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Interview: Frederick Wiseman Talks Crazy Horse, Career, and More

Wiseman spoke to us about working with William Castle, the clash between art and commerce, and the documentary power of the Marx Brothers.

Interview: Frederick Wiseman Talks Crazy Horse, Career, and More
Photo: Zipporah Films

Since his 1967 debut, Titicut Follies, a scathing exposé of the inhumane conditions inside a Massachusetts institution for the criminally insane, Frederick Wiseman has acquired a reputation as the dean of American documentary filmmakers, amassing a body of work (37 documentary and two fiction films) that’s truly astonishing in its breadth and depth, a tragicomic institutional chronicle of the way we live now. His latest “reality fiction” (Wiseman’s preferred genre rubric) is Crazy Horse, which debuted at the 2011 Venice Film Festival. Crazy Horse explores the eponymous Parisian nude dance revue as a site of “frustration and imagination,” to quote one of its proprietors. On the occasion of Crazy Horse’s U.S. theatrical premiere this week at Film Forum, Slant had the chance to talk with Wiseman about, among other things, working with William Castle, the clash between art and commerce, and the documentary power of the Marx Brothers.

I’d like to break the ice by asking about a footnote in your filmography. I’ve read that in the early ’70s you wrote an adaptation of The Stunt Man in conjunction with horror producer William Castle. How did that come about?

Castle contacted me. I knew Paul Brodeur, the author of the novel, so Castle contacted me and asked me if I was interested in doing it. And I did write a screenplay, but it was not the screenplay that was used for the movie [as written and directed by Richard Rush].

What was your contact with William Castle? He’s a figure of some notoriety in film history.

Well, he was perfectly charming with me. I think he didn’t like the screenplay, so he went on and got somebody else to write it. I didn’t have any big fight with him. I had some funny scenes in there. It was my first and basically my last foray into the Hollywood scene. I had no real interest in returning.

Looking back over your body of work, is there one film—or even one particular scene—that continues to haunt you?

No. Well, there’s some scenes that I think are very funny. Haunt me? No. Some scenes that amuse me a lot. There’s a scene in the film I did about the monastery [Essene]. Actually, I don’t particularly want to describe it, because it will ruin it for somebody who sees the film. I’d rather answer the question in a general way, because the moment I describe the scene, it sort of kills the joke.

Have you kept in touch with the subjects of any of your films, if only to keep tabs on what has or hasn’t changed with them?

Some. I’ve kept in touch with some of the people from the Comédie-Française, and I’ve kept in touch with some of the people at the Paris Opera Ballet. And that’s mainly because I have some common interests. I’m interested in acting and directing, I’m interested in choreography and dancing. Not dancing myself. [laughs] Those are the only two films where I really kept in touch. For all the other films, I always show it to the participants before it’s broadcast, or at least those of the participants that I can find. For a film like Welfare, it’s pretty hard to round up all the people a year later.

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What are some documentaries or documentary filmmakers that had an influence on you personally?

I think I’m more influenced by books I’ve read than movies I’ve seen.

Such as?

Well, I’m not saying that it’s a direct influence, but I read a lot of novels. The way that I structure my films is related to writing. It’s related actually to fiction filmmaking. Because while the relationship between fact and imagination is different in a documentary movie than it is in a novel, I have the same kinds of problems in the editing, the characterization, the passage of time, abstraction, metaphor, the relationship between the literal and the abstract, that a novelist or a playwright might have, more than a fiction filmmaker has. I don’t do thesis-oriented films. I discover the films in the editing, and it’s in the editing that I have to figure out what the material means.

Certainly your films have the kind of sprawling, multi-character storylines that are reminiscent of 19th century novelists like Dickens.

It’s the 19th century novelists that I like.

What interested you in making a documentary on the Crazy Horse?

I’d been living in Paris, I’d finished La Danse. And I’m very interested in dance. Crazy Horse is the third formal dance film I’ve made. You have Ballet, La Danse, and also Boxing Gym, in a sense, is a film in part about dance. I was living in Paris, so I was looking around for something else to do there. I was always interested in a nightclub, and a friend of mine took me to the Crazy Horse. I discovered they were rehearsing a new revue, the first new revue in a number of years, and so I went one night and I liked the dancing that I saw. I met the choreographer [Phillipe Decouflé] and the owners of the Crazy Horse, and they said okay, so I started shooting a couple of weeks later.

Many of your recent films, especially those shot in France, have shifted emphasis from examining public institutions to exploring institutions involved with the performing arts. To what do you attribute that shift?

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Basically, I’m trying to do movies about as many subjects as possible. I don’t think that I’m restricted to making movies about obvious social issues, like Welfare or Juvenile Court. My goal is to make as many different films around as many diverse kinds of subjects as possible. My first performance film was Ballet, which was in ’92, then I did Comédie-Française in ’95, and then La Danse in 2007. Crazy Horse was shot in 2009. In between Ballet and La Danse, there was Public Housing, State Legislature, High School II, and the two Domestic Violence movies. So I don’t think it represents any shift. It’s simply a deliberate extension of subject matter. My next film’s about a university. I think, to some extent, the fact that I have made some performance films has been misunderstood, because it means that some people have classified me, in my view incorrectly, as somebody who just makes films about obviously social subjects. And in fact a movie about a ballet company or a theater company is just as much a social subject as a movie about a welfare center, in my view.

Can you tell me a little more about the upcoming university project?

It’s shot already. It’s about Berkeley. It’s about the administration at Berkeley, the teaching, and the student life. It’s a movie about one of the major American universities. Berkeley’s one of the best universities in the world.

Over what time period did you film that?

In the fall of 2010.

So that was before the whole Occupy movement came about.

Yes. There was nevertheless student protest there, as there always is. I had access to everything that was going on. I have a lot of material and I’m busy editing that.

A three-part question: How long did you film around the Crazy Horse premises? How much footage did you compile? And how lengthy was the editing process?

Ten weeks. 150 hours. A year.

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Has your process altered significantly since you started making films?

I’d like to think I’ve learned something about how to make them. But basically the technique is the same: Sit in the editing room and fiddle around with the choices until the film’s finished. I’ve edited all my films myself, and I’d like to think that as a consequence of doing that—you know, it’s not for me to make the judgment that the editing is better, but I’d like to think it’s better.

How do you view the correlation between the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet company in La Danse and the girls of the Crazy Horse?

In both cases they are dancers who have been classically trained. Or at least the dancers at the Crazy Horse, if they haven’t been classically trained, have gone to dance conservatoires, so that they’re trained in either modern dance or ballet. For one reason or another, competition is very stiff to get into the major dance companies. The girls who didn’t make it into the Paris Opera Ballet or other major ballet companies, they like to dance! For them it’s a job, a job where they can continue their dance career. And they don’t think there’s any big deal about appearing naked, as indeed there isn’t. They’re very well protected by the Crazy Horse. They all have stage names. The mythology of a place like the Crazy Horse is that the girls are all call girls, but of course they’re not. They’re nice, sensible, intelligent women who are leading normal lives. Attractive women of 20-to-30 years old.

The dancers at the Crazy Horse rarely give vent to personal feelings except on occasion in groups backstage. Was this a conscious decision you made during editing?

There wasn’t much conversation among them. When I was there, they showed up for rehearsal, usually around 11 or 12 o’clock, they rehearsed a new show in the afternoon, and then they performed at night. There really wasn’t much chitchat. It’s a very professional scene. Had there been any really interesting conversations that I heard, I would have included them in this film. It wasn’t a question my deliberately excluding them. I just didn’t find them!

Throughout the film, we only catch glimpses of Roman and Slava, tap dancing twins, who seem to be the only male performers on the premises. What was their function in the revue?

And the illusionist. Roman and Slava performed five nights a week. I found it quite interesting that, at a place like that, none of the dance numbers in any way express heterosexuality. All the dance numbers suggest either lesbianism or masturbation.

Certainly the numbers that end up in the film do.

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I didn’t leave any out that suggested heterosexuality, there were none.

Do you think this has something to do with presenting the women as a kind of screen on which the average patron projects their own personal fantasies?

I don’t know what the explanation is. To some extent, it’s what you’re saying. It has to do with somebody making a judgment that those are the kind of fantasies that the public is interested in seeing. It’s a correct judgment to some extent, because the place is full every night! The Paris Opera Ballet is full every night too, and a lot of the great ballets concern the relationship with men and women.

There’s a moment in the film, in fact, where the choreographer mentions that the girls seem to have difficulty doing the routines that require them to caress each other or simulate…

They don’t like to touch each other. That’s a key scene in the film. I found that very interesting.

That scene also highlights the seemingly inevitable tug of war between artistic aspirations and the commercial necessities of the establishment.

Exactly.

Do you have any feelings about which side ultimately won out?

Oh, I think the establishment won out.

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Was Philippe Decouflé ever able to shut the premises down long enough to institute the changes he wanted?

Not the ones he talked about in that meeting. He didn’t have the same control. He has his own dance company, which I’ve seen perform, where he has complete control. Here he’s an employee. And he argued hard for what he wanted, but he didn’t always win.

You mentioned earlier that films are important to you. Can you mention some of your favorite fiction film directors?

As they say in Casablanca, “The usual villains.” Fellini, Bergman, Truffaut, Godard. Some of the Japanese directors. You know, the same people everybody likes as feature film directors. And among documentary film people I like, Marcel Ophüls and Errol Morris.

Are you in any regular contact with Errol Morris?

Yeah, Erroll’s a friend of mine. We both live in Cambridge. So we see each other from time to time. And I see Ophüls from time to time. Do you know Ophüls? He’s a great filmmaker, though he hasn’t worked much recently.

Sure. The Sorrow and the Pity. And he also did Hotel Terminus.

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Hotel Terminus is one of my favorite movies of all time.

So, out of the generation of art-house filmmakers you mentioned, is there one film in particular that had a particular influence on you?

None that I would say. This whole question of influence, it’s hard to track, it’s so indirect. But a lot of them I liked. I admire the imagination and integrity that went into making them. For some reason, as I said before, I’ve been more influenced by books than I have by movies.

I read somewhere that you went to a lot of movies as a child and young adult. What are some of your earliest recollections of filmgoing?

My earliest recollections of films are Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, the Ritz Brothers. I think the Marx Brothers have been a source of inspiration always.

Duck Soup is one of the great films.

Duck Soup and A Day at the Races. Can’t beat them. As far as I’m concerned, they’re both documentaries.

Budd Wilkins

Budd Wilkins's writing has appeared in Film Journal International and Video Watchdog. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

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