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Mekas:
I realized I was taking chances. I have to give credit here againone is always taking lessonsto Gregory Markopoulos. Gregory had taken chances that I thought wouldn't work, but he always managed to pull through. I don't know how familiar you are with Markopoulos's work; it's practically impossible to see these dayshe doesn't show it in America. I learned from Gregory that what seems embarrassingly personal soon after a film is made, later comes to be part of the content, and not embarrassing at all.
Another lesson came from Dostoyevsky, from a statement of his that I read when I was fifteen or sixteen and which I have never forgotten. A young writer complained to Dostoyevsky that his own writing was too subjective, too personal, and that he would give anything to learn to write more objectively. Dostoyevsky repliedthis is my memory; I may have adapted it totally to my own purpose; it's not a quotation"The main problem of the writer is not how to escape subjectivity, but rather how to be subjective, how really to write from one's self, to be oneself in language, form, and content. I challenge you to be subjective!" It is very difficult to be openly subjective. One has to keep it within formal limits, of course; one must not wallow in subjectivity. Perhaps I come very close to that sometimes. . . .
MacDonald:
Did the fact that 1976 was the American Bicentennial year have any impact on the making of
Lost Lost Lost?
It does tell a quintessentially American story.
Mekas: Lost Lost Lost
was completed because the New York State Council on the Arts (maybe because of the Bicentennial) decided to give four very special twenty-thousand-dollar grants. Harry Smith got one too. Suddenly I had enough money and I said, "This is my chance."
It's amazing, when one thinks about it: everybody saysand it's quite truethat this country is made of immigrants, that America is a melting pot. But it's not reflected very often in American literature. There is no major work that really documents the immigrant experience. Sinclair's
The Jungle
is the closest we have that I know of.
Lost Lost Lost
is a record of certain immigrant realities that have been largely ignored in art.
MacDonald: Guns of the Trees
[1961] is probably the closest of your films to a recognizably commercial narrative. What was the background of that project?
Mekas:
First I wrote a sketchy, poetic script that consisted of thirty sequences. I wanted to improvise around those sketches, and that's what we set out to do. "We" means Adolfas and me. We had agreed to assist each other on our own productions: first I'd make a film, and he'd help; next he'd make a film, and I'd help. He helped me on
Guns,
and I helped him on
Hallelujah the Hills
[1963]. The only thing that went wrong, and