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and I hope it provokes thinking, but that it's sometimes identified with the art style called "conceptual" seems peculiar, too.
MacDonald:
You were friends with Taubin and Frampton at the time when you made
Wavelength
. Was there a reason beyond just knowing them and their being available that they show up in the film? Was Frampton's appearance related to his being a particular kind of artist?
Snow:
No. They were friends and we had talked about what I was doing. I knew that Amy had acted, and I wanted an actress. She'd been in
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,
a popular Broadway play. Hollis volunteered. I was going around saying, "I want somebody to die for me," and he said, "Oh,
I'll
do that."
MacDonald:
When you first showed it to this small group of friends, they liked it very much. How was it received when it was first shown to a larger New York audience?
Snow:
It wasn't shown in New York at first. You know what happened? When Jonas saw it, he said, "You know, you should send
Wavelength
to this festival coming up in Knokke-Le-Zoute [Belgium, 1967]." But I didn't have enough money to finish the film: when I first showed it, the sound was on tape. I had decided I wanted to have the sine wave sound, the glissando, on reel-to-reel tape: it was better sound. But then I realized that was impractical, and if I wanted to show the film again I'd have to have an optical track. Anyway, Jonaswonderful Jonas!found the money to make this new print and he sent it to Knokke-Le-Zoute and it won first prize, and all these things happened as a result.
MacDonald:
Was
Standard Time
[1967] done as a sketch for
Back and Forth
[
«
]? In some ways they're very different, and yet when one sees them in succession, the question is almost inevitable since both center on the panning camera.
Snow:
Well, no, because I didn't really know that
Back and Forth
was ever going to exist.
Standard Time
was exploratory, I wanted to find out about circular pans on a fixed base and about what happens at different speeds. And when the film was finished, I got the idea for
Back and Forth
. I decided I wanted to work with back-and-forth and up-and-down pans of a limited angle.
MacDonald: Standard Time
has a diaristic element.
Snow:
Yes. It's my home movie in the sense that that was where we were living123 Chambers Streetand Joyce is in it.
MacDonald:
I assume
Back and Forth
was scored but that part of it was exploratory.
Snow:
Yes, that's right. Before I started shooting, I worked out the speeds with a metronome. I knew it would start with a medium tempo and slow down. And I guess that's the slowest point, actually. Then it