A Constant Forge Page #2

I know I never got the lines I wanted

under other directors.

I wanted to direct...

to find out everything I'm capable of

and to make the most of it...

whether people like it or not.

I believe that when you're young...

you should go to all the places

you're uncomfortable in and prove yourself.

Because someday you're gonna

have to prove yourself.

When I saw her, that was it.

I said, "That's the girl I'm gonna marry. "

Well, it was

a hard struggle to convince her.

I kept Gena under constant scrutiny.

I was enormouslyjealous,

filled with suspicions about other men...

and with the terror

that those suspicions might be correct.

She wouldn't put up with that,

and finally I relaxed.

In the beginning of our marriage,

I made a bargain.

Gena would fight me to the bitter end,

and I would fight her to the bitter end.

And the bargain never has been broken.

Together we lead a magnificent,

unassembled, emotional and undisciplined life.

I can't think of anyone with whom

I would rather argue or love than my wife.

We fight and argue and kill each other off

every single day, Gena and me.

But that's only surface. Because we both have

the understanding that when we don't do that...

it's all over.

I took a loft in New York

on 48th Street.

I got about 19 young actors together

to form an acting class.

And everybody paid

two dollars a week, including me.

I started teaching one of the classes,

and I loved it.

Shadows began as an improvisation

the class was working on.

I dreamed up some characters

that were close to the people in the class...

and then I kept changing the situations

and ages of the characters...

until we all began to function

as those characters at any given moment.

During one class, I was so impressed

by a particular improvisation that I said...

"Hey, that would make a terrific movie. "

Every scene in Shadows was very simple.

They were predicated on people having problems

that were overcome with other problems.

At the end of a scene,

another problem would come in and overlap.

This carried it forward

and built up a simple structure.

When we finished

the first version of the film...

we had two midnight screenings

at the Paris Theater in New York...

and they were both

absolutely disastrous.

It was filled with cinematic virtuosity-

with angles and fancy cutting...

and a lot ofjazz going on

in the background.

It was a totally intellectual film,

and therefore less than human.

I'd fallen in love with the camera,

with technique...

with beautiful shots,

with experimentation for its own sake.

I saw all that and wanted to fix it up.

I thought if I could shoot

for 10 more days...

I'd be able to make it into

what I'd originally visualized.

Shadows will always be the film

I love the best.

Simply because it was the first one,

and we were all young...

and because it was impossible,

and we were so ignorant...

and for three years we survived

each other and everything.

In Too Late Blues,

I was working under a studio system...

which I findjust doesn't suit me.

It's a system based on departments

and department heads and chiefs.

I'm not very good

at dealing with department heads...

because I'm not concerned

with their problems.

I'm only concerned with mine.

It was the story

of an idealistic jazz musician...

who falls in love

with a mediocre vocalist-an easy girl.

In turn, his ideals are shaken

and his manhood challenged.

Despondent, he sells out to

a cheap record label, becomes a gigolo...

loses his self-respect and finds

determination to return to his ideals.

A Child is Waiting was strictly

a commercial venture.

From my point of view,

it was a painful experience.

Not because of the retarded children...

but from the fact that it's really hard to

compromise a subject that shouldn't be compromised.

I worked with Stanley Kramer

as my producer for about four months.

Kramer had me replaced

and the picture reedited to suit himself.

There is no way we could have

gotten along together under any circumstances.

I hate the son of a b*tch.

The philosophy ofhis film was that

retarded children are separate and alone...

and therefore should be in institutions

with others of their kind.

My film said that these children

could be anywhere, anytime.

One thing I learned

about the big studios

You can't please them and yourself

at the same time.

I will never make

another commercial film.

If I can, I will make films

with nonprofessionals-

people who can afford to dream

of a much bigger reward...

people who crave to take part

in something creative and...

don't know exactly what that is.

At the end of 1964, Faces was born...

out of friendships

and mutual dissatisfactions.

I was bugged about marriage-

the millions of middle-class marriages

in the United States thatjust...

sort of glide along.

Couples married 10 or 15 years...

husbands and wives

who seem to have everything.

But all these creature comforts

have made them passive.

Underneath, there's this feeling

of desperateness because they can't connect.

What's worse is most couples

aren't even aware they can't communicate.

The whole point of Faces is to show

how few people really talk to each other.

At the beginning, I had written a first draft

that was 250 pages long.

And that wasn't even half the film.

Then we decided to film everything.

Even if the film lasted 10 hours.

We shot for six full months.

So, Faces became more than a film.

It became a way oflife.

We had only $ 10,000 when we started,

and the film cost almost 200,000.

To get the money, I played parts

in five films during these three years.

I became an actor in order to finance

the films I wanted to make.

The story of Husbands

is very personal to me.

My older brother died

when he was 30 years old, so...

I know very well the effect

of the death of a loved one.

From the very beginning,

we made a pact...

that we would try to find whatever truth

was in ourselves and talk about that.

Sometimes the scenes would reflect things

that we wouldn't like to find out-

how idiotic we were, how little we had

to do with ourselves or how uptight we were.

We made the picture

as a feeling about men...

and how they won't give in

to the world they live in.

These three men are 40-year-old kids.

They're happy. They-

Theyjust do whatever they want to do.

It's our night out.

I wrote Minnie because I didn't think

that two people can get married anymore.

The characters in

Minnie and Moskowitz...

is like they have become invisible...

and nobody can see or reach

their real selves anymore.

A Minnie Moore with all the values

in the world but no place to put them.

An empty bed,

a fixed-up apartment, a job...

a boyfriend who is married

who comes once in a while.

Her affair is with Seymour Moskowitz.

He's a footloose, practical,

uncomplicated American dreamer.

A Seymour Moskowitz

has his own style.

He's been tugged at and pushed like the rest

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