Interview by François Bernadi and Jessica Agullo
Photos François Bernadi
In the sixties Paul Morrissey and Andy Warhol were sharing the same odd ideas and they experimented with them. Then Morrissey gave us fantastic films; “TRASH” is probably the greatest underground film ever, “DRACULA” and “FRANKENSTEIN” are masterpieces of gloomy humor. Paul Morrissey is finishing his film titled later “Mixed Blood”. This interview took place in the editing room on April 27th, 1984.
Francois Bernadi: Could you tell us about your last film? It’s called “Voyous” isn’t it?
PAUL MORRISSEY: Well, it was called that simply because we didn’t have a title then. It was supposed to be called “Alphabet City”, but those other people stole the title. They were not supposed to take it, they signed a paper saying they wouldn’t and they took it anyway, Probably we could have gone to court and stopped them but there would have been problems with laboratories anyway. You cannot use the same name for two different films because the laboratories get confused. We couldn’t think of a title so we used a French word. Now we use the title “Downtown”, it’s not great but at least it’s used once or twice in the movie- I’- we’re going downtown…
Jessica Agullo- What is it about?
Pm: Drug selling, gangs shooting each other, kids shooting each other. A comedy.
JA: Not / I take it, “comedy” in the classic sense.
PM: In the classic sense, no. It’s the kind of comedy I’ve made before; it’s just my kind of comedy.
FB: Like “Dracula”?
PM: A little like that, a little more realistic. But all my movies have a balance of comedy and something else. This one has got a lot of other things but it’s a way of treating the drug business as a joke. Which is the way the city treats it. (laughs) I mean nobody cares about it. I would never treat it like a serious subject; nobody cares, who cares about nobody? Seems to be in a soap opera.
FB: Is this subject your choice?
PM: Yes, it is.
FB: Why did you want to make a comedy on drug dealing?
PM: Why not? I’ll make a comedy on anything. I suppose every subject should be done as a comedy. That’s how I see it. But also when you are low budget, that’s one of the few things that doesn’t cost money. I mean, everything else costs money: production values, different angles, shooting a lot… You know, to make a “drama” you have to be very careful, everything should be perfect.
JA: So the film material as a creative force within the work is very much secondary to you, cinematography, decor and so on.
PM: Yes, it’s secondary. The total should be your main interest. All dramatic fiction is based on character and movies are no exception. Your novel is based on character, your long poem is based on character, your plays are based on characters.
FB: You have Puerto Rican actors in your film?
PM: Yes, I am very authentic in that sense. I have every nationality in the book except Americans. I left the Americans out. I have a French, a Japanese, a Honduran, a Guatemalan, a Columbian…
FB: Italian?
PM: German, no Italian, Puerto Ricans and a Cuban, he is the star.
JA: Are there scenes in any of those places?
PM: No, no, it’s down in Alphabet City. That’s why it was a good title “Alphabet City”, because I have every nationality in there.
FB: Before this film what did you do?
PM: I did two other films that haven’t been released. One will, but there are politications between the producers … bah, I don’t want to go into it. The other one because nobody could understand it. Well, I guess everybody gets a chance to make one film nobody else understands. I don’t know, maybe they didn’t understand it or they didn’t like it. I hope, when the other one comes out and this one comes out maybe the third one will be shown too. It’s a cute film, but again it’ s a comedy. It is hard to make independent films like I do, always making humor. They think you have to be “independent”, you have to have a mission and a purpose and blaaa. . . , and you believe in the art and all that. That is what independent filmmaking means to New Yorker critics anyway. They don’t understand that you can do independent films and still be humorous. I don’t know, that’s the way it looks to me. You see, when a film is good, it’s entertaining and it’s humorous, and you like it and you say: “Oh, he did a good job, he thought up these interesting characters “. There is nothing more you can say about it, and, you know, teachers or stupid people who write about movies – they can’t analyze it! Good things exist on their own and they don’t bear a lot of critical scrutiny. I mean you can say it’ s very good because it’s very well done but that’s the kind of film that when you see it you see an audience connects to the people on the screen. So all the edits in the entire movie or anything else – the writing? … what is the writing unless it’s good characters? It’s idiotic to me… pointless! That’s why a good book is good because the characters are good and, unless you find interesting characters to connect to, there is nothing there, to my mind. It’s the problem now with literature,’ literature doesn’t exist anymore, it’s dead because they dropped out characters a long time ago. But they have these great institutions and school teach literature- modem literature – it doesn’t exist! There is no such a thing as modem literature. It’s all garbage. Yet, they are talking about the importance of this one, and that one is important, and we got to teach this cause that’s important and none of these writers they teach, from the past 60 years, are what we read.
There are a couple of good writers, there is Evelyn Whorgh, but they are not the ones they teach. They don’t teach comedies. And even in novels, the only novels that really stand up are the comedies. There is Jane Austin. Nobody reads nineteenth century literature, unless it’ s funny. Did you ever think of that? The French – they have not got funny literature!
(laughs)
JA: Oh, I disagree; I just found a wonderful book…
FB: It’s true, the French are not funny.
PM: No!!
JA: “Lafcadio’s Adventures” (Les caves du Vatican) by André Gide.
PM: Yeah, I liked that book. I once thought you could make a movie out of that. But I remember there was a big problem that you couldn’t really overcome. It would never be anything more than a nice… Basically it was silly and farcical but it has the character who stabs himself. I put that in the movie I told you nobody understood or liked too much. My character went and stabbed himself in the leg a few times. I just took it right from that book. I thought it was such an interesting thing for somebody to do – to cut their leg up like this. But in the book, he did it to punish himself, and I think for my character, it wasn’t self-punishment; it was that he made a mistake. It didn’t make sense in the story, he didn’t know he had made a mistake, but he did.
JA: It was sort of an intuitive impulse.
PM: Yes, there was some sort of structural flaw in the story narrative because you didn’t know why he was doing what he was doing. André Gide is such a famous writer and there’s not really one French movie based on his work except something called “The Symphonie Pastorale” which is some sort of soap opera, not at all typical of his work. It’s an old, old film. I don’t think it’s ever seen anymore. But actually, his books are a bit heavy-handed, and very serious. The things he wrote that are sort of humorous, stand up a lot better.
FB: Is Andy Warhol involved with this production?
PM: No, he’s too busy doing other things to waste time with movies.
FB: What was his part of the Job in “Frankenstein” and “Dracula”?
PM: Well, not very much in those but in the other movies before he had paid for it, you know, financed it. That did not cost much but he paid the bills. That’s important. He’s a producer, he produced it.
JA: roes he plays an integral part in the production when he produces?
PM: No, I don’t think any good producer does. A good producer says he hands the money over, see if the bills workout. I think a good producer is like an actor in that they work on instinct. Producers always put their two cents through, and operate… if you want to put your two cents in, you’re acting.
TA: Well, precisely because he was an artist and director…
PM: No, he’d never been a director. Everybody has a crazy idea about what Andy does and what he doesn’t do. I mean, as a painter – he doesn’t paint – he silk-screens. You ask Andy to paint a picture, I don’t think he could. But he’s a famous painter; he is a famous painter because he doesn’t paint.
FB: Do you still like rock and roll?
PM: No, I never liked rock and roll.
FB: Never?
PM: Never.
FB: But you were involved with the “Velvet Underground” and…
PM: No, I never liked it. The “Velvet Underground”, I don’t know what you would call them, but they didn’t really fit in the category of what I call rock and roll. Later they did rock and roll, I think, Lou Reed did something like that. But at the time they did that music, it was sort of artsy-craftsy music, you know, it was feedback, it was sort of an artsy music. Rock and roll to me means a lot of drumming, drums and a lot of noise. I like Boy George today. I don’t know, is that rock and roll? That’s what I call bubblegum, I always liked bubblegum music. Bubblegum is good if it’s silly and idiotic which is not the case of David Bowie. David Bowie is pretentious, he’s not funny. Boy George is funny and amusing, he’s good-natured. David Bowie tells you about the world and the end of the world and I don’t know what else. He to me is not interesting at all. Yet Boy, George, who’s not interesting, is good because he’s amusing. Somebody was talking about him that’s why I remember and I’m thinking about him. You know, my preference is always for the humorous stuff. In a way, when you think back to old movies it’s always the humorous ones that work, that you’d want to see again. The same for the books, the old books that you want to read and people do read, are the ones that are humorous. There is nothing greater in the English language than Jane Austin. Maybe Dickens. Then you’ve got Evelyn Wargh. The serious novelists, nobody wants them. I mean you have these very great novelists, Hardy, Thackeray…. and they are great, but they are not as good… I suppose I shouldn’t say silly things against them.
FB: Do you see any of the people of those times anymore? People from the “Velvet
Underground”
PM: Do I see them anymore you mean? Well, Nico is the best one of the Velvet
Underground. I always liked Nico the best. They threw her out, I don’t know why.
They were good, their first record was very interesting.
FB: There are your pictures inside, were you interested in photography too?
PM: Not really. I managed them and I produced the album. It says simply produced by Andy for better promotion. I discovered them and I told Andy he should spend his money in paying their bills; then they signed a management contract to give us 25%. They never gave us one cent. Andy gave them a lot of money to live for a year, produced their album with his money. I don’t think they were the nicest people in the world. But Nico, I thought, was a great personality.
FB: You did a film with her…
PM: I never did, no, but she was in some of the experiments that Andy and I made. “Chelsea Girls” was one. “Chelsea Girls” went to theatres. It’s too bad it’s not shown anymore. These films would never influence anybody but I always thought that if somebody was in film school the one kind of film they should imitate is the kind of film that Andy thought of: films that are not directed. It’s the best discipline for a director: to stop directing and look at actors, and people and characters, and personalities. Andy had a very good idea. It was an odd idea, kind of perverse, but I think it had a very good effect. Like saying- the director shouldn’t do anything and the actor makes what’s happening interesting. And we did it over and over again. Many times it didn’t work but sometimes it really worked and these people would do incredible things, say things funny, interesting, so enjoyable! I understood what he was trying to do and helped him to do it. But in film school they teach you how to “edit”, put the music in, very ordinary things and that makes you wonder who on earth would want to make a film. If you are in film school, the last thing you want to see, I think, is that kind of pretentious highfaluting’ stuff. But the simple stuff is what you should go back to. For instance, Andy wanted something similar to the films of Edison. You know Edison is the one who invented electricity, and films. He made the first films. Andy’s idea is similar to his: just to point the camera on something and watch it.
FB: Like “My Hustler”
PM: Yeah, that was one of the first films I worked on with Andy, but you know, you have to put the right people in front of the camera.
FB: Who were they in “My Hustler”?
PM: I don’t know, they weren’t hustlers. There was an older man and a younger man and then middle aged man. One was his teacher in Harvard, I think.
FB: The part on the beach with the guy and his knife was good.
PM: Yeah…. You did see that film?
FB: I saw it in Toulouse, In France.
PM: Ah, we don’t show them in America anymore because nobody distributes them. The distributors don’t think there is any money for them. But to go back to the kind of film you can make in school… Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin films are good examples because you don’t need sound and you can do it with a little Bolex or anything. I mean in retrospect I did films before Andy did, and I used to make silent films where people would walk, meet each other, and they’d hit each other on the back and, you know, what you could do in a silent film was always interesting. It’s a great discipline. And then it’s even harder sometimes when you have sound because you have to find people who can speak in an interesting way. The movies had no trouble finding interesting people in the 30′ s and the 40’s, then in the 50’s it started to change, and the 60’s and the 70′ s produced these very boring, uninteresting people. The movie business has fallen off and now the big business is done by special effects and science-fiction garbage, flying saucers and robots. I don’t find there are great personalities in those movies.
JA: Are there any auteur filmmakers at the moment with whom you feel affinity?
PM: I was thinking that the other day. No, I don’t think so, but there is one I was watching the other day… I can’t remember.
FB: We saw “Trash” last week at the Cinema Village. It stays so great.
PM: Was there a good audience?
FB: Very good. People were laughing all the time and clapping. This film is incredible. So many people tried to do this kind of film after without success.
PM: This is my feeling too. You know, one thing is that you need very good actors, very good personalities.
FB: You knew them well at the time?
PM: No, I had not met Holly before. It was a big success.
FB: What happened between the “Trash” and “Flesh” period and the Dracula; they are so different.
PM: They just gave me more money. You know “Flesh” cost $3000.
FB: And “Trash”?
PM: Well, not much more, maybe twice that.
FB: They show it quite often…
PM: Yes, it’s shown all the time. Never stop showing it. That’s still in distribution but they will all get sold to another distributor soon because now they are all owned by Andy and me again. We sold them just recently to all these countries, France, England, Australia, Germany, and we distribute them in cassettes to. So people tell me that low budget filmmaking it’s not worth it. I may say: ” Oh, we only spent thirty or sixty or a hundred. . . Wow, pictures paid a lot of money. There are no ongoing people who make cheap movies. They don’t exist in America. Low budget movies means a low budget horror movie, or a low budget sex movie, there is no tradition.
FB: Was “Frankenstein” a low budget movie?
PM: It really was, it cost about $300,000. But it was a studio type film, the cinematography was very professional. We had a very good cameraman, an Italian. We shot the film in Italy.
FB: Why 3D?
PM: They asked me to do a 3D movie about Frankenstein. It sounded awful! But
Then, I said, no, it could be funny. And in fact, 3D is very funny. I was the only one who seemed to see that 3-D was a joke, it’s idiotic. Then I did that and it was very successful. Nobody did 3-D for many years, then ten or fifteen 3-D movies were made in the past couple of years. Is it funny? They are not doing 3-D for humor they think they scare you! It’s a stupid effect.
Editor comes in
Editor: Paul, I’ve got a question. The scene where Tiago is stalking Juan for the first time, in the building… You know, after the drug line and they’re upstairs, and they’re walking around… Should Juan be hearing Tiago?
PM: I’m sorry.. . Tiago is talking where?
Editor- No, is stalking Juan. He. . . they go into the building and…
PM: Oh yeah, no, no, he should be hearing the what? the drugline?
Editor: No, no, not the drugline.
PM: Oh, yeah…
Editor: No, should Juan… should Juan be aware of them coming, should he hear them like off camera on, you know, when, when we’re on his angle, should we hear…
PM: (interrupting) Yeah, no, I think it’s so confusing because, he’s looking down the window and then Richard’s sort of coming…
Editor: (interrupting) It’s hard to know where you are, I mean…
PM: Yeah, no, no, but, uh, he does come all the way, this way and this way and then Juan is way down there, he. .. He wouldn’t hear him, no…
Editor: Okay.
PM: (laughs) Sound effects are a lot! And just for noises, footsteps… What kind of movie are you making?
FB: It’s a vampire film.
PM: I hope there are some laughs.
JA: We tried to do it deadpan serious, actually.
PM: That’s how you get laughs.
FB: Yes, it came out very funny.
PM: That’s what I do. When I did the “Dracula” film, I knew that, the way to get laughs was to do it deadpan. I didn’t do it to be serious and then found it was funny, I know when something is funny or it’s not.
FB: Your Dracula is fantastic.
PM: Ha, you liked this one. I must say I got spoiled in those two movies because it was the first time I used all non-American actors. There was one American: Joe Dallesandro. He was very good, but I really like European actors and not American actors.
FB: How did you meet Udo Kier and how did you have the idea to cast him?
PM- He was an actor who I met somewhere and he always struck me as somebody that couldn’t be used in a normal movie cause he didn’t have a normal appearance. He didn’t look like a human being, he looked like he came from another planet, and when someone asked me to make this horror movie and I thought it was a bad idea cause “Horror Movie” (grimace), and then I said, well, what the hell, it could be funny, so I just remembered him and “Uh”. Plus his German accent. You know, I love accents; I really love all my accents in the movie. Who cares, it’s so much more interesting to hear someone speak with an accent than understand what he’s saying. Who cares? I mean you can understand it, but you don’t have to understand all of it. You get so much of a characterization. You know people don’t write characters anymore. I’m not a great writer of characters, but I know of characters and I try to get them by casting peoples who have accents, who have unusual faces.
JA: So Stanislavski is not um…
PM: Oh! lt’s a piece of garbage.
JA: I didn’t think so….
PM: I think it’s so stupid. I was just reading a review of Al Pacino, and those people who work like that are so awful. They are so boring, and so predictable, and so obvious, and so uninteresting, and so lifeless, and they are pretending to be lifelike! It’s absurd. Al Pacino isn’t always bad. Sometimes he can be very funny. In “Dog ray Afternoon” he was very funny. Given the right part he can be good but when in those “Godfather” movies-he’s alright but the other people were better than him. The other Italian men were so much more authentic and really not “acting”. They were much better actors ’cause they didn’t look- like they were acting. You can see…
JA: He tries very hard…
PM: Oh, he’s trying so hard.
JA: Do you feel the director loses control when the actor gets really, perhaps excessively into his role like that?
PM: I don’t think he would be losing control. I just wouldn’t work with anybody like that myself. I don’t like that kind of acting. I think he’s getting bad acting. I don’t think the actor is in control. He’s just a bad actor. That’s not how actors are supposed to act. Bad acting is bad acting. Is the director’s fault the bad acting?
I saw the “Godfather” on TV the other day, it’s always on cable, I don’t know, It was very good. I was so impressed seeing it again; I hadn’t seen it for a long time.
But the acting – Marlon Brando was the worst one in it, Diane Keaton was awful and Al Pacino – he had a difficult part I suppose, he’s not supposed to be the old type but he’s in it. It would have been interesting to see somebody who was more like the other men in it playing Al Pacino and Marlon Brando’s parts but they’re thought of as the great actors and they get all the awards and I don’t think they have the good ones. I think everybody else is better.
JA: The academy tends to go very much with the Stanislavski type actors.
PM: They’ve given all the awards to no talent for the past ten, fifteen years. Not no talent, but boring; Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek; you know all these sincere…
” I’m so sincere, I’m talking slow, and I’m…” It’s just the worst to me. It’s not Errol Flynn, it’s not James Cagney.
FB: People say that you discovered Joe Dallesandro and put him as he was in your films “Flesh” and “Trash”.
PM: Not as he was. I made these stories. I made up a story and he just was a very good actor. He seemed very realistic. He was a very good actor if you asked him to do what he can do. Like I mean, even Al Pacino, I don’t think he can play the head of the mafia but I think he was very good in “Dog Day Afternoon”. You know a dope guy who doesn’t know anything and who looks like a little rat.
JA: rid you see the Broadway production of “American Buffalo” with Al Pacino?
PM: No, that was the article I was reading. He plays a ratty little idiot too. I mean playing stupid, awful people he’s good, but don’t try to make me believe that he’s a very strong head of the mafia. Anyway I just use him as an example cause I was reading that review of “American Buffalo”. No, I like all the young American actors who don’t come out of the acting schools, thank God, cause they are too young. Like Matt Dillon and Tom Cruise and there’s a couple of others. They are really good because they are people. They begin as people and they stay people and they happen to be very fine actors. But unless you have your own personality that you can keep when you act you don’t have anything else.
JA: And just interpret the lines from there?
PM: Yes, you can be a good guy in one movie and a bad guy in another but you’re still basically the same person. Unless you have an interesting personality to begin with you’re not an interesting actor. In my mind.
FB: Who do you have in your film now?
PM: A lot of interesting personalities, I hope.
JA: Did you cast from the street?
PM: I finally went to the streets for two or three people and one of them turned out to be really fantastic. I found him and mostly break dancers and Puerto Ricans but for the other actors I went through a casting agent, but you know, a non-union film, you get only the kind of people who aren’t so regular.
JA: So you don’t work it through the unions at all?
PM: No, anybody who does can avoid it actually. Well, if you want to make a big expensive film with professional acting, yes, you have to, but I don’t like professional acting, I like younger actors, fresher actors. The only thing is who’s got the personality. Who’s got the interesting qualities? People exist all over the world; I mean in every group of people somebody is more interesting than somebody else, somehow. So many people go to acting class and study acting, I don’t know why. Once they start to study how to act, I don’t know what the problem is, but these actors … It’ s so silly that they study how to act because there’s nothing to act 1 They are no great parts written, and most movies are very simple, somebody gets killed and you run here, -and you say this and you say that and it’s the kind of thing a person does in everyday life. It’s not the kind of thing you have to train to do. They are not training to play King Lear or to play Mollière. 99% of all movies are very naturalistic. If you’re a real person and you can act you should be able to do it. But once they start thinking, then they read this play and they start to bring it to naturalism. It becomes unnatural.
JA: The sincerity bit is really the problem.
PM: Oh, absolutely. The kiss of death! It’s the most hideous, offensive thing of the past ten or fifteen years, these sincere actors. So; many of them are just nauseating. They’re going by the wayside. Like I said, Matt Dillon is not sincere and he’s got great popularity. He’s funny, he’s charming and he has all those wonderful old-fashioned qualities. I mean: charm, good looks and fooling, kidding around, and humor… That’ s what makes an interesting person. Who cares if they’re sincere! What crap! Anybody can fake that crap; it’s the easiest garbage to fake. But you can fake it up to a point, you can’t really make someone believe you are sincere. There’s that nice actor Tom Cruise, there was a review of him in this same magazine, He’s amazing. He can portray sincerity and be totally genuine, without any of the phoniness and the pausing, the looking, and… uugh, He doesn’t have the charm of Mat Dillon but he ‘ s got some great qualities. He’s a very good actor. It’s nice to see actors like that and the public likes those kind of people, and would like to see more of their movies. The sincere actors, the public couldn’t care less. If we look at their careers most of their films are unsuccessful. Every now and then they get in one film that the critics say is great, people go and suffer through it, but they don’t go back to the next couple. None of the sincere actors have an audience, not the way Clint Eastwood has an audience or Burt Reynolds has an audience, or Matt Dillon has an audience, now I think maybe this Tom Cruise but even Brooke Shields, she has an audience. I love her, she’s my favorite
FB: Noo! . .
PM: She’s not bad! She’s the only girl with a feminine personality, and adorable and likable. She’s just an extraordinarily great “girl” ! People say she can’t act. What do you mean, she can’t act? I’d like to see these sincere nobodies try to be feminine, be beautiful, cute, adorable. I’d like to see them act that! She does it effortlessly. I think she’s the best. But she’s retired from films really. . I don’t blame her. How many parts are offered to her? She has to be a whore, or, you know, humping this Richard Gere, having sex with Richard Gere, and saying she really loves him and what kind of crap parts are that for a girl to play? Yeah, I mean look at the parts girls are given. They’re just nothing but tramps. Every girl is a whore, who isn’t really a whore, because she loves the guy. . Oh my God! No I mean, it’s very sad what girls have to do. Did you see Rachel Ward in “Against All Odds”? Terrible movie, I think, and she didn’t come across too good, but her part was so bad. She was rich but she was a tramp because her mother was destroying the ecology and was rich and evil. She was looking for true love even though she was having sex with everything. If only her mother wasn’t killing the ecology she probably wouldn’t be such a tramp. The psychology of the movie!.. If you think about it… Anyway…
JA: There’s a film which has just come out called “Erendira” based on a Garcia Marquez story. Irene Papas plays the main role, very funny acting, as far as straight, deadpan..
PM: Is it meant to be humorous?
JA: Oh, yes, yes.
PM: Oh.
JA: At least I hope so, I mean it’s not…
PM: Is it supposed to be a comical character who’s very straight?
JA: She’s an evil comical character. She prostitutes her granddaughter all over the deserts of Mexico.
PM: Oh, I see, I don’t know anything about it, but it’s funny. I didn’t know that. I Just saw that name with that big commie on it and I said:”- Oh, it must be that commie propaganda.’ All propaganda, especially commie propaganda, is deadly serious.
JA: Oh, it’s got no “message” whatsoever.
PM: That’s good, but I mean, they publicize it with this hateful fascist-commie name on it. You know that writer called Marquez is the most commie propagandist there is. He’ s out and out.
FB: What do you mean by “commie”?
PM: I mean he is the communist most famous writer. And he’ s propagandizing the take over of the whole South America by the Kremlin. This is to me like horror time. I don’t know what his writing is; I just know he’s the leading Kremlin propagandist. So I thought it must be some deadly serious crap.
FB: They introduce him first of all as the Nobel Prize of literature.
PM: Yes, because he’s out for the Kremlin. They gave him a Nobel Prize, what insanity. Why didn’t they give a Nobel Prize to Hitler and Genghis Kahn? But anyway, it’s interesting, I didn’t know it was a humorous film. What country does it come from?
JA: Brazil.
FB: Brazil does some good films. Have you seen “Macunaima”?
PM: No, but I loved “Pixote”, that was the best.
FB: “Pixote” was really good, yes.
PM: “Pixote” was the best film I’ve seen in years. That actress who played in it makes something different out of it. She played a comical role. She was brilliant. She’s the girl in the movie I just did.
FB: She’ s in your film?
PM: Yes.
FB: Is she Brazilian?
PM: Yes, she’s from Brazil.
FB: What’s her name?
PM: Merilla Para. She’s somebody great. I was very lucky to get her; she’s a fantastic actress. She can do anything. She’s been in the theatre since she was four years old. Her performance was staggering and she was totally outrageous. I mean, she was the most funny evil whore in the history of the world in the movie. The whole movie was wonderful.
FB: The killing at the end, I thought…
PM: Yes, everything was so interesting in that. I liked that film a lot. But you know, she came out because she was a funny character. There were some other funny character along the way. There was a blond woman and some other people who were funny too.
FB: But the situations were not very funny.
PM: No, that’s why. The more awful the situation, the more humor you need.
FB: You know, that, talking about the subject of your film, this world is going to disappear now or so they say. You know, the Alphabet City drug circuit…
PM: They’ll just move somewhere else, the drug addicts. I don’t see any signs of the drug addicts disappearing.
FB: No, that’s true.
PM: I wish I did. The communists put them all to death. I think that something has to be done about the drug addicts. I don’t think put them to death but sober, them up. You know, they can’t go on and on and on, it’s really a silly situation. They should be punished. They should be put on one of those desert islands and let them eat each other.
FB: The drug addicts?
PM: Yes, you saw the film “Papillon”? The desert island was a very good way to treat a prisoner. Let them sit on the island, grow their own vegetables, don’t give them anything, and if they want to kill each other let them. What a wonderful way to treat them, it’s the kind of punishment they deserve. And they’re not really that punished. I mean, they’re just being quarantined. Because they live in a beautiful island with beautiful water. The sharks will eat them if they go in too deep. The prison system obviously doesn’t work, but the Devil’ s Island system, which is a very old and sensible way, makes sense. To me it seems like a very good thing. All problems used to be treated with quarantine.
FB: It’s funny you say that because you produced the “Velvet Underground”, which is, I could say… with the song “Heroine”” and all that…
PM: I’ve done a couple of things that cater with drugs, but I mean, even that music was not supposed to say: Isn’t drugs great! It was a sort of… it’s how hideous drugs are…
FB: The Lou Reed song wasn’t.
PM: Oh, it’s hideous. They go (mimics guitar wails and rock screams) … It’ s showing that drug addiction is pretty hideous, but there’s a punishment value… Young people want to be punished but their parents didn’t punish them. Their parents didn’t beat them, didn’t make them do this, didn’t make them do that. They don’t go to the army, they don’t have to do anything. And so what happens is, they grow up, and all they want to do is punish themselves. Nobody punished them, nobody asked them to do anything, so they have this sort of psychological missing thing. “Oh God, I’ve got to be punished, I’ve got to be tormented. I never was sick, I was healthy, I went through life without any illness. I’ll make myself sick, I’ll punish myself. I’ll do all the things my parents didn’t do.” People who are in the army don’t usually come out taking drugs, cause it sounds like a lousy time, and they want to get away from it. You know, all that punishment, or discipline is taken out of kids’ lives and now they do it themselves, which is really awful, cause they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s out of control. All that drug addiction is self-abuse.
FB: (doubtfully) Yeah. .
PM: Self-punishment.. . And they don’t know why they’re punishing themselves. But if they really were in a miserable way, like in Russia, where the people are miserable, or in any of the Kremlin slave camps-they drink themselves into oblivion, because they’re miserable, but they don’t go as far as drugs. Maybe that’s just because they don’t have drugs, I don’t know.
FB: Yes, maybe.
PM: But I mean, you can’t say that Americans are miserable… They’re miserable because they’re so stupid or empty. But they certainly have advantages that nobody ever had in the history of the world and all they want to do is punish themselves. Who can understand it? I don’t know. But I think if you’re going to treat it, it’s a funny subject. It’s certainly a contemporary subject to me and I see only the funny sides of it. . .
JA: Yes, I imagine there’s no kind of authoritarian twist to it… to this film.
PM: No, not at all. Underneath it, I think Id prefer those drug addicts in prison.
But I think it’s funny to show a world where they are not and how people live in a world where they don’t punish people. That’s what the film is really about. When you take away all the punishment, they wind up with their own little systems.
It’s a very interesting idea… not an interesting idea – a cliché, but you don’t see it often… too often anyway.
