These Amazing Shadows Page #8

the National Film Registry is concerned...

I had a couple of different ones

that I put on there.

The one film that I actually got chosen

is a little film called...

Let's all go to the lobby,

let's all go to the lobby

let's all go to the lobby

to get ourselves a treat...

A little film made by

the Filmack company up in Chicago.

And it's a bumper

that goes in between the movies

to get you

to go to the candy counter.

The sparkling drinks are just dandy

The chocolate bars and the candy

So let's all go to the...

lobby,

duh, duh, duddiluh, duh, duh.

But I looked at it and was like...

"This is such an

important little piece of film."

Everybody knows it,

everybody's seen it.

It's the perfect example

of this kind of cinematic advertising

that they were doing.

And it's fun.

So I put it in

and sure enough it got chosen that year.

I was totally blown away.

Let's all go to the lobby

- to get ourselves a treat...

- Thank you, thank you.

When I was younger,

I was interested in films about power.

People with invincible skills.

They could shoot a gun

out of someone's hand,

they could snap

a bullwhip around your neck.

This will remind you

that I have been here once and can return.

And so from around six to 10,

those were the staple of my imagination

and you'd leave the movie

and you'd be acting out

all the parts with your friends.

And as a matter of fact,

on the first Western I ever did,

I ruined my first take on horseback

where I'm shooting somebody with my pistol

because on the finished film,

you can see me...

looking at the guy steely-eyed

and pulling the trigger and going...

Really stupid.

But, you know, it shows you the grip

that these things have on you.

When I was young, when I was little,

that was all I used to think about...

the N.B.A.

There's nothing more powerful

than a true story,

because it makes you feel like...

you don't have that escape valve...

that I have when I watch fiction.

When it gets too tough...

or too close or too emotional,

I can always kind of back out of it

just a little bit by saying...

"Eh, this isn't true."

And when you're seeing

a powerful documentary,

and you believe what you're seeing,

you don't have that

and that's a good thing.

My mother, she's like mother

and father to me.

She don't want me really

hanging around over here that much,

'cause of the gangs.

I always wanted to make stories.

This was a chance, an opportunity,

to hopefully tell a great story,

but a story that was true

and a story that,

in focusing on these two kids

and their families,

what their lives had to say

about the American dream,

about race in America,

about poverty in America.

It's something I think

that needed to be said,

and needs to always be said,

and unfortunately continues

to need to be said.

Arthur agee.

I would say an influence for me

early on was Barbara Kopple's work,

in particular, Harlan County.

Come, all you young fellers,

so brave and so fine...

Seek not your fortune

way down in the mine...

The beauty of documentaries is that

it only happens once.

It can't happen another time.

I remember

when I was with the widows...

from the Farmington Mine disaster

in Harlan County.

They had never gotten together

to speak about what it meant

to lose their husbands.

This was the first time

and they sat in a circle

and they talked about

the most intimate details...

of their husbands, of their lives,

of what it meant to be a coal miner,

what it meant to work

in one of the most dangerous industries

in this country.

And one or two of them

just burst into tears.

Another one got really angry.

I live right almost on the seat of

the main explosion, right there,

and they said,

"You get out of your house!"

And the police told me to get out.

Do you know why?

Because they didn't want me to see

what was going on...

up that damn, dirty, filthy mines!

It's about communication.

It's about connection.

It's about stepping in

to somebody's world

that you would never be privy to...

And being able to be there...

and understand

what's going on with them...

and who they are

and what they're about.

I mean,

nothing could be finer than that.

And nothing else will do that.

And if we don't save those films

and preserve those films,

we won't have a history.

Film reconnects us to the world

and to our experience of our lives

in this space, in this time.

...1929's H2O.

It is a short film about water,

where the filmmaker

starts from a distance

and looks at water.

Little trickles of water,

little waterfalls,

streams with the rocks visible.

And he moves ever closer

to the water

and the light playing on water

to the degree that

you no longer recognize it

as water.

Then I guarantee,

once you see this film,

you never look at water

the same way again.

It's not meant to make sense.

It's not meant to tell a story.

But in many ways, it's meant to

touch us the way poetry does.

It is not always easy to engage

the experimental film.

And one has to simply open one's self

to the language of film.

That's where the beauty lies.

We, through the medium,

we see the world anew.

You know, the great thing about the Registry

is that it's grown to be pretty diverse.

It's gotten a lot more inclusive, you know.

There's a lot of experimental,

avant-garde and independent films.

There's lots of documentary films.

There's home movies.

There even are a few industrial

and educational films.

There was a turtle

by the name of Bert

And Bert the turtle

was very alert

When danger threatened him

he never got hurt

He knew just what to do

He'd duck

and cover...

This country has always

been about persuasion.

Really most societies are.

And these films

really illuminate that...

kind of the changing history

of what we were told.

We must be ready every day,

all the time,

to do the right thing

if the atomic bomb explodes.

Duck and cover!

This family knows what to do,

just as your own family should.

The House in the Middle is a

goofy and rather marvelous film

made in about 1953, '54 by...

let me see if I can get it right...

the National Clean Up- Paint Up-

Fix Up Committee,

in association with

the Federal CML Defense Administration.

And it puts forth a really,

really odd message.

Three identical miniature frame houses.

The house on the right,

an eyesore.

But you've seen these same conditions

in your own hometown.

This house is

the product of years of neglect.

It has not been painted regularly.

The house in the middle,

in good condition,

with a clean, unlittered yard.

What it says is this...

If your house is freshly painted and clean

and doesn't have a lot of crap

sitting around in the front yard,

you're a lot more likely

to survive a nuclear attack!

So it really makes kind of

you know, a moral argument...

a behavioral argument

for surviving nuclear attack.

Two houses are a total loss,

but the well-kept and the painted house

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