Cinema Canada (Oct 1973-Jan 1974)

Chuck Shamata as Chino sexual drive, men are far more aggressive. You’re going right back to the animal kingdom .. . Right back to the bucks fighting it out for the leadership of the pack. I think it all goes back to that. I’ve squashed a lot of women’s libbers by throwing that kind of argument at them. Once you start throwing that in — they don’t quite know where to go. All of this is a Darwinian way of looking at things. I’m not saying that I know whether the argument is true or not. I’m saying I suspect it’s true, and until it is proven otherwise, I will go by that argument. Which is that women can do many more things than they’ve been led to believe they can do, but to try and condition women to think they can do everything that men can and to be brought up on a unisex level is ridiculous. That’s a lot of bullshit, really. I see the whole world as being a series of insane beliefs that are totally against common sense and that people accept every day as being perfect sense! Look at all the educational theories that are thrown out every ten years as being insane! So much educational nonsense goes on today in the name of freedom, and what you do is you destroy the child’s freedom. He ends up 20 years old and all he’s ever done is things he’d wanted to do. He’s never opened himself up enough so that he would have freedom of choice. A lot of that women’s lib thing is leaning in that direction. On the other side of it there are all these male chauvinists. I may be considered a male chauvinist but in a different sense than most of the other ones are. The one principle that should govern the world is the principle of comparative advantage. Whatever you can do best, you do. If you can’t do it as well as somebody else — let them do it and pay for it. That’s the law of economics. So I go right back to the tribe and from the tribe to the herd. I’m convinced to the deepest part of my bones that we are descendants of animals. That’s why people don’t kill each other: expediency. What makes something wrong is when the goals aren’t reached. But then it comes down to setting the right goals. Expediency again. Give me an idea of what’s a wrong goal. Put it this way — there’s no such thing as right or wrong. There’s smart and stupid. It’s stupid to kill because you'll get killed. It’s stupid to pollute the atmosphere because eventually it will come back on you and your descendants. I approach history the way a shrink approaches someone who’s got a problem. If, let’s say, you like to masturbate in telephone booths, he’ll say as long as it isn’t hurting your relationship with your family or whatever — you’re all right. You seem to have this Eastern mysticism which says, “‘It is. Therefore it will be.’? You don’t seem to have that bleeding heart liberal messiah complex of, “I must change that. I must help”... Oh, no. That’s not true. I hate bleeding heart liberals and I 34 Cinema Canada Michael Parks in a playful mood as Toby ~Football layer Shebib consider myself very much a liberal. I don’t consider myself an intellectual because I don’t talk like one. I’m not anti-intellectual — I’m anti-bullshit. And a lot of bleeding heart liberalism is bullshit. You’re equating my reaction to someone on a personal level to a problem on a national level — which is a totally different thing altogether. I’m not a laissez-faire person — accepting things that should be changed. No, no. I’m just lazy, that’s all. Are you sure that’s all it is? Oh, yeah. I’m not saying don’t try and change the world. I’m saying have a darned good time and change the world. As far as bleeding heart liberals go — there are so many examples where people worry about the smallest ... I’m talking about people who can’t see the forest for the trees. I walk a very thin line in most of my opinions, and that line to me is like 100 yards wide! Most people see it as a razor edge and I think they’re fools. You once said in an interview that you were a socialist and also that you’d like to make $100,000 a year. I’d like to see you manoevre 100 yards to explain that to me! I don’t see any complication in that. Where is the complication? That’s like saying you can’t be a catholic and a communist. I believe in the control of economy, but I don’t think I said I was a socialist. I couldn’t have said that. But you did! I said I may have socialist leftist leanings, but I don’t believe in Marxism. Marxism is just another form of Roman Catholicism dogma. Another form of bullshit. I don’t think capitalists are any better than socialists, I see people as human beings no matter what they do. I don’t consider a man who was a Nazia morally evil person. I never would consider Hitler an evil person. Hitler would make a fascinating film. He’s an incredible, marvelous, strange, twisted, mixed up, sick man and he’s got as much of everyman in him as anybody else has. That’s man! That’s man on the screen and people could sit there and say, ‘““That is a human being, and I can relate to that no matter what he’s done.” What happened in Germany was that people were thrust into a boiling cauldron. That’s like the formation of a planet — that kind of terrible, terrifying thing. I am interested in Nazis. I find Nazis and fascism fascinating. A motorcycle gang is a fascist organization and that goes back to tribalism. Who can tell me the difference between a fascist and a communist? Fascism is state capitalism. It’s another form of communism, pure communism. Everybody works for the state. All those youth camps the Nazis had where they had collective farms.... Israel has kibbutzes which are the same kind of thing the Nazis had. But surely you can’t equate the two? What I’ve been trying to say in all my films is just that there is no moral right and no moral wrong. Accept people for what I put forth on the screen. And usually, the kinkier they are, the