All language subtitles for Henning Lohner & Van Carlson on The Revenge of the Dead Indians

I'd like to introduce Henning Lohner...

...and I'd like to introduce Van Carlson, right here,

once again,
referring to the recent release of “C)ne I I”...

...which we were quite happy to see
out among the world.

And so,here for The Revenge of the Dead Indians,
we're going to make a

reflection. . . a moment or two where we share how, or
why, and what we were up to when we made this film.

C)f course, dedicated to john Cage,

as always, with just a little help from Frank Zappa.

Absolutely, always.

I think we mentioned that in the last one, and if you
haven't all bought 'rt yet, run out and get One! I

A wonderful film we made with john.

And thanks to Frank,
who introduced us to each other,

and we've been inseparable since!

- In I990,that happened...
-l989!

...even from that time,
there's elements in this film that

are from then and from all the things in between
then and when this was completed.

It's interesting Van met Frank in I982, which is the year
that I met john.just on a side note...

And then we met in I989, which is pretty much when
we started the Dead Indians, in a certain way.

I had been traveling around with john,

and in a way the first image was 433”,
which is the end of the movie.

That's really what set everything off.

And that was in I990.

But the idea to make a film about john

was coincidental with One! I

and it just took a long time to
get all of the material together.

We could have taken forever, but then finally

there was a reason to get the film out, which was

john's death.

And then public television in Germany,
of course, was interested...

well, not of course, but they were interested in
making a documentary about john, which then we did.

And because Henning was treated
so seriously by them,the length of this film

was a tribute to the number of people
that we were able to interview,

that wanted to participate,
all across the world.

And also,that Arte had the courage and fortitude...

It was one of those moments in time
that don't happen often.

The European cultural television channel Arte, was
founded the year before and the editorial producers

were mainly recruited from German
and French public television.

And our good friend, Christoph Jorg
commissioned this film

at a time when they didn't even know the
kind of programming they wanted to have.

So we were able to go out and do whatever we thought vvas
right for this john Cage theme evening, to commemorate him.

The story goes that we went out and did this thing,

and came back with a Z-and-a-half-hour movie,

gave it to Christoph

and the next day he came back at me
screaming about what I had done.

And I asked him, what's the problem,
don't you like it?

And he said, yes I love it but perhaps you forgot

that we have a 60-minute broadcasting slot
and the film is Z-and-a-half-hours long.

So, anyway,that was possible during those days
to show a Z-and-a-half-hour movie in 60-minutes!

No, on a 60-minute slot, so
everything just was shoved back

Everybody loved it and everybody
told us never to do it again.

But thankfully we did it right the first time
and we didn't need to do it again.

Which is mainly due to the man right here,
because of his wonderful photography.

Which is why I like and enjoy making films...
to see his photography.

But also, Henning provides, and his brother Peter
as well, provided the means to put it together.

And we had the time, and it was something that we
instantly developed - a means of working together -

that we were able to assemble this from a variety of other
projects as we were traveling around the world doing other shows,

we would devote some time to some visuals
and some points of view on the world

that were helpful in making this possible.

And some of the visuals that
you see from across the world

were gathered along the way as we did our
journey from then until when this was released.

And we knew that nobody
would finance such an outrage

because to rnake Z-and-a-half-hours of this type of film at
that time, which was the very early days of professional video,

vvas so expensive and people did not pay any money for
these type of documentaries beyond a certain limit.

It vvas clear from the beginning that our entire body
of work from public television would go into this.

Because otherwise there was
just no way to finance it.

And so, as a result, we were very busy.

You'll see these sort of hypnotic images,

transitions, or the “roulette” as Henning calls it;

but it's a lot of images that were filmed as
we were traveling from one place to another:

in taxis, cars, trains, on the airplane.

Because of the camera equipment
at the time, in the I990s -

Betacam SP, which was a
good format for the time

gave us portability, an accessibility,

that we could keep the camera rolling,
so to speak, along the way.

And this led to a lot of images that we were able to
capture incidentally as we were traveling.

At the time we were making this, and
even today, it was pretty much unthinkable

that a single image of the length of 433”,
which is the final scene of the movie,

would be broadcast.

It's unthinkable today
and it vvas pretty much unthinkable then.

And it was only due to this slot with Arte
that we talked about,

that it was even done.

But to think of the longest video image at that
time,which was probably 30-35 minutes,

to show a single image of that duration
on television was definitely not possible.

So we thought it would be interesting
to at least suggest that,

which is why the very shortest image in the film
is a frame, and the longest is 433”.

So, what we all the “roulettes” -
what you see between the

separation points between the three major acts,
these sort of tumbling visual sequences,

consisting of very, very short framed montages.

And because they are so short,

you can't actually see every image,
you an just try to see it.

The idea was that in that way
it would give the longer images,

even though they weren't as long as 3O minutes -
most are maybe 3O seconds or a minute maximum -

give them that value,
that they could have been longer.

So instead of doing the usual
“television thing”,

which means you have an edit basically every 3 seconds,

and sometimes depending on the show
it will be even more,

very rarely less.

So we wanted to establish something that you
enjoyed looking at, without becoming bored.

And as it turns out it was something that wasn't shown
on television,which is images of extended length.

Just on a side note,the construction of the film,

is a “composed” film as opposed to a “chance” film,

we are suggesting chance by the way it is composed.

But people have said that bemuse it is john Cage,
and john Cage is known for chance,

that it would be a film made not only about chance
but made out of chance.

And that's just not the case. As a matter of fact, it is a
“serially” composed film according to a series of numbers

- nothing elaborate but simple serial composition

in which the basis of the idea is that any combination
of individual edits can fit into 4'33”.

That's just going into 433”, but beyond that
you can add up anything you want.

But whatever combination of images, is timed
in such a way that it will add up to 4'33”.

And the timing structure,which is the same
as the compositional structure,

is based on the simple number series by Fibonacci -

which at the time was en vogue.

It was a that time when digital vvas coming about and
everyone vvas talking about algorhytms and series of numbers,

and I was talking about Fibonacci and I had very little
understanding of the mathematics of any of it,

but the simple formula is

I+I is Z, I+Z is 3,Z+3 is 5,
3+5 is 8 and so on.

That is the basis of this series,

and according to this number row,
we constructed the entire movie.

- You and Sven...
- Sven, our editor,

who is a great editor.

He had to endure living with Henning for a while.
Which I had to endure as we shot it...

...and then I moved in here for a half a year
and the whole family had to endure me.

But the editing process was fun.

It was about 4 weeks of editing,

analog at that time still,

I would sleep under the mixing console

and whenever Sven finished a sequence he would
kick me to wake me up and look at it.

That's how we worked for about
I4 to I5 hours a day, maybe even a little longer...

- “interrupted by a call from...
- ...Rutger Hauer:.

That was the last addition to our league
of people wanting to contribute.

I had tried to get a hold of Rutger for a fair amount
of time because I'm such a fan of his acting,

but also because of Bladerunner in which he has those
wonderful last lines that are also in our movie.

The story being -

I don't know if it's true but I wish it to be true -

that in shooting Bladerunner

there was a very long final monologue sequence
that Rutger was supposed to deliver.

He looked at it and came up with a distilled version,
which is what ended up in the movie,

and that's what he contributed to the film.

I'd like to believe that in any case;
those lines I always thought described

the nature of our film very well.

And I was really happy that we were already in
the editing room and the phone rings

and it's:“hi, it's Rutger calling.”

And at first I thought that somebody
was playing a joke on me but

but he identified himself very quickly

and we flew over to northern Holland

and spent some time with him.
It was really wonderful.

Everyone in the film was very eager
to participate and

you'll see in it that they talk
about a variety of ideas.

But also that they read from some of john's work,

from some of his written text.
And then of course,

you have john speaking for himself.

The film begins with an extreme
close-up of john's eye,

and I really can't tell you why
I decided to do that at the time but

I will say this: that john was such a nice man
and so very relaxed all the time that

it seemed appropriate.
Because in his eye you an

see a reflection of the room.

And as we're doing this extended interview,

I thought:“well, let's see what it looks like
in extreme close-up.”

So you have this rather striking beginning where

you're not sure who it is,
and then of course as it zooms out,

there's the master in
his apartment in NewYork City.

It was immediately next to the set
of windows that opened up onto the street.

Within the film and within everything
you have a sense of that street,

the passage of time and the people
and unseen events that you hear.

And that established -
you'll see a mirror sequence, but also

the sense of the frame as a window.

And so you have reoccurring images
of frames and windows

and vertical separators throughout this film.

It was our intent to give
a perspective on john's work

but also a device that we used, I think,
to reasonable effect throughout the film.

We were trying to achieve
a visual situation in which

it was increasingly difficult to tell
whether it was staged or not.

C)f course, practically none of this is staged,
although of course the readings are staged

and some other elements.

But we were trying to find chance that way by looking
at a room that we were going to photograph and seeing

there's the window,there's the reflections,
how could we use that to give a unifying,

subliminal sub-theme to the images.

Windows or mirrors or things
like that reflecting things,

surfaces, in and around the interview sequences,
and of course also in the landscapes, etc.

Duchamp has a short text about shop windows
which I've always enjoyed,

and certainly john amazingly knew Duchamp.

And also in the film, Dennis Hopper

off-camera had a very interesting story
about a time he had with Duchamp.

But certainly Dennis and
a number of people in the film

were very excited about participating and were very
gracious to let us come in and spend time with them,

Yoko C)no, artists, and creators
from all different mediums

that you don't see a lot,
certainly in American film documentaries.

And that's bemuse they all recognized
john's importance

as a way of living and
certainly in his art and music.

And we had worked with john
on the “One I 1/1O3”

and were familiar with how he
uses chance operations to

create a path, in making the film.
And in spite of that...

Excuse me, that's ridiculous...

We didn't make...

...actually in the film you'll have moments of the...

- ...hold on. jamesy...
- Why don't you cut?

...no, no, keep it running. It doesn't matter.

Jamesy, I'm still in the middle of my little thing
that I have to do here.

...that's my appointment for later...

So we'll leave that up to Brian
whether to leave that in or not...

Anyway, I'm sorry to interrupt you there.

Anyhow, as Henning mentioned
it wasn't a choice of our"s to pursue

chance operations in making it. However,
when you're out there making a documentary

you have to be open to what life presents to you.

And so within the time period
that we were making this film

you see especially the shop windows,the store owners,
the incredible shop owners in Paris,

the street sweeper,

citizens that we encountered along the way
as we were going to and from interviews

all of these great artists.

That sort of willingness that we always had to

pay attention to the path or the way it takes us
to get to the next step

is something that we would say:
“stop here, let's go look at this for a while.”

And so, even our walk around Walden Pond

was just literally, we got out of the car and
walked the circumference of the pond.

So a lot of the images that you see are just
that we had the camera and a tripod

and we just walked around the path.

And so it's a composition in itself of

various images that you could build as a way
to look at what that pond was...

If you took the individual images
and put them up in a room,

you'd ideally be feeling that
you're in the center of the lake...

...yes, all of these images on different screens...

...but certainly I think that's an important point.

The spontaneous act of stopping to pay attention

to something on the roadside is important bemuse
if you are using at the time a large

mobile camera, you're gonna have to stop
in order to pay attention to something.

The idea that john promoted was

that you pay attention in a way casually,
pay attention to casual things that happen

on the wayside, what he called the
downtrodden sounds of whatever we produce.

The wasted sounds of what we're producing -

noise,trucks, street sounds, whatever it was.

In order to do that with a camera there is a bit of an
effort and sometimes that seems to contradict

the idea of spontaneously noticing these things.

But, in fact, we were trying to just notice things
that otherwise get edited out

or not even shown on television.
Which is the medium that we're working in.

- Especially in America. . .
- . . . especially in America.

And this takes great patience because

there's equipment to deal with,
and we're used to that. But

I always had found john as an inspiration
because of the patience it takes

to produce things and to really pay attention.

Because the way that he asked significant questions
about understanding a process takes great patience.

So, when we bring the camera out
and we just set 'rt there,

compose an image and then we turn it on

and let it run for a while,
so that within that duration of

up to a half hour sometimes

there'll be things that happen
that we are just watching.

But it's always a miraculous thing to see

that it looks so staged, like we went out of our way
to compose this perfect image or interesting shot.

And all of these things just happened.

Our intent was that we had the camera there
and we had enough sense to turn 'rt on.

And longer than is the norm.

Yeah, and that takes a lot of patience.
I've done a lot of American television

and none of this would translate
into an American TV show because

they would be completely freaked out:
“why are you even making these images?”...

I remember, although I've made way
past I00 documentaries

I have had on occasion to work
with other cameramen.

And when I try to explain to them
to leave the camera on

longer than 5 or IO seconds
in order to establish an image,

it's very, very difficult to actually get them to do that.

The reason being because in producing
television there's a certain craft

and there's a certain way of doing things.

There's a tradition of doing things and it's
very difficult to break those habits.

People making television don't understand why
they should make an image

that is longer than 5 or IO seconds because they're
thinking it's never going to be used.

But we were trying to see something.

It sounds very simple,
bizarrely simple that way,

but we were actually trying to see something.

One should remember, perhaps,
that this was the height of MTV.

MTV started around I985

and had the fast editing and all of the things
that were happening at the time

and had become quite commonplace.
And we were just trying to make a statement

back to having the time to see things.

So,the final scene of 4'33” in Berlin,

you can look back on it and say
it was a very staged event,

which it is in one respect.

It is a performance, so it is staged and that's
what it always was intended to be,

4'33”, because it is a composition that is published, etc.

So it is within the tradition of performed music or art,

but at the same time it was spontaneous because we
were just driving from one place to another,

it was not our intention to do it.

And we saw this incredible lump of trash, of waste,

and at first moment bemuse we were both foreign
to Berlin, we didn't realize where we were...

- You and john...
- ...yeah,john and I.

But we were fascinated by this incredible rubble.

And so I said,“let's do it here.”

Bemuse we were planning to do it somewhere,
but there it was,

and so we thought this is perfect
bemuse it's about waste and rubble...

And it was the destruction of“The Wall”,
the checkpoint...

That's right, quickly we found out that it
was the destruction of “The Wall”,

so there was the social aspect to it...

But it was completely incidental.

No one would even know that. h: looks like
'n: could be in America, or wherever;

just rubble in the street which unfortunately is
so common everywhere these days.

Here in America we're reconstructing stuff,
everything?» worn out

so everywhere you go...
nothing's finished anywhere.

From one airport to another.

And for a lot of this film
I was so incredibly jet-lagged,

I was amazed that I had the sensibility
to turn on the camera sometimes.

I forced him, usually.

There's certainly a moment in the
Chomsky interview at MIT,

we had done a series of these at MIT,
and we had flown into Boston and

we'd been on the road for awhile,

and one of our team out of
the sight of Mr. Chomsky...

...you can say it, it was Darren...

Anyhow, Mr. Chomsky couldn't see Darren
but Henning and I could see Darren quite clearly,

falling asleep immediately after we started.

And struggling to stay asleep as we were working.

VVhich of course freaked me out, because here we are finally
with the “men of men” and 'n: was really, really embarrassing.

I have to say this, Darren you rock!

We were interviewing Tom Holland,
who is a horror film director;

and Darren fell asleep.
But unlike the Chomsky event,

he started to snore.

So, I was quite unhappy and Tom didn't like that...

- He got over it.
- That's right, he got over it.

The amazing people that we got to meet,

and listen to them talk about john
or talk about things that one way or another,

when put together related to john Cage
and the memory of him.

This entire project vvas one of the great experiences
that I had working in television.

And of course, working with Henning too.

Gee, more the other way around,
I think But anyway,

he's older than me so I get to say that.

Yeah,there's a lot of wonderful memories
in that whole experience.

Also,the patience we had to just record sounds,too.

And it's often the case when you are out in the world,

the camera's rolling and the crew is
just chatting amongst themselves,

and so we were very sensitive to the fact that we would
have to just record sounds as they happen,too.

And then you also have john's music in this film,

that I think Henning and Sven did such a great job
of mixing through the film

to give it a continuity and a sensibility of john's music

as well as what he inspired us to gather along the way,

with all of the images we collected.

Something, for instance,that's not evident
from the film itself,

is that in the sequence before Walden Pond
john is talking about how he found harmony again,

and that piece through which
he re-found harmony for himself -

the piece that he talks about is the one
that you hear as we walk around Walden.

There were certainly moments with Frank Zappa
that were also quite enjoyable.

And Frank, bemuse he was such a great entertainer

as well as a composer, musician, personality -

was an inspiration to me because

to gather some of these shop owners in an image
that revealed the sort of pageantry

or decorative elements of
their circumstance and then

and then throughout the film in dramatic terms,

we have the calf's head being skinned and chopped

as a process and toward the end
you finally see the brain revealed,

packaged and set out. For me,
the mystery always was “Who's doing this?”

And lthought it was so nicely done
that there is the very simple tilt up

that you see the butcher, and then
it's kind of back down to his work.

And he's got such a nice expression on his face...
- . . . reassuring.

In all of those fabulous French market scenes,

we had to spend a little time there over a few days

before they got comfortable with us or

stopped caring that we were annoying them
with the camera and everything.

But I think it adds a great deal to
the kind of commonplace,

where you have famous artists among just life in general.

Life on the street, the city scenes, traffic, the messes that
we've created everywhere.

The structure of the film is basically 3 acts
in which the first act is the artists,

the community so to say,
speaking about john's influences.

The second is more or less the scientists speaking about
the interaction,the influence of all of these

subjects or themes that pertain to john's work,
but also john's influence on them.

The third act is the people on the street.

The idea was,well,john talks a lot about the street
and the noises of the street

and the downtrodden sounds, etc.,
everything that's by the wayside.

So we figured, let's go out and figure out

what the people have to say about noise who
have to work on the street every day.

And that's how that last bit came about.

We were driving through Paris,
it was one of those situations,

and we saw this beautiful market near Montpamasse.

And we took a cheap hotel across the corner

and we spent 3 days, I believe,not shooting an image
because nobody wanted to speak to us.

But after 3 days for some reason,

they felt that we were there and then one guy
started and then everybody wanted to.

Yeah, and they just were accepting.
But also with the artists,

is the willingness to participate in something

that obviously we were serious about
or we wouldn't be paying attention,

and it was really enjoyable.

It's always striking when you start paying attention

and then you find people that have some part
to say that fits within the film.

That vvas really very enjoyable,
even as I vvas jet-laged.

I drank a lot of coffee during this show,
that's for sure.

A lot of good coffee, I must say.

In the second section,
the kind of little dome room -

Henning was quite adamant that I had to do a
hand-held walk through this room

because it's like some mad scientist...

Zappa's sense of Varese:
the mad scientist composer.

Someone had left this space there,

sort of abandoned in mid stream perhaps,
things left just as they were.

But there were so many old electronic devices
that it seemed

somehow left in time.

And that was always for me a fascinating tableau,

that compared with the gentleman in Frankfurt that
had the collections of. . . - Mlichael Berger...

...and of course the resonance of
john speaking of the Coke bottle...

...we knew that this man had a
wonderful collection of toys,

but he opens the door and there's this entire
house-full of Coca-Cola memorabilia

which just fit perfectly with what john was explaining.

Those are coincidences but you would think that...

...oh yeah,that “we had to get this.”

That was truly astounding. In this huge warehouse
facility that he had a number of them.

Each room was a different collection of
something which was organized.

So it wasn't like he just threw all the Coke stuff in,
it was all displayed in a sense of his order.

And he made his money from making kitschy
sex joke condom wrappers.

Just all kinds of kitsch)! stuff.

But the scariest room for me there was
the Disney room,the Mickey Mouse room.

And when you walk in you see all of the
Mickey Mouse and of the characters there.

But in the center, kind of just hanging from a string -

and it almost hits you in the face when you walk in -

is just a plastic sheath with a small letter in it

that was from Adolph Hitler, saying how much he
enjoyed watching the Mlickey Mouse cartoons.

Which was like,“oh my gosh,where did that come from?”

But anyhow, these are the adventures that you have
while you're making something like this.

It's really spectacular.There's always
these moments that kind of sink in,

and later when you're filming something else it clicks,

and “oh my gosh,this is a continuation that
we need to pay more attention to.”

I think the whole idea about paying attention to
things that you haven't been paying attention to

previously has a lot to do with that patience factor
that you were mentioning earlier.

There's that moment, particularly when shooting
in video,when you think we should move on

bemuse it is costly and it takes time to
do all of these things, etc.

Usually you have some sort of schedule or agenda.

And to get past that point and say, “no, we're just
going to spend that extra minute or two”

which seems like an eternity at the time. lt's just an
entirely different awareness of time.

But when you do that, it turns into
this wonderful moment.

Anyway, I was thinking because
of the whole patience factor,

that story with john that I was talking about
yesterday with Darrnstatdt and the bench...

...right:. . . - I might as well recount
it here... -. . .it's worth repeating...

Well, one of those wonderful moments
that stay with you...

I was assisting john for a while on
one of his tours in Germany.

And we wound up in Darmstadt, in a bank because
he needed to cash an American check.

The lines were long and he couldn't stand that long,
so he sat down in the middle of the bank

-they had a bench.And so there we were with people
running around and we were going to get called.

I had been traveling with him for a couple of weeks...

...and at that time he was a star.
He was prominent.

Everywhere he came there were people who
were like grapevines, crowding in on him,

and he was such a kind and gentle man,
and such a humorous man...

...that he made it easy for people to think that their ideas
would be appreciated by him.

Because he was always very friendly about
other people and other people's ideas.

So people would beleaguer him with basically
what turned out to be work.

I remember a lunch that we had where somebody
came along with 300 LPs that he wanted signed -

they were john Cage LPs but john had to
give up his lunch to do that.

And then somebody else wanted to go on a mushroom
hunt bemuse john was a big mushroom expert,

and then of course there were the concerts...
And it was just constant inundation.

So I figured, here I am with one of the greatest
composers of the 20th century,

I might as well ask the question of all questions, which
how often do you get to ask one of the great genii

“how he became to be a genius?”

So I said, “hey john, I guess we know each other
well enough, how do you do it?”

He was laughing away, and I thought
“now I'm finally going to get the great answer,

the oracle is now going to speak to me.”

And his response was:
“well, I've been practicing all my life.”

And that takes a lot of patience.

Well, he certainly had it.
He was a great teacher for that.

And we're going to go back and practice some more,
and hopefully make some more films.

And so, I guess until next time...

...and there will be a next time.
Because unbeknownst to you,

I think the next thing that will be coming out will be
the “Musicircus” that we recorded

as a memorial concert for john

on November 1 st, I992,a few weeks after he died.

And we recorded that and Brian Brandt is
army enough to record and put. out on Mode.

There's bits of it in this film...

and it was genuinely a celebration for john

at that time,right after his death.

- As it still is.
-Yes

- Happy trails.