Page 164
Sketch for McCall's
Long Film for Four Projectors
(1974).
MacDonald:
When I showed
Line Describing a Cone
during the mid seventies, people loved getting into the mysterious smoky space it created. Now with the health backlash against smoke, many people won't stay in the room with the film.
McCall:
Actually I consider the use of smoke a problem. But it's a necessary contingency. I've shown the film in city spaces where there's a lot of dust, and it works there. But I showed it in Sweden once without smoke or dust, and it was completely invisible. Personally I don't like the perfume smell of incense, which is the most convenient way to make smoke. Somebody at the Chicago Art Institute told me that when they decided to show it, they consulted their chemistry department and came up with a completely odorless, safe smoke. I wrote the method down and then lost it. It's always with a little regret that I use the incense method. And when you have a film as long as
Long Film for Four Projectors,
cigarette smoke is a real problem.
MacDonald:
With the later "Cone" films it matters less; they're more visible without smoke.
McCall:
When I drew the lines for those, I made them a bit thicker. The line of
Line Describing a Cone
is delicate; it could have done with a little strengthening.
MacDonald:
In a sense there's an irony in the fact that the implicit politic of the filmthe idea of using film to communitize the film audienceis undercut by the presumptions of the spaces or the institutions in which it's usually shown.
McCall:
Well, that's always going to be true. Every context you show a film in is always going to imply a whole set of assumptions. If Americ-