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power here is constant surprise, which compels unusual alertness and the exhilaration that comes with that.
Most of us can't really deal with a situation where every frame is different. The mind tends to superimpose them, group them together into more manageable units for easier comprehension, so that individual frames aren't really seen individually. A two-frame image has a much better chance of standing on its own, and three- and four-frame images are workable, practical units; almost anyone can perceive them.
MacDonald:
How widely was
Huge Pupils
seen? Were there extreme reactions? Were screenings shut down?
Noren:
It was shown a great deal and was considered very scandalous, although that was never my intention. Things were still incredibly repressive then. People who didn't live through it can't really imagine how much so.
Naked Lunch
and Henry Miller's books were still going through the courts, and I routinely had material seized by the labs. I remember once going to pick up some material at a lab and being told by the manager that they had destroyed it. I was outraged, but curious too, and asked him what they had done with it. It turned out that they had dropped the rolls in boiling water!
I think it was in 1967 that I showed the film at Notre Dame, of all places, at a conference on eroticism in the arts. The administration told the students not to show the film, so of course they immediately set up a secret screening in an out-of-the-way classroom. At least three quarters of the student body showed up and tried to squeeze into the room. About five minutes into the film, the police broke the door open and tried to seize the print. Some students got hold of it first and took off, police in pursuit, waving night sticks and mace cans. Meanwhile the print had come loose and was unreeling all over the campus as they ran with it. Finally, the police cornered them. Wild punches, bloody heads, girl's screaming, film flyinga living defense of the Constitution. The print was literally ripped to piecesthe body of Dionysus. That was an extreme case, but there were several other incidents in the heartland. In New York things were more civilized. A well-placed twenty-dollar bill assured your right to free expression.
MacDonald:
It has been years since I saw
False Pretenses
and
The Phantom Enthusiast,
the next two sections of
The Adventures of the Exquisite Corpse,
and I confess I remember very little. You've told me that the films are out of distribution, being reworked. Recently, I heard that your reworking them has to do with the demand of the women filmed not to be seen in the films.
Is
that the issue? Also, according to your filmography,
Huge Pupils
was reworked in 1977. How was it reworked? And why?
Noren:
I can't imagine why anyone would say that to you. No one I've