Page 296
necessity and pleasure of storytelling, because I've learned so much from being engaged by other people's stories of their lives. I've always wanted to make films that are as emotionally honest as they can be, and then I hope that other people will learn something from seeing them or feel that a part of their own life is being honored in the films.
MacDonald:
While I understand the resistance of some filmmakers to the idea that watching films should be a pleasure, I sometimes have a suspicion about the "moral purity" of this stance. I mean, if you're against sensuality in film, you don't have to go through the painstaking process of learning how to create a sensual experience.
Friedrich:
Right, right. It's the same thing with humor. I really envy people who can make funny films. That's a great talent. I would love my next film to be funny to a certain degree, but that's very difficult to do. I think there's a difference between humor that you laugh at, and wit, where something is clever and surprising and pleasing in a more subtle way. I think there are witty moments in
Gently Down the Stream
and in
The Ties That Bind
.
MacDonald:
One of the things I found really interesting about
The Ties That Bind
is your mother's perspective on the arrival of the liberating allies. She goes into some detail about how they destroyed her house; you can feel how violated she felt by that.
Friedrich:
When I talked to my father about it, he said that as far as he was able to observe (and he was never in combat; he came in at the end of the war to work in the denazification program), the first soldiers to come in were the combat troops who had seen a lot of action and were just sick and tired of everything. They came through and went home. It was the service and supply guys who hadn't been in combat, who were looking for some kind of action, that caused trouble. The combat troops had probably gotten rid of a lot of the aggression they felt toward the Germans, but the supply guys were doing it this other way. My mother told me a story about two friends of hers, neighbors, who were raped and killed by American soldiers. I was going to use that story in the film, but I decided that what I had was strong enough. She had many stories about being harassed by American soldiers. She was almost raped one time but got away.
MacDonald:
You mentioned earlier that you feel your parents gave you the skills you needed to be able to support yourself. How do you earn money?
Friedrich:
I do pasteup. I haven't worked lately but when I do, I get eighteen dollars an hour. I hate it passionately, but I learned how to do it by pasting up the first couple of issues of
Heresies
(with some other women). You just take the text and the picture and set it all up for the printer. It's, very exacting, mechanical manual labor. Actually, I think it's