A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

Next, I tried to use what we had developed in this campaign as a prototype and take the issues into a national forum. A conference was being developed at the University of Chicago for principal lawmakers around the country. Senator Sam Irvin was going to keynote it. We had worked with Lawrence Baskir, who was the chief consul and researcher for the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. We had given them a lot of material and felt we were in a position to launch a national campaign. We wanted to show that this was a pattern

endemic

to the information society, that in fact

everybody

had extensive files on them, and that police and planning bureaucracies were using computers, aggregate statistics, to do all of their prognosis and policy development, that drugs were being used, from Ritalin in schools to Prolixin [a strong tranquilizer] in the prisons.

That campaign didn't work out, but I wanted to continue to explore media and I felt that film might give me more access to the public. Of course, having never made a film, having no credibility, I found it agonizing to get support. Basically, I found "angel support," people who were not interested in the return on their investment, but loved our project.

Koyaanisqatsi

took seven years.

MacDonald:

Let's do a timetable. When did you form this collective?

Reggio:

In the early seventies.

MacDonald:

This local campaign that was so successful was in . . .

Reggio:

1974. We worked on

Koyaanisqatsi

from 1975 to 1982.

MacDonald:

When you look at the film now, can you see its history? Were certain kinds of things shot at certain times?

Reggio:

Well, we started to shoot the film in 16mm because at first

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that was the only film technology we could commandthough we always wanted to go to 35mm. I was so excited by what we garnered in 16mm that we went back to some of the people who had shown interest in the project. They shared our excitement and said we should shoot in 35mm. What began as a forty-thousand-dollar, thirty-minute, 16mm film became a demo. I put Tomita's rendition of Mussorgsky's

Pictures at an Exhibition

on what had been shot and used that to show people what the power of this project could be. That got me the money to work in 35mm. I went back and reshot a lot of the locations, although in one case, 16mm footage remains in the 35mm film: the material on Pruit Igoethe first example of a mass housing development in response to poverty. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) built this monstrosity in Saint Louis, and we were fortunate to be able to film it in 16mm once it was abandoned. I use it as a metaphor. When we were ready to shoot in 35mm, most all those buildings had been torn down, so we took that original 16mm, cleaned it up with an opal glass and wet gate process at Disney, and blew it up to 35mm. The grain structure held up.

MacDonald:

You mentioned "angel support." Was that local here?

Reggio:

No. It was support that had been identified and located during the ACLU campaign. I'd guess upward of seventy people put in money, but it was the faith of one person putting in close to two million dollars that got this film made. That person has requestedand I have honored that requestto remain anonymous. That same person continued to support us through

Powaqqatsi

(a 4.2-million-dollar film), putting in two million dollars. Cannon put in the other two million, for a paper dealmeaning we got bank financing and they had negative pickup. Cannon [Releasing Corporation] got all the rights, so in fact this gentleman was willing to make a bad deal for love of the project. He got net points way down the line but will probably never realize anything off it. Cannon will take most of whatever profits there are. Though, I must say, Menahem Golan and Yuram Globus at Cannon were very fine to me: they

never

interfered and gave me full creative control, which of course I required.

MacDonald:

Let's go back to

Koyaanisqatsi

: it must have felt strange to be involved in such a big project.

Reggio:

Well, after the ACLU campaign, I was not mystified by media, but from ten-, thirty-, and sixty-second spots to a 35mm feature is quite a jump. In fact, no one who worked on

Koyaanisqatsi

had ever made a feature. The cinematographer had only shot 16mm . . .

MacDonald:

Ron Fricke?

Reggio:

Yes, I was sure if he had the right tools, and if he could hear what I was asking for (which, it turned out, he could; we were able to work together quite well), he would do a fine job. By

not

becoming

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mystified, we were able to get on top of the project; in fact, we were able to come from a more original place than we might have, had we gone to film school and learned the "correct" procedures.