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ends with the phrase, "To Be Continued." Was that a concept for other films, or were there some specific plans for follow-ups?
Ono:
Well you see, all my films do have a conceptual side. I have all these scripts, and I get excited just to show them to people because my hope is that maybe they will want to make some of them. That would be great. I mean most of my films are film instructions; they were never made actually. Just as film instructions, I think they are valid, but it wouldn't be very good if somebody makes them. I don't have to make them myself. And also, each film I made had a projection of future plans built into the idea. If somebody picks up on one of them, that's great.
At the time I was making films, what I felt I was doing was similar to what
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
[1975] did later. I wanted to involve the audience directly in new ways.
MacDonald:
How did
Film No. 5 (Smile)
come about?
Ono:
When I went to London, I still kept thinking about the idea of smile, so when I had the chance, I decided to do my version. Of course, until John and I got together, I could never have rented a high-speed camera. Well, maybe if I'd looked into it, I could have. I don't know, but I thought it would be too expensive.
MacDonald:
Did you know Lennon well at the point when you did
Film No. 5 (Smile)
?
Ono:
Yes.
MacDonald:
Because I wondered whether you made the film because you wanted to capture a certain complexity in him, or whether the complexity that's revealed in that seemingly simple image is a result of what the high-speed camera reveals, or creates, as it films.
Ono:
Well, certainly I knew John was a complex person. But the film wasn't so much about his complexity as a person. I was trying to capture the complexity of a visual experience. What you see in that film is very similar to how you perceive somebody when you are on acid. We had done acid trips together, and that gave me the idea. I wondered how do you capture this?
MacDonald:
It's a beautiful film.
Ono:
Well, of course, you know from the statements I made about
Smile
[See Ono,
Grapefruit,
"On Film No. 5 & Two Virgins"] that my idea was really very different from the film I finally made. My idea was to do
everybody's
smile. But when I met John, I thought, doing
everybody's
smile is going to be impossible; and he can
represent
everybody's smile.
MacDonald:
What I find incredible about
Smile
is that as you watch John's face, it's almost as though you can see his mind working. I don't know whether it's an optical illusion, maybe it's created by the way that the camera works. But it's almost as though as you watch, the expression is changing every second.