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One of the things we were interested in was comparing radio announcers' voices. Even though they all sound alikethey've been trained to sound aliketheir voices change slightly as you move across the country.
MacDonald:
Another interesting formal aspect is the way in which the film reverses foreground and background. Normally, the viewer looks past you through the window. The things closest to the viewer, the things inside the car, becomepsychologicallythe background.
Benning:
And in the frame we seem to be continuous, whereas things outside the car are discontinuous with each dissolve. There's always a continuous space
and
a discontinuous space.
Gordon:
And the constant actionschanging drivers, eating, pulling over, switching hats and scarvesmalter the viewers' perception of and relationship to the image, which is actually a very complex frame.
Benning:
In a sense the car is the main character. You get a real sense of a nation built on automobiles.
MacDonald:
Do you two plan to collaborate again?
Benning:
No.
Gordon:
I thought the collaborations were fruitful, though. We never had any large disagreements about what we were doing. The disagreements we did have, and James can correct me if I'm wrong, had to do with working time, which I think is an interesting issue. I can't work late at night, and I can't: work and work and work for hours. That's one reason we stopped collaborating. It also had to do with the credit that was going to him but not to me.
Benning:
It was more my decision to stop than yours.
Gordon:
Definitely. But ending the collaboration pushed me to go in a specific direction with my work, and I'm pleased about the new level of experimentation and questioning. I would collaborate again, with someone who had cinematic interests similar to mine.
MacDonald
[
to Benning
]:
8 1/2 × 11
is the earliest of your films that looks like what came to be thought of as a "Benning film."
Benning:
I began by writing a detailed script about two women and a man traveling in different parts of the country; the women would somehow pick up the man. I wasn't sure what style I would use. I just thought I'd use the ideas that came from the optical printed films in a narrative, I did decide to change from a barrage of images to long takes, I tried to develop the space by moving objects within the frame. After it was finished, I realized that I was using a minimal narrative as a context for the formal elements of film itself. Now that I look back, it seems like there's a direct correlation between
I-94,
for instance, and the story idea for
8 1/2 × 11,
though I did occasionally break up that regular alternation, so that it wouldn't be too predictable.
I took the script and scratched out certain scenes that helped to