Im a Stranger Here Myself (1975)
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00You know, I'm sure he's not the kind of guy that's gonna get away with anything.
00:05You know, I'm sure he's not the kind of guy that's gonna get away with anything.
00:10I mean, he's got a gun, and he's got a gun.
00:15He's got a gun.
00:20He's got a gun.
00:25Hold on, T-Double.
00:55Hold on, T-Double.
01:25So long, T-Double.
01:30See ya.
01:35Take it easy.
01:40What's next?
01:45Now we can start strutting.
01:50What's next? Now we can start strut. One thing you gotta learn, kid. You gotta look and act like other people.
02:02Hell, when I first got to France and read the critiques of Rene, Godard, Truffaut, Romare, I didn't know who the hell they were talking about.
02:14But that's the way films should be. An artist should not moralize. A person who has the audacity to make a film in the first place shouldn't ever consciously put his own neuroses on screen.
02:32Most of your heroes are pretty neurotic.
02:36My heroes are no more neurotic than the audience. Unless you can feel that a hero is just as fucked up as you are and that you would make the same mistakes that he would make, you can have no satisfaction when he does commit a heroic act.
02:58Because then you can say, hell, I could have done that too. And that's the obligation of the filmmaker, of the theater worker, to give a heightened sense of experience to the people who pay to come to see his work.
03:16From 1947 to 1962, Nicholas Ray directed some of the most richly personal work in American cinema. Yet in 1971, when he accepted a teaching post at Harper College in Binghamton, New York, he had not completed a film in nearly a decade.
03:38At Binghamton, Ray trained his students to be a working production unit, teaching them filmmaking by shooting a feature film as a collaborative creative effort under his supervision.
03:49Born in 1911, Nicholas Ray left his hometown of La Crosse, Wisconsin at 16 to study under Frank Lloyd Wright.
04:16After a brief university career, Ray emigrated to New York City at the height of the Depression. There he became involved in the lively experimental theater of the 30s, working as an actor with such politically progressive groups as the Workers' Theater and the Federal Theater Project, which included the Living Newspaper.
04:34It was there that Ray learned the improvisational methods that he would employ in Hollywood and would still be using with his students in Binghamton more than 30 years later.
04:44It began on East 12th Street, not a few blocks from here. It led to my association with Kazan and Hausman, from whom I learned more than any other two people in the world.
05:09I worked in a workers' theater. We graduated to Broadway. And somehow or other one day Kazan said, come on, you've been spending enough time in radio, theater, television. I'm going out to Hollywood to make my first film. Come on along and help me.
05:36Hausman did the same thing. I suppose I've collaborated with Hausman on more things than anybody else I've ever worked with.
06:07Nick was himself a very vulnerable, very sensitive, almost too sensitive person in some ways, and in some ways very aggressive and assertive, in other ways extremely reticent and shy.
06:24And that combination is very good for a director with actors. Particularly, his real talent lay in what he could do with very young and tender and sensitive and insecure people, like Kathy O'Donnell, Farley Granger.
06:41Hello, hello.
06:54Do you do the marrying?
06:58That's my business. I have a $30 wedding which gives a complete recording of the ceremony on record. I have a $20 wedding.
07:04Were you just married?
07:05That'll be $20. Tilly, Herman.
07:08Who are they?
07:09My sister and her husband. Witnesses.
07:12We have to have them?
07:13Oh, yeah. First you've got to sign your names. Over here.
07:25If you'll just sign the register.
07:49Rent you a ring for a dollar, or sell you one for five.
07:54I'll buy one.
07:57This one will do it.
08:25By virtue of the power vested in me, I hereby perform this wedding ceremony.
08:29Do you, Catherine, take this man, Arthur, as your lawful wedded husband, to love, honor, and cherish henceforth?
08:34I do.
08:35Do you, Arthur, take this woman, Catherine, as your lawful wedded wife, to love, honor, and cherish henceforth?
08:40I do.
08:41Well, put the ring on her finger.
08:47By virtue of the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife.
09:05Wish all the health, happiness, and wealth in the world.
09:09Herman, you've got a cold.
09:12I'm sorry. I have.
09:15That'll be twenty dollars, plus five for the ring.
09:24You don't think much of my way of marrying people, do you?
09:27I sure don't.
09:28Well, me neither. I'm giving folks what they want.
09:31My way of thinking, folks ought to have what they want.
09:34As long as they can pay for it.
09:37Nick has always made almost all his best pictures, actually,
09:41have been about people whom society was oppressing and society was crushing,
09:47and who were almost doomed to be defeated by society.
09:51Well, Nick himself is not altogether outside that category.
09:56In 1962, having become one of the highest paid American directors,
10:01Nicholas Ray dropped out of the film industry,
10:04plagued by personal problems and discouraged by the compromises of commercial movie making.
10:09For Ray, the 60s were a long, murky period,
10:13marred by a stream of unrealized projects and by failing health.
10:17In 1969, he returned to the United States after a ten year absence
10:22to make a film about the Chicago Conspiracy Trial.
10:26What was it that captured your attention with the Conspiracy Trial?
10:30It was the greatest circus of bigotry I'd ever heard,
10:35directed against young people who were the,
10:40now the 32 and 33 year old equivalents of James Dean,
10:45who wrote pamphlets that were of such sophomoric and collegiate humor,
10:53like the stuff you write before homecoming games,
10:56which were taken seriously by the court.
10:59One day Lee Weiner came to me and asked if I were a friend of Groucho Marx's,
11:06and I said yes.
11:09He said, do you suppose we could get Groucho as an expert witness for us?
11:17And so we'll try.
11:20And he says, somebody has to explain our sense of humor,
11:26and he's the only man in the United States that we know of who can explain our sense of humor.
11:34And to see Dave Dellinger, the oldest of the group,
11:40and a Quaker pacifist be the only one to put his body in front of Bobby Seale
11:51to protect him from the blows of the police,
11:55there's so many things.
11:59I'll make it someday.
12:02After we finish this one, maybe.
12:04And the next one.
12:10Hey, you bums, look at them.
12:13Hey, look at that bunch of, look at those magnificent bastards in there.
12:17Hey, get us out of those cats in there.
12:20Well, I was talking to Howard Hughes.
12:23Oh, get in the window, you schmuck.
12:26Hey, get in the window.
12:29And he says you're a bastard.
12:31I see you got your pancake on over there.
12:33He says you're a bastard.
12:35Nick came and virtually changed the whole cinema department, the whole idea of filmmaking.
12:40And I think he has a huge amount of insight into everybody he's known for a while.
12:49He uses, he employs those insights for characters in a film, even.
12:58He's a con artist, and he knows how to manipulate people, if that's an acceptable word,
13:05but that's part of the talent of a director.
13:08He's always wanted to be cherished by young people,
13:13and he scorns his own generation, which has rejected him, apparently.
13:20And he just likes working with young people, as far as his role in the film,
13:25which is an essential part of the whole film.
13:30He's, as a character, I guess he's something like the parole officer in Rebel,
13:36always caring for young people, and he's been like a father to us and a counselor
13:44and a teacher at the same time.
13:47Ray's unconventional teaching methods demanded intensive involvement from his students,
13:52leading them to adopt a communal living arrangement that brought down
13:55continual harassment from conservative university authorities.
13:58Eventually, the group was forced to move to a farm just outside of town.
14:02Gradually, under Ray's direction, teacher and students alike attempted to develop
14:07an original approach to filmmaking that would express in a new way
14:11the process of self-discovery that has always been one of Nick Ray's central themes.
14:15Look, I like this quality on here better than I like the correction one.
14:22Which one is that?
14:24The overexposed one.
14:25Why do you like that one better?
14:27Because I like it better.
14:31Look, this is dull. This is one of the most aesthetic characters in the world.
14:37Look, I know what shot it is. I know what shot it is.
14:40But this is dull as hell, you know?
14:44How did Bogart take to playing the part of the writer in In a Lonely Place,
14:49which is rather a departure for him?
14:51Well, I had taken the gun away from his hand for the first time in Knock on Any Door.
14:59And the second time, he was ready for it.
15:08A little bit more ready for it.
15:12And he obviously loved it. It's one of his favorite films.
15:18But it was a very personal story.
15:23A very personal story.
15:25The last part of it, I had written with Andrew Solt.
15:32And Bundy and Solt had headed east.
15:40In the meantime, I had separated from my wife, Gloria Graham,
15:45who was playing opposite Bogie.
15:49And if I had let the producer, Bobby Lord or Bogie, know that,
15:55they would have gone crazy or Harry Cohn would have gone crazy.
15:58And so I said, well, look, I'm having trouble with the third act.
16:03Make an apartment for me out of a couple of dressing rooms.
16:08Because I don't want to drive to Malibu every night.
16:12And I want to get down and get on stage and work at night, which I did.
16:20And Gloria behaved beautifully. Nobody knew that we were separated.
16:25And I just couldn't believe the ending that Bundy and I had written.
16:32I shot it because it was my obligation to do it.
16:36Then I kicked everybody off stage except Bogart, Art Smith and Gloria.
16:41And we improvised the ending as it is now.
16:45The original ending we had written so it was all tied up into a very neat package.
16:51Frank Lovejoy coming in and arresting him as he was writing the last lines,
16:55having killed Gloria.
16:58And I thought, shit, I can't do it. I just can't do it.
17:03Romances don't have to end that way.
17:06Marriages don't have to end that way.
17:08They don't have to end in violence, for Christ's sake, you know.
17:13And let the audience find out and make up its own mind about what's going to happen to Bogie
17:21when he goes outside of the apartment area,
17:25which was the first apartment I lived in in Hollywood, by the way.
17:30This is a very personal film.
17:37Bogart plays a neurotic screenwriter with a violent temper
17:40who is unjustly suspected of murder.
17:42The police investigation places an intolerable strain on his relationship with Gloria Graham.
17:49Right there.
17:51The moment we see them together and talking, right after my rap for the detective.
17:56Working within the studio system, Ray, like other directors,
18:00often had to relinquish control of a picture at the vital stage of editing.
18:06Should we mix the speaker over this?
18:09Right.
18:21There we go.
18:23Which take is this?
18:24This is like take four or something.
18:26Listen to take six.
18:28Six?
18:29Yes, there is one.
18:32And also, I want to put back in, because in seeing the assembly in Boston,
18:43it struck me that we have no resolution to this at all,
18:46and we must have that jump of Leslie into Doug's arms.
18:52Why don't you do the tape?
18:54No.
18:58How did you approach your cutting in Hollywood?
19:00But I would cut every night after shooting.
19:02As you want.
19:04I usually have a rough cut in the film within a week after I finish.
19:12But this is different.
19:18This is a method of teaching.
19:20That we've come out with a film is, we hope, a very lucky accident.
19:28Ah.
19:34Now, crescendo, right from here.
19:37Before that.
19:38This part comes in before that.
19:40Now, let's listen to another take, if you can.
19:43Okay.
19:44Because I have one which is almost on the nose.
19:47When do you want the crescendo?
19:49The crescendo begins while we're on their backs.
19:51Oh, while we're on their backs.
19:53Right.
19:54So if I cut two bars, I think that would work.
19:56No, the two bars will bring you into the la-la-la-la.
19:59How have you organized your students' work on this production?
20:02Following a rotation system with somebody being on one sequence,
20:07somebody else being on another sequence.
20:10And finding that a person who may be emotionally involved in one sequence
20:19may not be doing as good an editing job as somebody else might do.
20:23Take him off, put him onto something else.
20:27Do you find you, can you get a consistent rhythm to the picture with those?
20:31That's my final job.
20:33Everything that goes through here now goes through me.
20:40Finally, there can only be me.
20:43Finally, there must be the director.
20:46Whenever you're ready, Luke.
20:48Yeah, okay.
20:49Turn up the lights, please.
20:51When the young French critics first began to develop the auteur theory,
20:54the concept of the director as the central creative force in the making of a film
20:58was a new one.
20:59No other American director attracted more sustained enthusiasm
21:03from François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and their colleagues
21:06than Nicolas Ray.
21:08I think what attracted us was that there was something European
21:13in this man from Hollywood.
21:15And what was European was perhaps the fragility,
21:19the vulnerability of the main characters.
21:22Although he sometimes shot with stars like John Wayne or Fred Bogart,
21:26these male characters were not macho or Sterling Gaiden.
21:31There was this great sensitivity.
21:35And especially in the treatment of sentimental stories,
21:39which gave an impression of great reality.
21:42At a time when Hollywood cinema was not easily personal or autobiographical,
21:47we always had the impression that the love stories in Nicolas Ray's films
21:51were true stories.
21:58I said once, and I'm ready to say it again today in front of this camera,
22:02I said once that a film like Johnny Guitar
22:04had more importance in my life than in Nicolas Ray's.
22:07It's a film for which I became passionate as soon as I saw it.
22:11I was critical the moment I saw it.
22:13I wrote about it.
22:14I wrote several articles about it.
22:16We even started a correspondence with Nicolas Ray.
22:20But I was talking about Johnny Guitar,
22:22which is a film that has a great importance in my life.
22:25I don't know why, because I found it very strong, very deep,
22:29about relationships between men and women.
22:31And I think it's the only film...
22:35It's the only film in which I saw a theme that is very interesting,
22:39at a certain stage of romantic relationships,
22:41which is bitterness.
22:42The bitterness of people who loved each other,
22:44who don't love each other anymore, and who see each other again.
22:46And I don't think any film treated it as well as Johnny Guitar.
23:00At points I feel drained of that...
23:02As their concept of the film evolved,
23:04Ray and his students continually revised their scenario,
23:08endlessly reshooting sequences.
23:12By this time, they had been working together for nearly two years.
23:17What I feel is that I want to give.
23:20Right, I know. It's a very difficult time now.
23:25As the project's shortage of funds grew critical,
23:28production would cease intermittently for want of cash to buy film stock.
23:32Ray fell ill that winter and suffered from bouts of despair.
23:35Because when you hand her the blankets,
23:40you're the one who wanted to come in and warm Tom originally, as you did.
23:44Right? Right.
23:46And so at this moment...
23:48The company would work when it could,
23:50from noon throughout the night until dawn in bitter cold,
23:53functioning on a few hours' sleep, snatched between takes.
23:59Action!
24:05I don't think that I could have gotten him...
24:08Or I could ever get him such a good acting teacher.
24:11I think he's the greatest teacher of acting in the world.
24:14I'm really excited by that.
24:16And the reason that I still work on the film,
24:19because I've wanted to leave, you know, now for...
24:22Since May.
24:24May.
24:26It's because this relationship that I have with Nick
24:30is still very exciting.
24:32The energy's still very high.
24:36You don't even take time with me anymore.
24:39Play your part or else get your ass off the set.
24:42My concentration is on him in this angle,
24:45and I don't want your personal hostility
24:48or whatever the hell you are feeling
24:51to take a part in the film.
24:53At this point, not at all.
24:56Not at all, at all, at all, Leslie!
25:07My personal hostility is not involved in the film.
25:10It's not involved when I walk from here to there.
25:13So I don't know what you're talking about.
25:16Well, then, honey, you haven't learned anything about acting.
25:20If that's, you know, your judgment.
25:23Fine, keep it.
25:27But I remain immune to it.
25:29Because I know what I know.
25:31You sure know your immunities, you know.
25:34Yes.
25:36I will not try to convince you.
25:40I will not try to convince you.
25:43All you can do is just cut ass out.
25:50If I waited for you four hours tonight...
25:52You didn't wait for me for four hours!
25:55I beg your pardon.
25:57I beg your pardon.
26:02Tell me when you waited for four hours for me.
26:04From 8.15 till 12.
26:068.15 you called.
26:07That's right.
26:09Who did you talk to?
26:10Judy.
26:14So how did you wait for me?
26:16Because she's part of the crew.
26:19I thought there's some kind of communication.
26:31We waited for you, for Christ's sake.
26:33Well, how was I going to get over here?
26:35Somebody was going to come after you when you called.
26:37But they didn't.
26:38And I called and no one came.
26:40You were going on to campus.
26:41I was not.
26:42You said, don't go on campus.
26:43I did not go on campus.
26:45Because then it would take even an hour.
26:47You're talking bullshit.
26:48I am not.
26:49You're talking petty bullshit.
26:51I am not.
26:52Four hours is a lot of time.
26:53You want to talk about the part, I'll talk about the part.
26:56I will not talk about petty bullshit.
26:58It's not petty bullshit.
26:59It's a matter of time.
27:00That's all.
27:02And if time is of the essence in this film,
27:04then it's not petty.
27:06Do you have any questions about this?
27:08No, I just walked from there to there.
27:23Play the actual scene for what it is.
27:26I don't know what it is.
27:28I don't know what it is.
27:30I don't know what it is.
27:32I don't know what it is.
27:34I don't know what it is.
27:36How do you feel?
27:38All right.
27:39All right.
27:40He's in a reluctance.
27:43Yeah.
27:44To let her walk him.
27:46I don't want to.
27:47All right.
27:48I don't want to feel any kind of reluctance at all.
27:52You should.
27:55It's for the scene.
27:57Because you want to do that thing for him.
28:00I do.
28:01To show him.
28:04So it's with reluctance you give them to her.
28:07And that is...
28:09This is the only moment of heroic action in the film.
28:15All right.
28:16Ready for picture, please.
28:19Ready.
28:20That's okay.
28:22Roll them.
28:23Sound on.
28:24Camera on.
28:25Scene.
28:26Action.
28:33All right.
28:34Now.
28:35Turn that way again.
28:49Sorry.
28:51All right.
28:57I like this very much.
28:59I just want to see the other kind of graciousness come into it.
29:08I want to extend...
29:12Extend the moment a little longer.
29:16Because it may take a moment in it.
29:20Or just a second in the thought.
29:25It's the kind of miracle in film where...
29:30You can extend that thought into...
29:3330 seconds, 40 seconds.
29:37No, we want to extend it to 8 seconds.
29:48The move was good.
29:51All right.
29:55So I think it's the move first and then the...
30:00Okay, darling.
30:02You do it.
30:14Leslie!
30:17Wonderful.
30:18Thanks.
30:20Wonderful.
30:21Thanks.
30:23I try not to direct them until just before the scene,
30:26which is part of what the hassle was about last night.
30:29And...
30:30But when a person has the stink of the gallows about her...
30:35How...
30:37Then you...
30:39Then you're bound to run into...
30:42The same thing that you might run into with a Tallulah Bankhead.
30:46Or a...
30:50Well, hell, I've only had two fights with actors in my life.
30:53Really.
30:55And...
30:56You use...
30:57What is of their essence at the moment.
31:03Because that is their easiest reference point.
31:06And you have to be aware of that and how to agitate it.
31:09How to...
31:11Make it work for you in the scene.
31:14What their immediate concern is.
31:16He showed me about a year ago little bits of the Binghamton film.
31:19And some of them were...
31:20I couldn't tell what the whole film was like at all.
31:23There wasn't enough of it.
31:24But I saw a couple of sequences that were quite amazing.
31:28And really reminded me of Nick's...
31:33Kind of...
31:34Of talent which he was showing in the days when he was making
31:37Rebel Without a Cause.
31:38And those extremely...
31:41Passionate and vital pictures.
31:43Passionate and vital pictures about the young.
31:47How did you get the part in Rebel?
31:49Well, Nick made a lot of tests.
31:53Of different girls.
31:54I think there were about 50 of us.
31:56And it sort of narrowed down.
31:57There were 50 to begin with.
31:59And the second day it was down to 10.
32:00And the third day I think it was down to...
32:03Five or six.
32:04But the big problem was...
32:07That I had really up to that point only played children.
32:09And although I was 15...
32:11The last thing I did was in Pigtails or something.
32:13And so I was finding it difficult to convince...
32:16And Nick was also finding it difficult to convince the studio
32:18That I was out of Pigtails.
32:20So one day I came on an interview with a boyfriend
32:23Who had a cut on his face.
32:25And Nick said, where did he get that?
32:28And I said, drag racing.
32:29And then shortly afterward...
32:32I was actually in a bad car accident with Dennis Hopper.
32:36In which Dennis was driving too fast.
32:38And we were all thrown from the car and brought to the hospital.
32:41And I was sort of semi-conscious.
32:43And the police were called.
32:46And they were asking me my parents' phone number.
32:49And I kept saying, it's Nick Ray.
32:51Call Nick Ray.
32:52And the number is...
32:53So forth and so forth.
32:54The number of the Chateau Marmont.
32:55And I just kept repeating that.
32:57And so that's who they did call.
32:58And Nick sent his doctor down to the hospital.
33:01And then he came down.
33:02And I said, Nick, they called me a goddamn juvenile delinquent.
33:05Now do I get the part?
33:07And you got it.
33:08And I got it.
33:09No director that I'd ever worked with had ever improvised.
33:13And Nick's bungalow at the Chateau Marmont where he lived.
33:19Was the...
33:21The set was built from that.
33:23So that when we rehearsed, we really rehearsed as though in a set.
33:26And we improvised most of the scenes.
33:29Could you tell us something about the relationship between Nick Ray and Jimmy Dean?
33:35Well, they obviously had become very close.
33:38Because before the film started, they sort of hung around together.
33:41And as you mentioned, went to New York.
33:43And so that Jimmy trusted Nick a great deal.
33:46And I think Nick was very fatherly towards Jimmy.
33:51I mean, he was to Sal and to myself as well.
33:56But I think Nick just absolutely understood Jimmy.
33:59They were just completely in tune in personality.
34:01I guess maybe Jimmy reminded Nick of himself a great deal.
34:05So that there was never any friction as there was between Jimmy and other directors that he worked with.
34:11And it was just a wonderful blend.
34:14And Nick brought out this feeling of trust in Jimmy.
34:18But working with Jimmy was...
34:25Like a real joy.
34:28A real joy.
34:31But I had the advantage of his having worked with Kazan.
34:37And where he at least had a method of beginning.
34:46I developed the method a little bit more.
34:49Because Kazan and I had matriculated at about the same time in the theater.
34:55And he had taught me a lot.
34:58I think the nicest thing Gadge ever said to me was,
35:03How did you get that spontaneous performance out of Jimmy?
35:08But method changes with damn near every actor.
35:12And I honored his imagination more than almost anything else.
35:17Dean was the only one in the cast who had any real comprehension of method.
35:22Or of the school of theater in which I had grown up.
35:27And...
35:33You couldn't use the word improvise.
35:35If you used the word improvise with people like Andoran.
35:40Or Jim Backus.
35:43Or Virginia Brissac.
35:47They'd say, oh this artsy school.
35:52And...
35:56So I'd use old vaudevillian terms.
35:59The director has to be able to work with everybody from every school.
36:06No cast is ever made up of really the same people, the same background.
36:13So you have to use all the techniques you've ever learned.
36:17Whether it's what you learned from a vaudevillian.
36:20Or from an old leading man like Fuller Mellish.
36:23Who came over with Henry Irving and Minnie Madden Fisk.
36:26Or burlesque people like Red Buttons.
36:31Or Phil Silvers.
36:39Or from miners or shrimp fishermen.
36:48Or your own peers as you grow up in the theater.
36:53It's a...
36:54A Cary Grant for instance is a...
36:58Is a fellow like...
37:00Duke Ellington has in his trunk so many tunes.
37:06Well, Cary Grant has so many notes of sunsets.
37:11So many jokes.
37:13So many things that he's collected and remained collecting every single year of his life.
37:18That his memory, his affective memory is always implemented by an easy reference.
37:30He has them in the trunk.
37:31He doesn't have to refer to them because the compartments of the brain have them.
37:35But having written them down.
37:36Having noted them.
37:37And having taken the...
37:43Visual memory of...
37:45Like that tree between those two little shacks there.
37:50Being something which you...
37:53Might remember in the scene.
37:55Say, why don't we use that?
37:59After Rebel Without a Cause,
38:01Nicholas Ray continued to produce some extraordinary work.
38:04Although he was one of Hollywood's most respected directors,
38:07Ray still suffered studio interference
38:09that bodlerized his conception on several films
38:12and he began to work abroad.
38:14Thereafter, he drifted from one project to another
38:17through the Byzantine complications of independent production
38:20and multinational financing.
38:22Compromises were still required,
38:24but Ray did enjoy a measure of autonomy
38:26beyond that generally accorded him in Hollywood.
38:29Then in 1960,
38:31he was drawn into the world of blockbuster spectacles.
38:34Although he brought his immense visual talent
38:37and some original conceptions to the rather inflated material,
38:40Nicholas Ray seemed glaringly out of place
38:43overseeing the massive technology
38:45and impersonal logistics
38:47of A King of Kings
38:49or of 55 Days at Peking.
38:51Why did he get discouraged?
38:54This is the terrible evil, I think, of the Hollywood system.
38:58I think you end up,
39:01because you do get screwed occasionally by studios,
39:04you do get frustrated,
39:06they do mess up your work
39:08and make it more difficult for you to work
39:10or they did in those days when the studios really existed.
39:12They don't really exist anymore in that sense.
39:16I think Nick was probably much more vulnerable than other people.
39:20Everybody has this,
39:21but whereas a man like Kazan was able,
39:24who's tough as nails, was able to take it in stride,
39:27I think Nick finally was partially destroyed by it
39:31and became almost perverse in his resistance,
39:36in his almost being prepared to be screwed
39:40before anticipating the screwings before they actually occurred.
39:45Now that is not rare.
39:46That happens to many directors
39:49and many people who work in the business.
39:51It affected Nick more than other people.
39:54Most film courses or film classes
40:02concentrate on
40:06getting rid of the responsibilities to the students
40:09as quickly as possible by putting them off in corners
40:11and shooting 8mm films,
40:13which they can do all by themselves
40:17and present for a senior thesis.
40:23Therefore, the emphasis is on a kind of static camera
40:30with cute ideas or masturbatory ideas
40:34or date-making ideas
40:38or anything except the relationship with other human beings.
40:44And film is a collective art.
40:46It's an eclectic art.
40:47It's a collective art.
40:50And it's, by its own nature,
40:57become the most communicative art that we have in the world.
41:03And the only two great ambassadors we've ever had
41:05from the United States have been jazz and film.
41:10And that doesn't come from sitting off in a corner.
41:20For all his hardships,
41:22Nicholas Ray remains both intransigent and optimistic,
41:26facing an uncertain future,
41:28determined to make films in his own way.
41:30In a sense, each project he undertakes
41:33might be likened to the blind run in Rebel Without a Cause
41:36as a slightly mad test of courage
41:39that leads him up to and perhaps over the edge of disaster.
41:42While Ray did find in Binghamton momentarily
41:45a kind of community and collective endeavor
41:47for which he had long been searching,
41:49in the end, Nick Ray knows that he must drive his blind run alone.
41:53As he has often remarked,
41:55the working title of every film he has ever made has been
41:58I'm a Stranger Here Myself.
42:02There's a little camera on this.
42:04There's a little camera on this.
42:17It might be good emotionally for you to take the low camera.
42:27She's putting the blankets on Tom.
42:29Yeah.
42:32Huh?
42:33Yeah, go ahead.
42:34That you tip up to her.
42:37What do you mean? I take a camera that's...
42:39That's the low camera.
42:41As the blankets come on to her.
42:43You should be the 75 here.
42:47And you tip up into her.
42:51I think it's emotionally a good thing.
42:54All right. Okay.
42:57Footage, please.
43:02It looks very beautiful to me.
43:05That's a wrap.
43:26© BF-WATCH TV 2021