a moment when these things were happening way more than ever before.
JG: It was a case where technology changed an art form. Suddenly it was possible to have a camera on your shoulder. Three or four years earlier it wouldn’t have been possible—except in the most studio set-up kind of ways—to point a camera at a camera. And to have all that shaky stuff, and this was not fake shaky. All this stuff has since been co-opted—you can’t tell anymore if that’s real shaky camera or if they’re making it look like a shaky camera. But everything here—if you hear a sound pop, that’s a real sound pop. If the sound suddenly drops, it’s because that shotgun mic wasn’t pointed in the right place. Everything is real. Anyway, I was such a young man, so many things have happened since. Of all the things that have happened to me in life, this event here with Bill is one of the absolute high points of my life.
EH: To see you on camera, the way you responded to it, even with your frustration, you’re clearly so deeply engaged with what’s happening. Obviously that’s who you were at the time, but how amazing to have had an opportunity to be engaged that way.
JG: There was a seriousness there. An artistic serious- ness. This engagement that you notice, this is not just some wise guy undermining authority for the purpose of undermining authority. There’s an actual artistic earnestness here. We actually care about what we’re doing. In our own rebellious way, we’re loyal to the film.
EH: It’s amazing how with all these conflicting person- alities and opinions, the metaphorical ambitions and
political and theoretical intentions, the film comes across as so alive. It becomes this active moment, perpetually. And that’s very rare. You can try to manufacture it, but it’s very rare to have a film where, even if improvisa- tion plays a part in it, it’s not like everybody is working towards an improvisation. It’s all just happening.
JG: In fact, the word improvisation almost is not appro- priate because of the vastness of the improvisatory char- acter of what we were doing—from the moment we arrived at the park to the moment we went home. It was so improvisatory that to call it that almost diminishes it.
EH: Did it feel that deeply spontaneous throughout?
JG: The improvisatory character was so huge that it’s almost like it went too far. It was like, “Let’s improvise. And we’re improvising and all of a sudden it was like, Oh my God. This is just, like, ridiculous.” And that’s when the mutiny happened. You might say too much impro- visation. I thought I was so cool, being so loose. Just roll- ing down the ocean with no rudder and no compass. And then, finally, Hey, can we please have a rudder and compass? Like, where are we going? It finally hits you.
EH: Of all the things that Bill may have intended, that to me is most valuable. That sense of, “Okay: ultimate openness, total collaboration sounds great. Not having one all-knowing leader sounds good.” But the reality of that is really maddening.
JG: No matter what his motive, his strengths or weak- nesses, he allowed this mutiny. And it created an alto- gether different kind of outcome.
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