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Robertson:
I'm trying to take a pretty picture, if that's what you mean.
MacDonald:
I was surprised to hear you say that you shot for a long time before you even looked at the footage.
Robertson:
I still do! I don't look at it for at least a year! I just do assembly editing. Everything I take is in the film. The only alteration I've made is the taking out I've been doing lately, and I really regret that in a way. I thought that with the diary it would be great if
everything
was included, if I left overexposed or underexposed film in. Then the guy who is in synchrony with me somewhere in the world would have plenty of room to put in
his
words. But lately I've been taking more and more out of the diary so that he has less and less space to put his own words over. Mostly I just take out anything that's not visually comprehensible, that's completely black or completely overexposed (thinking ahead to video transfer). Almost everything else stays in.
The idea of not looking at what I take is so that I always have a naive idea. I don't take a picture deliberately and then take another picture deliberately. I take pictures when I find something I really like. Recently I noticed that an image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, naked (I saw it on MTV), had gotten paired up with a picture of myself standing nude in front of my closet where my measurements and weight are printed on the side of the door. So there's probably subconscious memory and association involved with some of my images.
MacDonald:
How much other avant-garde film have you seen?
Robertson:
I saw a fair amount when I was at Massachusetts College of Art, but I've gotten out of going to a lot of films. I've got to put going to see film back in my life. I'm trying to rebuild into my life things that I let go when I was really depressedlike reading.
I started reading last fall in order to counteract the boredom of the mental hospital. I read voraciously and I've been reading ever since, which is good, because about a year ago, and at times over the last few years, I've found it difficult sometimes even to read a newspaper. So I've been building reading back into my life.
And I've built exercise back into my life. They say a person who wants to lose weight should gradually increase their physical exercise. Well, I'm running every day now. I think the next thing is going to films.
The problem is that I moved back home with my mother, to save money for film and get out of the city. It costs about fourteen cents a second just to shoot and process original film, without making prints. Then my mother decided to be the guardian of my mental health. She used to be in the habit of going out to film festivals with me. At the moment, I hardly have anyone to go with except her. And I'm kind of afraid to say, "Mom, I'm going out to a film": she'd be disappointed that