Page 243
about and all the images, everythingI always read the text from beginning to end.
The text
is
very strong, of course. I chose as strong a text as I could think of at the time I was making the film. And the images are just these flat, two-dimensional baseball cards. At first glance, they don't seem to offer much information, though they do change, and I think that they're quite beautiful as objects. They also represent the innocence of youth.
Anyway, I wanted to play down the images and play up the text. Also, at some points the sound track is probably more interesting than the image or the text.
MacDonald:
The issue of gender seems very central in
American Dreams,
which offers a comment on a certain kind of macho engagement with the world. Hank Aaron's understandable but compulsive need to pass Babe Ruth; Arthur Bremer's less understandable but not totally mysterious compulsion to kill Nixon (or some other public figure); and your compulsiveness on one hand in revealing your baseball card collection, and on the other in maintaining a rigorous formal structure throughout the filmall of these activities seem parallel instances of a particular male way of functioning in the world.
Benning:
That's exactly what I was trying to suggest! When Bremer talks about how the danger of driving over eighty miles per hour with a bad front tire gave him an erection, the speech on the soundtrack is LBJ talking about escalating the Vietnam War. The main point of the film is that this kind of maleness is causing problems.
MacDonald:
How did your collaboration with Bert Barr on
O Panama
come about?
Benning:O Panama
was made because Susan Dowling at WGBH liked my films and Bert's writing and got us together. At the time, I was trying to raise money for
Landscape Suicide
. I had part of it, but not all, so I thought I'd take that project on. As it turned out, it took a year to do and cost more than
Landscape Suicide
. I hadn't collaborated in a number of years, so just going through the process was interesting. Bert and I worked well together because we thought a lot alike, but neither of us liked compromising. I probably won't collaborate again for a while; it's difficult. But I like the film.
MacDonald:
What got you into the
Landscape Suicide
project? What drew you to Ed Gein and Bernadette Protti?
Benning:
I had written a script about Ed Gein, Charles Evers (Medgar Evers's brother), and an ambulance driver in World War II. I was going to have each of those people deliver a monologue reflecting on the particular acts of violence they experienced. Gein would do what he does in
Landscape Suicide
; Charles Evers would talk about his brother's death on their front porch; the ambulance driver would talk about her experiences in