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James would say another, and somehow this film developed. We both conceived of it, and we both worked on it. Even then I was interested in forcing narrative away from simple story-line and character identification toward problems of representation, language, and the reading of the film text. The minimal narrative in
Michigan Avenue
contains a beginning, middle, and end, but an active viewer is required to fill in the spaces.
Benning:
I remember that Bette was going to make a narrative film about two women. I can't remember the details. She started the film, but somehow it changed from a somewhat straightforward narrative to an optically-printed filman optical printer arrived in Madison, and I was familiar with it. I kind of horned in.
MacDonald:
As the film goes on, the women's actions seem increasingly performed for the camera.
Gordon:
It's very much a conscious performance. The two women stare straight at the camera and the implied spectator, confronting the voyeuristic gaze.
Benning:
I think one reason for Scott's observation is the actual change in technique. The first section was shot in slow motion (fifty frames per second); every frame was copied fifty-eight times, then dissolved into the next frame with a twenty-four-frame dissolve. It looks like a still at first, and as you watch the frame, different areas seem to move. Cars are the most obvious, then you see that people are slowly moving up and down. The second scene was shot at twenty-four frames per second, and every frame was copied once. The last scene was shot at twenty-four frames, and we copied either every third or fifth frame. The jump in the action is larger there, so you become more aware of the optical printing. In the third scene, the action is fast enough so that you actually start to see the freeze frames dissolving into each other. I think the changes make you concentrate more on the formal elements.
Gordon:
It's a metaphor for the workings of persistence of vision in film.
MacDonald: I-94
seems to have been, among other things, an attempt to assess where you were vis-à-vis each other.
Gordon:
Hmmmm.
Benning:
I think once we started making the soundtrack, the assessment just happened. We had decided to expose each otherliterally. We were thinking about the sound, and I gave Bette the microphone and said, "Tell me something intimate," and she did. As soon as she finished, she said, "You tell me." I wasn't ready either. The film wasn't preplanned; we were driving along with our camera and just decided to make a film together.
Gordon:
It was spontaneous. Of course, now I realize some of the