A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

opened at ten New York area theaters. Well, you don't do that with this kind of film. Maybe it was to meet some financial imperative for the video deal, where they had to make so many theater play dates, but it didn't help us. I think Yoram, big person that he is, is going to allow us to rerelease

Powaqqatsi

in a different way.

MacDonald:

Who made the connection with Coppola and Zoetrope [Zoetrope Studios, Francis Ford Coppola's production studio]?

Reggio:

I made the connection through Tom Luddy, who was Director of Creative Affairs at Zoetrope. We had just finished the final mix of

Koyaanisqatsi

. Francis was off to shoot

The Outsiders

[1983] and

Rumble Fish

[1983] in Oklahoma, and he asked if I could do a special screening. So Francis saw the film with his crew at a private screening and stood up afterward and spoke highly about the film. And the next day, Francis offered (gratuitously) to be involved. He was very generous to offer his name to the film. In fact, I think most people see that film and think it's a Coppola film, which works well in terms of the distribution.

MacDonald:

Does he still feel connected to the project?

Reggio:

Francis requested that he somehow be involved with the second film, so he and George Lucas share presentation credits. George also allowed us to use, at cost, the facilities at Sprockets, his post-production facility, for the mix, which was invaluable; and he and Francis will serve as presenters for

Naqoyqatsi

. George is acting as our co-executive producer, helping us put together the package for the new film. If I call someone, that's one thing. If Francis Coppola or George Lucas does, it's quite a different thing, and I'm very fortunate to have their patronage. It was actually Francis Coppola who set up the deal for

Powaqqatsi

with Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.

MacDonald:

I was involved in the production of a film called

The Journey

[1987], an attempt at a global film. Peter Watkins, the director, was concerned that his earlier films had, to a degree, functioned within the timetable of commercial film and TV, and his goal for this film was to interrupt that expectation, to make the film so long that you'd have to

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invent new contexts for showing it. In a way, your decision to do a trilogy comes out of an urge to resist feature-length consumption patterns. Does it concern you that individually the parts of the trilogy still fit within the standard time structure for consuming film?

Reggio:

Well, no, it doesn't. That's something that I consciously dealt with during the media campaign for the ACLU. People learn in terms of what they already know. I cannot change the industry of consumption. I cannot change the world. Obviously. If I want to have this film seen, I have to make certain concessions. If I made this film sixty-five minutes, there'd be no venue for it. If I'd made it three hours long, it wouldn't have floated. You're right in saying that in doing a trilogy, I can avoid this need to consume things in predetermined bites, but I felt, and feel, that my objective, not only as a filmmaker, but as an organizer, must be to get these films before the public. The films are unusual to begin with. They must have the chance to be consumed, and in that consumption, transform. I don't think it's the

right

thing; it's the given. And it's something that I have to try to work with.

Douglas Trumbull approached me to do

Powaqqatsi

in Showscan. Well, I thrilled to the concept, but I couldn't go that route. Douglas's intention was to make Showscan theaters multiply all over the world, but that was only an intention. The image is just about one third smaller than I-Max, but with

tremendous

luminosity because it projects at sixty frames per second. The image has almost a surreal quality. But I felt that as wonderful an opportunity as it would have been for my purposesgiven that the impact of the image is extraordinary and I could have used magnetic tape for six-track Dolby soundthere might have been no place to show it.

MacDonald:

Using slow motion and Glass as a soundtrack sets

Powaqqatsi

apart from standard movies anyway.

Reggio:

It does, though with Showscan you can invade the viewer in a more total way. At certain increments of quantity, you change the qualitative possibilities of what happens. I think that's generally true in the world: we've quantified everything to such an extent that we've changed the quality of life.

MacDonald: