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establishing shot?" I knew I was in trouble. I'd syncopated everything. I even had a pixilated sequence of the king of Sweden arriving at the museum and jerking through the whole exhibit shaking hands rapid fire with all the other dignitaries. Brinkley looked at the whole thing, said some patronizing word to me, and we knew that was that. The assemblage was eventually given over to their editors, over my not quite dead body, and they cut the film. It appeared on television, with a conventional talking-heads interview with Hulten which they'd gone back to Stockholm to shoot. It was my footage, cut along the lines of my assemblage, but without the rhythms. I sat there watching it, cringing, with my parents in Michigan. They were proud: my name was in the credits. I did get paid, but I felt like I'd been raped. When I tried to get the footage later, they wouldn't cough it up. I
was
able to buy that new Bolex, the Rex model. Up until then I'd been using an old non-reflex model that belonged to my father. I shot
Pat's Birthday
with that new camera, and I still have it. At the rate of ten minutes of film a year, I haven't worn it out yet.
After I got my new Bolex, I took to loaning out the old one. One of the first borrowers was Carolee Schneemann. She went away with Jim Tenney for the summer and came back with the footage later used for
Fuses
[1967]. I remember her showing me this film of her and Tenney endlessly fucking, and wanting to know how I felt about it. Finally I realized that they'd had to stop and wash clothes and cook food and do other things in between the fucking, just like the rest of us, and I got over my depression.
Anyway, to get back to
Pat's Birthday:
when I'd gotten to New York, I'd met Oldenburg and other pop artists. We used to go to parties and hang out. I was on the fringe. Then they came to some of my films. I'd been introduced to Oldenburg as a guy who owned a movie camera, and he wanted to employ me (for no pay) to shoot his happenings. This is 1961, 1962. I said nix. I'd just done that film with Tinguely [
Homage to Jean Tinguely's Homage to New York
] and realized, once again, that I didn't like to use my camera as a substitute witness for myself. And I'm not a good live cameraperson anyway. But I went to all the happenings. In the spring when he'd finished them, we talked about making a real film together. I suggested doing it out in my neighborhood in Palisades, in Piermont, where
The Great Train Robbery
[1903] was shot and where Woody Allen shot
The Purple Rose of Cairo
[1985]. Allen turned that little town into a Depression town. The local joke is that he had to upgrade it about ten years to make it look right.
So Oldenburg and I hung out there and talked, and then on our appointed day a week or so later he arrived with Lucas Samaras, and Pat [Oldenburg], and one or two other people. He had a big duffel bag full