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And the impact of the film as a happening was already getting lost from filming for so long. And there was the rental of the camera and the practical aspect of the shooting schedule. At a certain point I just said, "Oh well, the number's conceptual anyway, so who cares. It's enough!"
MacDonald:
I assume that when you did the early Fluxus version of
No. 4,
you just followed people walking across an apartment. For the long film you'd built a machine to do the filming, which allowed you to film in more controlled close-up; we can't see around the sides of the bodies the way we can in the earlier film.
Ono:
Well, in the first
No. 4
I was pretty close too. But, as you say, it wasn't really perfect. In London we did it almost perfectly. My idea both times was very visual. All my films had very visual concepts behind them in the beginning. I mean
No. 4 (Bottoms)
has many levels of impactone being politicalbut originally I simply wanted to cover the screen with one object, with something that was moving constantly. In the course of seeing films, I had never seen a film where an object was covering the screen all the way through. There's always a background. The closest you get to what I mean is like some macho guy, a cowboy or something, standing with his back to the screen, but you always see a little background. The screen is never covered; so I thought, if you don't leave a background it might be like the whole screen is moving. I just wanted to have that experience. As you say, it didn't work in the early version, but it was the first idea I had for the film actually.
And also, the juxtaposition of the movement of the four sections of the bottoms was fascinating, I thought.
MacDonald: No. 4 (Bottoms)
reminds me of Eadweard Muybridge's motion photographs.
Ono:
Oh I see, yeah.
MacDonald:
Was the finished film shown a lot?
Ono:
Well, I finally got an OK from the censor and we showed it in Charing Cross Road. Then some American Hollywood producer came and said he wanted to buy it and take it to the United States. Also, he wanted me to make 365 breasts, and I said, if we're going to do breasts, then I will do a sequence of one breast, you know, fill the screen with a single breast over and over, but I don't think that was erotic enough for him. He was thinking eroticism; I was thinking about visual, graphic conceptsa totally different thing. I was too proud to make two breasts [laughter]. I think there was an attempt to take the bottoms film to the United States, but it was promptly confiscated by the censor
MacDonald:
At customs?
Ono:
Yes.
MacDonald:
There's a mention on the sound track that you were planning to do other versions of that film in other countries, and the film