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MacDonald: Jamestown
and
Recreation
use a lot of junk art, trash art, assemblage in a way that moves the films in a diaristic direction. We get a sense of your environment.
Eyewash,
which was made right after those films, uses a highly edited, gestural style, with obviously personal imagery, a method exploited so effectively by Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas.
Fist Fight
has some of that feeling too, but in
Eyewash
the feeling of you moving
through
an environment seems more powerful.
Breer: Eyewash
was the last film I did in Paris. I was back here when I made the soundtrack. I wanted to send it to a festival in Germany that wouldn't accept films without soundtracks. That annoyed me, just as an idea. So I did a soundtrack but kept it separate from the film. I planned to send the two things to them separately, and say, ''Here's my fucking soundtrack; play that,
then
show the film," but I never sent it.
The soundtrack is called "Earwash," by the way; it's exactly the same length as the film. This was a case where I thought I'd use a collaborator, get in touch with musique concrètejust a vague idea. I found out about a guy who ran a series of new music events at the YMCA on Ninety-second Street, New Music for Our Time, something like that. It might still be going. Max Polakoff his name was. He was a violinist. I called him explaining that I had a little film and was looking for somebody to do the sound track. He met with me and saw the film and wanted to do it. I don't know, violin didn't seem appropriate to me, but I figured I could edit what he did. We went to [D. A.] Pennebaker's studio and Polakoff improvised on a violin while he looked at the film. I thought, "Oh shit." But he was a good musician and respected in New York, and there was no way I could politely disengage myself. Later, he wanted to show the film at the music series. I hadn't yet heard the mix; we'd just gotten it back from the studio. As things turned out, it'd been overmodulated. It was too loud and sounded like a cat being pulled through a knothole. We didn't hear it until we played it that night for the audience, a full house. Before the presentation Polakoff dragged me onto the stage. I muttered something about keeping the sound separate from the picture because I didn't want the sound to interfere with the movie. Everybody giggled when they heard that, except Max. What I was saying must have seemed aggressive to him. Anyhow, we played the track and it sounded awful; then watched my film, and went on with the rest of the program. The next day newspapers wrote up the event. The music critics didn't give a shit about the film, but really roasted Max. I called to apologize for the lousy reproduction of the sound, but he didn't want to speak to me, and I haven't seen him since. And I haven't used the sound since.
MacDonald:
How did you come to do mutoscopes?