Audio transcription

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

John Quackenbush  0:00  

In 2015, the Harvard Film Archive hosted The World Made Flesh and Freed by Song and Sadness, three evenings of screenings and conversations with Luther Price. This is the audio recording of the introduction and discussion from the second program on February 1, 2015. Also participating is HFA Director Haden Guest. Take note that the recording begins after the introduction of Haden Guest.

Haden Guest  0:32  

[AUDIO MISSING] ...awareness of film as film, but it's also a catalogue of the loving abuse that he uses to treat and to transform the film objects that are his art: perforating, puncturing, tearing, staining, burying even in his backyard film prints to turn them into works of strange and transformative beauty. Poised as we are at the twilight of the photochemical age, a lot of attention is given to this aspect of Price’s work and yet, I think it would be a mistake to think of him as a materialist formalist filmmaker in any way. Because I think Price's understanding of film is also an understanding of film as an emotional medium. And I feel that in the fragility, in the rawness of his imagery, lies a keen understanding of the emotional potency and power of film. I feel like his really extraordinarily meticulous craftsmanship is grounded in an understanding of this as well. This is very clear in tonight's program, which offers a suite of really, I think, unusually intimate, and profoundly emotional films. In putting together these three programs, going through Luther’s vast body of work was a wonderful challenge. And it quickly became apparent to me that family was such an important theme and idea in Price’s work. And this theme is the thread that unites the films in this program. They also point to a diaristic thread that runs through Price's work that I think ties him as well to a very important strand of first-person filmmakers who have emerged from this very area. I think, of course, of Anne Charlotte Robertson, another great artist who graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art where Price received his MFA and where he teaches now. 

So we're going to see a group of five films and one set of slides, a very nicely companioned piece, a reminder of the work that's upstairs, begins with Domestic White from 2004. This is one from the series of so-called “ribbon films,” that Price has been producing. Really, really, I think, just mesmerizing films in which he marries sixteen and eight millimeter. And the way that I don't know has ever been done before. Cold, Cold Heart: this is—some of you may know that the artist known as Luther Price, also, in an earlier incarnation was known as Tom Rhoads—and this was his, in fact, very first. It’s from 1986. Then we'll be seeing a film called Recitations. This,I think, also points to something else... I think that I'd like to just mention the idea of Price as a sound artist, I think his almost sculptural use of sound is really unmatched. And we'll be seeing Home from 1999. I think this is one of Price’s most important films and one that is really central to this body of what we could call “home movies” that are really the sort of beating heart of his oeuvre. That'll be followed by a set of slides, Home Slides, these will be silent, a carousel of slides, and then we'll close with a film Door #2, 37, which is a portrait of sorts of Price's sister. This is from 1997. And then we'll have a conversation with Luther Price here so please don't go away. 

I should just mention tomorrow we're being threatened with yet another storm. Our plan, our intention is to be here after tomorrow night's show—which I highly encourage you to come and see—to happen. That said, you know, if the severity of the storm is too much, poses a danger, then of course, we will alter those plans and so consider the show will will take place tomorrow unless there's an announcement made sometime in the afternoon which will follow the university's guidance. So now please join me in welcoming Luther Price.

Luther Price  5:59  

Thank you Haden. Oh, my goodness, I'm so... I apologize because I'm really emotionally drained already. And now I realize that I have to sit through and revisit this haunting program. So we'll see how that affects me. It's crazy because you make these things and maybe one is okay? But this is a little– I'm really revisiting some ghosts here. So it'll take its toll. But we'll have a conversation later, Haden and I, and try to get through it. So thank you so much.

[APPLAUSE]

John Quackenbush  6:50  

And now Haden Guest and Luther Price.

Haden Guest  6:54  

Thanks so much, ever so much, for this really wonderful set of films. And I thought maybe we could begin at the beginning, maybe we could speak about one of the films in particular Cold, Cold Heart, which brings us back to 1986. And I think it's a really revealing film in many ways, and one of them being the use of the the soundtrack, this Hank Williams song that gives the film its title, and I was wondering if we could speak about this film and maybe about the use of song throughout your works, the ways in which certain songs and lyrics and titles and words take on almost a form of prayer, they sort of repeat and they take on new meaning as we hear the words again and again. So I was wondering if we could speak about Cold, Cold Heart and maybe think a bit about song and image in your films.

Luther Price  7:57  

Well, I'm still adjusting... This is like an overdose for me because I hardly ever see these films, but then to see them all together. Plus, last night I was visited by ghosts. I actually got up and I was like I'm done with sleeping so I didn't get much sleep. You know? Like if I go back to sleep I'm just gonna– I was conjuring all kinds of ghosts. It’s all ghosts here tonight. 

But um, we Cold, Cold Heart was my first film believe it or not. Right? That's crazy. But I remember... because I had been working in video and I was checking out the video studio and doing for maybe like an hour or two (at MassArt when I was a student) and back then the equipment was really huge and you know, crazy in 80s video, and the batteries would– You know, someone would return the video and the batteries would be dead, things like that. It's crazy. But I would check myself into the studio for like an hour or two hours and just set up these vignettes for Warm Broth—which I have the tapes, the VHS tapes, they’re very rare—and I would create these characters and…  And so Warm Broth was gonna be a video you know, and I bought a camera and bought some film, some sound film, God bless sound film. God bless? Why did I say that? [LAUGHTER] Wow. I never say that…. Right, what was I going to say?

Oh! I remember getting the film back and projecting it, and I realized, oh my god, I just made a film! (I just said “God” again.) So, and then I realized that Warm Broth had to be a film. And it was like magic. It was like opening up something magical. Magic. I found something magic. Still remember that feeling, it was a great feeling. 

But I grew up with country music and Hank Williams. I was saying before that I didn't even realize there was anything but country music until… we used to keep the radio on top of the refrigerator, and it would always be country music in the kitchen. And one day, I remember it was 1972. And I decided to change the knob. And The Doors came on. What is this? This is wonderful. And then I was hooked. But when I'm looking... All of this footage that you see, I really remember having a wonderful childhood, by the way, you know, lots of birthday cakes. We should’ve named this show “Cake.” “Birthday Cake,” you know? What would we do without birthday cakes? Right?

Haden Guest  11:18  

No, it's a kind of chronicle, kind of milestone...

Luther Price  11:20  

When was the first birthday cake? I need to find out. It's such a wonderful symbol. It's such a wonderful object.

Haden Guest  11:27  

I think it was the Egyptians. 

Luther Price

The Egyptians made the first? [HADEN LAUGHS] The cavemen. I’m sure there is a drawing in a cave somewhere of a birthday cake. Made of meat. [HADEN LAUGHS]

Haden Guest  11:41  

But so Luther, 

Luther Price

I wanna know.

Haden Guest

I mean thinking about country music, this idea of this–

Luther Price  11:46  

What I realized too, there’s evil in my life too, becauseI have a brother and he's like Damien. He's six years younger than I am. And he's like Damien, literally, Damien. When he was born, there was like evil. And there's no images of him in any of this, because I didn't want that. In Home you see some, there’s a little torment there. He's taking a tantrum for a second. But I realized how wonderful my childhood was. My mother was a factory worker. And every Friday she would come home with a different costume for my sister and I. So a spaceman costume, cowboys…. We had matching guitars, army outfits, Indian outfits American Indian outfits. It just went on. We always had the costumes to dress up in; that was her thing, you know, so...

Haden Guest  12:52  

Hence the origin of clown films perhaps.

Luther Price  12:55  

It molded me because we grew up in East Boston and back then it was really like a concrete jungle. There were no trees. And we really couldn't go outside. So our whole life was just about like imagining things, building tents, and yousee the big huge elephant. So we weren't deprived of anything, you know? But you know, my social skills lacked, I think, because, you know, I remember going to kindergarten and I was just horrified that there were other people. Other little people like me, and I was like, What do I do with this? So I used to hide inside like those cubbies, you know, the old fashioned classrooms. So... And I still do that. I'm like a hermit. Just coming on a train here... There’s smelly things on the train, you know, and if it's not smelly, it's like perfume and ugh… People! I’m sorry… 

Haden Guest  13:59  

Thanks for coming out tonight., Luther [LAUGHTER] and being with us all.

Luther Price  14:06  

I just like ghosts. That's it.

Haden Guest  14:09  

I wanted to follow from Cold, Cold Heart to go to Recitations because this is Hank Williams, as well, like lyrics being read. I mean, can you tell us something about this–

Luther Price

In Recitations? 

Haden Guest

Yeah, in Recitations...

Luther Price  14:23  

No, actually when I was in New York, someone... There’s that music. What is that music? Someone told me and it went in one ear and out the other. But my mother– See, the thing is, it's really interesting because when my mother wanted to salvage and record and maintain these memories, you know, she went out and bought a Super 8 projector, a camera, a movie screen, to record our lives, right?. And my father for some reason immediately sold it, sold all the equipment, but to make it up to my mother, he bought her reel-to-reel audio recorder with the old tape. So all of our life is on audio, which is interesting because I'm much more of a visual person, I think. But she was constantly in front of that reel-to-reel tape recorder, [LAUGHS] just singing and you know, talking and these were recitations where she was really, you know, I think she had a book or something, but she would play a record to go along with it. She was like the original performance artist, I think, you know, and she was also an installation artist. After she passed away, I realized that she hoarded things, like she had elastic bands, she had big, huge bags of elastic bands. If you even touched it, it would disintegrate. And the things that she kept, I was like... I had to throw it all out, because... I wish I kept it, but... What am I– I'm sorry, what?

Haden Guest  16:10  

Well, so speaking about that soundtrack in Recitations, so you've manipulated it to make the voice... to change the pitch...

Luther Price  16:18  

That was deteriorated. So my mother sounds a little Munchkiny, you know. Yeah, from the reel-to-reel. It can be fixed. I actually, I don't own those anymore. I made the mistake years ago. Saul Levine invited me to one of my first shows, solo shows at Film Society. And I made the stupid mistake of inviting my mother and my sister to see these films. It was about a year later, I'm having coffee with my mother and it all came out how horrified she was because I was making films very personal and... It took her a year to let me know how hurt she was. But then she asked for everything back, she asked for all the audio footage back. Any photograph, I had all these photographs. And now my brother has them also, I will never see them. So it's all gone. So luckily I have that. But...

Haden Guest  17:30  

Well no, this is really fascinating to hear the importance of these recorded soundtracks in your home because thinking of the film Home, this soundtrack is really so evocative and extraordinary and mysterious where we have a fragment of a story being repeated, and sort of stuttered. And it gives this quality of you know, these stories that family members may tell again and again. And once you start hearing it, you just sort of sit back and hear the whole story again. And then at the same time, we've got something that sounds like there's a horror film soundtrack in the background and this hacking cough. So when I was speaking earlier of the soundtracks as having almost a sculptural quality, this sort of musical quality at times. I was wondering if we could focus on this film Home and speak a bit about, you know, how the soundtrack took form, and how it came to be. There's something in your films where at times the soundtrack seems to have—in your sound films—really an autonomy, and at the same time to be so at times, almost wedded and at times to be pushing, pulling off on its own. So I'd love to speak about this, hear more about the soundtrack of this film

Luther Price 18:54  

Yes, realize that I'm just as into the construction of sound as I would an image, you know constructing an image, splicing it and so... But also, you know, the thing is, is that I do inherit this thing from my mother; she was very repetitive to begin with. I loved listening to her stories, because she would tell me the same story as if it was the first time and you know, of course, I would listen to it as if it was the first time and you know, I've I haven't written down these stories. There's a lot of stories that I'm hoping that before I get, you know... I’m losing brain cells by the day at this point. If I could start writing them down before– Because that's it! You know, this is it. I need to record that.

But yeah, the awful thing is, is that I remember my mother would be telling me the story and I'd be listening to it and actually enjoying hearing it again. And my brother would pass by the room and finish the story for her. And “blah blah blah blah….” I would be like, “How horrible are you? Who are you? Who are you?” Right? 

Haden Guest

That’s pretty obnoxious.

Luther Price

But she would be like, “Oh my–” But she didn't deserve that. But I was pretty bad because Home was shot in the 80s, in the late 80s, all this footage, during the time I was making, I think, very early films. And I would go there to shoot. Because at my parents house, the backyard was a seawall and I just love the seawall to work with as a horizon against the sky, so it was a really nice stage to work with. But back then I would just carry my Walkman Pro around my shoulder and walk into the house. It was like a Fred Wiseman type of thing. After a while they just got so used to seeing me with the recorder and the camera that they didn't suspect anything. Until one day I'm sitting– Because I mean, this is one of many stories—that we hear in Home—that I chose because it's about the truth. So it really made sense to what was going on and why I was trying to talk about this with my family. But I have lots of tapes that I made, I guess spying tapes, you know. And I remember sitting there at the kitchen table and my mother's making me cinnamon toast and coffee. And she turned around and she said, “Are you recording me?” And you could hear me say [IN A SHRINKING VOICE] “no.” But I was lucky enough that I thought of this ahead of time, because I was like if I do get caught—because I'm conniving in that way—I was like, if I do get caught, I need to have a backup plan, right? So I pulled it out. It was an Aerosmith tape. But you know, if you cover the tops with tape, you can record over it. I was like “No, it's an Aerosmith tape.” [LAUGHTER] “Oh, because I thought you were recording me!” I was like, “I'd never do that.” But yeah, my mother and my sister, they were best friends. So they’d sit in the den eating Steak-umm sandwiches, and just watch TV and just talk. And I’d be there sitting there in between them.

Haden Guest  23:08  

That's the television? That's the sound…?

Unknown Speaker  23:10  

They were watching television. Perry Mason. It was Perry Mason.

Haden Guest  23:17  

I love the quality of... I mean, it's interesting how you describe this kind of stealth operation of your camera because the image is in there where the home is being filmed as if it's a crime scene, you know, you’re sort of taking evidence of what's being eaten and where the furniture is, so that’s...

Luther Price  23:35  

The thing is is this footage was taken more than a decade before the tragedies would actually occur in that house. The thing is, is that I even hate looking at that house.

Haden Guest  23:50  

This is the blue house that we see?

Luther Price  23:52  

My brother has that house now. And I haven't stepped foot in that house since 2001 when my mother died. When she died, I left the house and never came back. But it's awful. It's awful. You know? I just get a bad feeling from it. It’s awful.

Haden Guest  24:14  

Well, something you spoke about last night, Luther, was this idea that in some of your films there’s almost a kind of predictive quality somehow; you feel that some of your works seem to point to events that happen in the future. So in Home this sort of, perhaps menacing..

Luther Price  24:36  

Yeah, it's haunting. You know, the thing is, is that I feel like film is a medium that has the ability to conjure ghosts in many ways. You know, it's on some other level. I really feel that we're tapping into something, you know? Yeah.

Haden Guest  24:56  

And do you feel the same way then about working with found footage? 

Luther Price

No, no. 

Haden Guest

Okay.

Luther Price  25:02  

But I do feel like, you know, say in Domestic White, which—this was the first time I ever projected that film—

Haden Guest  25:12  

The first film in the program tonight.

Luther Price  25:13  

It looked really beautiful. The 16mm looks gorgeous here.

Haden Guest  25:17  

Yeah, no, it's– Thank you, John.

Luther Price  25:20  

Yeah. But it was really nice to watch that because, you know, it was somebody else's ghosts, you know, which I like.

Haden Guest  25:31  

Maybe friendlier?

Luther Price  25:31  

You know, I had nightmares last night. And the thing is, my whole family, they're all gone. They're all... you know. And they were fighting with me. They all ganged up on me. I always have this recurring dream where I go to visit them and I'm complaining that the bathroom is too dirty. You know? But they're like, “No, it's not.” And I was kind of like the black sheep of the family. We used to go to Woolworth’s, the counter—like back-to-school shopping in Downtown Crossing—my mother would take my sister and I to Woolworth’s. And even if it was fried chicken, I demanded that I had to use silverware to eat it. And they just thought that was ridiculous. And so I was like, what is it Nancy?, from The Munsters. And I just felt like I was born into the wrong family. [HADEN LAUGHS] And they knew it too, you know? For some reason, I just don't belong there, I didn't belong there, you know... 

Haden Guest  26:48  

Well, maybe I mean, to sort of channel this... I mean, thinking about this larger project in this group of films—some of which are here in this program—of looking back at your home, at your family life, and also offering a tribute to and a kind of memory of the deceased members of your family. So this was a very sort of intense and very personal project. And I was wondering if you could just speak about this process: was this something that was urgent that you had to do? Or was this something that took a lot of time? Was this a kind of therapy of sorts for you? 

Luther Price  27:38  

I didn't think of it as therapy at the time, but looking back, when you see a group of films all together as a body of work, it becomes something of its own, you know? But I'm glad that I made the work, because in many ways, I think that it kind of got me through something or I I think that I started to make films to begin with, to try to understand my own past, because all of my early films were about my own domestic history. And then I felt if I could get through that, then I can get into my contemporary self at some point, which I finally did and I was thrilled. So I really… you know, I'm sorry, because you did such a wonderful job with these programs. But I really do want to just move forward. And I'm just for me to go back in these incentives, revisit these chunks of gristle, it's really difficult, you know, but I'm really looking forward to, more than ever, the present, and the future, and it's all about, you know, leaving that behind, but it's it's there. But I'm really not sure if I want to do this again, you know? Yeah, I'm not sure that I need to, because I don't really think it's healthy for me. It's like stopping and going back and then crawling back up again. I think at this point, it's time for me to just leave that to something else. I think it'd be healthy, right? No? No? I mean...

Haden Guest  29:42  

[LAUGHS] Ed Halter’s disagreeing.

Luther Price  29:44  

What? Why do I have to? It's like, why do I have to keep revisiting something? You know, I made the films, why do I have to keep– You know, whyyyy do I have to keep looking at them? Why? I didn't make them to haunt me. I made them... I don't know why I even do these things, but I never suspected that I would have to be attached to them for the rest of my life, you know? Do I really want ghosts hovering around me? I want to just say goodbye to that, you know, and move on. Because, maybe then I can moooove on. You know, I'm still in Revere, I think, because I'm still with, you know, this unsettled business, you know. So, but ideally, it would be nice to move, literally move and just move on. And I think I– You know, I mean, you only live once. I think I deserve to pursue that. Right? 

Haden Guest

Absolutely.

Luther Price

Leave the ghosts behind.

Haden Guest  30:56  

Well, Luther, let's talk about the last film in the program, Door #2, 37, which I think is really such an impressive and tour-de-force film, I mean, this machine gun montage at different times. And then at the same time the use of the Portishead soundtrack. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the soundtrack, about this film, about this tribute. 

Luther Price  31:26  

Yeah, well, I, you know, I love Portishead and that was the thing about this as I was making this film, Door #2-37 as a tribute to my sister, because she was on her way. She was dying. So it was just a sort of goodbye wish to her. And so this is what I was working on. I'd visit her in the hospital and I'd come home and I'd work on this, but all I listened to was Portishead, so it just made sense that it would find its way into the film. That's how I used to work. I used to listen to a lot of music. Now, for some reason, I can't listen to music when I'm working. I tried it a few times, but then all of a sudden, I go from working to looking into the mirror, singing into a hairbrush. I'm like, What just happened? I just spent three hours singing Elton John. And I'm like, I'm not making films. [LAUGHS] I'm just in a daze, like around my house, entangled in things... And I’m like, I'm not getting– So it's funny because I absolutely can't listen to music now. So I'm addicted to listening to the Discovery Channel. Investigation ID. So... murdah. [LAUGHS]

Haden Guest  33:04  

Well, Luther, let's take some questions, comments from the audience, if we have any. We'll start with Will. You can have a microphone. Second row.

Audience 1  33:22  

So I guess this question is kind of about the last film, but also more generally, I just noticed, for example, actually, like in Home, how you had you had these photographs that you were showing, and then later those turned into like these, kind of, moving still lives filmed in the actual rooms in the house. And also, I noticed a kind of similar shift of the guy in the bed with the tape on it, how it's kind of just film of him. And then later, I got the sense that it was being shot off of a television monitor or something. I'm just curious about what impact television has had on you because it's not really addressed directly. I remember last night there were like the kind of operating room TV stuff. But yeah, I'm just curious if you could maybe talk about that.

Luther Price  34:19  

Yeah, I was thinking about that. That there's a lot of rephotography going on and different types of rephotography in this work. But in Home for instance, I did shoot a lot of the original footage in Super 8, but it didn't feel contemporary enough for me as a home movie. Because by that point, we had our video camcorder. So we were allowed to shoot Christmas and all these things, but if I pulled up out camera during Christmas, everyone like hid under the bed, because that was like, you know, there was something bad about super 8. So it just felt like the right texture for me to create as a home movie that was more contemporary to my family. So I pulled back and forth from Super 8. And then we see the slides later, the negative slides. When my mother found out she was dying, she started throwing away lots of things, and I came by once and I found that lampshade, actually. There's a lampshade that you see in a lot of the slides and for some reason I picked it up. I didn't realize that it was part of my life, but I was drawn to it. And I was like, “Can I have it?” She was like, “Yeah, I'm throwing that out and throwing everything out on the porch. I'm throwing all of that stuff out.” And it was really like, everything, you know, all the good stuff. So I took the lampshade. And then I realized later Oh, no wonder I liked that lamp shade. It was part of my childhood. And then I found a stack of deteriorated negatives that were all stuck together in like a brick. Because they had gone through the blizzard of ‘78, the flood. And so I took them and I soaked them in water and separated them. And then in Recitations what I was doing too—because I had just gotten a camcorder at that point, so I was playing a lot—and I liked the idea of... I love the idea of just going back and forth between mediums. So I took the... It's a little interesting, because I'm trying to figure out what I did. But what I did was I took the strips—it was still in strip form, the negatives... So they are negative—I took them and I held them over a light bulb that was attached to my wall and put my camera on macro and then taped two magnifying glasses to the camcorder to even get up closer and switched it to positive on the camcorder. And then... later, I played that, you know, VHS or whatever. I guess it was a VHS.

Haden Guest  37:37  

Right because you rewind it at one point. 

Luther Price  37:39  

Yeah, on my television. This is so old school! I kind of like it in a way? And then I would just set up my tripod and Super 8 camera and rephotograph that. So there's a lot of rephotography going on, you know? And so it's like a little marriage, a dancing marriage between mediums in a lot of this work. And even in Domestic White, because I'm kind of marrying two mediums there too, you know, sixteen and [?regular 8?]...

Haden Guest  38:14  

And of course, still photography, though. 

Luther Price

It was a good question, though.

Haden Guest

Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, I've got a question here in the middle. Actually, if you could just wait for a microphone. Can we have a microphone in the middle? Here it comes, right here. Thanks, Jeremy.

Audience 2  38:29  

Hi, Luther. I thought that you did like double exposure in that film.

Unknown Speaker  38:35  

Which one? 

Audience 2

The one we were just talking about, Recitations?

Luther Price

Recitations?

Audience 2  38:40  

Because there was a black dot and everything was white...

Luther Price  38:42  

Yeah the black dot is the light bulb. So that translates as black. So did you get what I was saying as far as how that process went? It’s kind of simple, but it's kind of elegant in a way when you think of it, you know? 

Audience 2

It was really beautiful.

Haden Guest  39:00  

Other questions? Yes. David in the back,

David Pendleton  39:12  

Luther, I get the impression that a lot of your work is really about trauma. Or at least that’s–

Luther Price

Trauma?

David Pendleton

Trauma

Luther Price  39:17  

Oh, drama

Haden Guest  39:20  

Trauma with a T.

David Pendleton  39:24  

Now, judging from the use of, you know, often decayed or damaged footage, the repetition, the use of medical footage, etc. I'm just wondering if that seems like a fair reading to you, and if you could talk– And maybe that has to do more with your older work and not with this new work, because I noticed that the things that have the most recent dates that I've seen to date, are much less about that than the earlier works.

Luther Price  39:54  

You know, I guess you do what you know. And that's kind of what I know, you know? I really feel like... Oh, I'm being so dramatic! But I really feel like I wasn't meant to even be in this world because I feel like I'm watching the world like, pressed between glass as a witness to even my own life. I don't feel real, I just don't…. But you know, the day I was born, my mother's sister, my Aunt Sally committed suicide. So every birthday, my mother would– You could just see her face looking at me blowing out the candles, she wasn't thinking of my birthday, she was thinking of my aunt's death, and I always knew that. The birthday cake is a big symbol if you notice. And I don't know, this darkness just seemed to follow me. That's why I don't want to go back because I really think that I can move away from that. And, you know, I've tried really hard, you know? I think I go into different bodies of work and even now making slides, and I feel like I'm really trying to get away with the inkblots and just falling in love with color, which, you know, it took me years to fall in love with color, you know? It's just a quest, I don't know. I think we all kind of do that in a way, in different ways, right? I just want to be better. I just want to feel better, you know? And, and leave– You know, why not? Right? But there's a lot of trauma, there's a lot of that disaster. I feel like I'm living in a shell, you know, because I'm so kind of broken too and I'm jealous of other people's bodies. But you know, I'm stuck with what I have. And I could be doing worse, you know? I have friends who have… Believe me, I know. But I don't know, I'm just… trying to move on. I'm really in a grumpy mood tonight, huh? I took like a grumpy pill or something, huh? [HADEN LAUGHS] You know what it was: I took a five-hour energy drink and it's like, did the opposite. I was like–

Haden Guest  42:35  

[JOKING] What time did you take that?

Unknown Speaker  42:37  

I was like, “I need some energy!” You know? I just feel like instead of giving energy, it just deflated me. I'm like a deflated balloon. 

Haden Guest

Try this, Luther. The original energy drink.

Luther Price

I’m like a deflated balloon version of myself. I’m like phfffffffffffffft!

Haden Guest

Luther, maybe we’ll take one more energizing question. Go ahead.

Audience 3  43:06  

Hi, if you want to move on, can you tell us a little about what direction you want to go?

Luther Price  43:19  

[PAUSE] Well, I have to work towards that, whatever it is. You can't push it. I just need to continue to work and just be more positive about myself, first of all. Because the thing is, I realize I've always put myself last, too, so I can't complain when I'm like, oh, complaining because I'm, you know, in pain. It's like, you know, I had every chance to to go to therapy or rehab because I've had accidents. And I was like, Well, I want to work, I need to get this done. And I was like, You know, if I'm not healthy and I'm not happy, then of course I'm going to be making you know, sad miserable stuff, right? So I need to fix myself first, and then we'll see what happens with the work. I'm really being honest, that's all. That's all I can be. You know, I hate to turn this into a therapy session, [LAUGHTER] but, you know, I mean, I just witnessed all of this autobiographical work. And so, you know, put, you know, I think we all– What?

Haden Guest  44:42  

Well, I was just gonna say judging from the really joyous and, I think, quite amazing work that we see, very recent work, some of it made, you know, just within the last month upstairs, I think that one of the new directions that you're moving in is really quite apparent and I'm talking speaking of the slide work upstairs which—tonight is your last night to see this, so it definitely linger in the lobby after we're finished with the session, which I believe…

Luther Price

Is James here? 

Haden Guest

There he is. 

Luther Price

Thank you, James. 

Haden Guest

We thank him for this wonderful collaboration between the Archive and the Carpenter Center, which continues tomorrow night. So return tomorrow night, brave the storm, and we'll be back again with Luther Price for another set of films. Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]

Luther Price  45:33  

Since we were talking about Hank Williams, he used to say “If the good Lord is willing and the creeks don't rise,” because we are getting a storm, you know, and then he got into a plane crash. [LAUGHTER] Thank you so much.

[APPLAUSE]

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