Original subtitles

- All right, the excitement continues: Paul Morrissey.

- The legendary Paul Morrissey.

_ Legendary.

(audience cheers)

- Thank you, thank you.

- How did you first begin making films?

You started making short films.

What led you to become a filmmaker?

- That's a good question. I never thought of it.

Got out of a college, went in the army for a few months,

then I went to work for an insurance company,

looking at pages and changing words and crap.

And then, I think I did something purposely

to get on welfare, whatever it is, unemployment insurance.

Went back to another insurance company,

but during that period, nobody made their own films.

There was some little, once a month in the

East Village, Jonas Mekas would screen footage of somebody.

I'm watching the garbage.

I needed a place to live in Manhattan for all that.

Before I lived in the Bronx,

and I looked at the apartments that were available

in the Bowery on 4th street, and really,

you could rent an apartment, you know?

You went in the door and there was a bathtub and a stove,

I guess, a chair and a bed.

And there was a bathroom down the hall,

but the rents were like $26 a month.

Now, those rents are $2,600 on the same side.

Anyway,

I saw this apartment and as I came up,

the first floor was an old store on 4th street,

very close on the Bowery,

across the street from the famous --

one of the greatest, the oldest house in New York.

Luckily, it's been preserved.

It's in the middle of the 19th century. Anyway,

I said, "What's the store? Nobody lives there?"

He said no one.

I said, how much is the rent?

He said it's about $50 a month.

And I looked at this big high ceiling and a bathroom,

and you didn't have to climb any stairs.

So, I lived in this storefront.

Not many people were doing that.

And then I realized, if bought a projector or something,

I could project movies from one end to the other,

and I could have a Nickelodeon, which is what it was.

And I got some people, maybe in the newspaper,

who made some footage or something,

and I went to the public library.

You can take out a film they had for rent.

And I started showing movies on Saturdays and Sundays, and

then I started shooting my own things and projecting them.

So, I started at the very base.

(whistles) What's that whistling?

I started at the lowest way you could literally begin,

where the movies began originally,

on the Bowery with nickelodeons.

And then I started shooting longer versions of things,

like 20 minutes or 25 minutes.

But my films were never experimental.

They were always in the tradition of silent movies.

People went around and walked about and met people

and never spoke and that, no sound,

and so that's where it began.

There were other people who started doing what I did:

rent stores and show movies,

but it never came to anything much that I know about.

What's the next question?

- Well, I didn't get to talk to Art before this,

but I would like to ask you about The Velvet Underground.

- The Velvet Underwear, I called them.

They were -- well, one of them was a terrible,

hideous human being. Two of them are really nice.

And one, it was the gifted one from Wales, John Cale,

he didn't seem to know what to do.

I became an agent and the manager for somebody

named Andy Warhol, who didn't do anything,

but he understood that if someone's going to buy something

they call modern art, they don't buy it for the art,

they buy the name on the art.

So, you go in and you say, oh, oh,

you got something by Lady Gaga. That's great.

Must've paid money, because she's famous.

That's all it was, all modern art.

But especially him. They're all like that.

And my job was to do things that would get --

that he would present to have his name in the paper.

So, I presented movies that I made with his camera.

He never could make a movie.

Couldn't decide, he couldn't --

he was autistic beyond belief.

He couldn't read or write. Anyway --

and the thing is, what was I talking about before?

Oh, I did movies. I did this, I did that.

Later, I started an idiot newspaper called,

Interviews to the Business,

and he would pay the bills, but the bills were tiny.

And the films I made were a couple of thousand dollars.

I made them on Saturday afternoons,

two or three hours at a time.

But somebody said to me,

because I could take still photographs, whatever,

they wanted a picture of this rock n' roll group

that had just started today. That day.

Could I come tomorrow or something?

Or come that day and take pictures of them.

And it was in the West Village, terrible little place.

Whatever they called them, I forget what they're called,

and they were playing with the -- (viola noises)

The viola was the big instrument and I spoke to them.

I said, you started yesterday,

do you have a manager? No. I said, oh.

Well, I think I could manage you,

meaning support them. They had no money.

And I told Andy the next day,

I said, you gotta come tonight, see this real --

support this rock n' roll group,

and your name with it in the paper.

He was trembling. He hated them.

And not that he hated them,

he just hated the idea of spending any money.

And it went on for a number of months,

until I got them jobs here and there.

And then they take Andy's picture.

That's all he cared about.

And I got them to sign the contract,

and then I took a few thousand dollars of Andy's

and produced the record album. The only one.

The first one. The only one I think he would listen to.

And I got them bookings in Los Angeles, San Francisco,

but the toilet -- what's it called?

The Swillmore Auditorium in San Francisco,

and they got to be well-known.

They didn't release the record for a long time,

but it got Andy's name all over the country

as if he was involved with rook n' roll,

so it was one of the things that made

his name and got the deal

to raise the price on the silkscreens at The Factory

he did downtown, Lower East Side.

He never even laid eyes on these guys.

That's what I did with the Velvet Underwear.

It was very unpleasant dealing with one of them.

I also had to get rid of them after a year, so, anyway.

- Before we go further,

why have you not done so many public appearances

in recent years?

You must be being asked to be --

you own, at least, I think, what, 10 or so

of your own movies still?

- More than that, even.

- And you're still making movies.

You made a movie recently.

Why not the public appearances?

- I think it's idiotic. I don't know.

I mean, I'm not trying to sell

some piece of shit called modern art.

I mean, if a movie's any good, the movie should

attract people,

but going and having your picture taken,

they all seem to do it now.

Everybody in Hollywood that has a career,

they have to go out and have their picture taken,

take a picture, take a picture.

If that's what works for them, let them go on,

it's just the movies don't seem so good to me.

I loved the movies of Hollywood studios up until '60.

By that time, they went out of business, studios.

But I always like to say the greatest thing that ever

happened in the history of motion pictures

is something called Turner Classic Movies.

To see the movies made in the '20s and the '10s, and

'30s and the '40s, until they started disappearing

in the '50s. Even in the '50s,

some great films were made.

After 1960, the studios didn't exist.

Very few halfway decent movies were made the last 5O years.

Recently, Turner showed some

Fatty Arbuckle movies, and he was famous.

He was fat and he was very popular, and they were very good.

They were very funny.

And one of them was made in 1913.

Another was 1914. That's 99 years ago, a century ago.

And to see people, the way they look,

the way they dress, the streets, the cars,

and to be entertained, is wonderful.

So, they've been making good movies for a long time.

And I think the greatest thing

in the history of television is Turner Classic Movies.

I'm sure they'll disappear soon and they'll put nothing

but crap on instead and commercials.

And now, they show a lot of garbage.

You don't want to waste time,

but they still show films, usually late at night, from

the early '20s, early '30s.

And you take a tape, record them and see them all the time.

It's wonderful.

The great movies and studios depended on their stars,

and stars had their personalities,

and the personality was the same in every movie.

Cary Grant was Cary Grant in every movie. Katherine Hepburn.

They were all the same. Greta Garbo was Greta Garbo

in every movie.

Now, these kind of acting class people,

with their hideous new character shit things,

where they're upset for the whole movie,

I find it unwatchable and nd l find it artificial.

(cell phone rings)

How'd I carry this with me? Should have turned it off.

It went dead.

Want to take my picture? Hey, bye.

But the point is, if I was selling underwear, or, you know,

a department store fashion -- you had the picture taken.

If your name is famous, they buy the underwear.

Your name is famous, they buy the thing on the wall

they call art. That's obvious, isn't it?

But I don't think it contributes to anything. I dunno.

- I'd like to ask --

- Oh, by the way, Greta Garbo

never went to a public event in her life,

and she remains the most extraordinary

woman of the 20th century, if not all time.

She was absolutely one of a kind.

And they knew it at the time.

Now, God only knows who they think is good,

but she was great. Okay.

- I'd like to ask about two of your earlier films,

Trash and Heat.

Joe Dallesandro, actually, I'd like to ask about.

So, was he a natural actor?

(cell phone rings)

- That's him, it's Joe!

(cell phone rings)

- Hello?

I can't talk, I'll call you later.

Well, any good actor is a natural actor.

They should be themselves.

They should be -- their personality in real life

should be more or less what you see on the screen.

Now, you know, John Wayne wasn't shooting anybody.

Greta Garbo wasn't giving men dirty looks like that.

But their personality,

what they did in front of the camera,

are extremely close. That's the way it should be.

- For both of those films, you created them.

- I wrote them. I cast them,

I produced them, I directed them,

I photographed them, I edited them,

I distributed them, I own them.

Is there anything more I could have done?

- N0, I think you did it all.

- And I did it all by myself.

- What I'm trying to say is, though, that

those movies are of a time and they're like a capsule.

What were you -- was there something

you were trying to create?

- I wasn't trying to capture a capsule at the time,

I was just trying to make a good movie with interesting

people, and a story that other people weren't telling.

I had three, four thousand dollars

to make a whole movie on Saturday afternoons,

two to three hours in the afternoon,

on a couple of afternoons, other people had 3 million,

or 3O million.

I was doing something that I think was perfectly okay to do.

- Do you have a preference of the two that you like?

- No, I like them all, I like all my movies.

I like Spike of Bensonhurst.

My favorite is almost Beethoven's Nephew,

which nobody has seen, because there's a true story

of Beethoven's, which nobody's ever wanted to tell it.

Everybody knows what it was,

but boy, was he a monster. Should have been a horror movie.

I like them all, yeah.

- What about the films you shot at Europe and you were given

for you, significant budgets,

budgets that you hadn't really worked with before.

What was it like finally work -- even though they're low,

certainly low budget pictures.

What was it like working with a budget for a change?

- Very nice. It seemed easy.

Carlo Ponti was my producer and he couldn't have been nicer,

and he didn't bother me one bit.

Do what you want. I met him and I had a guy, a producer,

who was going to do another film for him in 3D.

And I was going to do it in 3D.

And the producer was to do a Frankenstein 3D. Said okay.

So, Carlo Ponti just asked me a few questions.

He had been a lawyer. He was a very quiet type.

He was not a loud Italian.

And he said, oh,

how much money does it cost to make a Frankenstein in 3D?

I have no idea.

My films cost four or five thousand dollars.

He said, how much time would it take?

I was just shocked to get the -- I said, oh, well,

about three weeks. I just made it up.

Oh good. Then he paused, and he said,

how much would it cost? Again, I didn't know what to say.

I said $300,000. He said, oh that's good.

And then he paused and he said,

he was a very smart man, obviously.

He said, oh, why don't you do two?

Do another one for $300,000, three weeks.

I thought, okay. There was another pause.

The guy next to me didn't know what to say.

He said, what would the other one be?

And I -- Dracula, oh, good. That was it.

He said if you cast the girl in the first movie,

send her in after you cast her, do what you want,

he didn't ask me. He said, do you have a script?

I said, no, I'll make it up each day.

He said, okay. I couldn't believe how nice he was.

He was very nice. And I did it.

And I went with the big crew and a great,

nice cameraman, and not a huge group.

And then the first day I told the actors what to say and

they couldn't believe, they couldn't remember it.

And I said to myself, my God,

I have to type it up every morning and give it to them.

And I did,

I got a typist and I dictated it to her

on the way to the set in the car.

Setting up the shot, she typed it up,

I handed it to the actors, they memorized it.

I out it and photographed it.

I did exactly that every day. And then Frankenstein

might have been three weeks and a day or two, and

I had lunch break.

And after lunch, one o'clock or whatever,

I began Dracula. The day I finished Frankenstein.

So, I had to write scripts for two different movies, and I

made that in three weeks, too. Carlo Ponti was very happy.

Anyway, I made a film in Vienna, Beethoven.

I made a film in Paris, made a film in London

with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore

that was not successful at all.

I made a film somewhere else, I can't remember. California.

- The Hound of the Baskervilles,

which was with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

You said it wasn't successful. Why do you think that was?

- I know why it wasn't.

The producer was all nice. And Peter Cook was nice.

I didn't know Dudley Moore, but he was not nice.

He was not happy.

And I was told by the producer

that Peter Cook said that I could write a third,

he would write a third, Dudley Moore would write a third.

I said, oh my god, what the hell is that?

But I had all these other actors in it

from the Carry On films, like

Terry Thomas is a great, great actor,

everbody famous in these comedies.

I only wrote a part of it, and I think they

got the funny laughs.

Things written by Peter Hook and Dudley Moore,

weren't good, I just had to sit there and photograph them.

I think it's a cute movie because it's so ridiculous,

but it's not really funny.

So, I didn't like losing any control and I never did again.

- You retain the rights to several of your movies still.

Do you have any future plans to rerelease them?

- Streaming. Yeah.

I'm not going to get into a distributor who does what he

wants for 5, 6, 7, 8 years. I'll never see a penny.

Every step of the way, I distributed my films, deals

with this one, this is ever a good deal.

Trash was the only film I had a good distributor.

He was a wonderful man. He opened all these big foreign

films and then he bought my film.

I couldn't believe it, it was like,

like my Fellini films would go or something.

And it did very well and he paid extra money,

but he was the only one.

And he died of a brain tumor soon after he did my film,

a year or two later.

It's a very bad business to try and make money in,

unless you're getting 3, 5, 10, $20 million in advance,

the accountant, the accountant takes in all the money and

distributes it. But that's at the top of the line.

It's a lot of money out there for that. But small films,

I don't think make money.

- How did you come to cast Udo Kier?

- Well, I met Udo Kier,

I remembered he was German, and I contacted him somehow.

I told him, come here, lets make some movies, he said sure.

Simple as that. I never tested anybody for a part.

Never. I cast instinctively,

and I've been very fortunate with all the people I've cast.

- Forty Deuce. So, I wanted to ask about that.

- Two people owned it. One was a very dishonest human being

and the other one was a Frenchman.

They never reached an agreement. It was never distributed,

because the guy was -- one guy was a billionaire,

the other one was just a poor, French producer.

It was only shown, I think, in France.

It was a film I liked a lot, based on a play.

The cast had done the play, except for one change I made.

And it was very unusual for him.

I don't know if anybody's ever seen it.

- I have..

- You've seen it?

- Yes.

- You remember what's so odd about it?

I remember I made it in five days.

It might've been a movie.

I did four days on the streets of New York,

and then the other 45 minutes,

I did with two cameras operating at the same time.

And the actors would go from one side of the stage from the

theater --you couldn't tell -- into the screen here,

the screen here. And everybody would --

the second 45 minutes consisted of two shots without cuts,

unless it was 30 minutes without cuts, I can't remember.

It was like 45 minutes cut in half. And that was the trick.

And I think it worked okay.

And the actors were great,

but the only famous one -- who later became famous --

was Kevin Bacon, a very good actor.

He was very young.

Some other people in it I don't remember.

- You recently had a film, News from Nowhere?

- I called it News from Nowhere.

It's about something I'd actually done before.

An immigrant comes to America.

He's overjoyed, nothing terribly dramatic,

He thinks the people are kind of empty, goes back home.

I think America has become

kind of not like it was 60 years ago.

And the studios were making films about the real America,

not the acting class shit from New York, which we've been

getting for the last 40 years.

Films are no longer entertaining,

except for little kiddie things,

where they're arguing and screaming and cursing.

And I don't know if adults can go to a film

and enjoy them anymore.

I think they're amusing, but I don't know,

'cause I don't see them.

- Do we have any questions? We're almost out of time.

- Yes, yes.

- What are a few of your favorite films

that you haven't been involved in?

- Gone With The Wind. I mean, Hollywood makes

the most extraordinary films.

I saw a film recently, I had never heard of it,

it was called The Matrimonial Bed.

It was made in 1930, a man named Frank Fay.

He was a very great theater star. He was married to

Barbara Stanwyck and he alienated Hollywood in the '30s.

I guess he came out against comedies,

I don't know what happened.

He played his last years in the theater.

It was a wonderful film. He was so funny.

The film was funny. I can't remember what it was about.

It was so silly. It was on Turner Classic Movies

at 6:00 in the morning.

I happened to be up and watching, and

I said, my gosh, what a great film. To see these

kind of entertaining films made,

especially by the studios in the '30s, and some of the

silent movies now are showing up.

And they're very interesting, recently.

Films I've never heard of, but you know,

in Hollywood in the '30s,

they did Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies.

Nothing ever was made in the history of movies

as good as those things.

They made about six or seven of them.

They did so many good movies in the '30s. Then in the '40s

they got a little more serious, that's with John Ford

and William Wyler,

others like Anatole Litvak, they did their greatest films.

John Ford's How Green Was My Valley is a masterpiece.

So maybe his best film,

but then right after that he made Tobacco Road,

which is hated by the liberals,

because it says that America is a good country.

It's not a commune. It doesn't need your communism.

Tobacco Road was a gigantic book and a gigantic theater

piece that lasted about eight years in the theater.

And it was a wonderful movie, and very funny, by John Ford,

who did a great job.

Then John Ford did They Were Expendable

right after that,

and that's one of the greatest movies ever made.

It stars John Wayne and Robert Montgomery, who

never was a good actor but in this.

It was about a military base on an island that's

doomed, because the Japanese are coming in

to kill everybody.

And the two officers talk about, well,

we have to go when they leave at the end of the --

They Were Expendable was shown right after the war.

People didn't go because of it was too depressing, because

really, without showing people getting killed,

made you realize how the life of these soldiers was lived

on borrowed time.

And then William Wyler in 1940, I think he made --'39,

he made The Letter, with Bette Davis, his best film.

Her best film. A very great film.

And then at 1948, '49, he did The Heiress,

with Olivia de Havilland, Ralph Richardson, very great film.

The work these directors did has never been equaled.

They came from the '20s,

they came from the '30s, they worked in the '40s,

they worked in the '50s, that doesn't exist anymore.

There's no big director, no good director.

There's directors that made a lot of money

with some garbage they made.

$8 million and none of the movies are any good.

So, I don't know what Turner Classic Movies

is going to exist on in the next 40 years,

because they'll have to show the junkers

that are made in the past 60 years.

I like the movies.

I can't describe that many great movies I've seen because

I've seen so many. And I like so many.

Usually, the light ones are the ones that last longer than

the serious ones, like The Letter, that's great.

Bette Davis shoots the boyfriend in the first scene in the

movie. (shooting noises)

And she lies all the way through.

And then,

he had a Chinese girlfriend and the Chinese girlfriend comes

and kills Bette Davis at the end of the movie,

and you're so glad somebody is killing her.

These films are extraordinary,

great writers have written them, good screenwriters.

People like William Wyler, they didn't even speak.

He never spoke to the actors. Never.

He just said over again, try to get it better, okay.

He did 3O takes.

Most directors wouldn't do that, because the actors

didn't want it, but he did it. With him, it worked.

But I find the movies of the studios,

the great Hollywood studios, they were very greatest movies.

And there were no such thing as independent movies

in the '10s, the '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s.

We started from Europe when the studios would have a

business.

The great films made in the past 5O years

were only made through the '60s, '70s.

In Italy, the greatest directors lived over there,

greatest actors, greatest actresses, the stories.

The movies went all over the world in Italian language and

no other country did that. He wouldn't do it German.

He didn't do it Spain. Didn't do it American.

Didn't do it in the '60s or '70s.

Then Italians did. Then eventually,

all the directors died. (indecipherable) was still alive.

Greatest living director, magnificent director,

enormously successful.

And all this talent that was in Italy is all gone now.

Recently, they had a director who died,

named Mario Monicelli.

He'd done a hundred great films,

you know, fifty great ones.

And he continued to direct while he was 88 years old.

He never stopped.

Finally, 92, he said, I can't direct films anymore.

And he jumped out a window. Mario Monicelli.

I mean, a hundred times better than Fellini in some ways.

Fellini is unique in his own way.

There were so many great directors and actors

and actresses in Italy. Now there's nobody.

So, I don't know.

I wish -- I like to say it just to annoy people.

I think movies have been over a long time,

even though a couple of good movies get made every year,

usually from England or something.

But the best thing to happen in the history of television

is a television show called -- the name I hate.

But it's the best thing I've ever seen on television,

called Hardcore Pawn.

Has anybody seen it?

Isn't it great? Three hours, you can't stop watching it.

That man, his daughter and the son, are incredible.

Especially the father. People pawn

in Detroit and the store is huge.

He must have a hundred employees,

but then only the family are on camera.

The people who come in for money, it's unbelievable,

and this has never been seen in a movie or anything.

And it's -- they show three hours once a week

on Tru television. And I say,

I'm watching again, Tru television, Hardcore Pawn,

because it's pure TV.

They just have two or three cameramen there and bodyguards,

because the people want to kill them.

The nice man who runs it. And they stand up

to these people, but they have bodyguards,

the size you haven't believed,

but I don't think television -- it used to in the '50s,

it had Jackie Gleason, and Phil Silvers, and funny people.

Now, they don't have that. They just have vulgar crap.

I don't know what I'd watch on television anymore,

except Turner Classic and Hardcore Pawn.

And sometimes you see a documentary or something,

and the animal documentaries.

I don't see television.

I don't know where it's going to go.

I don't know if it has anywhere to go,

but I do recommend looking for something called p-a-w-n,

pawn shop. Hardcore Pawn. Okay.

- Well, thank you very much. The living legend,

Paul Morrissey here. And he will be here all week.