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MacDonald:
By the time you made
Walden
you'd been filming for a long time. Had it gotten to the point where you were deciding in advance that you wanted to go film this or that for specific film? It's clear that you decided to go to the circus several times for
Notes on the Circus
.
Mekas:
No, I didn't plan. I just recorded my reactions to what was happening around me.
Notes on the Circus
originally I thought I'd get it all the first time. But I got involved in the circus and went three or four times. I decided in advance to film Peter Beard's wedding, but when I arrived, I discovered that my Bolex wasn't working. Peter happened to have a Baulieux camera, so I used that. I had never used it before, so it was very risky.
MacDonald:
What is your connection with Peter Beard? He's very prominent in the diaries.
Mekas:
I had met him before
Hallelujah the Hills
. He was the cousin of Jerome Hill, whom I knew by that time. We became friends during the shooting of
Hallelujah the Hills,
and the friendship has continued.
MacDonald:
In the first reel you say, "I make home moviestherefore I live," a line that's quoted a lot. Had you seen much home-movie making?
Mekas:
No. I hadn't seen much 8mm until the Kuchars came on the scene. They brought a few others out into the open. Many millions of cameras were floating around in the country for home-movie making, but no one saw the footage. We did attend amateur club screenings in the late fifties.
MacDonald:
All your films are involved with social rituals, but
Walden
seems particularly involved with the specific social rituals that are often the material of home movies: weddings especially.
Mekas:
There are a lot of weddings in my diaries. A wedding is a big event in anybody's life; it's colorful and there's always a lot of celebration. As a child, I remembered for years my sister's wedding. Where I come from, weddings go on for a week or two. Occasions like that attract me. There are, of course, no such weddings here. But I film them anyway, hoping to find the wedding of my memory. There are also places to which I keep coming back. One is the Metropolitan Museum. On Saturday and Sunday lots of people sit on its front steps. There is something unique about this and for years I've kept going back, trying to capture the mood that pervades it. I think I finally decided I've gotten what I wanted and I'm not going back again. The autumn in Central Park is also something unique and for years I kept going back to it, but now I think I've gotten that. Winter in Central Park also. And I've filmed a lot of New York rains.
During the period when I was shooting the
Walden
material, I wanted to make a diary film of a teenage girl just leaving childhood and entering