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Peter had made a motorcycle movie called Wild
Angels which was a big big success and Jack

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Nicholson had made one called Hell's Angels
on Wheels and I had made one called The Glory

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Stompers. So Peter and I promised each other
we wouldn't make a bike movie. We wanted to

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do anything but make a motorcycle movie because
we were afraid that we were going to become the

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John Wayne and uh you know Gabby Hayes of bike
films. I went to Toronto to promote the trip.

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So I was there in the first day of this big
exhibition. Jack Valenti is up on this big

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table of big wigs and he's a new boy in the block.
LBJ had just appointed him and just created the

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thing called the Motion Picture Association of
America. And Jack's up there. This is his first

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public utterance. My friends, you're my friends
and looking right at me. We have to stop making

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movies about motorcycles, sex, and drugs and
make more movies like Dr. Dittle. I went back to

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the Lakeshore Motel, smoked a couple of dubes,
had some Heineken, sat down and began to sign

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photographs. I came upon one photograph from the
Wild Angels. So, the dubes and the heiney kicked

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right in and I fell into the photograph and that's
it. I know what to do for my next sex motorcycles

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and drugs movie. First thing I thought of was
these two guys who had done this journey across

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America and that they'd get bumped off by these
guys who were poachers. I'd call him Hopper and

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it was about 4:30 in the morning. He woke me up
in the middle of the night and he said, "What do

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you think of that idea?" And I said, "Did they
tell you they'd give you the money?" And I said,

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"You direct, I'll produce, both write, and we'll
both act. We can save some money." Dennis said,

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"You want me to direct?" I knew that Dennis would
be the perfect person to direct this film. And

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uh I wasn't wrong. We've gone through the whole
60s and the 60s have been such a fascinating time

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and there had been no movies made that had
anything to do with our reality. I mean the

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movie that was made the year that uh we made
Easy Rider was Doris Day and Rock Hudson made

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Pillow Talk. The young kind of movies were being
made for kids were Beach Blanket Bingo, you know,

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with Frankie Avalon. They had very little to do
with the reality of Hate Ashberry or the reality

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of the Hippie Love Ends. So much was happening at
that moment. The visual arts were exploded. The

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music was exploding. All these creative things had
happened. And basically, this was tapping into the

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end of it. Pop art had already happened. Rock and
roll had already happened. The summer of love was

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over. I was in Roskoff in the west coast of France
in 1967 shooting a film with Jane. One afternoon I

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hear some scuffling on the stairs and into my room
walks Terry Southern who had been in Rome looking

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at Barbarella that he had written for Jane Bonim.
Cherry wanted to know, "What are you doing?"

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tell him the story of what Dennis and I were
going up to. And Terry knew Dennis. Terry said,

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"Denden, huh?" "Well, what's your plan?" I said,
"Well, you know, we really don't want us to write

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it into a screenplay form. We're too impatient
for it. So, we want to find somebody who will

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just mechanically write it into a screenplay form
for us and then we'll go out and shoot the film."

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Terry said, "I'm your guy." He said, "Terry,
your fee is the budget of the film. Come on,

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give me a break." No, you don't understand,
Peter. I'm your guy. We all got together,

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began to work it out. By the time we'd spent about
five days together, we had it locked into a story

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that I recorded on tape and it was transcribed and
made out of 21 pages. And that's what we went back

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to Hollywood with. So, we went into Bob Rafelson,
Bert Schneider, and our friends who had just made

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the Monkeys and had this tremendous success.
and Jack Nicholson was there because they were

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making Head and that's how Jack fell into it.
Also, Raelson said, "You know, it's the most

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commercial story I've ever heard." Well, how much
do you want for this movie? I said, " $360,000."

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I wasn't prepared for it. I just thought, well,
that's how much it cost Corman to shoot The Wild

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Angels. I can do the same. No problem. I said,
"We ought to go to Marty Grove because we'll

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have 100,000 people in costume. We won't have
to pay for it." And Bert wrote us a check for

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$40,000 to go shoot Marty Grove. And Schneider
said, "Uh, this is your test. I'm giving you

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money to shoot this 16 millimeter thing. If this
works, fine. If it doesn't, you're not going on

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with this picture." There was been some confusion
about when Marty actually took place. So, they

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were caught. They hadn't they didn't have anything
except a number of volunteers. I had to suddenly

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jam and get friends with 16 mm cameras together
to go and shoot in Marty Gro, which is already a

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disastrous idea. the night before they traveled to
New Orleans, they had a meeting. People would say,

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"Gee, okay, uh, we need a gaffer. Who wants to
be a gaffer and you know, somebody put, "Okay,

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you're the gaffer." And it was like that. It
was just, "Oh my god, this can't work." I mean,

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I wasn't that organized, but I was appall. And
they all thought they were the first camera. They

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all thought that. We're all out of our minds.
Half of us were on acid. We go to a meeting in

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a conference room. Dennis and Peter are sitting up
there. We got to be careful here because they know

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what we're doing. And I said, Dennis, who knows
what we're doing? He said, the government. I said,

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the government. Well, why? What are we doing
that that they know? He said, they know that

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we're here to make this movie. And I said, well,
how do they know what the movie is about? We don't

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have aing script. How the can they know that? He
said, they know, man. Man, they know because of

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who we are. Who are we? Seymour Cassell was one of
the camera assistants. You know, this is great. It

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was a nightmare. And I was so convinced that we
had to do this right and so on. I was a maniac.

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I tell them nobody's to film anything unless
I tell them to. And every time I look around,

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there's a guy shooting out the window. And again,
because they all wanted to be directors. It was a

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nightmare. It was a prison-like atmosphere. Dennis
was quite afraid that we would get some idea that

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we should go shopping and then he wouldn't
have us in that exact inspired moment when

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he had something to shoot. So he used to say,
"Are you there? Are you there?" And we Tony

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and I would look at each other. Yes. Why? I don't
know. Just just want you there. Then I get in an

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argument with one of the cameramen. Give me it's
my camera and he go off and shoot without Peter.

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We were supposed to be in the parade. If you look
at the film carefully, you'll see that we're never

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in the parade. There's one shot where I'm in the
parade. I could not believe what was going on. Uh,

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and I'm the producer. A lot of people quit.
So, they started to come back about the

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second or third day, and they'd all come by the
office and just tell me these horror stories of

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what happened. I was taking a shower, I guess,
trying to wash the day off. It was so amazing.

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So, I got cleaned up and and dried off, put
on a t-shirt and some jeans and a jacket. Went

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next door where Karen Black and Tony Basel were
bunkked together. Picked up Karen's guitar and

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started playing songs and you know, location love.
There's a scuffle going on outside. I was drawn to

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the scuffle. And out there is Barry Feinstein
holding his $30,000 three lens combo Aeraflex.

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And Barry Feinstein is the Golden Glove champion
while Dennis is kicking at him and trying to get

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the camera. Barry Feinstein and I get in a fight.
We're rolling around and fighting. I want all the

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film in my room and he starts throwing it at me.
The room is full of film. Did you work me? Ran me

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through the streets night and day hearing you
screaming about how Orson and Wells had failed

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and like how you weren't going to fail. fight
fell into the room with the two girls and upside

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down. Dennis tumbles through the door crashing in
through a door where Peter is in bed with Karen

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and Tony. Dennis picked up the guitar was Karen's
guitar and slammed it over Barry. Dennis was

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sitting on him. He was pinned to the phone. Picks
up a television, threw it at Barry and Dennis

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looked at him and he says, and he meant it, I love
you, man. Man, I love you. The whole thing has

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been like a Rashimon experience. the whole movie,
the entire production, everybody's got an entirely

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different story on the thing. Terry Southern,
a grown-up, someone who can put order in here,

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someone who can make it pragmatic and workable.
So, we all had a meeting. Dennis was going.

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Terry said, "I don't think I can bear the
cacophony of your speech much longer." Dennis

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said, "The cacophony, huh? The cacophony of my
speech, huh?" and they were like having these

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arguments and things and nothing was decided. So
we started this very badly. This was did not start

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off as a couple come some friends now making a
movie. The big schism seemed to have come down

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to New Orleans. They never were the same after
that and they argued considerably throughout

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the remainder of the picture. They started
out great pals and they didn't end up great

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pals at all but they could pretend they were
great pals to the outside world and they did

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for years. Next thing was to get the script done.
So now there's a lot of controversy about that,

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but basically Terry Southern had been one of the
original producers and Terry ducked out after

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the New Orleans tobacco. So we made a deal with
Terry to be one of the writers on the project. We

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decided to shut down and get a screenplay written
and hire a real crew of real people and get kind

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of professional about the whole thing. We hired
a production manager named Paul Lewis. I had done

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a series of pictures with Jack Nicholson.
Jack and I were talking one time. He says,

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"Have I got a thing for you?" He said, "I've got
a great great picture for you to do. It's a bike

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picture and it's with two crazies, but at least
you have one guy there who will drink with you."

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I didn't think we were doing anything special at
all. Dennis always thought we were doing something

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special. The movie was a like a western to me. I
thought of Wyatt as Wyatt and I thought of Billy

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as Billy the kid. These two thrown together as
partner. For me, it was a western idiom. We were

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working with riding a motorcycle. I'm wearing
spurs. I was the Duke. Dennis was wardro and

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we're going across John Ford's American. It's
a couple of guys and rather than riding horses,

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they're riding like motorcycles. Uh they camp
out around campfires. They're the bad guys.

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They're outlaws. If you look at the Wild One,
that was the beginning of glamorizing the biker

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as the kind of fantasy outlaw. And what that did
is it created the atmosphere to allow the Hell's

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Angels to become a big gang. The same time that
we were making Easy Rider 1968, the whole country

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was ablaze. The Black Panthers were causing riots
everywhere and the cities were burning. We were

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living in a society that was amoral because
we could no longer believe in the moray of the

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society and that we were all breaking the laws of
society. People wanted change. They wanted us out

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of the war. They wanted a different kind of life.
You know, everybody was giving away acid in the

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beans and the love endings. Everybody was smoking
dope. If you didn't have it and somebody else had

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it, everybody shared. It was a nice feeling. And
it all changed. And when harder drugs came in,

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it became a business. When hard drugs started to
come in being dealt by people who had absolutely

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no values whatsoever, that was the beginning
of the end of it. When we first started doing

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meascul came before acid actually we were just
looking for different take on things because

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of smoking marijuana and the kind of things
that we were doing in the 60s. It seemed like

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everyone was outside of the law at that time. The
exact producer told us you can't have heroes who

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smuggle hard narcotics. can you do it with grass?
And then I looked at Hopper and I said, "Well,

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yeah, if we have three Peterbuilt triple tractor
trailers waiting for us." We couldn't really get

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that much marijuana on a motorcycle, you know,
to make it interesting, you know, moneywise. I

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changed that to cocaine because heroin had just
a bad connotation to it. And cocaine was a drug

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of kings and nobody really knew what it was. I
didn't really want to make it a drug you could

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identify. It was just a white powder. I wanted the
moralists in the country to feel whatever was the

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worst drug for them, that was what this was. And
that we would score this in a junkyard in Mexico,

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scoring junk in a junkyard. Haro loved that
thought. He also promised he'd give me real

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coke. It's a test. Oh man, I'll tell you, powdered
sugar really hurts. I had flown into LAX with John

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Lyn in a lair jet and looking out the window I saw
this is a public road and I just thought this is

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really wild. This would be a great place to do
a scene where there's so much noise you can't

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hear what goes on but you know what's going on.
Planes were landing from 20 ft to 50 ft over our

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heads almost every minute every minute and a half
and every time a plane went everybody was ducking

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down. There were the planes roaring overhead,
roaring, taking off. And at the same time,

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a train went by carrying halftracks and tanks on
its way to Vietnam. And I said, "Mixed media." And

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we elected not to put the tanks in there because
we did not want to make a film about or against

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any judgment on the war in Vietnam. We got Phil
because he had his own Rolls-Royce. So, we picked

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up that free and his own bodyguard. Another one we
picked up for free. But we ran into some problems

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because Phil really was scared. By the end of the
day, I mean, people were going to kill each other

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because you couldn't hear, you couldn't talk
to anybody. And the first day of the picture

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was almost the last day of the film. One of the
first things I did after I talked with Hoppers,

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I drew out the pictures of the motorcycle with
the teardrop gas tank. It's extended with the

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far front end, the two big Harley V twin poppers.
Boom. I'm just riding one big phallic down the

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road. They weren't motorcycles that you drove back
and forth across the country. Nobody tried that,

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I don't think. I There must be some nut cases
that did, but no rational human being tried

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it. Llo Kovac is the greatest telephoto operator
I've ever seen. Our camera car was hysterical.

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What we would do was mount the camera either in
a convertible or on the back of a station wagon.

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soft tires, back seats out, just some sandbags
and an Aeraflex and and lassel. ABC Leathers had

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made two jackets and one set of pants for me.
And I wore the outfit all the time. In fact,

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I'd got in a bathtub with pants on and got them
all wet and then let them dry with me and my

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legs bent so they would look like I'd been born
in them. So, it was a hot day. We'd stop. We're

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waiting. I'm getting hot in the black leathers. By
the time we got to Kingman, we were all going to

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go out by the pool to have a cocktail. That sounds
cool. Got into my room, peeled off the leathers.

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I had these purple legs from the diet pants. I
was very embarrassed about my skinniness. I said,

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"I'm not about to go out with skinny purple legs."
So, I pulled on some clean pants and went to the

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bar and I said, "Bring me the tallest, coldest
beer you have." So, they came with this big stein,

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glass stein of defrosted at that. And I grabbed
it, thinking to myself, [ __ ] And this is the

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first day on the road with the movie, you know,
my first production. This is wonderful. All these

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people were all together making this movie. Babis
picked up the beer. Couldn't move to my face. I

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could pick it up, put it down, but no hinge. So,
nobody saw that one. I'll wait and I grab with the

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other arm, pick it up, and it won't move. And then
I just try without the beer. I can't make my hands

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move this part of my body because for the entire
day at 25 miles an hour because you had to see the

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background. We could not go fast with my hands
up in the air so high and they're just hanging

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on trying to keep this sucker from going over at
faster speeds. It was easy to ride at slow speeds.

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It was a major [ __ ] I couldn't put anything in
my mouth. I couldn't even smoke a joint. We've

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been smoking since early that morning. What
we did was we drove along in three Cortezes

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and we jump out and shoot, jump out and shoot,
get back in the Cortez. And we were diligently

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figuring out what we were going to say. And of
course, it started coming up very serious and very

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heavy. And by the time we got to where we were
going to shoot, which is an Indian burial place,

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and there were park rangers standing there
watching us, they didn't want a pebble moved.

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We sat there with a camera running, I don't
know, 5 minutes before anybody said anything.

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We were so loaded, we didn't even know where
we were. Some of the hostilities you'll see

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between some of the people showing some of the
scenes. I think Luke and Dennis may have had some

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words earlier in the day, and I think you'll see
some of the hostilities in the way it was done,

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between the porky pig and, you know, certain
things. But it really worked for the picture.

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It was our first real day off and we all gathered
in the lounge of the Americana in in Flagstaff.

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We put all these roundts out in the circle and we
all were having a good time and I had my 12 string

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guitar and I was singing and playing and we were
having a grand old time till some son of a [ __ ]

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came out from the real bar drunk staggered
in into the middle of our circle and started

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saying you hippies youing hippies. you know, he's
an ex-Marine and he's thinking you peace next and

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he gets on a rant. He pisses off quite a few
people on the show, some of them whom served

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in Korea and he picked him up, put him outside
the circle and we all thought that's good enough.

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And as we all went to sit down again, he pulled
Joyce's chair out, Joyce King, our script clerk,

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and she sat down and fell on the floor. You do not
with the film company when they're all together.

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We picked him up, put him down in the bar as we
all went sighing hail out of this bar and into my

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room. The whole company uh went into Peter's
room, everybody. And Peter was sitting there

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rolling a lot of joints and uh everybody sat down,
everybody in the company and including people who

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had never done grass before. Everybody sort of
like smoked and you know got a little high. It was

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a nice it was a nice start for the road trip. It
was hysterical what went down. I can't tell you.

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I'd be invading people's privacies, but it was
absolutely hysterical how that that evening ended

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up. And we bonded beautifully. The only time I
ever had anything to do with con basically pretty

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ugly scenes. They were run by usually two or three
guys on a total power trip. Total control over

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some poor chicks that they ran ragged. Bunches of
children around that weren't being taken care of.

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But this was a polystyrene commune in the hills of
Malibu. So a little different. We shot the commune

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in the Malibu Hills here in California and we
had the art director copy almost identically

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New Buffalo. We had sent some people down to
Panga Canyon just to pick up hippies wherever

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we could find them so we could populate this thing
more. When I first come into the commune and I'm

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fully clothed and I lean over the wash basin and
splash my face and then my armpits and I've got

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on a shirt and a jacket. Why would a guy do that?
It was just something funny to do. I felt at times

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the movie was taking itself so seriously that
I had to harpoon it. Peter character would very

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likely maybe stayed in the commune. He seemed
to be very happy wherever he was. It was sort

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of okay, you know, and I'm the one we got to
keep going. We got to keep going. Dennis may

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be the dark force pulling this thing to a bad end.
You could just tell that if he stuck with Billy,

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he kept on doing what he was doing, that one
or both of them were going to wind up dead.

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The marching band is America to me. And marching
without a permit is something that I knew quite

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a bit about since I was in the civil rights and
trying to stop the war. So, we get in the parade

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and we get busted for parading without a permit.
We had to do that line. You're in the parade or

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you're not in the parade, right? We're on the bus,
not on the bus. As I said, an ACLU type will see

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it go down and and buses out of jail. Dennis put
the ACLU type in jail with us. Thing in the prison

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that Jack says about, you they're cutting
off their hairs with rusty razor blades. If

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you have long hair, you guys are lucky. You know,
those are things that I stories that I'd actually

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heard that Paul and I had heard about what was
going on in Texas and not to go through Texas.

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We were running into these young kids with their
head shaved. Really beaten badly by uh Texas uh

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police and they would see us and they would say,
"Do not go through Texas or they're going to catch

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you. They're going to shave your head and they're
going to kick the [ __ ] out of you." We stopped.

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I bought Dennis a hat, made him tuck his hair
under the hat. And he wouldn't do it. You know,

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he I'm not going to go this way. I'm going the
way I'm going. We get to the border. He says,

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"I'm not going through Texas." Jack wasn't going
to be an actor anymore. I remember he told me

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that. He said, "What? You didn't want to be an
actor?" I said, "What are you going to He said,

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"I want to run a studio." Jack didn't originally
want to do the picture. Jack had reached a point

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where he was not sure he wanted to act anymore. We
had a production assistant whose name was Chris.

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And Chris could roll a joint better than anybody
I ever saw. And somewhere in there, we bought a

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kilo of marijuana for the for the picture. The one
thing is there's no time you see anybody smoking

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any dope in that movie that it isn't dope. The
shooting of that scene was magnificent because

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I was getting Nicholson loaded. You know, really
good pot. This was going on. So when it came time

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to shoot his end of it, he was really ripped.
I couldn't believe that actors could do that.

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They could get that loaded and still remember to
do anything, you know? It was a stunning kind of

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eye openener for me. And Jack went up, laughed
his ass off. Well, we cut. Okay, it's a print

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and a pickup. And Jack starts, "No, no, Dennis,
let let me do it from the top." Because he had

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been studying very hard. And Jack's just almost
in tears, begging. And the camera's now rolling,

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slated. And Dennis says, "Okay, Jack." And Jack,
uh, well, well, where where were we? In Morganza,

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Louisiana, the cafe. It was basically a segregated
state. And they had a white section and a

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non-white section. The best part of the cafe was
in the black section because they had great music

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in there and they had a great jukebox and the
people were there were much looser and everything

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else. Some of our crew went in the back and were
dancing to the music and dancing with some of

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the people who were in that section. That added
to the antagonism and added to the hostilities.

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The sheriff who was actually in the picture said,
"Either you get him out of there, I'm putting him

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in jail." So, I arrive at this place, Morganza,
Louisiana, this little coffee shop, which is about

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all there is there. I'd had this location scout
go ahead and he would find actors that might be

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suitable to be in the picture. And I kept telling
him, don't go to like, you know, little theater

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groups. I don't want little I want real people
and I'll try to work with them. Tony had lined up

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50 or 60 people. He had gone to the local little
theater group and he had gotten a group of actors

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together who had all dressed up and looked
like they were ready to perform. And I went,

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"Oh man, this is terrible." So we arrived before
anybody else was there as we walked in. They're

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standing around the house. I can smell them.
Can you smell them? Dennis says, "Those guys,

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we want them." I said, "I want those guys." And he
goes, "You've got to be kidding. I can't ask those

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guys. They'll kill me." And I said, "Those are the
guys I want for the movie." And I said, "You see

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those little girls over there?" And he said, "Oh
my, we're going to get in so much trouble here.

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We'll never leave this town." I said, "Everybody
wants to be in the movies." So they did. They

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wanted to be in the movies. I told them, "There's
nothing you can say that's too bad about us. Feel

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free to say anything you want about us because we
raped and killed a young girl outside of town."

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Oh. So that freed them up to use all their bigotry
and all their stuff and all their nastiness,

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which they wanted to use anyway. For years, I was
criticized. Why didn't you use a black guy on the

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back of the bike? You know, well, why? because it
would be too obvious that there would be a reason

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for them to kill us at that time because of the
racial implications of going into the South, but

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in point of fact, we didn't need to be different.
We didn't need to be black. We just needed to

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have long hair. And I wanted them to kill one of
their own. I wanted America to kill their own son.

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And when they killed Jack Nicholson, the worst
thing he's done is get drunk and uh and uh work

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for the ACLU, which everybody wanted me to take
out of the picture, which I thought was ludicrous

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at the time. But anyway, that's how uptight
everyone was. They didn't object to anything else,

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but that ACLU line I, you know, can't we do
something about that? Jack distills it all.

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He's our mouthpiece and he explains it. Genesis
foil. All they worried about is our hair. Oh yeah,

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they don't like the hair, but don't go tell them
they ain't free. And this is what we were seeing

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in the movie. We're not free. It was tough. But
Jack had to die. He was the one person everybody

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identified with the most. He was a drunk. If
anybody had trouble getting with any of our

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characters at that point, cuz we were ptheads.
With Jack's character as a drunk, they can get

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into the scene and they're more comfortable
with him. They knew that if he was found dead

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with his skull crushed, had been seen with these
two guys and those two guys had left the scene,

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probably the idea would be that those guys did
it. Dennis had found this graveyard, which I

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found to be rather bizarre, but it worked for me.
Everybody's buried above ground in New Orleans

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cuz you dig 3 ft down, you're in the water. And we
go up the side of the [ __ ] and we take the acid

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when he Peter breaks up the acid and gives it to
us. And I say my sensitive line. Oh, shut up. just

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take it. We were going to go to the cemetery and
shoot the next day. I said, you know, I don't know

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if I can sleep tonight and we're getting really up
early. And so Peter said, uh, take this. Take this

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and you'll sleep. What is it? He says, sleeping
pill. Yeah. So, I take it and I sort of feel like

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um I'm lying there trying to go to sleep and Tony
is next to me in the other bed and she's listening

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to me and I'm going, "Tony, I know this sounds
really strange, but I feel like I can't get in

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my body. I feel like I can feel the outside of
my skin. It feels really cool and cold and and

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I can't go to sleep because I'm out. I can't get
in." So she wakes up in the morning. She says,

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"Karen said the most wonderful things last night.
Why doesn't she say them in the movie?" The whole

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sequence was not scripted. Dennis saw the statue
was Italian Statue of Liberty with me sitting on

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her lap asking my mother why she'd coped out on me
because my mother committed suicide when I was 10.

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And I said, "Dennis, you can't ask me to do that.
Just because you know doesn't give you the right

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to go public with it, especially in the film. I I
don't feel comfortable doing that." No, no, man.

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You you've got to, man. I mean, man, man, you
man, you you got to, man. You mean you know,

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man, I mean, it's Dennis, I don't want to do it.
I don't want to go out there and say that. I don't

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want to be that public with it, but man, you you
got to and we're arguing and arguing and give me

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one good reason, man. You know, because I'm the
director. I couldn't argue with that. So, I got

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up on the statue and I went for something I had
never done in my life. That to me was talking to

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the Statue of Liberty and saying, "Are you just a
piece of paper? Is liberty just a piece of paper?"

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I thought of those things as being symbolic of
what was happening in the country. Barry, who

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was filming it, could see it through the lens. And
I don't know why Dennis wanted to move the camera,

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but Dennis wanted to move the camera. Barry wanted
to let it roll. And I could hear the argument. And

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finally, I go, "Shut up. It's in the film." We had
shot the whole movie and I said, "But there's one

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more scene that we have to shoot." And he says,
"No, no, we've shot the movie the movie." And I

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get him out in the middle of the night. I said,
"We're shooting this scene." And he said, "Well,

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I'm not saying all that crap." Dennis started
out. What do you want to say, man? Well, you know,

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I just want to say we blew it. Yeah, it's good.
We have to say we blew it when we went for the big

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money, man. You know, we say we blew it our hair.
No, no, I just want to say we blew it. And this

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boiled into an argument, you know, basically with
Dennis, it's high level, high decibel. I said,

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"Well, then don't worry about it. You just say we
blew it and I'll say the rest." He said, "Well,

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how you going to do that?" I said, "Don't worry
about it." Dennis and I were at a gas station and

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found this gentleman with a goiter on his neck.
And Dennis said, "Get me him." So I said, "Those

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are the two guys that I want to do the killing."
He said, "But we need somebody with a uh pickup

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truck. Do you have a pickup truck?" And he said,
"No, but my friend does." And he points out his

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friend from the back and I said, "Dennis, yeah,
right. Get him." So Dennis, we got them both,

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put them in the car, and you know, Dennis told him
what he wanted to do. Basically gave them roughly,

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you know, what they were supposed to say and
and then let them go. I really wanted to win

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the con film festival. Yeah. And uh I had enough
knowledge to know that superimposers were like

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00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:09,520
frowned on in the u European art uh art market.
People said, well, that was because they couldn't

316
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:15,280
afford the money that it took to superimpose.
But I that may be partly it, but I I think that

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superimposer is really cheating, you know? I mean,
I think that if you can direct cut something,

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it's much cleaner. Dennis had cut together the
picture in a in a very long version and we'd seen

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this long version endlessly and it was too long
to ever think about releasing. Dennis wanted to

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road show the movie which is when you have the
intermission you know ticketed signed seat and

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all that and I kept saying Columbia isn't going
to do that Dennis just there's not a chance in the

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world that they're going to road show this movie.
So, at some point the picture was taken away,

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if you will, from Dennis. We had to take the
film and re-edit it from three hours down to a

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reasonable length film. Jack edited edited his
part of the scene. Hayward edited, I edited,

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uh, Bird edited, Bob edited. We'd cut it down
from over three hours to 90 minutes. And we had

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a screening for Dennis at Columbia in the
big theater. And I just thought he's going

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to go so nuts when he sees what we've done. You
know, he was my brother-in-law and I liked him,

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but he had a temper and I knew this was cutting
to his creative soul. And the lights came on and

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I was prepared for anything, you know, to
be anything from being shot to, you know,

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like and he and he was there was tears in his
eyes. And he said, "That's beautiful." He said,

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"That's amazing. Don't ever ever
let me cut another photo of film.