Page 31 - Studio International - February 1971

to do with people who ... it's more like roll newspapers and the certified critics and the the children didn't poison their systems with
philosophy. Like Andy is sort of an instinctive established groups. It's usually pretty poor. But drugs and kept their eyes open; watched films
person who does everything by instinct but is if you're going to talk about the future of the instead of chloroforming themselves with the
involved in philosophy very easily for someone cinema, it has to become the young people's shit drugs and then the shit music. q
who wants to speak about it — and people like medium because they're the only audience for
Marshall McLuhan speak about it on large- anything in the world because people are so
scale terms. I don't think it has to do with being prosperous they want to sit home and watch TV;
a painter. Unless the fact is that painters are they're not interested in movies or art or
encouraged to do everything by instinct—you anything else. And all the young people still have
know, a line or a colour is supposed to be pure some interest in art, and it would be nice to really
instinct. Maybe it does. But then I don't really think they were going to get interested in movies.
know of any other painters involved in films. If not it's really going to be all drug addiction
HILL : Michael Snow ? Ed Emshwiller ? with repetitive Chinese-water-drop torture of
MORRISSEY : Yes, but I think they still regard mm mm, mm mm, mm mm, which goes with
the film as an extension of something they hang the nodding out of the drugs. It would be nice if 3 & 4 Stills from Trash
on the wall, and I don't see that those people
3
when they make films have any people in their
films. People act people. You see, I think a film
should be about people, and when they're acting
with patterns and abstractions and shots and
montage and all the techniques of film-making,
the pan and things, it has no content; and just
like modern art, without any content, it's all
form. It's modern art and it's not film. I think
there's a big gulf there. And Andy's films are
films because the subject matter is people. I don't
know what it is really but I would just like to see
movies emphasizing more the art-form of the
actor, because children love celebrity
performers, but all the celebrity performers
they're interested in are rock-and-roll people.
Rock-and-roll people are musicians,
musicians are all drug addicts because music is a
kind of life-style where you go home and you
play music by yourself and then you go out on a
sort of circus-life existence and one-night stands;
and like all these stupid people who die—Janis
Joplin, Jimi Hendrix—they have to take drugs to
survive the misery and the squalor of that kind
of living. And then music itself is so non-verbal.
Musicians are peculiar you know; they never
were part of the community, of anything; they're 4
always unto themselves, I think. So the kids all
want these heroes and they make heroes out of
these very poorly talented imitators, everybody
imitating everybody else and they scream and
howl, but the kids want the heroes; all the
heroes are in music though. And they're really
kind of trashy heroes. It would be nice if the
young people were interested more in film stars.
And if you did have more rapport with the
people—more films were made with young
people—and the young people were the
audience, the way it is for rock and roll.... But I
think anything an actor does is a thousand times
more interesting than anything a musician does
because music is abstract and acting is very
personal, more relevant. But there is this
extraordinary lust for pop music, which certainly
has been suffering diminishing returns lately. It's
really pathetic now. It's junk. There's more
good stuff on the radio than there is on albums.
The albums are the real garbage. But the stuff
on the popular radio which is promoted is there
because of children—bubble-gum music and
teeny boppers who aren't into album music.
They find more good music than the rock-and-

61