bad
[laughter]. Sometimes I think it's good.
MacDonald:
Well, it's what it
is,
now.
Snow:
[Laughter] It certainly is.
MacDonald:
I'm always struck by the textural dimension of
Wavelength,
by the variation in grain. In fact, there's so much to look at in the film that I'm amazed when it's called a minimal film.
Snow:
Oh, I don't understand that at all. Every time I read that, I'm amazedthough it hasn't happened all that often. It's also described as a "conceptual" piece, sometimes. Certainly a lot of thinking went into it
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and I hope it provokes thinking, but that it's sometimes identified with the art style called "conceptual" seems peculiar, too.
MacDonald:
You were friends with Taubin and Frampton at the time when you made
Wavelength
. Was there a reason beyond just knowing them and their being available that they show up in the film? Was Frampton's appearance related to his being a particular kind of artist?
Snow:
No. They were friends and we had talked about what I was doing. I knew that Amy had acted, and I wanted an actress. She'd been in
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,
a popular Broadway play. Hollis volunteered. I was going around saying, "I want somebody to die for me," and he said, "Oh,
I'll
do that."
MacDonald:
When you first showed it to this small group of friends, they liked it very much. How was it received when it was first shown to a larger New York audience?
Snow:
It wasn't shown in New York at first. You know what happened? When Jonas saw it, he said, "You know, you should send
Wavelength
to this festival coming up in Knokke-Le-Zoute [Belgium, 1967]." But I didn't have enough money to finish the film: when I first showed it, the sound was on tape. I had decided I wanted to have the sine wave sound, the glissando, on reel-to-reel tape: it was better sound. But then I realized that was impractical, and if I wanted to show the film again I'd have to have an optical track. Anyway, Jonaswonderful Jonas!found the money to make this new print and he sent it to Knokke-Le-Zoute and it won first prize, and all these things happened as a result.
MacDonald:
Was
Standard Time
[1967] done as a sketch for
Back and Forth
[
«
]? In some ways they're very different, and yet when one sees them in succession, the question is almost inevitable since both center on the panning camera.
Snow:
Well, no, because I didn't really know that
Back and Forth
was ever going to exist.
Standard Time
was exploratory, I wanted to find out about circular pans on a fixed base and about what happens at different speeds. And when the film was finished, I got the idea for
Back and Forth
. I decided I wanted to work with back-and-forth and up-and-down pans of a limited angle.
MacDonald: Standard Time
has a diaristic element.
Snow:
Yes. It's my home movie in the sense that that was where we were living123 Chambers Streetand Joyce is in it.
MacDonald:
I assume
Back and Forth
was scored but that part of it was exploratory.
Snow:
Yes, that's right. Before I started shooting, I worked out the speeds with a metronome. I knew it would start with a medium tempo and slow down. And I guess that's the slowest point, actually. Then it
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would gradually speed up to its fastest and then cut to the vertical pans and finally slow down. I made these two sides to the tripod, so that when I panned, I couldn't go further than a certain point, which would define the arc I wanted. I tried making a little machine with a display motor, but it was uncontrollable, so I did it by hand.
My use of that space was similar to my use of the space in
Wavelength:
there's a difference in the space when there are people in it and when it's empty. Before shooting, I had set up places where certain kinds of things would happen, and I wanted them all to relate to the idea of back and forthness, or reciprocity, or exchange.
MacDonald:
More fully than in
Wavelength,
every action that happens in front of the camera seems to be specifically referential to the process of the back-and-forth panning.
Snow:
That's right. It's more integrated into one set of issues than
Wavelength
. I did
Back and Forth
during the summer of 1968. A number of artists were invited to Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey over a period of a month. I decided to shoot it there in a classroom that had the interesting situation of being right on the street, so that would allow the imagery to be inside and outside, another kind of back and forth.
Back and Forth
was also shot out of order, depending on who was available when.
MacDonald:
Both films start slowly and build to a kind of climactic fast motion, and then calm down during a denouement. This is particularly evident in
Back and Forth
. In fact, after the credits there's a passage of "reminiscence" about earlier moments in the film. Was that a conscious play on conventional narrative?
Snow:
Well, no, though, as you say, the shape is climactic.
Wavelength
literally "cums" at the end: the last thing you see is liquid. I was and am interested in sex and so I suppose maybe that's the source of the shape, at least in those two films, though that's not the only way to think of that shape. As I told you, I really have no background in the development of narrative film and have never had any particular interest. I'm not consciously trying to subvert the movies. The structure you mention is just one way of moving in time, as far as I'm concerned.
The main problem with narrative in film is that when you become emotionally involved, it becomes difficult to see the picture as picture. Of course, the laughing and crying and suspense can be a positive element, but it's oddly nonvisual and gradually destroys your capacity to see. There's really no narrative in
Back and Forth
. There are isolated incidents that are called for partly by the kind of space you see, but no narrative connection between them.
MacDonald: One Second in Montreal
followed
Back and Forth
. Whereas
Wavelength
and
Back and Forth
have often been called mini-