Im a Stranger Here Myself-1975
Category
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Short filmTranscript
00:00♪
00:21Whoooo!
00:23♪
00:44Hold on, T-Double.
00:46♪
00:53♪
01:23Whoooo!
01:25♪
01:33Whoooo!
01:35♪
01:43So long, T-Double.
01:44See ya.
01:46Take it easy.
01:47But take it.
01:50What's next?
01:51Now we can start strutting.
01:53One thing you gotta learn, kid.
01:55You gotta look and act like other people.
02:02Hell, when I first got to France,
02:04and read the critiques of René, Godard, Truffaut, Romer,
02:11I didn't know who the hell they were talking about.
02:15But that's the way films should be.
02:17To me, an artist should not moralize.
02:21A person who has the audacity to make a film in the first place
02:28shouldn't ever consciously put his own neuroses on screen.
02:33Most of your heroes are pretty neurotic.
02:38My heroes are no more neurotic than the audience.
02:42Unless you can feel that a hero is just as fucked up as you are
02:47and that you would make the same mistakes that he would make,
02:52you can have no satisfaction when he does commit a heroic act.
02:59Because then you can say,
03:00hell, I could have done that too.
03:04And that's the obligation of the filmmaker, of the theater worker,
03:08to give a heightened sense of experience to the people
03:12who pay to come to see his work.
03:23From 1947 to 1962,
03:25Nicholas Ray directed some of the most richly personal work in American cinema.
03:30Yet in 1971, when he accepted a teaching post
03:33at Harper College in Binghamton, New York,
03:35he had not completed a film in nearly a decade.
03:38At Binghamton, Ray trained his students to be a working production unit,
03:42teaching them filmmaking by shooting a feature film
03:45as a collaborative creative effort under his supervision.
03:49Grow, not grow, let the virgin go, but become us.
03:53You've just described it.
03:56All right, all right.
03:57All right, places, please. Places.
04:00Scene one, age take one.
04:03Action.
04:07Born in 1911,
04:09Nicholas Ray left his hometown of La Crosse, Wisconsin at 16
04:13to study under Frank Lloyd Wright.
04:15After a brief university career,
04:17Ray emigrated to New York City at the height of the Depression.
04:21There he became involved in the lively experimental theater of the 30s,
04:25working as an actor with such politically progressive groups
04:28as the Workers' Theater and the Federal Theater Project,
04:31which included the Living Newspaper.
04:34It was there that Ray learned the improvisational methods
04:36that he would employ in Hollywood
04:38and would still be using with his students in Binghamton
04:40more than 30 years later.
04:44It began on East 12th Street, not a few blocks from here.
04:50Led to my association with Kazan and Hausman,
04:54from whom I learned more than any other two people in the world.
05:01Of...
05:08I worked in a workers' theater.
05:13We graduated to Broadway.
05:16And somehow or other, one day Kazan said,
05:19come on, you've been spending enough time in radio, theater, television.
05:25I'm going out to Hollywood to make my first film.
05:29Come on along and help me.
05:35Hausman did the same thing.
05:37I suppose I've collaborated with Hausman on more things
05:40than anybody else I've ever worked with.
05:44Nick had come to New York during the depths of the Depression
05:48when life was very strange, so rather desperate,
05:53and at the same time extremely hopeful,
05:59and there was almost no limit to the dreams one could have
06:03because everything was so terrible that everything was dreams.
06:06Nick was himself a very vulnerable, very sensitive,
06:12almost too sensitive person in some ways,
06:16and in some ways very aggressive and assertive,
06:20in other ways extremely reticent and shy,
06:23and that combination is very good for a director with actors.
06:28Particularly, his real talent lay in what he could do
06:32with very young and tender and sensitive and insecure people
06:36like Cathy O'Donnell, Farley Granger.
06:51Hello, hello.
06:56Do you do the marrying?
06:57That's my business.
06:58I have a $30 wedding which gives a complete recording
07:00of the ceremony on records.
07:02I have a $20 wedding.
07:03Will you just marry us?
07:04That'll be $20.
07:06Tilly, Herman.
07:07Who are they?
07:08My sister and her husband. Witnesses.
07:10We have to have them?
07:11Oh, yeah.
07:13First you've got to sign your names.
07:16Over here.
07:21If you'll just sign the register.
07:26Register.
07:47And?
07:48Rent your ring for a dollar or sell your one for five.
07:53I'll buy one.
07:54And this one will do it.
08:24By virtue of the power vested in me,
08:26I hereby perform this wedding ceremony.
08:29Do you, Catherine, take this man, Arthur, as your lawful wedded husband
08:32to love, honor, and cherish henceforth?
08:34I do.
08:35Do you, Arthur, take this woman, Catherine, as your lawful wedded wife
08:38to love, honor, and cherish henceforth?
08:40I do.
08:41Well, put the ring on her finger.
08:46Now, by virtue of the power vested in me,
08:49I now pronounce you husband and wife.
08:55Here, tip him each a dollar.
09:04Wish all the health, happiness, and wealth in the world.
09:09Herman, you've got a cold.
09:11I'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?
09:26I sure don't.
09:28Well, me neither.
09:29I'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.
09:36Nick has always made almost all his best pictures, actually,
09:40have been about people whom society was oppressing
09:44and 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,
10:00Nicholas Ray dropped out of the film industry,
10:03plagued by personal problems
10:05and discouraged by the compromises of commercial movie making.
10:08For Ray, the 60s were a long, murky period
10:12marred by a stream of unrealized projects and by failing health.
10:16In 1969, he returned to the United States
10:19after a ten-year absence
10:21to make a film about the Chicago Conspiracy Trial.
10:25What was it that captured your attention with the Conspiracy Trial?
10:29Well, it was the greatest circus of bigotry I'd ever heard,
10:34directed against young people
10:37who were now the 32 and 33-year-old equivalents of James Dean,
10:45who wrote pamphlets that were of such sophomoric and collegiate humor,
10:52like the stuff you write before homecoming games,
10:55which were taken seriously by the court.
10:59One day, Lee Weiner came to me and asked
11:02if I were a friend of Groucho Marx's, and I said, yes.
11:09He said, do you suppose we could get Groucho
11:13as an expert witness for us?
11:17And so we'll try.
11:20And he said, somebody has to explain our sense of humor,
11:26and he's the only man in the United States that we know of
11:28who can explain our sense of humor.
11:34And to see Dave Dellinger, the oldest of the group,
11:39and a Quaker pacifist
11:45be the only one to put his body in front of Bobby Seale
11:51to protect him from the blows of the police.
11:54So many things.
11:59I'll make it someday.
12:02After we finish this one, maybe.
12:04And the next one.
12:09Hey, you bums, look at them.
12:12Hey, look at that bunch of...
12:14Look at those magnificent bastards in there.
12:17Hey, get a shot of those cats in there.
12:19Well, I was talking to how it's used.
12:22Oh, get in the window, you schmuck.
12:25Hey, get in the window. Yeah.
12:29And he says you're a bastard.
12:30I see you got your pancake on over there.
12:32He says you're a bastard.
12:34Nick came and virtually changed the whole cinema department,
12:37the whole idea of filmmaking.
12:39And I think he has a huge amount of insight into everybody
12:44he's known for a while.
12:48He uses, he employs those insights
12:53for characters in a film, even.
12:57He's a con artist.
12:59And he knows how to manipulate people,
13:01if that's an acceptable word.
13:04But that's part of the talent of a director.
13:07He's always wanted to be cherished by young people.
13:12And he scorns his own generation,
13:15which has rejected him, apparently.
13:19And he just likes working with young people.
13:22As far as his role in the film,
13:24which is an essential part of the whole film.
13:28He's, as a character, I guess he's something like
13:32the parole officer in Rebel.
13:35Always caring for young people and
13:39he's been like a father to us and a counselor
13:43and a teacher at the same time.
13:46Ray's unconventional teaching methods
13:48demanded intensive involvement from his students,
13:51leading them to adopt a communal living arrangement
13:54that brought down continual harassment
13:56from conservative university authorities.
13:58Eventually, the group was forced to move to a farm
14:00just outside of town.
14:02Gradually, under Ray's direction,
14:04teacher and students alike attempted to develop
14:06an original approach to filmmaking
14:08that would express in a new way
14:10the process of self-discovery
14:12that has always been one of Nick Ray's central themes.
14:15Look, I like this quality on here
14:19better than I like the correction one.
14:22Which one is that?
14:23The overexposed one.
14:25Why do you like that one better?
14:27Because I like it better.
14:31Look, this is dull.
14:33This is one of the most aesthetic characters in the world.
14:36Look at this.
14:37I know what shot it is.
14:38I know what shot it is.
14:39But this is dull as hell, you know?
14:43How did Bogart take to
14:46playing the part of the writer in In a Lonely Place,
14:48which is rather a departure for him?
14:50Well, I had taken the gun away from his hand
14:54for the first time in Knock on Any Door.
14:58And the second time
15:03he was ready for it,
15:07a little bit more ready for it.
15:11And he obviously loved it.
15:13It's one of his favorite films.
15:17But it was a very personal story.
15:22A very personal story.
15:24The last part of it
15:28I had written with Andrew Soult.
15:32And Bundy had...
15:34Soult 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,
15:54they would have gone crazy.
15:55Or Harry Cohn would have gone crazy.
15:57And so I said,
15:59Well, look, I'm having trouble with the third act.
16:02Make an apartment for me out of a couple of dressing rooms.
16:07Because I don't want to drive to Malibu every night.
16:11And I want to get down on stage and work at night.
16:18Which I did.
16:19And Gloria behaved beautifully.
16:21Nobody knew that we were separated.
16:24And...
16:27I just couldn't believe the ending that Bundy and I had written.
16:31I shot it because it was my obligation to do it.
16:35Then I kicked everybody off stage except Bogart, Art Smith and Gloria.
16:41And we improvised the ending as it is now.
16:44The original ending we had written so that it was all tied up
16:48into a very neat package.
16:50Frank Lovejoy coming in and arresting him
16:53as he was writing the last lines, having killed Gloria.
16:57And I thought, Shit!
17:00I 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.
17:12And let the audience find out and make up its own mind about
17:17what's going to happen to Bogie
17:20when he goes outside of the apartment area.
17:24Which was the first apartment I lived in in Hollywood, by the way.
17:28This is a very personal film.
17:35Bogart plays a neurotic screenwriter with a violent temper
17:38who is unjustly suspected of murder.
17:40The police investigation places an intolerable strain
17:43on his relationship with Gloria Gray.
17:47Right there.
17:49The moment we see them together and talking,
17:51right after my rap for the detective.
17:55Working within the studio system,
17:57Ray, like other directors,
17:59often had to relinquish control of a picture
18:01at the vital stage of editing.
18:06We mix the speaker over this?
18:08Right.
18:10There it is.
18:21There we go.
18:23Which take is this?
18:24This is like take four or something.
18:26Listen to take six.
18:27Six?
18:28Yes, there is one.
18:29Right there.
18:31And also, I want to put back in,
18:34because in seeing the assembly in Boston,
18:42it 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?
18:57How did you approach your cutting in Hollywood?
19:00I would cut every night after shooting.
19:02As you went.
19:04I usually have a rough cut in the film
19:06within a week after I finish.
19:12But this is different.
19:13This is a...
19:18This is a method of teaching.
19:20That we've come out with a film is,
19:25we hope, a very lucky accident.
19:34Now, crescendo, right from here.
19:38This part comes in before that.
19:41Let'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?
19:48The crescendo begins while we're on their backs.
19:51While we're on their backs.
19:52Right, right there.
19:53If I cut two bars, I think that will...
19:55No, the two bars will bring you into the la-la-la-la.
19:58How have you organized your students' work on this production?
20:02Following a rotation system with
20:05somebody being on one sequence,
20:07somebody else being on another sequence.
20:10And finding a...
20:14that a person who may be emotionally involved
20:18in one sequence
20:19may not be doing as good an editing job
20:21as somebody else might do.
20:23Take him off, put him onto something else.
20:28Do you find you...
20:29get a consistent rhythm to the picture with...
20:31That's my final job.
20:34Everything that goes through here now goes through me.
20:41Finally, there can only be me.
20:44Finally, there must be the director.
20:46Whenever you're ready, Luke.
20:48Yeah, okay, at 16, you're ready.
20:50Turn 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
20:57in the making of a film was a new one.
20:59No other American director attracted more sustained enthusiasm
21:02from François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and their colleagues
21:05than Nicolas Ray.
21:08I think what attracted us
21:10was that there was something European
21:12in this man from Hollywood.
21:15And what was European
21:17was perhaps the fragility, the vulnerability
21:19of the main characters.
21:22Although he sometimes shot with stars
21:24like John Wayne or Frey Bogart,
21:26and these male characters were not macho
21:29or Sterling Gayden,
21:31there was this great sensitivity.
21:34And especially in the treatment, I must say,
21:37of sentimental stories,
21:39which gave an impression of great reality.
21:41At a time when Hollywood cinema
21:43was not easily personal or autobiographical,
21:46we always felt that the love stories
21:48in Nicolas Ray's films
21:50were true stories.
21:57I said once, and I'm ready to say it again today
22:00in front of this camera,
22:02I said once that a film like Johnny Guitar
22:04had more importance in my life
22:06than in Nicolas Ray's.
22:08It's a film for which I became passionate
22:10as soon as I saw it.
22:12But I was critical when I saw it.
22:14I wrote about it in several articles.
22:16And we started a correspondence
22:18with Nicolas Ray.
22:20But I was talking about Johnny Guitar,
22:22which is a film that has a great importance in my life.
22:25Why? Because I found it very strong,
22:27very deep,
22:29about male-female relationships.
22:31And I think it's the only film
22:35in which I saw a theme
22:37which is very interesting
22:39at a certain stage of love relationships,
22:41which is bitterness.
22:43The bitterness of people who loved each other,
22:45who don't love each other anymore,
22:47and who see each other again.
22:49And I don't think any film treated it
22:51as well as Johnny Guitar.
22:55Shut up!
22:57What?
22:59At points I feel drained of that.
23:01As their concept of the film evolved,
23:03Ray and his students
23:05continually revised their scenario,
23:07endlessly reshooting sequences.
23:11By this time, they had been working together
23:13for nearly two years.
23:15You know, what I feel is that
23:17I want to give.
23:19Right, I know. It's very difficult right now.
23:21And...
23:23As the project's shortage of funds
23:25grew critical,
23:27production would cease intermittently
23:29for want of cash to buy film stock.
23:31Ray fell ill that winter
23:33and suffered from bouts of despair.
23:35Because
23:37when you hand her the blankets,
23:39you're the one who wanted to come in
23:41and warm Tom originally as you did.
23:43Right?
23:45Right.
23:47And so at this moment...
23:49It worked when it could,
23:51from noon throughout the night until dawn in bitter cold,
23:53functioning on a few hours sleep
23:55snatched between takes.
23:59Action!
24:05I don't think that I could have gotten him
24:07or I could ever get him
24:09such a good acting teacher.
24:11I think he's the greatest teacher of acting
24:13in the world.
24:15I'm really excited by that.
24:17That I still work on the film.
24:19Because I've wanted to leave, you know,
24:21now for...
24:23since May.
24:25It's because
24:27this relationship that I have with Nick
24:29is still very exciting.
24:31The energy's still very high.
24:35You don't even take time
24:37with me anymore.
24:39Play your part or else get your ass off the set.
24:41My concentration is on him
24:43in this angle and I don't want
24:45your personal hostility
24:47or whatever the hell
24:49you are feeling
24:51to take a part in the film.
24:53At this point, not at all.
24:55Not at all, at all,
24:57at all, Leslie!
25:07My personal hostility is not involved in the film.
25:09It's not involved when I walk
25:11from there to there.
25:13So I don't know what you're talking about.
25:15Well, then,
25:17honey, you haven't learned anything
25:19about acting.
25:21If 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.
25:33Yes.
25:35I...
25:37will not try to convince you.
25:39I will not try to convince you.
25:41All you can do is just
25:43cut ass out.
25:47If I waited for you four hours tonight,
25:49that meant...
25:51You didn't wait for me for four hours.
25:53I dare fucking to.
25:55I beg your pardon.
25:57I beg your pardon.
26:01Tell me when you waited for four hours for me.
26:03From 8.15 till 12.
26:058.15 you called.
26:07That's right.
26:09Who are you talking to?
26:11Judy.
26:15So how did you wait for me?
26:17Because 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
26:37and I called and no one came.
26:39You were going on the campus.
26:41I was not. You said don't go on the campus.
26:43I did not go on the campus.
26:45Because then it would take even an hour.
26:47You're talking bullshit.
26:49I am not.
26:51You're talking petty bullshit.
26:53I am not. Four hours is a lot of time.
26:55You want to talk about the part, I'll talk about the part.
26:57I will not talk about petty bullshit.
26:59It's not petty bullshit. It's a matter of time.
27:01That's all.
27:03And if time is of the essence in this film,
27:05then it is.
27:17Do you have any questions about this?
27:19No, I just walked from there to there.
27:21Wait.
27:33The actual scenes are what it is.
27:37How you feel.
27:39All right.
27:41These are the reluctant.
27:45The letter walk.
27:47I don't want to feel reluctant at all.
27:51You should, for the scene, because you want to do that thing for him, to show him, so it's with reluctance you give them to her, and that is, this is the only moment of heroic action you can do.
28:14All right, ready for picture, please.
28:18Ready.
28:20That's okay.
28:21Roll them.
28:22Sound on.
28:23Camera on.
28:24Speed.
28:25Action!
28:33All right, now, turn that way again.
28:43Cut, cut.
28:49Sorry.
28:51All right.
28:57I like this very much, I just want to see the other kind of graciousness coming through.
29:03I want to extend, extend the moment a little longer, because it may take a moment, or just a second in the thought,
29:23the kind of miracle of film, where you can extend that thought into 30 seconds, 40 seconds.
29:37No, we want to extend it to 8 seconds.
29:48The move was good.
29:54So I think it's the move first, and then the... Okay, darling, you do it.
30:15Leslie!
30:16Ah.
30:18Wonderful.
30:19Thanks.
30:20Thanks.
30:21I try not to direct them until just before the scene, which is part of what the hassle was about last night.
30:28And, but when a person has the stink of the gallows about her, how, then you, then you're bound to run into the same thing that you might run into with a Tallulah Bankhead, or a...
30:50Well, hell, I've only had two fights with actors in my life, really.
30:55And you use what is of their essence at the moment, because that is their easiest reference point, and you have to be aware of that and how to agitate it, how to make it work for you in the scene, what their immediate concern is.
31:17He showed me, about a year ago, little bits of the Binghamton film, and some of them, I couldn't tell what the whole film was like at all.
31:24I mean, there wasn't enough of it.
31:26But I saw a couple of sequences that were quite amazing, and really reminded me of Nick's kind of talent, which he was showing in the days when he was making Rebel Without a Cause,
31:39and those extremely passionate and vital pictures about the young.
31:46How did you get the part in Rebel?
31:48Well, Nick made a lot of tests of different girls.
31:53I think there were about 50 of us, and it sort of narrowed down.
31:56There were 50 to begin with, and the second day it was down to 10, and the third day I think it was down to five or six.
32:03But the big problem was that I had really up to that point only played children, and although I was 15, the last thing I did was in Pigtails or something.
32:12And so I was finding it difficult to convince, and Nick was also finding it difficult to convince the studio that I was out of Pigtails.
32:19So one day I came on an interview with a boyfriend who had a cut on his face, and Nick said, where did he get that?
32:26And I said, drag racing.
32:29And then shortly afterward, I was actually in a bad car accident with Dennis Hopper, in which Dennis was driving too fast.
32:37We were all thrown from the car and brought to the hospital, and I was sort of semi-conscious.
32:43And the police were called, and they were asking me my parents' phone number, and I kept saying, it's Nick Ray.
32:51Call Nick Ray, and the number is so forth and so forth, the number of the Chateau Marmont, and I just kept repeating that.
32:56And so that's who they did call, and Nick sent his doctor down to the hospital, and then he came down.
33:02And I said, Nick, they called me a goddamn juvenile delinquent. Now do I get the part?
33:06And you got it.
33:07And I got it.
33:08No director that I'd ever worked with had ever improvised, and Nick's bungalow at the Chateau Marmont where he lived,
33:18the set was built from that, so that when we rehearsed, we really rehearsed as though in a set, and we improvised most of the scenes.
33:28Could you tell us something about the relationship between Nick Ray and Jimmy Dean?
33:34Well, they obviously had become very close, because before the film started, they sort of hung around together,
33:41and as you mentioned, went to New York, and so that Jimmy trusted Nick a great deal.
33:46And I think Nick was very fatherly towards Jimmy. I mean, he was to Sal and to myself as well.
33:56But I think Nick just absolutely understood Jimmy. They were just completely in tune in personality.
34:01I guess maybe Jimmy reminded Nick of himself a great deal.
34:06So 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, and Nick brought out this feeling of trust in Jimmy.
34:18Working with Jimmy was like a real joy.
34:30But I had the advantage of his having worked with Kazan,
34:38where he at least had a method of beginning.
34:45I developed the method a little bit more, because Kazan and I had matriculated at about the same time in the theater,
34:54and he had taught me a lot.
34:57I think the nicest thing Gadge ever said to me was,
35:02how did you get that spontaneous performance out of Jimmy?
35:07But method changes with damn near every actor.
35:12And I honored his imagination more than almost anything else.
35:16Dean was the only one in the cast who had any real comprehension of method,
35:21or of the school of theater in which I had grown up.
35:32You couldn't use the word improvise.
35:35If you used the word improvise with people like Ann Duran, or Jim Backus, or Virginia Brissac,
35:46they'd say, oh, this artsy school, hmm?
35:55So I'd use old Vaudevillian terms.
35:58A director has to be able to work with everybody from every school, you know?
36:05No cast is ever made up of really the same people, the same background.
36:12So you have to use all the techniques you've ever learned,
36:16whether it's what you learned from a Vaudevillian, or from an old leading man like Fuller Mellish,
36:22who came over with Henry Irving and Minnie Madden Fisk,
36:25or burlesque people like Red Buttons, or Phil Silvers,
36:38or from miners, or shrimp fishermen,
36:47or your own peers as you grow up in the theater.
36:53Cary Grant, for instance, is a fellow like...
37:00Duke Ellington has in his trunk so many tunes.
37:06Well, Cary Grant has so many notes of sunsets, so many jokes,
37:13so many things that he's collected and remained collecting every single year of his life, you know?
37:19His memory, his affective memory, is always implemented by an easy reference.
37:29He has them in the trunk. He doesn't have to refer to them because the compartments of the brain have them,
37:34but having written them down, having noted them, having taken the...
37:38the...
37:42visual memory of, like that tree between those two little shacks there,
37:49being something which you might remember in the scene, say, why don't we use that?
37:58After Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray continued to produce some extraordinary work.
38:04Although he was one of Hollywood's most respected directors,
38:07Ray still suffered studio interference that bodilerized 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 and multinational financing.
38:22Compromises were still required,
38:24but Ray did enjoy a measure of autonomy beyond that generally accorded him in Hollywood.
38:29Then, in 1960, he 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 and impersonal logistics of 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.
38:57I think you end up, because you do get screwed occasionally by studios,
39:04you do get frustrated, they 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.
39:15I think Nick was probably much more vulnerable than other people.
39:19Everybody has this, but 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.
39:47That happens to many directors and many people who work in the business.
39:51It affected Nick more than other people.
39:53Most film courses or film classes
40:01concentrate on
40:06getting rid of the responsibilities to the students as quickly as possible
40:10by putting them off in corners and shooting 8mm films,
40:13which they can do all by themselves,
40:19and present for a senior thesis.
40:22Therefore, the emphasis is on a kind of static camera
40:30with cute ideas or masturbatory ideas
40:34or date-making ideas
40:37or anything except the relationship with other human beings.
40:44And film is a collective art.
40:46It's an eclectic art. It's a collective art.
40:52And it's, by its own nature,
40:57become the most communicative art that we have in the world.
41:02And the only two great ambassadors we've ever had
41:05from the United States have been jazz and film.
41:09And that doesn't come from sitting off in a corner.
41:21For all his hardships,
41:23Nicholas Ray remains both intransigent and optimistic,
41:27facing an uncertain future,
41:29determined to make films in his own way.
41:31In a sense, each project he undertakes
41:34might be likened to the blind run in Rebel Without a Cause
41:37as a slightly mad test of courage
41:40that leads him up to and perhaps over the edge of disaster.
41:43While Ray did find in Binghamton momentarily
41:46a kind of community and collective endeavor
41:48for which he had long been searching,
41:49in the end, Nick Ray knows
41:52that he must drive his blind run alone.
41:54As he has often remarked,
41:56the working title of every film he has ever made has been
41:59I'm a Stranger Here Myself.
42:03There's a little camera on this.
42:04There's a little camera on this.
42:17It might be good emotionally
42:19for you to take the low camera.
42:27She's putting the blankets on Tom.
42:29Huh?
42:31Yeah, go ahead.
42:33That you tip up to her.
42:36What do you mean, I take a camera that's...
42:38That's the low camera.
42:40As the blankets come on to her.
42:42Usually the 75, yeah.
42:45And you tip up into her.
42:50I think it's emotionally a good thing.
42:53All right, okay.
42:54All right, okay.
42:57Footage, please.
42:59Um, 155.
43:01It looks very beautiful to me.
43:04That's a wrap.
43:24Thank you.