Storytellers.

You are not really involved.

You have put yourself in an audience

and the movie constantly says, this is a movie.

Well, not really until the end.

They dialog about movies and you see a movie

made at the beginning and so on.

[Orson] Do you see the movie itself?

You see the movie, yes, that they're making, also.

[Orson] You keep seeing it occasionally

or you see it like rushes?

No, you see it as they make it.

In other words, the movie starts out

with a violent Western being made

and then you go into that movie and see the actual movie

and then that breaks down into like making the movie again.

[Orson] And you see the slate come in and all that

or do you see the movie as-

You'll see the slate come in at the beginning.

[Orson] It's the making of a movie, in other words.

The movie that they're making is called "Billy and Rose."

[Orson] And it's not his movie,

he works as a stuntman if I remember correctly.

He takes care of the horses and he does stunts.

He really is a wrangler, he doesn't really like

to do stunts, but he calls himself

a stuntman after they leave.

[Orson] That's nice.

[Connie] Six B.

But after they leave and he comes back to this village

where the sets are, the Indians are now acting

out the violence that they saw,

except they're not playing, they're doing it for real.

[Crew member] Seven A.

[Orson] Not both in the same situation down.

But then at the end of this,

the whole thing becomes a movie.

When you build up to believing that he's really going

to be killed in this, and suddenly you start saying,

"Hey, I don't have my wound on, this is not going to match."

[Orson] And that's a movie.

"Who gave me this cigarette,

I didn't have this cigarette in the procession,

this isn't going to match."

And the priest is there trying to get him

to do the scene and they're trying to get him

to do the scene and he says,

"I'm going to get it in one take, if you guys

will listen to me we can really do this",

singing "I'm Back in the Saddle Again"

and talking about Gene Autry and how he came back

from the war.

[Orson] Does that mean it was a movie?

Or don't you want to tell us?

Well then he supposedly dies.

But he doesn't die, he gets up and asks the camera,

"How was that for camera?

When you were dollying with me was I running

too far ahead of you?"

And the cameraman says,

"Yeah", he says "Well did it work?"

And he says, "Yeah, I think it worked",

and he says, "Well, okay."

[Orson] Yeah, then it was a movie.

It was a movie, yeah.

Then we go from that, through a montage

you see him fall, you see flowers laid on his grave,

you assume that he's dead.

It does all the cliché things, and the cliché

whatever we are, 50 years into movies, I mean.

The things that we know that the man's dead.

And then suddenly he does this,

and then it goes to a couple

of children playing hopscotch on a mountain

in the Andes and that's the last shot of these kids

playing this game, which is what movies are to me

and what drama is to me.

It's a game, it's a ritualistic game.

[Orson] Movies have got to mean more than that

to you, though, because you think movies are also magic.

You believe that people living in the Andes are capable

of substituting the making of movies for religion,

and I think you're crazy,

because I don't think there's anything

in the movies which is the equal

of a big organized religion with all the stuff

that goes with it.

When I was in high school everybody dressed

like Marlon Brando like after "The Wild One"

started talking like Marlon Brando.

[Orson] That's dressing up and acting.

And hoped they looked like Marlon Brando.

When Elvis Presley was 21, he came to me

and said he's got to do this fight scene,

it was the first picture he's ever going to make,

he was already a millionaire from music, he said,

"I've got this fight scene with Richard Egan,

I can take care of that," but he says,

"I've never hit a woman before, got to hit Debra Paget."

And I said, "But you don't really hit people in movies",

and he says, "Oh, I suppose you're going to say

that they don't really shoot really bullets at people.

I've seen the wood splinter off the wall."

[Orson] He said that?

Yeah.

[Orson] But aren't you confusing reality with magic?

In other words I believe people will believe

anything in movies.

That real bullets are used and the guy really

screws the girl, or anyone really dies,

whatever you want to say.

But I think that's poor weak stuff,

that reality is always poor weak stuff compared to magic.

And if you tell me a group of Indians

are still suddenly going to get hooked on

as poor a little bag of tricks as 50 years

of movies has created, I think you're wrong.

I don't think that this story could ever happen

in that reality.

But in reality that we are children playing games

when we create.

At best, we're children creating games.

That game is so serious a game

that we would do almost anything we could

to get something from the people

that we are using in front of that camera.

That's um, and then I think there's a lot of magic involved.

[Orson] Glamor, not magic.

No, magic.

When the light comes and the sun or clouds suddenly appears.

I think all that's magic.

I'm a very naive, primitive,

unsophisticated, non-intellectual.

[Orson] And you think, but you see, you admit

that the Indians are closer to magic than Elvis Presley.

Yeah, but not Bunuel.

[Orson] How did we get Bunuel into it,

we're talking about your Indians up in the Andes.

But I'm saying that they don't have the magic

that Bunuel has.

[Orson] Oh yes they do.

The Indians do?

[Orson] Of course they do.

They're closer to the real sources of magic, I say.

You may be right, but they don't, well see, what is magic?

When do we get into machine magic or are we talking

about magic magic?

I would say that the Indians are closer

to magic of the atmosphere.

[Orson] I'm talking about magic meaning magic.

Not glamor, not-

There's machine magic.

[Orson] Is there?

I don't think so.

Oh, I do.

[Orson] That isn't machine magic you use.

That's man magic using a machine.

Okay, I'll go with that.

[Orson] That's you, the shaman, the magician,

using the camera and making magic out of it.

There's no magic in the machine.

And the people closest to magic

are very far away from movies.

They're Indians up in the Andes, because magic

is based on nature, and all that we can ever

do in a movie is to draw on these mystical first sources

using the crappy little machinery which

is all that we've managed to come up with in 50 years,

the most backward industry on earth,

but somehow the magician comes

into it and creates something.

There's no great machine there.

I agree with you.

The man uses the machine.

But the atmosphere, things that happen, things you wish for.

One day you want it to rain, it rains.

Be nice if there was sun today, there's sun.

[Orson] That's, ah!

You know what you're onto now?

You know what you're onto now?

You're onto the thing about the director as God.

And God doesn't work magic, he performs miracles,

not the same thing.

Magic is what man does.

I like it, man, a lot.

It amuses me.

When it rains the day you want it to rain.

[Orson] Sure, I wrote a movie once I never made

about a movie director who was making a picture in Italy,

and at the end, when he's made peace with the saint

with whom he's been warring, and the wind

has been blowing for days and days and it won't stop,

he finally says, "Peace."

Unconscious, he says, "Cut the wind",

and the wind stops, you know, that's the confusion

that every director gets.

The blower stops or the wind stops?

[Orson] You never know, you see.

That's the director as God, not as magician.

He has two roles.

A magician is not God.

God is the man who says, "I'd like it to rain."

The magician is the man who says,

"I'm going to make it rain by magic.

I will it."

The director is closer to God than to magic,

that's his weakness.

Because the trouble with the world is God.

Oh God.

[Orson] That's the only argument,

I love your story about the guy,

I'm worried about these Indians, I'm worried

about the Indians, perhaps it works because the church

is dead up there, and I'll bet it is.

Well, I moved everything out of the church

and put it in the movie set church.

[Orson] I see.

That's what the priest does when he joins the procession.

He moves everything out of the big church

and puts it into the movie set church

which has no back on it, and when the God's figure

which he's chanting to is thrown out of focus

you see the field full of sheep.

Which, I did not put a field full of sheep,

there just happened to be a field full of sheep there,

and when I asked to throw the focus László Kovács said,

"You're not going to believe this,

but there's sheep out in that field."

It's very nice.

Looks good though.

I'm going to take credit for it.

[Orson] That's what God has always done.

Right, he's always put sheep out in his field.

[Orson] No!

My point is that he didn't put them there,

he takes the credit.

That's right!

[Orson] He's a typical director.

Absolutely.

He may not be so bad after all.

[Orson] What's that, a Fresca?

[Crew member] Yes.

[Orson] Thank you.

Are you fellas ready?

Are you going?

[Connie] Seven B.

[Gary] I'm rolling.

[Orson] Oh good, rolling.

What?

[Dennis] I'd like some gin and tonic.

[Orson] I like gin and tonic,

why didn't you give it to him?

Why'd you ask him?

You're supposed to ply him with liquor.

Yeah, and liquor!

Where were we?

[Orson] Well, I'll tell you what we were talking about,

is about the director as God.

You know, it is fun to say, "Let there be light",

and there is light.

It's part of the big kick,

I suppose it's why everybody wants

to be a movie director nowadays

because it's the closest you can get to God.

And I suspect that as being a bad thing in all of us.

Is God into sex?

[Orson] What?

I said, "Is God into sex?"

[Orson] Well, you know, a couple thousand years ago

he knocked up a little Jewish girl

and they've been talking about it ever since.

I remember that, yeah, that's right.

No, I think that that's a very dangerous area,

the God director area.

[Orson] Yeah, but every director-

But actually it's a reality.

[Orson] It's a reality, it's a real feeling,

it may be dangerous.

What I think is that directors have

got to be closer to poetry and further from creation.

I'm worried about the word creation as applying

as it does to the God-like attributes of the director,

and poetry's a tough thing, you know.

You can get into that kind of experience mystically

or through drugs or through any kind of act,

but it is an act, it's the stuff of poetry,

which means it's the stuff of magic,

and therefore the director ought to be a magician

and a poet rather than a god.

I'm still confused about the area

of the magician as director.

I'm still confused about that.

I'm confused about the difference between the God director

and the magician director.

[Orson] So am I, but I think we're confused

about God and magic anyway.

The magician is the fella who invokes,

who calls up spirits and demons and angels.

Well, I think that I'm in the magician area

more than the God area of directing, you know?

I think I'm going to cop to that.

I'd rather think of it that way.

[Orson] You'd rather make magic than be God?

Yeah, there's no question.

I wouldn't believe myself as God.

[Orson] Well, there's a high probability that God doesn't

and that's why he requires so many prayers.

Like any other director, he needs yes-men.

Right.

That's true.

Of course, the one book that I read which I liked,

the Gospel According to Thomas,

it says in there that Christ said anybody

who prays will be condemned.

Anybody who gives alms will beget sin for himself.

[Orson] Now what is this book?

This is Doubting Thomas's sayings of Christ which was

found in and printed in 1946.

[Orson] Found where?

It was found because of-

[Orson] In Glendale?

[Connie] Eight A, Eight A.

Right, near Glendale.

The other Glendale.

[Orson] I don't believe that

they found the writings of Doubting Thomas.

Who says they did, where did you find this book?

I have to attack you on this.

Harpers and Row.

[Orson] And he says anybody-

I mean you believe Harpers and Row, surely!

[Orson] What do you feel about,

you're against prayer, then?

Yeah, I think prayer's a waste of time.

[Orson] But that isn't a good way to-

Prayer and fasting and giving alms is a waste of time.

Also, not hating your mother and father is a waste of time.

[Orson] You should hate your mother and father?

That's what it says in this book.

And I just take that as an evolutionary kind of process

where if you don't want to one-up your old man

then you're not going to go anywhere

and you're a total waste.

[Orson] You stand condemned out of your own mouth

as a slave of the American system

of accomplishment and achievement.

I didn't say that you, you see,

you've got to understand that-

[Orson] You say it's not worthwhile,

you're not going to get anywhere.

No I didn't say-

[Orson] That's the whole scene we're trying

to get away from now.

Okay.

[Orson] This making an awful lot of noise.

Shall we change magazines?

[Man] It's the motor, can't change anything.

[Orson] He's just fallen,

one of our men has just fallen over dead drunk.

No, you say it's a good thing,

not a good thing, I don't want to be simplistic,

but you say, "I'm against praying, I'm against giving alms",

you said.

Now that shocks me, as a Christian.

Deeply shocks me.

I only believe in giving it away

when you know you're not going to get it back.

[Orson] That's a Christian statement.

That's Christ, in this book.

[Orson] The Glendale Gospels!

It also says in there they'll call him the Lord of Peace

but he's come to cast wars and cause divisions.

[Orson] He said himself in the other Gospels,

which are a little better authenticated-

I don't like the other Gospels, though!

There's no miracle in there.

[Orson] "I gave you not peace but the sword", he said.

He was militant.

He drove the moneychangers out of the temple.

I think that could be a great scene.

[Orson] You bet, and you're the man to play it.

You'd be great as Jesus, do you know that?

No, but I think I would be really good running

through the moneychangers.

[Orson] You're kidding, but I think you'd be great.

That's where I've been playing most of the time, you know.

[Orson] I think for a goyim you'd be an awful good Jesus.

Better to have a Jewish.

I could wear like even bluer eyes.

[Orson] You're a little WASPish for it.

Even bluer eyes, I could put-

[Orson] Would you like to play Jesus?

Schneider should play Christ.

[Orson] Schneider just left.

Schneider should play Christ.

Don't you think?

[Orson] Isn't he?

Oh God.

[Orson] No, come on now, you're talking about, you've got

to contribute something, evolution and all of that.

You believe that we all should be contributing

something to society, basically do you believe that?

Yeah.

We should be contributing something

or we shouldn't be contributing anything.

I think that everybody should have the basic necessities

and then if they want to go on and work,

they can decide that they want to do something.

Otherwise, I don't think that they should be working.

There are only five necessities, there's medical,

shelter, clothing, food and one other, transportation.

And I don't see why the world can't supply

that for everyone, and if everyone wants to wear one suit

of clothes then he can wear that one suit of clothes.

If he wants to do something else and go on beyond that,

then he can do that.

[Orson] Yeah, now the world isn't going to.

60% of the population of the world is hungry

at this minute, and in about four or five years

that'll be raised to about 75%, so it doesn't

do us any good to say that.

But technically we could do it.

[Orson] Oh sure.

Well, technically we could lick pollution, and you know.

But that's the way I feel about things.

If a man wants to go on and then make movies,

then he'll be there because he wants to make movies,

not because he wants to-

[Orson] Not because he's forced by devilish producers

to get up in the morning.

Not because there's a lot of money in it.

Not because there's the money or-

[Orson] I've been making movies for 30 years

and I have never found that there's a lot of money in it,

so I can't follow that line of reasoning!

I was talking more on a technical level

than I was on a creative level.

I think that a great many of the technical people

are there not because of a love for movies

but because they have very good unions

and they make a good living at it.

Not because they love it.

I remember working in Hollywood, all I heard

when it came five o'clock,

"Come on, let's get this shot, it's fight night tonight.

Got to get this shot, c'mon it's fight night tonight."

Well, that doesn't make you feel like acting

or directing or anything else,

it makes you feel like fighting.

And it doesn't have anything to do

with a creative process that hopefully somewhere,

in all this equipment, there is somebody creating.

[Orson] Isn't that true anyway?

In the great age of the novel in the 19th century,

when you had Dostoevsky and Dickens and everybody

that we can name, there were never

so many literary hacks, never so many editors saying,

"Come on, you've got a deadline, get going",

and all of that.

Isn't there always that side to any profession

which is involved with the public.

Aren't there always going to be the guys

who are cranking it out?

What do you think, are you aware of that?

Except that we are not working with a pencil

and piece of paper, we're working with sometimes

as many as 25, 30 people.

[Connie] Eight B.

Or-

[Connie] Eight B.

[Orson] Now, there you're speaking from your generation.

25 or 30 people?

I can only tell you as Jake Hannaford

that I've never walked on a set with less than 120.

If we count the teamsters union.

25 or 30 people?

Yeah.

Maybe we should have more!

Sometimes I wonder if it isn't just,

it really doesn't matter what kind

of movie you're making as long as everybody's working.

[Orson] That's what the leaders of the industry

are always telling.

It doesn't really from an industrial point of view,

and it's the people who are speaking for an industry

that say that, so why aren't they right

from their point of view?

They are.

We can't argue them, they're on another league,

it really isn't our discussion, is it?

Sure, they want everybody to have jobs.

It's nothing to do with the creative process

or making a film.

Like you wanted everybody to get

in the publishing business and only so many people

are going to get that pencil working

and that's all that is to that.

How do you feel about, you're supposed

to have changed the whole movie scene for the world.

Does that make you happy?

It ought to.

I didn't even know I was supposed to have done that.

[Orson] You've got to have read it.

I haven't believed anything I've read so far.

[Orson] You don't believe any of it?

You go through an article, maybe 10% of it

has any relation to reality at all,

the rest of it is a fiction of some writer.

I just read a thing in Confidential about me,

about Dennis Hopper's ugly past,

about how I turned a girl into a junkie,

how I aborted her child, Barbara Berkeley

who I've never even heard of,

and how she had nothing else to do at the end

of the article but to take a contract killing

of two FBI men in a cheap motel in Arizona.

While I was blasting freedom off the bike,

she was killing two FBI men.

It doesn't say that I made the contract for her

to do the killing, but it's led you to believe

that it was very possible that she needed the money

to go to Europe, maybe I got her involved in this.

I mean, that's total fantasy, I didn't even know the girl.

I've never even heard of the girl,

much less aborted her child, which she carried around

in an alcoholic bottle, holding close

and saying, "This is Dennis and my child."

It's crazy.

It has a conversation with me and a police officer

which is totally insane.

[Orson] I thought that Confidential was out of business.

I did too.

I sure did.

[Orson] This is their coming back.

They're back now!

They're back.

Incredible.

[Orson] Are you going to do anything about it?

Yeah, I'm going to try and find out

if this Barbara Berkeley ever existed,

if there were two FBI men.

I mean, that's the first place to start,

then the next thing would be to try to prove

that I never knew her.

They don't even have a picture of her in the article.

If the FBI says, "That never happened",

then I mean it's a very simple thing.

Otherwise, I don't, I'm going to go through with this one,

because I believe that if I had sued Life magazine

in the first place, this probably wouldn't have happened.

[Orson] The Life magazine probably encouraged them.

[Connie] Nine A.

Yeah, because in Life magazine it said I shot everything,

I shot junk and whatever,

and this goes a little bit farther and says

that she used my junk to become addicted.

[Orson] Well, if you shot junk while you were

directing a picture in that altitude,

you belong to a new race of man, that's all I can say.

Superhuman, yeah.

[Orson] You didn't do anything about the Life thing?

I saw you on The Cavett Show.

That's all I did.

I was advised by my lawyers

that it would be better just to keep it quiet.

[Orson] But all lawyers will always tell you that.

I didn't like it, but they said it would cost me

so much money, just keep it in the newspapers

for about five years more.

[Orson] That's the hell.

Repeating the story that you want to deny,

that's where they get you on a bad story.

Because if you try to stop them, every time

it's covered in a newspaper, they repeat the story.

So so many more people have read that you're shooting junk

in Cusco or wherever the hell you were,

I don't know why you went up, around there somewhere.

But you want to take peaceful means to deal with that,

would you ever take direct action on a personal level

or are you too sophisticated for that?

I've always had fantasies of punching the guy

in the nose, you know.

Well, I don't get into that,

I don't think I get into it, but when I get into it it's,

it takes a confrontation that's an immediate thing

that isn't thought out and preconceived for me

to get into that kind of thing.

For example, we were making "The Last Movie,"

this guy told me he'd stolen some things

and when I confronted him with it he told me

I was making a bad movie, and at that point

I just put his head right through a coffee table,

you know, but it wasn't something I thought about doing.

I can take an awful lot of things,

but there's certain things that I,

like when you're really working on a movie

and you're really working hard, for somebody

to tell you you're making a bad movie,

that kind of thing can set me off.

Or I can, um, there's an area of me

that is a very violent area,

but it's not a preconceived violence.

It's not the kind of thing that I could preconceive

to do something to someone.

I'm not involved in those kind of games.

I can become involved in sexual play games,

but I don't like the idea of a game in my life,

where I play a game.

Where I do something to cause a reaction

that I can stand back and watch.

I could never think of that,

except as directing a movie where I'm trying

to work on people psychologically

so that I can get something from them,

then I'll play all the games in the world.

But then it's no longer a game to me.

It's something else.

[Orson] It's not a game.

That's not a game at all, except insofar

as any artistic effort is related to playing.

But of course it's not a game

'cause you're not tinkering with people's souls,

or trying to at least.

When you work on them very heavily

psychologically though, at times,

to get them into certain things.

[Orson] Yeah.

But they signed up for the trip.

Yeah, right.

Well, I know.

Yeah, yeah.

[Orson] Anybody who's an idiot enough

to be an actor has got-

I really enjoy acting in my own films.

Such a relief not to have somebody screaming at you,

it really is.

[Orson] They screamed at you before you've made your own?

Did they ever!

Did they ever!

They good.

I always figured that directors really hated actors.

They really didn't like actors at all.

[Orson] They're right.

Actors aren't people.

They're a third sex.

They are neither men nor women, it's something else.

And the trouble is that there's a little actor

in every civilian.

A little actor in every civilian.

There's a little actor in every president.

[Orson] Wow.

That's the chief civilian of us all.

No, I think directors are bound

to both love and hate actors.

It's like sex, isn't it?

Isn't there sort of a parallel

between a sexual relationship and a relationship

with a director with his cast.

It's courtship and conquests.

I hope so.

I just, you know.

I don't understand why.

Well, you've got to have a little fun.

I mean, no I, yeah I think it's-

[Orson] On the theory that all sex is fun?

Oh, I didn't, I don't think that.

Oh no, I didn't mean that either.

[Orson] No, it seems to me that you're going

to find a lot, you're much too comfortable.

I think you're going to find, you're going

to find that most directors seem to hate actors,

but don't, there are some that really do.

Hitch really does.

Yeah, well I unfortunately was brought up

in the television area where-

[Orson] That's really getting it going-

It is really fight night there, yeah.

And it was always like, not what I could do

that could help me, but more,

"Don't, don't scratch your beard,

Get your hand down from your face."

I mean it was always no-nos rather than any sort

of encouraging level where, or creative level,

I mean, there was no creative level, but to try

to create, because I've always wanted,

even though it's perhaps a bad television show,

I didn't believe I was ever going to play Hamlet.

If I was thinking about Hamlet, I wasn't going

to ever play Hamlet because that television show

is going to be so bad that I would never be able to get

to the next step, whatever that was.

But-

[Orson] Would you want to play Hamlet?

Yeah, I really would like to.

[Orson] Not Jesus, but Hamlet.

Hamlet, I think yeah.

I think I'm a little closer-

[Orson] God, you are an actor.

A little closer to Hamlet than I am to Jesus.

I mean, not that he isn't here, but I'm just saying

as a human being.

[Orson] I'd say you are much closer to Jesus

than you are to Hamlet because I don't see that you,

I don't see you as reluctant in the role which

has been given you to play.

Which role?

[Orson] Dennis Hopper, filmmaker,

extraordinary leading actor, seminal personality

for a whole generation.

It seems to me that there's no reluctance attached

to your playing that role and everything about Hamlet

is the fact that he didn't want to be Hamlet

or do the things that Hamlet had to do.

It's a good thing.

It's a good thing I live in the mountains

because I don't think I can play that role too long,

sustain it too long in public.

[Orson] Of course not.

Of course you couldn't, nobody could.

But you do sustain it at least you haven't destroyed it.

The books haven't come out of towns yet.

The latest reviews aren't out.

Yeah I-

[Orson] Is that lamp talking too much

right near you there?

I don't hear it saying anything.

[Connie] Nine B.

Where are you from?

[Janice] Seattle.

Seattle, where you from?

[Gary] Low light on the slate.

[Orson] What's that big noise?

Whose camera is that?

Where?

[Glenn] Montana.

[Connie] Can you see it Gary?

It's picking up that noise. - Roll sound, Bob.

[Bob] I'm rolling.

[Orson] A little noise-

[Man] Nine A.

[Gary] No, there's no light on the slate.

[Crew member] Nine AX.

[Orson] Okay.

It's really funny, I find myself asking

like really simple questions to people like,

"Where are you from?"

Where are you from?

And when I say them, I think

"My God, they must really think I'm really corny and dull."

But I really find, I-

[Orson] I think it's important where people are from.

Yeah, it gives you an inch when you say,

"Oh, Seattle, oh, Seattle, Montana."

It's interesting.

[Orson] Where are you from?

Dodge City, Kansas.

[Orson] Really Dodge City?

Yeah.

[Orson] Then that whole Western dream business,

that myth, it must be important.

That's part of what's in your movie I guess.

Well, not really, but the character

is named Kansas and he is the kind of people

that my uncles and those kinds of people were that I felt.

[Orson] What, now I'm going to be shitty and Hannafordish-

Jake.

Everybody knows about you.

[Orson] Yeah, I know.

I know they do.

But the reason I am is because I want to find out

what makes you think you're different

from these uncles you're talking about.

I don't think I'm different necessarily.

I ran away from my family.

My father manages post offices and I ran away from that.

And the more I ran, the more I'm now beginning

to see what those qualities of that man were

that I never communicated with

that are now coming out in me.

I don't like them, but they're there.

[Orson] Do you think people are supposed

to communicate with their parents?

I think it may be better that they don't.

[Orson] They don't in anywhere in the world,

except in the fevered brains of Americans.

The idea that that grown children should communicate

with their parents is part of the American idiocy.

Every animal throws its young out of the nest

or the caves the minute that they're old enough

to fend for themselves.

And the idea that everybody should go on loving it

only really exists amongst some Latins and Jews.

It's not at all a universal notion.

You feel badly about the fact

that you couldn't communicate with your parents?

I enjoy seeing kids that are happy at home.

[Orson] Well, you just mean you like to see happy people.

Well, but I mean, I enjoy seeing a family together.

I don't-

[Orson] Yeah, but so does everybody.

That's a happy birthday to one and all.

But I think that, I don't think I would have been,

if I hadn't have had an unhappy childhood,

I don't think I would have ever

become a movie director or an actor even.

I mean, I think that that was my release

for the lack of communication

that I had in my childhood with my immediate family.

[Orson] You had an unhappy childhood?

Well, I mean, unhappy in the sense that yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'd say so.

I mean as far, I mean, not that I was ever hungry

or any of that.

I mean, I was middle class.

[Orson] You were hungry for love?

Yeah.

I've always been hungry for love.

Yeah.

[Janice] Talk about something else.

Oh, talk about something else.

Yeah, religion.

[Orson] What made it unhappy?

A family demanding too much of you.

[Orson] What did they demand?

Well, anything they demanded.

I went the other way.

I mean, from school to whatever it was, I-

[Orson] Is that unhappiness?

Isn't that just the definition of the normal reaction

of a child with their parents?

Perhaps.

[Orson] How do you get off calling it unhappy?

Isn't that a romantic boast to yourself?

I don't mean you're coming on for me.

I mean, aren't you maybe trying to convince yourself

that it was a heavier scene that it was.

No, I really think no, I left, the first time I left home

at 13 and I left every year after that.

I mean-

[Orson] Why did you keep going back?

It's hard out there, man.

It's not easy.

[Orson] You went back for the groceries?

I wanted to finish high school.

[Orson] And did you?

Oh sure.

[Orson] Why did you want to?

No, I didn't really want to, that was something that's I

sort of thought that if I did that,

that would pay them off for whatever.

That's something they really wanted and-

[Orson] Then you did have a sense of duty.

You went back-

Oh, I've always had a sense of duty.

That's the pathetic thing.

[Orson] Why the hell is duty a pathetic thing?

Cam A.

Why is duty a pathetic thing?

I don't really have an answer for that.

[Orson] Why you went back each time-

It traps you.

[Orson] What?

It traps you, duty.

[Orson] You don't want to be trapped.

I don't like to be told that I'm trapped.

I'm constantly trapping myself, but I, the idea of,

yeah, I'd rather make up the duty that I have

to perform rather than have it-

[Orson] Then it's not a duty is it?

Unless it's imposed by society or by some system

of commonly held beliefs, what the hell is wrong with that?

Sometimes when I talk, you fellows oughta look at me,

too, you know.

All right, it gives more movement.

Yeah.

This could get stationary.

I don't really know.

I really, there's certain areas

where I just don't, it gets too complicated or too simple.

I can't really relate to that.

I don't really know.

[Orson] You don't know then really why you ran away?

Yeah, it's a classic story

of a mother who was very domineering,

very rough swimming instructor and a father-

[Orson] In Dodge City?

Yeah.

She managed the swimming pool.

It's one of the largest outdoor swimming pools

in the United States.

And she was a champion swimmer.

And my father was in the OSS and China, Burma,

India and Japan and so on.

And when he came back from the war,

it was "do whatever your mother wants"

who was a screaming, screaming woman

who I couldn't communicate with at all.

I was terribly attracted to her.

I would like to have gone to bed with her,

but maybe that had been the whole basis

of this relationship.

But she was a screaming, crazy lady, you know?

And my father was a very quiet, dedicated man.

And he said "Don't bother me.

I'm going over these plans.

You do whatever your mother says."

Well, that's unhappy, babe.

But at the same time, it did make a creator

out of me because it made me stop doing certain things.

[Orson] You're only telling me you didn't

get along with your mother.

Now how many people do, who don't become queer?

Or lesbians at least?

I think I'm a lesbian really.

[Orson] You're copping out of the argument.

No, I'm not copping out at all.

[Orson] You're copping out of the argument.

I'm not queer, but I am a lesbian.

[Orson] No, seriously.

If you get along terribly-

I'm serious.

[Glenn] The hat gives it away.

All lesbians wear hats.

[Orson] If you get along with your mother,

you're in a lot of trouble, aren't you?

Yeah.

I would have been in a lot of trouble.

[Orson] What, so you ran away from her attractions

and she repelled you and all that

and that made an unhappy childhood?

Also, I don't like this.

Not so happy.

Yeah.

Keep looking for my mother everywhere.

[Orson] You've got troubles in other words.

And you wouldn't have been a director without troubles.

You wouldn't have been an artist without.

That's what everybody says.

That's the romantic point of view.

Yeah.

I think I'm a little given toward that,

toward romantic, being a romanticist.

I hate it.

[Orson] Do you think it's possible for any director

not to be a romantic?

I don't know.

I don't like romantic pictures.

For example, I sort of dug the story of "Dr. Zhivago,"

but I hated the way the movie was made.

I thought it was the most romantic cliche thing.

I liked the story.

I went along with the story, but I like to think of myself

as a man who is completely unsentimental and like,

you know, I'm the most sentimental slob in the world.

But the kind of art that I like is an unsentimentalized art.

But at the same time, I think I'm very heavily romantic

in my concepts of those things.

I mean, I like to think of "Easy Rider" as, a couple

of guys out on the road on bikes,

and it's a bunch of bullshit.

It's a romanticized image

of what it would be like if two guys were out on the road

on bikes, I mean, it's completely romantic

from the beginning to the end, full of symbolism.

[Orson] Have you ever seen a non-romantic movie

in your life?

The answer is no.

[Crew member] Gary okay.

[Orson] Every movie has to-

Jake, you're a hard man to talk to.

[Orson] No, I don't think there

is such a thing as a non-romantic movie.

There are non sentimental ones

and you yourself started confusing that today.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

For example, you take Potemkin, Potemkin, I mean,

Lenin as you know, believed that movies

were the way that the final revolution

would be movies and not with guns,

but you look at Potemkin and who in the world-

[Orson] Where did Lenin say that?

One of his biographies, I'm not quite sure which one.

[Orson] He says that the revolutions

are going to be made by movies.

Well, his explanation of Eisenstein making movies

and so on at the same time, when I saw "Paths of Glory,"

I was sitting there going "My God, look at that shot.

Isn't that amazing?

This shot that shot this shot."

And pretty soon I said, "What am I saying"

This movie is supposed to be telling me an emotional story.

And I'm saying, my God, look, look how great that shot is.

Look how great this shot is.

I wasn't involved in the emotion of the film itself.

[Orson] Then you were saying that movies

shouldn't be visual?

No, I'm not saying that.

I'm saying I'm caught in the same traps, but I do think

that if they're going to be, if they're going

to tell a story that sometimes they have

to be a little less artistic.

I mean, to get you really emotionally involved

or to have a lasting power.

[Orson] Is there any, is there anything

that a movie can do that is stronger

than appeal to the emotions through the eyes?

I don't know.

I don't, I can't-

[Orson] But you want them to be less artistic,

meaning less effective to look at?

No, I'm not.

I'm caught in between camps.

[Orson] You're talking as an audience and I sympathize

with you, but not as a filmmaker.

Well, I'm caught between camps again

because I'm not the intellectual

and I'm not the bourgeoisie.

I'm not-

[Orson] What makes you think you're not the bourgeoisie?

Well I may be the bourgeoisie

and I may be the intellectual.

[Orson] See, there's no arguing with you.

I don't have anything to argue about.

I'm a very contented man.

[Orson] You are.

I don't know what you were running away from home with,

you must've had the most difficult mother whoever lived.

If she could quarrel with you,

she could quarrel with anybody.

Well, she yes.

Well, I've changed a lot.

I'm over 30 and I can't be trusted anymore and know it.

I would say that for example, I went to parties

like this say before I made "Easy Rider,"

I would end up drunk in a corner,

telling everybody, screaming and yelling,

telling everybody about the great movie

I was going to make some day and why wouldn't they listen

to me and what assholes they were

and what a dying dinosaur they were involved in and-

[Orson] But you were right.

Everything you said was right.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Everything I said for 15 years was right.

But, it didn't, I don't have to do that anymore

because I can make movies, at least maybe one or two

before they finally get to me.

I mean, as long as they make money, which is the great God,

great criterion, then I'll go on making films

and if they don't make money, then-

[Orson] You'll start shouting in the parties again.

That's right.

That's right.

I won't go to the parties, but I'll find another release.

[Orson] Well, what about the guy who's

at peace with the world politically,

you refuse to discuss that.

I don't think that was fair.

Well, I'm not at peace at the world politically.

[Orson] You're not at peace with the world?

Because I don't know anything about this

about just before he left Bert Schneider said,

"Ask him why Henry Fonda called him an idiot?"

Why did Henry Fonda call you an idiot?

I don't know.

I don't know why he called me an idiot.

I think that probably because his son became a movie star.

I don't really know.

He doesn't like me and none of the family ever liked me

and I was married to Brooke Hayward, Leland's daughter.

Right.

And Henry was married to Margaret Sullivan in the beginning.

And I don't really know, except that I've never been

asked into his home and in the middle

of editing "Easy Rider"

they had a big party for 400 people

and everybody went but me and I wasn't even asked.

And so I don't really know.

I know that that whole family hated me.

And, and I hate them.

[Glenn] Perhaps he himself is the idiot.

Well, it doesn't matter whether he's an idiot or not.

I don't know whether he's an idiot.

I liked him in "Grapes of Wrath."

[Orson] But you finally said something,

that you hated them.

Who else do you hate?

I believe in dialectic logic, you see,

I believe you either love somebody or you hate them.

There's no disliking them or liking them.

I mean, if you're going to spend time around people,

then you want to be around people that you love.

You don't want to be around people that you hate,

or you're really into a lot of masochism.

So I believe in dialectics in the same way

that I believe in one through nine numbers

and back to one again, I don't believe in fractions

or maybes or supposes because you can't figure

any distances that way.

If you're getting into microcosms you don't have,

there's no time for fractions.

Or when you get into space travel,

there's no time for fractions.

And in your life there shouldn't be any time for,

"well, yeah, he's all right."

Ah bullshit he's all right.

You either love somebody immediately

or you hate them immediately.

And you might change your mind about that.

But those things I think are constant.

It doesn't really matter what the man does

or what the woman does.

If you love them, you're always going to have

that love for them.

And you will be with them or whatever.

And if you dislike someone, it will only,

it's only going to grow.

So I mean, people spend, constantly spend their life

with people that they really,

sometimes they're all right,

because of business or whatever, but they don't,

they don't really have that love, hate thing going.

[Orson] And you love enough people,

so you can say that the people that you're

with by and large, you love?

I would say that right now at the moment,

living up in the mountains that-

[Orson] You don't see enough people,

so you're forced to make that decision.

No, I see 27 people for dinner every night.

[Orson] The same 27?

Well, they vary.

[Orson] But all lovable?

No, no, but I would say that, generally,

the majority of them I like, I love, sorry.

There, I caught myself in that one, didn't I?

[Orson] Not badly, not badly.

[Glenn] All sheep herders?

No, they're editors mostly.

I hate my editor.

I hate my editors, but-

[Orson] You have to stop calling them editors

as a favor to me.

They are cutters.

Yes.

They certainly are

[Orson] Editor is a false word for it.

It's a pompous word like mortician for undertakers.

Don't let them call themselves editor in your hearing.

Quote me.

They cut.

A nice Anglo-Saxon one syllable word.

Cutters.

[Orson] Dennis, if you either love somebody can we

do that off John in a way.

So we don't make a noise.

Dennis if you love people or hate them as you say,

and that there are no maybes and you don't admit

in fractions in your life as a sort of-

I try, I try not to-

[Orson] Try not to.

That's good enough.

All we can ever do is try in everything.

But if that's so, why do you come across as,

why don't we ever get any expression

of what it is you hate since you do make these strong,

the dividing lines between them?

We haven't heard anything if apparently you love everybody.

No, I've gotten into the habit of-

[Orson] That's why you ought to play Jesus.

No, no, no.

I'd gotten in the habit to, to like try,

I think it's a very dangerous time

to say anything about what you really feel about things.

[Orson] What do you mean by that?

I have too much heat on me at the moment

to really talk very much about what I really feel.

[Orson] What's the-

I mean, if I came out and really said politically

what I felt, or if I came out and-

[Orson] What would happen?

I think I'd probably be put in jail at the moment.

[Orson] For a radical opinion.

Like overthrow the government?

Well, not only-

[Orson] What makes you think that you would be singled out

for such a thing?

It's not just that, but it's also the fact

that I don't think that,

I didn't admire Stokely Carmichael when he got up

and told everybody to arm themselves because

what I felt was maybe it was necessary, but where is he?

He's in Europe or somewhere entertaining royalty.

I don't know.

[Orson] That's a solemn thought,

Stokely Carmichael entertaining royalty.

But you know what I'm saying.

I'm saying he's not in this country any longer

and he's not effective as a leader any longer.

I just, I don't think-

[Orson] But you really think that you were

in a unique position where they would,

where they would bust you before they bust somebody else

for giving radical opinions?

We certainly had the McCarthy hearings thing

that wiped out the movie industry pretty good.

[Orson] That isn't an answer.

That isn't an answer.

I think, I don't think it's an answer at all.

And it's the first area in which I find you really weak

if you'll permit me to say so, because I was,

I did, for example, everything you're supposed

to not to do and never had to clear my throat

during the McCarthy era because I wasn't scared.

Yeah but you were a fascist.

[Orson] No, I'm not Hannaford, I'm talking to you now.

Oh, okay.

[Orson] Seriously.

I don't see what makes you think

that you're uniquely susceptible to the big bust

if you give any opinion, including let's bomb,

the Washington, what's going to happen?

There's an enormous permissiveness

for that sort of revolutionary talk.

I don't think so.

I mean, I don't think I don't, I don't, I don't think so.

I don't agree with that.

I think that the boom's really going to come down hard.

[Orson] Come down.

What's that got to do with now?

Well, I think it's more effective not to do that.

I don't know of another kind of-

[Orson] Yeah, but now you're,

aren't you changing the subject?

You said you liked a dialectical logic

and that's not employ, employing those tools

at all when you change the subject.

And the subject here is,

the subject here is that you think

that you'd get busted immediately

if you said what you thought.

I don't think it's wise to say

what you think at this point.

[Orson] That's another thing.

Isn't it?

I think it's much bigger-

[Orson] You're talking like a politician

because you're not answering the question.

To do something, to do an action.

[Orson] That all may be true,

but you're still not answering this.

So what makes you think you will get busted?

I don't know, man.

I don't know, it's just a dream I had once.

I live in an area that is a very revolutionary area

in the mountains.

[Orson] What does that mean?

They're training for the overthrow of the country.

No, no, no.

It doesn't mean that at all.

[Orson] All right.

It means that I live in an area

that is a very revolutionary area

where people are really being bombed

and really being shot and really things are happening.

Most of these people are Spanish American since 85%

of the people that live where I live, are Spanish Americans,

but they're also, uh, hippie communes that are armed.

And there's a lot of really heavy,

in a town of 1600 people there are 150 federal agents

because it's that close to Los Alamos.

And it's between Los Alamos and SAC, which is in Colorado,

which is 40 miles away.

So at this moment, that area is a very heavy area.

And with that many people and that small a communities,

like looking at everything through a microscope.

So I just think it's that if you're going to talk,

it might be fine to get lost in the city and scream

and yell a lot.

But it's not that easy where I live

because there are people up there who really

are making bombs and there are people up there

who really are storing guns.

And I just think it's-

[Orson] Where you live there are people making bombs

and storing guns?

[Dennis] Yeah.

[Orson] Well, that's not, it doesn't surprise me a bit.

What surprises me is that if you live

in a community like that,

you feel you're in some peculiar danger

for making radical statements.

What?

Yeah.

I would think that might figure.

[Orson] Are you making a bomb?

No, I didn't say, I'm not making any bombs,

but I mean, there are people that I see every day perhaps,

or they come by occasionally

that that might be making bombs.

[Orson] But how does that affect the fact

that you give an opinion about something?

Because when it all comes down, I don't know.

It just seems that it would look as if uh, I mean,

it'd be too easy for them to say, as they do anyway,

"What are you seeing that man for because

like that man's a communist?"

Or "What are you seeing, they're planning to blow up

the Gorge Bridge?"

And "Those are the people that bombed the linoleum plant

up there."

I mean, that's what I'm getting every day

from federal agents.

I mean, at least every two weeks, they come

to my house and ask me questions.

I don't think it's time for me to sit around dinner parties

and suggest that I have any sort of political activities

or any opinions at all at this point.

[Orson] Does it occur to you that that attitude

is what is making possible a victory of reaction?

Yeah, I would think that that would go,

I'd go along with that.

[Orson] And you were in effect by holding silence

by being a reluctant revolutionary,

you were in fact feeding

and making possible the coming American reaction.

Well, I think it always takes an action for a reaction.

I don't know.

I don't, I really don't.

I don't think of it that way at all.

I'm a film, I make movies and that for me

to make movies is really enough.

And that I can say what I want to say in those movies.

For the time being, you know.

[Orson] We, at the time being, do I hear the gentle squeak

of a door opening in the future on this closed secret which

is your political mind?

Well, when I stop wanting to make movies and want

to get involved in politics, I'll be there

and I'll say what I feel about it.

But right now I don't-

[Orson] You think they should be separated?

What?

[Orson] Making movies and being a political animal?

Well if you're a political animal,

it's going to be in your movie and-

[Orson] You just admitted that whatever is in the movies

which are political is going to be so primitive.

With not much interest.

Well, I didn't say that, but-

[Orson] All right what did you say?

What?

About the movie?

[Orson] About the capacity of any movie

to say anything political.

I don't think there's anything as powerful as movies.

I think that movies-

[Orson] What have they ever done?

Well, they've won elections for people, I think.

And certainly the television-

[Orson] What have they ever won?

Well, the television commercials-

[Orson] That's not a movie.

Well, that's- - [Orson] No, come on now.

It's film.

It's film.

[Orson] It's not movies, no sir.

Back to this film.

Not movies, come on.

Movies are what you pay a ticket for and go in to see.

What movie has ever moved anything demonstrably?

Gee, I don't know.

I went around, after I saw "Place in the Sun," I went around

for years thinking I was Montgomery Cliff or every time I go

to a rich person's house, I go right for the pool table

and pretty feel sorry for myself.

[Orson] Nothing to do with moving things politically.

I don't think we've ever really gotten into it.

I don't think anyone has really ever made a movie yet

that really, that really has effected, effected change.

I don't think Eisenstein-

[Orson] That's just what I got through saying.

Yeah.

[Orson] You're agreeing with me.

Yeah, I'm saying, I don't think we've gotten into it.

[Orson] So you're not speaking politically

because you're going to say it in movies

and we haven't done it yet.

So in effect you're saying watch me.

No, no, I'm saying, see,

I deal in it in nursery rhymes anyway, you know,

I don't deal, I don't confront it directly.

Even in my movies, I confront it as an, as a nursery rhyme

or a Mother Goose sort of story.

I don't do, I don't come out and say, hey,

you know, I come out and say,

you know, so I may not be the person that does it,

but I think that there will come a time that like,

you know, there will be films that will move people.

I mean really move people to do something, to make change.

And I think I'm far too much of a poet to be that person.

But I think it's just, it's right here.

It's around the corner.

It's going to happen and-

[Orson] Nothing, Dennis, you're saying, I've got to keep

after you, because if you announce yourself as a devotee

of a logical process of reasoning,

you're not following the argument logically.

Are you?

What argument?

[Orson] Ours.

Okay.

[Orson] Ours.

Which is, I say that if you have strong political opinions,

if they are genuine, you have no right to keep quiet

about them.

Otherwise they aren't opinions,

they're just general feelings.

Unless you are and maybe I'm putting words in your mouth,

but see if I am or not, unless you are protecting yourself

as an artist so that you can continue

to function making movies.

Are you so spooked by the present scene

that you're afraid to say what you think

so you'll continue to be allowed to make movies?

I don't think there's any question about anyone confusing

what I think.

I think everyone already knows what I think.

I mean, I don't think that there's any-

[Orson] On what basis?

On the basis of my nursery rhymes.

I mean, I don't think that this-

[Orson] But you just said, and we have it on film,

about how completely wrong everybody got it.

So, nobody does know.

No, I'm not saying that.

I'm saying.

Yeah, well, I don't think that anyone who's really, I mean,

I don't think there's any question where my feelings lie,

you know.

And for me to, to talk about it seems after the fact to me.

I think that anyone who starts back and looks at I marched

with Martin Luther King and that I was one of the organizers

of SNCC, and that I was in CORE and all those things.

I mean, all they have to do is look at the record.

I mean, and they can see where I, what happened to me

and you know.

[Orson] You're now answering me.

Well, no, I'm just saying that.

I don't think that there's anything

for me to say at this moment.

I'm not Jane Fonda.

I never saw Jane Fonda with Cesar Chavez

or with Martin Luther King or in Washington or any place.

I've never seen, you know, I saw her at the beach

with Roger Vadim in a bikini and I must say,

she's very beautiful, but I didn't realize, you know,

when she was over in Russia, drinking cham, whoops.

When she was over in Paris, having champagne

and cocktail parties and orgies that she had anything

to do with the movement at all.

So, you know, I think that she's a little late,

but you know, great, go ahead and do it.

And then she can go back to Europe

and have some more parties.

[Orson] But what you are saying now,

leaving Jane Fonda out of it, what you're saying now

is that you don't have to speak because of your record.

Not because you're afraid you'll get busted.

And also because like,

I think you lose your effectiveness.

I don't believe that you can work, you know,

that you can work or do anything,

be effective if you're going to like take a soap box,

stand on it and scream and yell and say-

[Orson] Isn't there some,

isn't there a distinction though,

I know that you don't like fractions,

but isn't there a distinction between the soap box

and total silence?

I'm still making movies.

I mean, I'm making a movie, which is not,

I'm not a Marxist-Leninist and I'm not John Wayne,

you know, I'm just caught in the middle somewhere.

I'm not a middle of the roader either,

but I do believe there has to be change.

There has to be change now-

[Orson] How can there be change if you keep quiet?

And a lot of other people keep quiet.

You're going to make the change by movies, right?

I mean, there's change coming.

I mean, isn't there?

I mean, it's either been-

[Orson] Change of subject.

Change of subject.

You've just changed the subject.

The subject is, how is this change going

to come if everybody's going to be silent,

and make their movies, print their books

or whatever their job is and protect that job?

Who is going to make the change except Jane Fonda,

which is a solemn thought.

Well she can change me anytime she wants.

Who's going to make the change?

The ones that aren't talking about it.

[Orson] You really think there's

such a thing as a silent revolutionary, who is effective?

There's never been such an animal since history began

and all the great revolutionary leaders

were enormously loquacious and willing to be heard from.

I don't think there are any revolutionary leaders

in this country.

[Orson] Then there's not going to be a revolution.

That may be true also.

[Orson] Or do you think there's such a thing

as a revolution without leaders?

I think that could happen.

[Orson] Yeah?

With the movies?

No.

No.

I think that like you could get a revolution going with,

I mean, if you were going to have an effective revolution,

the only way you could have it would be in the suburbs

with groups of five people, you know,

who didn't have any one organized group

and said that we are all connected here.

We're all together here.

You could only do it by say five guys-

[Orson] Where's your central committee?

You wouldn't have one.

That sounds logical, more logical than in a country

with the kind of intelligence that this country has,

which seems to be all they have at the moment,

except they can't seem to find prisoners of war.

But beyond that, I would say that

that would be the most effective.

[Orson] Without a central committee?

Without anyone.

Is there a central committee?

I mean, I don't believe that Hanoi

controls the prisoners of war in Cambodia.

And I don't believe that Russia

controls the communist party in this country or any of that.

I think that that's, or that there is a central committee

or any of that.

I don't, I think that's, I find that nonsense at this point.

Because any-

[Orson] You would astonish any revolutionary,

professional revolutionary, whether he was Trotskyite,

Leninist, Titoist or anything else you want to name,

if you propounded him the theory

that you could organize a revolution

without a central committee.

Just in groups of five.

That seems to me, carrying the nursery rhyme principle

to the point of madness.

Absolutely.

I couldn't agree with you more.

[Orson] How can you win with him?

How can you win with him?

Total insanity.

I think it's a crackpot idea myself.

[Orson] Revolutionary.

But no, I think that you're going to find that those kind

of things that have been happening,

like the bombing in Wisconsin University

and those kind of things, those are not done

with any central committee behind them.

Those are done, like by-

[Orson] I didn't say that they weren't done,

but they're also ineffective

because they don't have a central committee.

If a lot of different groups are going

to bomb a lot of different places

all you get as a general atmosphere of repression

and no way of organizing against it.

Everything is done by organization.

Do you really think you can have a revolution

on without organizing it?

Can you change the world by making movies or keeping quiet?

Jake, you're a stubborn old man.

[Orson] He's Jesus.

That's what I keep telling him.

Oh no.

I'm Hamlet, man.

I'm just Hamlet.

[Orson] You've got it.

You haven't read Hamlet.

You said you weren't a reader.

I didn't read it.

I just liked the title.

[Orson] So the revolution is going

to happen without organization.

And-

I mean, do you think it's possible

that there could be a revolution against an army

of the United States or against, unless the army

of the United States decided that there was going

to be a revolution?

I mean, I don't see how any revolutionary activity

could ever get together in any country

without the army finally joining.

So, I mean, it's impossible.

There is no such power in this country.

[Orson] The army is made up of soldiers.

Yeah, right.

[Orson] The minute you have an army,

you want to organize a revolution,

you get to enough people so it includes the GIs.

And then you throw everybody off

because the soldiers refused to fire.

Right.

So like, then you have to do things that get the sympathy

of those people to join or to say I'm not going

to fire on these people.

[Orson] Yeah.

So you have to organize, you don't think they're going

to pour out of the movie theater and drop their guns?

Not with that sound.

[Orson] They're firing on us.

[Gary] John's camera gone or something?

[Orson] John has gone.

[Gary] All right.

[Orson] All right.

We're moving right along.

12BX

[Gary] Mark it.

13A.

[Orson] I think that you are either too modest

or too timid, and the latter solution appeals to me more.

To come right out with it and say that you propose

to change the world a little bit with your movies.

And that's not a fair question.

I'd love to change the world any way I could,

whether it's movies or, you know-

[Orson] How can you say that?

Now that's a nice smarmy statement meaning nothing

if you insist on keeping your silence.

You've chosen your weapons and your weapon is a movie.

So it's no good just saying I'd love to change the world.

That's a meaningless statement.

It's charming, lovable-

I'm not sure it's possible.

[Orson] And without any sense to it.

I'm not sure to change the world is possible.

But I would try any way that I thought was feasible

to change the world.

If it was making movies or if it had to go as far as it has

to go or whatever.

I mean-

[Orson] You said you would try?

I would try it.

[Orson] What would the conditions be?

Because a would implies that there have to be conditions.

Oh, I think there's enough conditions right now.

I don't know exactly what-

[Orson] Then you mean that you will change the world?

Or will try to change the world?

I mean, I think we all try in our own way

to like make change and I'm trying.

[Orson] Do you believe that most people try

to change the world?

Honestly, do you believe that?

Because that's an unusual opinion.

No, I don't.

[Orson] Right.

I don't think, I think hardly anyone does.

[Orson] That's right.

Or hardly anyone is sympathetic to anything.

[Orson] Because you just said we all try

to change the world, meaning that you didn't mean it.

Well, no, I didn't.

I'm involved.

I can't figure out any other reason to be alive.

You know?

I, uh, I don't-

[Orson] So we're getting right back to it.

You're going to change the world with movies.

I said I was going to, well, I-

[Janice] You're gonna try.

Try.

No, I'm not gonna-

[Orson] You're going to try

to change the world with movies?

Yeah.

[Orson] How do you want-

I'm going to try to make movies.

That's it.

That's an effort right there.

[Orson] Because it seems to me that you are not,

you are not willing to admit-

To anything.

[Orson] To anything, yes.

You're right.

You're right on.

I must have an awful lot to hide.

[Orson] No.

I don't think so.

Maybe I have nothing to hide.

That could be too.

I don't know.

I have to make a movie and see if I can find out.

[Orson] That's a great definition of an artist.

Every artist makes what he does to find out

whether he has something to hide or not.

I've got a lot of material.

[Orson] So you're sure you are hiding stuff?

Then you have no instinct-

I think we're all hiding things from ourselves.

[Orson] That's what you come on with?

We're all hiding things.

You're not so, you know that that is slightly version

of Reader's Digest.

Thinking you don't mean it, it isn't worthy of you.

I've heard of the Reader's Digest but I never read it.

[Orson] It isn't good enough for you to say that.

Yeah, I should try to really, I need a script writer.

[Orson] No, you don't.

You're just a sly damn politician running for office here.

It's true.

It is true.

I am running for office.

[Glenn] SAG.

No, no, no.

I'm running from that office.

Yeah.

I'm very involved.

I love politics.

I love the news.

I sit and watch the news.

I can watch the news all day long, you know.

If they had news on television all day long,

I would love it.

You know, I could really sit there all day long

and watch the news.

[Glenn] Rona Barrett.

[Orson] You don't read.

Not that news, no.

[Orson] You don't read the news?

No, I prefer watching the news.

I do read it.

I mean the only reading I really do is the newspaper except

that where I am there aren't very many newspapers.

[Orson] Meaning that you don't read 'em.

No, meaning there aren't any, there's the Denver Post,

but that takes, that's always two days late.

[Orson] Well, if you get, will you admit that

if you get, I'm pressing on you, but I have to.

Because at some moment or another,

you're going to admit something.

Oh God.

I mean, yes.

Of course.

[Orson] Will you admit this, that it is impossible

to follow the news by having solo recourse to television.

No, not if you know what you hear

and what you see with your eyes.

It's not impossible.

I think that most people over read, you know.

[Orson] Not you.

No, not me,

[Man] Except the Gospel According to Saint Thomas.

I overindulge, but hardly ever over read.

[Orson] So, you think that television

is a sufficient medium.

It gives you all you need.

You love the news and what you mean

is the newscaster's version of it on the news.

No, not the newscast, no, but actually

seeing something happen.

I mean, even if it's from a point of view that

is not necessarily the point of view that I feel.

[Orson] How often do you think

you see anything happen on the TV?

Most of the time they're asking the soldiers

to run through a second time

and look like they're firing at us.

You see some dead bodies-

I've got a pretty good eye.

I can tell that.

So that's a second take.

I've got that down pretty good, but-

[Orson] Sure you do.

But there's almost no television film of real happenings

except fires, the arrival and departure of heads of state.

I think you're-

I loved the knifing of the Pope the other day.

That was beaut, that was big.

[Orson] Was that on?

Sure.

I saw Bobby Kennedy killed on TV.

I saw Oswald get it.

I saw, you know, I've seen an awful lot of murders

on television lately that weren't,

they were live even, that weren't-

[Orson] Well, instant replay.

Well, I saw Bobby Kennedy live and I saw Oswald live.

[Orson] So you are glued to your television

set waiting for some other leading figure to get

it at as far as I can tell.

Well, I wouldn't want to go that far.

[Orson] Because the news, I think you'll agree

that you're in a hell of a minority

if you think that you can really get the news from TV.

You can just get a few dramatic occurrences that happen to-

Well it's a cumulation of everyday viewing.

[Orson] Nursed by television.

[Dennis] Nursed by television, he-

[Orson] Sustained by all these tragic events.

[Dennis] Absolutely.

Yeah.

[Janice] We were talking about

I'd rather eat a wild game that I went out

and hunted than a cow

that was hit by a sledge hammer.

[Man] If you'd ever been to a slaughterhouse

you'd never say-

If everybody, if we were back

to those days where that was the way you lived

and that's the way you survived-

What do you mean back to the way,

that's the way we live up there.

[Orson] What do you mean?

Okay.

Okay.

Then you're excluded.

If you can't- - I'm not excluded.

I live with the maj, 85% of the people-

But there's a lot of people that go out,

just not to, not to-

Let me tell you something, 85% of the people

where I live make, their average income is $700 a year.

All right, then those people have a reason to-

So their way of life is to go out and hunt.

And poach, even.

But how many people go out and hunt just

for the pleasure of killing a moving object,

which happens to be a living, you know, a precious animal?

You mean to go out and shoot dogs or-

Not to survive.

Yeah, for the sport of it.

Or hawks?

For the fun of it.

For the-

[Orson] Janice, you have a perfect right

to object to people hunting at your own choice.

You have no right to stop anybody from doing

what they want, including killing animals.

Oh no, of course not.

I could not do it.

[Orson] I say you have to leave this party, nonsense.

You don't want to kill a deer, that all there is to it.

You eat steak, which lived,

which dies much more miserably than any deer.

So it's a poor argument.

I'm not arguing.

[Orson] Give up everything and we now know

the vegetables scream and weep.

[Janice] Oh yeah, I've heard of that.

I know, I know.

That's the reason I stopped eating-

Well, I've known that for years.

That's the way I get it off.

No?

[Orson] You're a vegetable sadist.

Yeah, right.

[Glenn] He admitted to tin cans.

So there is art.

No.

But I do have, ya see, people keep coming up

and saying, how do you feel walking around a day,

all day long with a 30 aught six pointed at your back.

So we got these guns in, you know.

I have one for everybody in the house.

You know.

[Orson] Just in case?

Just in case somebody, I don't want to feel responsible

if one night, somebody really tries it

and somebody else gets killed besides me.

You know?

I mean, I wouldn't like

that going through my head, you know?

So I just have everybody, right.

So, but I of course have the best gun.

I mean, I tend to have that, I'm not into sharing

that much, you know?

And I got a gun the other day that is a marvelous gun

for $160.

And it's a semiautomatic.

It is a machine gun actually.

But it has a little, it has a little, it's awful?

I never felt happier in my life.

No, but it's like, you know, it's got a little pin

on it like this and you just, there's a pin on it,

which makes it legal.

I mean, it's not illegal to have this gun.

But by filing that off it becomes a full machine gun.

Right now, though.

As quick as you can pull the trigger,

it fires 100 bullets.

And it's a Belgium.

No BAR is really basically what it is.

But it's a great gun and it doesn't kick it all.

It's really amazing.

[Glenn] Imagine what you could do

with a little assistance.

[Orson] Have you always been on guns?

Or is that a new thing?

No, that's new.

That's new.

I never owned a gun until "Easy Rider."

And Peter and I both bought guns.

We got as far as Flagstaff and we decided we needed,

we might need a gun.

You know?

So we bought some pistols and-

[Orson] Started practicing?

No.

[Orson] Just carried them?

Just carried them around.

No, I didn't even carry them.

But, we just had them.

They had them in the truck.

Prop truck.

Well, we had guns drawn on us in Louisiana and were asked

to leave a restaurant and we had some sorta

very heavy things happening to us.

[Glenn] Those are the real people.

I don't think they really even care whether

they win or you win.

It's the idea of exchanging blows because their women-

[Orson] Don't rate a John Wayne morality in it.

They don't have it. - No.

[Orson] Not at all.

Their idea of really fighting is like

with eight guys against one person.

You know?

[Orson] Yes so preferably shooting in the back.

Yeah, right.

But they are, but they are dedicated.

To that.

And because they don't, they don't really get enough love

from their women.

Most of their women are lesbians.

And the Catholic thing that's much easier on the women

than being with the men, the men are completely separated

from the women.

I mean, when the Teatro Campesino from Fresno came

to the house and performed there,

I mean performed at the theater where I brought them.

But the women were so surprised that there were some men

in the kitchen helping cook.

They couldn't believe it.

And they brought them in and said, look at this, you know?

And the guys said, well, yeah, we'd help but you know,

but they were completely, but not only that,

but the men sit together and the women sit together.

There was no like, you know, even thinking

that they were going to sit together at the table, you know?

[Man] Groovy.

[Janice] No.

No, well, it's not for me.

It's not for me.

I really-

[Orson] It's their culture, no, it's their culture,

it's nothing to do with-

I dig their women a lot, but it's not for me.

I can't.

Yeah, yeah.

[Orson] I don't think men and women sit,

eating separately means

that they aren't getting enough love.

That strikes me like another one of those God damn American.

Well, I don't mean that they're not getting enough love,

but I think that their religion,

their Catholic religion, whatever it is

that they have separated themselves

and that they are not together as-

[Orson] They were separated

before Catholicism or Christianity-

Really?

[Orson] It's part of their culture.

Really?

I don't, I didn't-

[Orson] And I don't think it shows a lack of love.

I think they respect each other tremendously,

but I'm talking about phys, I mean,

you don't see a man go up and hold a woman.

Maybe that is the great Anglo myth that like, you know,

you should hold a woman.

[Orson] It's the American myth,

you don't see it in England either.

Except just recently imitating the Americans.

Americans are the people who paw each other all the time.

Yeah.

That can be sort of disgusting too, but I love it.

I really do.

I'm for pawing.

I can't-

[Orson] Yeah.

But they're not-

Oh, this mother, oh hi mom.

Another mother.

[Orson] They're not, they're not for pawing.

And that doesn't mean they don't have enough love.

It means they just have another way.

Yeah, they have a way, they get in the car and go off

with a six pack.

[Orson] Sure.

No, really in the back seat.

It's terrific.

They have a lot of romance.

But I'm for that too.

Listen, I don't mind a six pack in the back of a car.

It's just-

[Orson] You're talking about sex,

I thought we were talking about love?

Oh yes.

I'm sorry.

I keep getting confused about that.

[Orson] Do you?

Yeah.

There is a difference, isn't there.

[Orson] You think there isn't?

Yes, I know there is.

But I-

[Orson] Sure you do.

I'm not sure which I prefer.

[Orson] Not sure he knows the different

between sex and love.

And he does.

Oh, I know the difference between sex and love.

Love is painful and sex is fun.

No?

[Orson] Doesn't that depend?

I suppose, but I haven't gotten lucky yet.

So I don't really, I can't really give an answer to that.

Every time I fall in love it's been very painful.

[Orson] And that isn't fun?

That kind of, pain I can dig, but that kind, I don't think

that that's fun.

No, I don't, I don't enjoy that.

[Orson] If you have a painful time,

every time you fall in love,

then you must enjoy having a painful time.

I would say that I keep picking my mother.

But, beyond that I'm getting closer and closer every time.

I really, I would really like to have an old lady,

you know, that's my old lady.

That's going to get old with me in a rocking chair

and sit around and you know, that kind of thing,

whatever that means,

where you look at each other and say, you're drooling.

I mean, you know, you go to the old home together,

you know, or whatever.

But I don't see that for me.

And I don't seem to pick those kind of chicks,

even though some of them act out that role

until they can't stand it any longer.

But I don't see that in the near future for me.

And then very often that woman that

would do that is not necessarily exciting to me.

You know?

I want a little fire there too,

but I don't want fire that's going to burn me

and consume me.

I want fire that's going to excite me and inflame me.

But not that's going to destroy me.

[Orson] Your trouble-

Yes?

[Orson] Your trouble, Dennis,

is that you think your condition,

which is identical with everybody else

in the world is unique.

No, I don't think it's unique at all.

I think it's unfortunate that it isn't unique.

I think that, you know, that the strength

of whatever we are, really is based

on that relationship somewhere, you know.

I saw it in my grandparents.

I did not see it in my parents,

even though my parents never divorced.

I think it was because they couldn't afford to divorce,

but they hated each other.

There was no love there really,

or love that I could understand.

But I saw my grandparents and I saw another generation

that really, really loved each other

that really lived with each other and died

with each other and raised the crops from the field

and butchered their own animals and cured their own ham.

Did the things that is lost to me.

I mean, I'm just beginning to learn them again

because I thought there might come a time

when you might really have to survive again,

and really have to know how to grow crops

and butcher your own food and do your own thing.

[Orson] You think there is a time coming like that?

Well, I think that they will be the only survivors

in the next 20 years.

I mean, with the pollution, with the problems

that we have and just with the general,

well, the cities are destroying themselves

and it's not going to be too much longer.

[Orson] That being so, you still want to be silent?

I don't think I have to talk with that going

to be that way.

I don't think there's going to be a revolution

in this country that's ever going to win.

You know, I don't think that you can, you're going

to ever defeat the army or ever bring down the structure

in any way, that can only be pimples being popped

and things being blown up and people being shot

and things like that, but which will caused havoc.

But the country will bring itself down.

I mean, it's not going to come by a revolution as such,

if it does, it will be a revolution

that comes from South America

and comes into this country with a mass army moving

from the South.

[Orson] Revolutions aren't made by masses.

They're made by minorities.

Middle-class intellectual minorities

make revolutions, that's historical facts.

I'm not an intellectual so I wouldn't know.

[Orson] No, but that's who make them.

Whoever could read, you know.

They aren't made by television watchers.

You never know these days.

[Orson] Well, if you're not going to do anything about it,

it's not going to happen.

Let's see if you can do it with movies.

Or just cure your own meat and hope.

Oh God.

Oh Jake.

I tell ya.

[Orson] Great, cut.

That's it.

All right.

[Dennis] The whole public think

that I'm that guy in "Easy Rider."

[Orson] I suppose they do.

You think anybody, you are on the screen, you are.

You know, they think George Raft-

[Dennis] Absolutely.

When I'm feeling sorry I look at that and say my God,

boy, yeah, right?

[Janice] All right, yeah.

[Orson] Let's get over it.

Let's get over here.

Huh, John?

[John] Right.

Good food.

[Orson] She's a great cook.

And I'm on a terrible diet.

I had to go away and lock myself in the room not to see it

and I'll task it on.

That's that crisis.

Of starvation.

All right, we're moving right along.

[Glenn] Moving right along.

[Dennis] I wish I could think of a question.

[Orson] Everything you've said tonight,

and I'm just getting to know you on camera,

but everything you've said makes you sound like an actor

who became a director, not a director

who had to be an actor.

Am I right?

[Dennis] Absolutely.