Original subtitles

I enjoy it more than going to a

party.

I enjoy it more than any other art

form.

You know, it's better than sex.

It's better than love.

I think I've had dreams of beautiful women

that I've seen in films.

When the theater is crowded, the aisle is

the best place to be.

I don't want to get overheated, I have

a place to put my bag.

84 was when I think I became serious

cinephile.

All my life, I suppose, but I didn't

take it seriously until August 1950 when I

was 14 years old.

It's beyond obsession, you know, it's...

I don't know what it is, there's no

word for it, so you could call it

cinephilia.

Let's go again.

Billy Whiter, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, James

Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, La Manie du Cinéma, CinéMania,

La Manie du CinéMania, Isabelle Adjani, Anna Magnani,

Roman Polanski, Klaus Kinski, Alain Delon, Michel Simon,

Jacques LeMond, Jacques Nicolson, Julie Christie, Jacques Tati,

Warren Beatty, Visconti, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Renoir,

Stéphane Audron, Trintignant, Alfred Hitchcock.

J'aime le cinéma.

J'aime le cinéma.

Well, what I do is, is I go

to films every day, and I see, you

know, one, two, three films a day, occasionally

four or five.

If I don't go to five in a

day, then I'll end up missing something that's

playing.

Everything else in my life generally has to

be structured around that.

I have torn my hair out for years

over films that I've missed.

You know, because I don't go to weddings,

you know, I don't go to funerals, you

know, I don't visit people in the hospital,

you know, if I have a screening to

go to, you know, and I make people

who are close to me understand that they

can't expect that.

And there's this one woman who always, whenever

I see her, she always says, there you

are.

Every time I go to a movie, you're

there, you know.

And I say, you know, well, that's me.

Here I am.

That's the only thing to say, really.

I moved here the day before the Fassbinder

retrospective started, and it was for that reason.

I've seen thousands of films.

I've seen La Dolce Vita, which is perhaps

my favorite film, and Eight and a Half.

Those two films I've seen many times.

And I will see a Godard film as

many chances as I get.

Why?

Film is a substitute for life.

Film is a form of living.

As a film lover, you have to accept

that that is normal for you, that that

is not something pathological.

The rest of society might think that it

is, but to have not had sex in

many years, but to have had all these

experiences with film...

Harvey's a fascinating example because he's somebody who

will see almost anything you put before him.

Oh, here's a classic.

Any Hollywood movie from any year, no matter

how trashy, how bad.

The one they showed on Friday night was

goddamn awful.

He is fairly uncritical, though, as a viewer,

in the sense that he loves so much

crap.

I would say he goes to about two

a day, every day.

I forget how much film I saw yesterday

in five programs.

My mouth dropped.

It's nine hours and five minutes.

I'm going, eh.

You could write a whole novel based on

all the strange characters there.

Some people think I'm one of them.

I love Audrey Hepburn, but the best movies

made in this country were the comedies and

the musicals.

Actually, my favorite actress is Ginger Rogers.

I love Ginger Rogers and comedy.

The last thing a film buff would ever

ask themselves, another one was, what was your

day like?

I mean, film buffs do not socialize.

Film buffs get together to see movies.

They do not get together to have parties.

They do not get together to know each

other.

I hate the multiplex theaters.

I think they ruin the fun of going

to movies.

They're so overblown.

Roberta is the queen, the queen of cinemaniacs

in New York.

I think the person who's most recognizable, most

visible, most notorious, you know, on the entire

circuit.

Roberta and I are two of the last

people, maybe the two last people who will

not watch video at all.

I refuse to have a television set.

Well, what Roberta told me is that she

needs 150 program notes to every film.

Screening room schedules, the gay and lesbian schedules.

That was after the Japan Society, and before

that was the Doc Fest, and before that

was the Irish Film Festival II films.

Before that was lunch.

Before that was the schedules at the Whitney.

I'm going to have to get back inside

because I've only got about five minutes.

I don't want to miss the beginning.

Oh, my God.

Us film lovers are an elite crowd.

I think there's a very small group of

us worldwide.

We're obviously important because we're the people that

these great films are being made for.

By the way, who was sitting behind me?

Your best friend.

I was afraid of that.

I do boring work during the day so

that I can go to films at night,

and I've avoided preparing for some kind of

real career, like being a lawyer or something

like that because I'm afraid that if I

became a lawyer, I wouldn't have time to

study philosophy and go to films.

My psychiatrist told me yesterday, he said it's

a compulsion.

Am I going to film as a compulsion?

I've niched myself.

I have a niche, which is European cinema

after the war and particularly since the French

New Wave, 1958.

This is my personal card.

Bill Heidbreder, B.A., English, summa cum laude,

University of California, Berkeley, writer and philosopher, interests

cultural theory, continental philosophy, film.

Everybody says it's pretentious, you know, I say

I'm a philosopher.

Then I make these sandwiches that I take

with me so that I don't have to

buy pizza during the day because pizza's expensive,

especially when I'm unemployed.

Okay.

And I never have time to cook.

I mean, there's no way I'd have time

to cook.

You know, people will go to a restaurant

and they'll order, you know, food.

They'll spend a lot of money on this.

And for me, I can spend $5 or

maybe nothing if I'm a member.

You know, for $5, I get an aesthetic

experience that, you know, no Italian restaurant, you

know, can begin to compare to, you know?

Even though I have no ambition, really, of

being a filmmaker, film critic, or a film

scholar, like, to do work like Deleuze, like

film theory that's very theoretical.

You know, I'm very particular about things.

When I was getting ready to go to

the film, I would take a shower, I

would make sure that I had clean underwear

and clean clothes because I didn't like to

feel uncomfortable during the film because I want

it to be, like, a perfect experience, you

know?

And the other thing I do is, before

the film, I always go to the bathroom,

even if I'm running late.

Well, sometimes not if I'm running late.

That's a dilemma.

But I try to get there five minutes

early, go to the bathroom and wash my

glasses.

And it's terrible.

I mean, I should get an eye operation

because my glasses never get completely clean.

I have pills for the sniffles in case

it gets cold.

I get the sniffles.

I have pills for back pain.

But sometimes you don't get very good back

rests at the theater.

When I go into the theater, if it's

cold, which it will be, I'm going to

go into the bathroom, and if possible, I'm

going to change clothes and put on this

thermal undershirt and this sweater.

So I don't know.

I should live in a tropical climate, but

I don't know of any cities in tropical

climates that have good film opportunities.

I mean, the places for film are New

York and Paris.

Let's see.

These are anxiety pills.

I take those an hour before going to

bed, right after the last film.

And then these are the pills that I

take for sleep, part of the sleeping pills.

I think it was 2 hours before I

go to bed.

So I'm okay.

I'm ready.

Let's see how heavy this is.

It's kind of on the heavy side.

I think I'm going to take out the

computer book.

And then I think it will be a

little bit lighter.

Yeah, it's lighter.

Really?

I guess I'll buy it now.

Let me make sure I haven't bought it

already.

My therapist said I don't express enough aggression,

and watching movies isn't a very aggressive activity.

My favorite seats usually aren't the most popular

seats.

I have a favorite seat at MoMA, too.

It's behind a barrier in the back, and

that enables me to have an unobstructed view.

I think I'm going to sleep now.

Walt Doreen has a series on the Italian

director Zerlini, who's pretty good in late August.

There are some rare things there, but I

have Italian films from the late 50s and

early 60s, so I'll see some.

I go there occasionally.

Now they're doing L.A. René, I can't

stand him, so I'm avoiding that pretty much.

Let's put it this way.

French intellectuals are not my favorite people.

I don't want to sound like Spiro Agnew,

but they can really...

I've seen some things that a real does,

where you just sit there and pull your

hair out, and it makes me ashamed that

I'm a Francophile, but not that side to

them.

I basically like to be entertained, and some

of the foreign movies are deadly.

I mean, they're called masterpieces because you don't

get any fun out of them, so people

think they're profound.

I never liked Antonioni.

Maybe what's in a flea is the point

where, you know, you pay a price, where

there's pain involved.

I had a feeling of guilt, like, Bill,

you could become some kind of professional, and

you could have a professional career, and this

was more than 10 years ago, and you're

in your 20s, and you're kind of letting

things pass you by, and everybody else is

oriented towards a career, and here you are

going to films and not really doing much

else.

The commitment to cinema ultimately entails a commitment

to a technically deviant lifestyle, a lifestyle of

on the margins, so that's the price that

one pays, but in order to pay that

price, I mean, it seems like one would

have to have a certain passion, so maybe

that's cinephilia.

Where have you been this afternoon?

Well, I went to see the White Blue

Road again.

Ah.

It's got a

nice senior citizen's place.

Bill claims that he has never been too

warm in a theater, ever.

He's never been too what?

He's never been too warm.

He told me he brought a thermal vest

and put it on when he got to

the theater.

I can't believe it.

He's always walking around in a coat.

You know, that's the sort of thing you

associate with people who are about 97 years

old, I said, I was so hot once,

and it wasn't that long ago.

It was at the Art Greenwich.

They did none of the air conditioning on.

It was boiling.

I actually took off my blouse and sat

there in the audience with nothing on but

the bra.

And the people sitting next to me didn't

notice.

Luckily, I got it off very ferociously.

I mean, we have to go to extremes

once in a while.

My name's David Schwartz, and I'm the chief

curator of film at the American Museum of

the Moving Image.

It's New York City, so you can never

rest.

You're always missing something.

There's always something that you should be seeing.

These people have very elaborate schedules worked out.

I'm sure the subway system drives them crazy

because they'll have 30 minutes to get from

here to Lincoln Center.

They're dealing with that all the time.

I know a lot of these buffs have

figured it out to the minute.

They know when the film's going to start

and end and how much time they have

to make it to a film forum or

the next show.

The real question is, how can I fit

in the absolute maximum number of stuff that

I want to see?

So I get to this point where if

I don't get everything entered in there, I'm

basically just guessing, and I may find that

I regret it because I may find that

there was a way to fit more stuff

in, so I end up missing stuff.

So it's really important that I take the

time to do it.

But the process is, here's a folder where

I keep all the schedules of everything that's

coming up.

And I have a file.

Film calendar.

I start out by listing every film that's

playing in New York that I might conceivably

want to see.

After I've called all the curators and found

out about what the prints are like, anything

that there's a good print of that I

might conceivably want to see that's going to

show at a theater that I consider has

adequate projection, I list.

And then what I do after I have

all this stuff listed is I narrow it

down.

I also wanted to create a decision-making

program, either in a database program.

Supposing the film is shown on Monday and

Thursday and the following Wednesday at different times.

And at each of those times, some other

film is shown that you also want to

see.

And at each of those times, a third

film is being shown.

And I would have, like, up to seven

films on a particular day, all of which

I wanted to see.

There's multiple chains of if-then scenarios.

If I see this film at that time,

then I can see this film at that

time, and then I can't see this film

at that time, and then I have to

see that film at this time, and then

certain things become excluded.

And you have to go through all these

if-then chains of reasonings.

You have to go through all of them.

But now what I do is I have

all these schedules.

Here's the 11th Annual Gay and Lesbian Film

Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Film Forum 1, Film

Forum 2, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Walter Reed,

MoMA, etc., etc.

And, you know, I just go through it.

Let's find one.

For instance, the Film Forum 2 schedule I

know is...

I know that these are all new 35mm

prints, so that's a light day, a light

and simple day.

But to narrow this down...

I mean, this is one of the worst

schedules I've ever had to deal with.

I guess most people would say that they

should have my problems.

Oh, yeah, you've never seen the master list,

right?

The list of everything I've seen since December

of 86?

Cool.

Let's see.

I mean, the year that I saw a

thousand films in eight months is probably kind

of hazy, because I was really overdoing it

then.

This is around the time of my burnout.

Maybe it's a little after.

Yeah, The Fortune Cookie.

I was probably on a double bill with

Kiss Me Stupid.

Oh, here was the early Hitchcocks, Aventure Malgache.

That was an early propaganda short.

And then there's a Cassavetes film.

Then I went to double indemnity on the

last weekend.

That must have been double bill.

Then here's Drowning by Numbers, Peter Greenaway, Dark

Passage, the Bogart and Bacall film directed by

Delmar Daves.

On Dangerous Ground.

God, I don't know where I saw that.

Just a minute.

Oh, that must have been at the Regency.

The first time I saw it, I never

cried so much.

I do associate all these films with the

time, you know, whatever despair or romantic entanglements

or problems with the police.

I can think back to what I was

doing at that time because movies were always

some kind of respite from those difficulties.

Harvey's great.

Somehow Harvey knows the exact running time of

every film.

And if we list a film incorrectly and

we're like four minutes off in the listing,

I'll hear about it.

If the print we showed is not the

same running time that we listed in the

calendar, I'll hear about it.

What's the worst that could happen?

98 minutes.

It's a good Danny DeVito, Martin Lawrence comedy.

Moulin Rouge?

208.

Another good movie.

Atlantis.

It's a popcorn movie.

How long was it?

It was 95 minutes.

A Knight's Tale?

212.

For Whom the Bell Tolls?

Two hours.

Oh, here are the soundtracks.

The soundtracks are right there.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my God, you have so many.

This is old Jerry Goldsmith, Citizen Kane.

Then from Citizen Kane...

Bernard Herrmann.

Then it goes into Bickle's Rosa.

Here, you can't even get this one, and

this is a great movie.

This is not a great movie.

This movie sucks.

Now, if you open this, you'll see them

do the makeup on the guy.

The inside is the makeup on the Elephant

Man.

It's the original.

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Look at that.

You can't get that anywhere.

Roy Budd.

Square root of zero.

Look at that.

This played with Valiant Gwangi in 69.

And this movie never shows up.

Destination Moon by Lee Stevens.

There we go.

And War of the Worlds by Lee Stevens.

There you go.

You have the Alan Funt movie soundtrack.

And I've seen both versions of this movie.

Rocket Ship XM.

I wish you had a stereo so we

could hear these.

I don't have a record player, and the

stereo doesn't work that good.

All right, Jack.

You ready for a shot?

Mm-hmm.

Well, Harvey's Bristol Cream.

Would your mother object?

Who's going to object?

She's not here.

I'm here.

I'm offering you.

Yeah.

She went away.

She wanted to dust.

When your parents...

It's a little messy, so...

When your parents were still together, did they

sleep in the same bedroom?

No, she moved in there after a couple

years, and she didn't want him bothering her.

So I was here all day yesterday.

That's five programs.

Oh, my God.

Special schemes.

But I have the weirdest memory of a

horror film from the 50s, and nobody knows

what it is.

It's the weirdest memory.

It's a refrigerator.

They open the refrigerator.

They're all body parts in the refrigerator wrapped

in paper.

Okay, great.

And they take out one body part, and

there's a human eye sticking out of the

paper.

I said, I know it's from the 50s,

but nobody knows and never heard of that

movie.

I said, oh, my God, that's the strangest...

And I must have been a little kid

when I saw this.

I time every single thing I sit through

because I'm curious.

That's why.

If it runs a minute over, five minutes

over, ten minutes over, even a whole reel,

that's why.

I know what it is.

Oh, by the way, the movie tonight is

108 minutes at 9 o'clock.

That was another friend of mine.

I was just about to tell him the

running time.

Mr. Running Time, yes.

This is my seat.

You're always in the center.

Oh, are you a film buff?

No, I'm not a film buff.

Are you watching all the movies here?

I had in mind this was the only

place that would make sense for you to

shoot me, but obviously you're not going to

because Irvie's more interesting.

She's not the star today.

I'm the star.

I basically just took a class at the

new school, and they taught me how to

use a camera.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have to clear this

area for the next program.

I'm going to try to pick up some

more flyers over there on that shelf.

Okay.

I can't even go to the bathroom or

anything.

Aren't they already?

Haven't people started going downstairs?

I don't talk about Jewish.

Hi, Fred.

You're coming downstairs, are you not?

I can't have to go to the bathroom

during the day when I'm running around.

I do not have free time during the

day.

I'm frequently running from one movie to the

next.

I would have to run right out of

the theater and jump on a train to

the next one.

Be careful about what he would eat, even

if it would be to the detriment of

his health.

He wouldn't eat too many vegetables or too

much fiber because it might change his bathroom

schedule.

He was actually on this somewhat constipating diet

just because it was more convenient for him.

I didn't like to eat a lot of

beans.

Just a full meal of vegetables would spell

disaster the following day.

Cost is never the consideration.

You might not go to something because it's

not very rare and you can see something

else instead.

But to let money enter into it at

all is a betrayal.

That's a betrayal of your vocation.

Obviously, $25, that's one thing.

You live on the edge.

$25 for films, that can sink you.

I inherited some money from an aunt who

died.

Unless I spend it all on prostitutes, I'm

set for life.

Harvey, Roberta, and Eric all collect disability.

I try to be careful about seeing first

-run films because first-run films are $9,

but everything else is $5 or free.

The French Institute is free because I have

a membership.

MoMA is free because I have a membership.

I can't think of any place else, but

I have memberships everywhere.

My unemployment is going to run out before

the New York Film Festival starts.

But if there's something really good in the

New York Film Festival and $14 looks like

a lot of money to me at the

time, I'm going to go.

How much do I see really every day?

Well, it depends.

If you go into a multiplex, sometimes if

you get lucky, you can see maybe three

films.

But lately at AMC, they're getting very tricky.

They're watching the escalator.

The elevator, they have guys in the elevator

actually saying, Where's your ticket?

So you can't do it like that.

My best trick is to see that nobody's

in front of the theater watching and then

you just walk in.

That's my best trick.

You know what I did?

I went on the other escalator because they

were on one escalator and I went on

the other escalator.

So I went up the escalator, took out

my red ticket, and that's what I used

to get in.

The red ticket is what gets you in.

This is like trying to get in and

things...

I like the old days.

You had a ticket?

Fine, go in, go in, go in.

No name, no nothing.

Undercover car.