Take One (Mar-Apr 1970)

your films? GORIN: There is no such thing as artistic expression as opposed to political expression—there is only artistic political expres sion. As long as we are making movies we can’t avoid dealing with aesthetics, but it is a new kind of aesthetics. ls your emphasis artistic or political? GORIN: Guess! But you can’t express a revolutionary content if you haven't got a revolutionary form, and you have to build it by opposing the long history of the form, which is the form of the ruling class. GODARD: Art cannot be separated from politics. Who is run ning California today? An artist, a western artist named Ronald Reagan. Do you feel the ruling class artistic form of, say, James Bond 007, Breck Hair commercials have been successful— GODARD: You can add Fellini, Bresson, Zabriski Point— a lot of people. OK, were you ever thinking of using that particular artistic form in a revolutionary way? GODARD: It’s not possible. Z is a good example. What is the situation? The Greek government is paid by the ClA—it lives on CIA money. And Hollywood is the agent of the CIA in that particular area of ideology which is the movies. So what does it mean if you make a picture on Greece, and this picture receives an Oscar in Hollywood? These are the two parts of the contradiction. GORIN: A film like Z can be helpful in a very precise circumstance: If you don’t know anything about Greece, maybe you learn that somebody was murdered whose name was Lambrakis. But the film is a flop unless you have a political friend sitting by your side, explaining to you what the real situation was in Greece, and why the colonels took power. The film explains nothing about the Greek situation. GODARD: It’s like the two slogans: ‘Peace In Vietnam,” or “Victory To The NLF.”’ If you're willing to make these tours for money, why aren’t you willing to make bad films that would make money? GODARD: |! would be glad to make a bad film for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, but they won't accept me. Oh, | would be glad to. |can do a real dirty movie for them, really! GORIN: The only people who offer us money are Grove Press. They are closely linked with Hollywood, but we can use the money. GODARD: We are very glad to receive money from Grove, and if they are glad, for the moment it’s OK. I'll accept money from the Greek government to make a picture! GORIN: Which picture? On our way back to Tom Luddy’s for dinner, we tried to explain something of the Berkeley ambience (i.e., a selfsustaining generalized rage) that had infused the press conference, but Godard shrugged it off. After dinner, we set out for the Berkeley Community Theater, where Godard and Gorin were to speak after British Sounds was shown. When we arrived, the film had half an hour to go, and we were standing idly around the theater lobby when we were approached by three angry young men who launched immediately into a bitter tirade. “Where is that asshole?’ one of them demanded. “Godard! Fuck that, man!” “What's the matter?” asked Tom, as calmly as he could. “This stinking film is the matter!’ said the man. ‘That prick sure has a lot of guts charging two bucks for this shit!” “How much of it did you watch?” asked Tom. “Five minutes was all | could take without getting sick.” “Well, that isn’t really giving it a chance. But if you “| don’t want my money back,” said the man, apparently the spokesman for his group, “I want to tell that dumb cunt what | think of his rotten movie!’ Tom said, ‘‘Well, here he is,’’ and indicated Godard. “Go ahead.” The man walked purposefully up to Godard, leading us all in a general movement; ihere was such a strong feeling of imminent violence that we wanted to be able to step in if it proved necessary. “This movie stinks!” said the man. “Why?” asked Godard. “Because it’s just a lot of bullshit,’ said the man. “What should it be?’ asked Godard. “Uh, like, people should be free. Some kind of free theatre where they can do their thing.”’ “But what kind of thing?’’ persisted Godard. “Oh, just. ..you’ll never understand, man. We’ve had enough of this bullshit. We were thinking of going in there and breaking it up or something.” “‘Why don’t you do it?” suggested Godard. “Maybe we will,’’ said the man. By this time it was apparent that there would be no physical violence, and we left the contenders to battle it out on their own. It was as though Godard was saying, “To be an effective revolutionary you’ve got to act intelligently,’ and Berkeley was answering, “No, I’m too pissed off!’ When the film was over, Godard, Gorin and Luddy approached the stage for the question-and-answer period, only to be met with a barrage of tomatoes. The attack came from the group that had been in the lobby, and we realized that they had brought the tomatoes with them before they had even seen the movie—there were no stores in the neighborhood still open. When they ran out of ammunition they left, and the questions began; they were no more intelligent than the tomatoes. Godard was attacked for being arrogant, for being a male chauvinist (despite that fact that his film included a long statement on the oppression of women), for getting rich by ripping off the Movement—on and on and on. He tried to answer calmly, but nobody in the audience was really listening. Someone asked him if there was a place in the Revolution for “smoking dope and dancing naked in the streets.”” Godard replied that while there might be a specific situation in which such action would be a correct tactic, he didn’t advocate it as a general movement. He spoke repeatedly about acting from logical analysis rather than from emotional feelings, but this just got people more upset. One young woman began a long, whining statement in which she kept returning to her “feelings,” and was just coming around for the third time to, “and | feel,” when Godard yelled. “Fuck your feelings!’ At the time it seemed like he had just lost his patience, but in retrospect we’re not so sure. Saul Landau and NET-TV were interested in filming a program about Godard, and the Dziga Vertov group agreed to participate in exchange for a share of the profits. Early the next morning (April 24th), two cameramen, two sound men, and a director from NET showed up at the hotel. In Tom Luddy’s garden (the same garden where Tom Hayden had spoken in One A.M.), a long sequence was shot with Godard and Gorin talking about the Palestine movie. Then, still accompanied by NET, Jean-Luc and JeanPierre paid a visit to Tom Hayden, partly out of friendship and partly to discuss the demise of One A.M. Godard seemed ill at ease, and his English got a little confused, as witness the first, long statement below. NET filmed the discussion for five or ten minutes, until Hayden asked them to stop. At that point we turned off our tape recorder too. don’t want to see the rest, why are you still here? Did you ask for your money back?” 24 GODARD: We had Cleaver of the Black Panthers, and then we went to some rock and roll, and we thought that putting all