A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

composer in the world, you'd get this person who has broken-needle syndrome." Of course, I disagreed and persevered. My colleagues wanted me to use the great musics of the world, Bach and Mozart, et alia. My own clear feeling, which I trust explicitly, is that if the music is truly half of what's happening, it has to be written with the charge of the intention of this film: we can't be borrowing music that had another intention. That I'm able to collaborate with such a great composer gives me a real edge. I'll give Philip a poetic understanding of my feeling, and he'll try to translate it back through composition, through mathematics, which a lot of composition is, so that the

feeling

comes through. I should mention that I don't know anyone who worked on

Koyaanisqatsi

who doesn't feel Philip's music was the right choice now.

MacDonald:

Does Glass look at material as you shoot it?

Reggio:

He's integrated into the whole process. Usually, as you well know, a composer scores background to plot and characterization and is not integrated into the life of the film. Maybe he's involved for as long as a month. Philip is involved with the concept; he goes on location, looks

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at all of the rushes, is collaborating on a daily basis with me. I set up my studio in New York for

Powaqqatsi

because I realized in doing

Koyaanisqatsi

that we should have been closer together. Ours is a hand-inglove operation, one medium motivating the other. In fact, I think that's what gives Philip the opportunity to come to the fore: there's so much focus and attention given to the score that it allows him to produce his best work.

MacDonald:

It's funny that your other collaborators thought his music wouldn't work with the film, because the serial approach to music that's evident in compositions by Glass, Terry Reilly, Steve Reich, and others relates very directly to film's serial arrangement of frames.

Reggio:

It was so obvious to me that I couldn't believe I was getting that response, but then again, I

can

understand. When you listen to

Music in Twelve Parts,

there's a certain demand on the listener to let go; it's almost like taking acid, which can be a very frightening experience if you're not willing to die. I know I'm being dramatic, but listening to Philip's music can produce a tremendous emotional movement inside the listener. Philip abandoned the twelve-tone Western scale for the inspirational power of Vadic Hindu chants, which are trancelike; they open up the conscious and the unconscious mind to another space, another dimension.

MacDonald:

In

Powaqqatsi,

there are intermittent sound effectsthe waterfall and so on. At what point does that level of sound get into the film?

Reggio:

Well, to work with Philip is to work with his crew, which is a real advantage for me. He has a music director, Michael Riesman, and a producer, Kurt Munkacsi, and all the musicians who have worked with him. The sound effects were developed by Kurt Munkacsi along with me, the editors, and Philip's crew. Sound effects were more important in

Powaqqatsi

than in

Koyaanisqatsi,

though there are some in the earlier film too. The music director of

Koyaanisqatsi,

by the way, was Michael Hoenig (an early member of Tangerine Dream and now a composer on his own in Los Angeles). We want to do much more with sound effects in the third film, and have the sound design move to the forefront at certain points. We want to create a musical "bed" where other sounds fit in. We're going to hire a sound designer to work with Philip and me.

MacDonald: Powaqqatsi

has done less well at the box office than

Koyaanisqatsi

. Has that seriously affected the third film?

Reggio:

Well, it hasn't helped raise money. You're only as good as your last film. I want to congratulate Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan for giving me the creative space to be totally independent. They've given me great respect, and they're true lovers of

Powaqqatsi

. They're proud to have their name on it. But I think the way the film was

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handled

in exhibition was a problem. They tried to handle it as a big film. In New York they released at the Ziegfeld. Well, that's the flagship of the City. It's also a desert at night because of its location on Fifty-fourth Street. We wanted to put it in a small theater with a great sound system, a theater where the house gross might be smaller, but where word of mouth could have time to generate a larger overall audience.

Koyaanisqatsi

opened at the Fifty-seventh Street Playhouse and had a twelve-week run. In Los Angeles we premiered at the Century City Plaza for two weeks, and then moved it to the Royale, where it stayed for more than five weeksthe overall run in the L.A. area was twenty weeks. After being at the Ziegfeld for, I think, five weeks,

Powaqqatsi