Page 115
MacDonald:
How many people came to screenings?
Baillie:
At the University of California, or nearby, we'd always have from twenty-five to seventy people. I'd guess the average was thirty-five to forty-five. Over in North Beach, there might be twenty people. We showed all over the Bay Area. We were very concerned about the tone of the events.
MacDonald:
What tone were you looking for?
Baillie:
We wanted a nice family mood. We knew we were going to show things that were likely to upset people's expectations. They were prepared for the conventions of a literary kind of movie,
real movies,
and they weren't going to be seeing much of that. So we wanted to be kind to them. Mainly, we wanted them to relax. That's why we had pies and fruit and door prizes.
One time I gave a show in Los Angeles, with our normal relaxed mood, but people came in expecting a lot of excitement: ''Experimental Films!" Since they weren't getting that out of
Parsifal,
they threw food at me! I had spent months collecting my old paintings for a show in the lobby, and they drew moustaches on them! If you get 'em worked up, it can go the wrong way. But we always tried to work with the audience.
Choosing programs, however, was like making films: we didn't take audience preference into consideration. Our decisions were totally personal and aesthetic. Putting a program together is like making art. It's one of the few places where a person can function without damage to others, with personal power, self-centeredness, ego, whatevertheir own vision. Our theater was like that. During the tea ceremony in the old Japan, nobody would ever ask could you bring out the
other
scroll, please? [laughter]. Or could we maybe have some
other
tea? No, you'd come and there it was, and because the master of the ceremony, the master of ceremonies, is a particular person, with all the limitations of being particular, the master would do it his or her way. And as a result, this particular ceremony would have a universal touch.
Teaching for me should be done the same way. If a student approaches me, implicitly assuming that I should be concerned with the same politics she is, or he issome fashionable dogmaI always fade out immediately. That's not education. I don't like to please students and I don't like to please audiences. If I did, I'd make Coke ads or porn films, and right now we'd have a fat income. College students are so fashion conscious. These days, they're very concerned about how you're supposed to treat each other, "correct politics." I've always taken to the Zen way, where you make a big joke of what everybody thinks is serious and you're very serious about what everybody thinks is not. You mix it all together and throw it out backward. It stays new that way.
MacDonald:
What else do you remember about the early Canyon days?