Audio transcription

Out-Takes from the Life of a Happy Man introduction and post-screening discussion with Jeremy Rossen and Jonas Mekas. Saturday February 11, 2017.

John Quackenbush  0:01

February 11, 2017. The Harvard Film Archive screened Outtakes from the Life of a Happy Man. This is the recording of the introduction and discussion that followed. Participating are filmmaker Jonas Mekas and HFA Assistant Curator, Jeremy Rossen.

Jeremy Rossen  0:18 

All right. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Jeremy Rossen, Assistant Curator here at the Harvard Film Archive. And it's my honor and pleasure to welcome you all back here to our second evening with Jonas Mekas here in person.

[APPLAUSE AND CHEERS]

So it's a little daunting to describe the so-called “Godfather” of American avant-garde or New American Cinema. So—now, a man who needs no introduction! No. [LAUGHS] Sorry, Jonas—I was just joking. [LAUGHS]

[APPLAUSE AND CHEERS]

All right—sorry, what? Give me one second, Jonas. [LAUGHS]

[APPLAUSE]

All right—Jonas says I don't have to say anything, but I'm gonna say just a quick [LAUGHS] —quick word. Tonight, the first thing that we're showing isn't listed in your program. So we're showing the North American premiere of Reminiscences of a Trip to Germany. Is that the correct title? Yes. That's about a 21-minute piece that Jonas made several years ago that we're going to be showing first. And then after that, we're going to go into one of his more recent features, and I think one of his strongest works that he's made, and I really love this film Outtakes from the Life of a Happy Man. So, I’m gonna be brief, because Jonas wants to to get started, but II did want to read, briefly, this—it’s brief, Jonas!—this note that your friend Peter Kubelka wrote for you in 1964. So, briefly: “When Jonas in 1964 got me a grant of $10 a week, he helped me. When he brought me to New York and showed me my films, he became one of my fathers. When he beat me in a vodka drinking bout, he astonished me. When he kept my bicycle in his living room for years, friendship assumed a new meaning for me. When he established his diary style of using glimpses, he forced me to put into my category of special rascals like Buñuel, Brakhage, or Anger, whose works I have to envy. When I saw him prepare yogurt for his daughter, I understood why, out of a small container, he was cutting yogurt with a spoon, and placing the slices one by one on a cool white plate, careful not to break them nor destroy the consistency. Very slowly; very, very carefully; such love in the preparation of each single bite I had witnessed only once before. It was in a Viennese early morning market kitchen. Imagine every piece as a bite in the mouth—don't just chop, the great cooking lady had said. She cut the meat for the goulash. Jonas has realized that whatever paradise there is, it should be a here and now; loving care is a key to it.” So, I think that's about as succinct as you can get right there, as a praise for Jonas. So, without ado, please join me in welcoming Jonas Mekas back to the stage. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

Jonas Mekas  3:51 

I won't say much. We'll be here after the films to answer your questions, if you have any. The first film, Reminiscences—I mean, I would say first, there was Lithuania, where I grew up. Then there was—and there is—New York, where I am now. In between, there was war. There was Germany. The short film that you will see are my Reminiscences from Germany, just some memories that will precede the Outtakes from the Life of a Happy Man. Outtakes—well, see, these are not film—I do not say these are film outtakes. There are no “outtakes” in my filming. You know, footage is footage. I use some, and the rest is sitting on the shelf, and I will use it another time. These are outtakes from my life, not outtakes from my films. Okay? So, I will see you later.

[APPLAUSE]

[John Quackenbush]  5:31 

And now the discussion, with Jeremy Rossen and Jonas Mekas.

[APPLAUSE]

Jeremy Rossen  5:38 

All right. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming back Jonas Mekas to the stage.

[APPLAUSE]

I feel like I need to pause for a few more moments. It’s hard to transition into  talking about it. But I wanted to just—before we—I’ll open it up quickly to audience questions, but first, before we do that, just a couple quick questions for you, Jonas. So you said that your life's work amounts to just images and fragments of this world that you bring together for yourself and a few friends. But as the images of the people that brought you joy pass you by, you realize that a lot of them aren't with us anymore. Many of them that brought you joy aren't there, and you're watching these images alone, by yourself. So I think as much as the film to me seems about the life of a happy man, the film also seems to me about emptiness, and loss, and a kind of—some sort of spiritual consolation as well. So I wondered if you could say a few words about that?

Jonas Mekas  7:07 

About the loss?

Jeremy Rossen  7:10 

No, I feel—about the happiness of the film, but it's also that you can feel that there's this sense of—you know—there's a heaviness to it as well. There's a happiness, but there's a heaviness to it as well.

Jonas Mekas  7:26 

Life has all those aspects. Happiness, you know, includes everything. [LAUGHS] It's not—happiness does not exist in a vacuum—vacu-um. It includes, you know, all aspects of one's life. Yes, all that is included. Yes. No, I don't have much to say about that. [LAUGHS]

Yeah?

Jeremy Rossen  7:57 

All right, well then—going back to the—

Jonas Mekas  7:58 

I don’t analyze my life and I cannot analyze my films. I'm not that type of person. Yes, it's all up to—I guess—to you, to others. I just make my movies. I just make them because I have no choice, I have to make them.

Jeremy Rossen  8:28 

You said also that—

Jonas Mekas  8:30

Yeah. No choice!

Jeremy Rossen  8:32

—that many things that you've done, it's not because you wanted to, but they're out of necessity, like you created—

Jonas Mekas  8:38

Necessi— [CLEARING THROAT] Sorry. [CLEARING THROAT] I have a kind of cold. It’s some kind of mysterious necessity, that is—you cannot really put your finger on it. You cannot say that it's an inner necessity, or outer necessity, but it's like—it's some kind of madness. [LAUGHS] Yes.

Jeremy Rossen  9:24 

I wondered, though, what you’d think about now? I mean things have obviously changed from when you had to do things out of necessity, because they weren't—didn’t exist.

Jonas Mekas  9:32 

I keep telling—that I'm not a thinking person!

Jeremy Rossen  9:36 

No, no no—I’m not asking you to think, though. What I was saying is, as far as necessity now, it seems like necessity now would be—maybe like film preservation, or things of that sort.

Jonas Mekas  9:50 

If we talk about necessity, there must be some complete, you know, case. Okay, I mean, whatever I have done in my life, I did only when there was really a need. A need, okay, to creation of the Film-Makers Cooperative. There we were, like 100 of us, and nobody wanted us, nobody wanted to show us, to distribute us. So there was a necessity to create our own distribution center, to bypass, not to fight, and waste time and energy, but to bypass the commercial channels. So we did, so it— [LAUGHS] Because there was a need, so it happened practically by itself, with little push, same with Film Culture magazine. There were many of us who wanted to exchange ideas, but there was no platform. There was Cahiers du Cinéma in Paris, Sight & Sound in London. But there was nothing in New York, in the United States. So there was a need, there was a necessity. So it had to happen. And it happened very easily, with just some push. It's like—the most important thing in human life is the birth! It happens by itself, with sometimes, some additional help—that's all. So all good things happen that way, by themselves. If you force—try to invent your own idea to impose upon people, that's wrong, that's evil.

Jeremy Rossen  11:59 

But I guess then does—

Jonas Mekas  12:00 

But that’s what I mean by—

Jeremy Rossen  12:02

Right. No, exactly.

Jonas Mekas  12:03

—by the need and necessity.

Jeremy Rossen  12:06 

But I—but just to—

Jonas Mekas  12:07

Politicians, you see. They try to enforce things by force. They have an idea, and they think it’s good, and everybody should do what they think should be done. And if they don't do it, there is a gun behind it. If that's not enough, there will be a tank behind it. If that's not enough, there will be an atom bomb behind it. But you have to do what they want you to do! That's the way of politicians, not poets.

Jeremy Rossen  12:42 

Speaking of politics and history, with—go back to your first work, the Reminiscences of Deutschland. So it began when you joined the Resistance in ’41? Is that accurate to say?

Jonas Mekas  13:00 

That's what [LAUGHS] brought—that's what brought me here to Cambridge.

Jeremy Rossen  13:07

Right. You were forced to the West—

Jonas Mekas  13:09

And I’m lucky, I'm so lucky that I was thrown out by circumstances that were not very pleasant. And I didn't like it, but looking back, I think I was very lucky, and very happy that I was uprooted and ended up where I ended up. I had to run away because I was working, you know, in the underground, and I was about to be discovered, and you know, it's complicated and a long story, but I had to leave the country. That was during German occupation. And I left. We thought one way to do it is to—maybe to pretend that we are going to Vienna, to enlist in the University of Vienna. And that's why with fake papers, we left for Vienna. But somewhere on our way, we were arrested by the military police, and ended up in the forced labor camp. That’s a brief, brief capsule.

Jeremy Rossen  14:24 

But just to go back to that point real quick, because that set your whole life into motion, so it seems like a very pivotal point, and—was it the case of a stolen typewriter that you were using to type up for the Resistance, or what—did you bury that typewriter, or hide the typewriter?

Jonas Mekas  14:39 

No—in the underground work, there are different people do different—there are functions. Usually, those who were listening to like BBC London—free country radios, and making receipt, writing down the information—what's happening in the world—because you could not do that, neither in the Soviet Union, nor Germany during the war. Somebody took those notes, and my function was to type them. To type them. Type it to prepare for publication, underground publication. But the typewriter which I was used, well, was stolen. So it was a question of time, when it will be discovered on the [UNKNOWN]. [UNKNOWN] will be discovered. Because Germans were looking for a certain—you know, one way of detecting who is issuing those publications is by typeface and little—you know.

Jeremy Rossen  16:00 

But then I wonder also how did you convince your brother to come with you? I mean, because your brother wound up playing such a pivotal role in your life and, and contributing and—

Jonas Mekas  16:11 

Oh that was very easy; we were very close. We grew up six, and we were the youngest. And usually [LAUGHING] some of the older ones, you know, they used to sort of—

Jeremy Rossen  16:24

Beat up on you.

Jonas Mekas  16:25

Get a little bit [UNKNOWN]. So we had a union. Two youngest, we made a union, to defend ourselves against the older brothers.

Jeremy Rossen  16:35

Strength in numbers.

Jonas Mekas  16:36

That was normal. [LAUGHS]

Jeremy Rossen  16:40 

So I think—

Jonas Mekas  16:42 

Why don’t we open—

Jeremy Rossen  16:44 

Yeah, exactly. I was gonna say, we’ll open up to questions. So we have microphones, so when we call on you, just be patient and wait to speak in the microphone. So we all can hear you. There's a gentleman right in the middle there.

Audience  17:05 

Can you hear me? Yes. So I'm totally convinced that you had a happy life, after watching that movie. Are there outtakes of the unhappy life? I mean, there were no pictures of children crying or, you know, sadness, or funerals, or [INAUDIBLE]

Jonas Mekas  17:23

I have this—I guess, weakness, defect in my life. That I am not interested in recording unhappy situations, or the dark and horrible. I'm just not interested to record it for myself, or for the others. You can hold that against me. [LAUGHS] There are others—there are many artists who are interested in recording, and their subject matter is– You know, they go into the dark parts of our life and humanity, horrors. And that's fine. We need that. But that's not me. Of course, every life, everybody's life has both.

Jeremy Rossen  18:30 

Gentlemen in the very back, if you want to wait for the microphone.

Audience  18:36 

Hi. I was wondering, do you think about your childhood in rural Lithuania every day? How does one—

Jonas Mekas  18:47

No, no, no, I don't think! I don't think about the past, really. I'm very much in the present moment. I live in the present, and I don't really think about the past at all. Not even yesterday.

Jeremy Rossen  19:07

[LAUGHING] No, I think you've said many times that your work isn't about memories, it's about—

Jonas Mekas  19:16 

That's why those images, when I dig them out and begin to put together, they are for me—they are not past anymore. They are just now that something I found on my shelf, and I look at them. Of course, when I recorded, it was, you know, at the time when I recorded it, when I filmed.  But now, I’m dealing it with found reality—reality now, at this moment.

Jeremy Rossen  19:43 

It seems like a very kind of a Zen way of living in the world, is that you're always in the moment, and trying to capture—

Jonas Mekas  19:49 

I wish humanity would suddenly lose memory, and begin from scratch, from the beginning! We would be saved all what's happening today in the world. That it's all that past, all those memories that are destroying, is behind what's happening, the horrors of the day. Nationalisms, religions, organized religions, organized systems—forget! Let's—let's lose memory! It's a curse! Memory, like—is a curse, almost, yes?

Jeremy Rossen  20:48 

Right.

Jonas Mekas  20:50

Let’s move—

Jeremy Rossen  20:52

Do another in the very back.

Jonas Mekas  20:54

Ahead—

Audience  20:58 

Jonas, thank you so much for this. I was wondering whether you think people are always the same at their core, throughout life, or whether people are constantly changing?

Jonas Mekas  21:09 

What—can you repeat it?

Audience  21:11 

Sure, yeah. I was just wondering whether you think that people—individuals are at heart—at their heart—always stay the same throughout life? You know, as they grow old, and they always are the same at heart? Or whether you think that people are constantly changing, and maybe even take things from each other, and aren't bounded individually at all?

Jonas Mekas  21:29

I'm not so sure what you're trying to say. But of course we change. It's like when you are a child, you, you know—you eat [LAUGHS] child's food. And when you are a teenager, you have some different problems, and when you are at my age, you have a completely different perspective to everything, because I pass through so many nervous breakdowns, let’s say. [LAUGHTER] So that I'm completely somewhere else.

Jeremy Rossen  22:18 

All right. Let's do up front in the pink shirt, right here.

Jonas Mekas  22:24 

And it would be, see—if I would be still, if I would not change my attitudes to life, to various ideas, then it would be like, I would be frozen in some moment of my life, which would be very, very disastrous for—

Jeremy Rossen  22:49

But you—

Jonas Mekas  22:50

For me as a human being, who has to grow and change. Like, only politicians, when they do find that somebody said something different a year ago. I mean, even politicians change! If they don’t change, then they're evil. They don’t go with the times.

Jeremy Rossen  23:14 

But, speaking of not changing though, when you came to the U.S., you were—in 1949, you were 27. And you've claimed that you've stayed 27, and you'll be 27 until you die.

Jonas Mekas  23:27 

Yeah, I use 27 in that sense that Joseph Conrad used, in a sense, in The Shadow Line, in his short novel. That there is a time, when you are young, you just do what you feel you should be doing. You don't care who criticizes, who thinks that you should be acting, doing what you are doing. You should be doing that way, not that way? No, you don't care! You just do it. And then a moment comes—that shadow line, when you begin to look back, to compare,  to be retrospection. Look at what you have done, what others have done. It's like, it's that moment. Some freeze there, at that moment, and just begin. You see it in art very much. And others, they never freeze. They never accept, they reach the shadow line, but then they don't cross it, they don’t go into it. They remain 27.

Jeremy Rossen    25:00 

Is part of that some–

Jonas Mekas  25:03 

Which is, of course, takes a great, great effort. It doesn't happen—

Jeremy Rossen  25:10 

I believe it.

Jonas Mekas  25:11

—by itself.

Jeremy Rossen  25:12

But I wonder also if some of that is a result of you kind of losing your childhood, and you didn't get a chance to be a child?

Jonas Mekas  25:20

Ten years were stolen from my life by the Western Civilization. Yes.

Jeremy Rossen  25:34 

Well, let's take a question down here, Naomi.

Jonas Mekas  25:38 

And I was angry about it! I did not forgive the Western Civilization, what they did to me.

Jeremy Rossen  25:43

Yeah, that’s—I’m sure–

Audience  25:45 

What about the guy in the pink shirt?

Jeremy Rossen  25:49 

Oh, sorry, wait yeah. Pink shirt! Pink shirt guy. Sorry, we got sidetracked.

Audience 25:53 

No, that’s okay! I blend in. It's fine. I also just want to caveat this: At any moment, you can say, "You sweet summer child, you're..."

Jonas Mekas  26:00

Can you talk into the mic?

Audience  26:02

Am I? Okay—I'm sorry. I know you've repeatedly said that your second film doesn't necessarily have much to do with memory. That these images are just selections from your life that you're choosing to share with us. But one of the things that I thought was particularly special about your film for me was, it sort of simulated how memory works for me on my nerve endings. As far as the images—we return to a few particular images more frequently than others. They're arranged very carefully, and sometimes they kind of bleed into this white light—and my question for you, my question is–

Jonas Mekas  26:43 

You see the film is like an essay also on memory. There are no answers. What I say, it's just a part of that discussion. It's a very big subject. There are many, many books [LAUGHS] on that subject.

Audience  27:00

Thank you.

Jonas Mekas  27:01

So, this is my contribution to it.

Audience  27:04

My simplest question for you would be—is this how you personally arrange and think about your memories?

Jonas Mekas  27:11 

What do you mean, personally?

Audience  27:13

Yeah, well—

Jonas Mekas  27:14

I made it!

[LAUGHTER]

Audience  27:16

Yeah—exactly! No, exactly!

[LAUGHTER]

Exactly. That answers it.

Jeremy Rossen  27:21 

Fair enough?

Audience  27:22

Fair enough.

Jonas Mekas  27:24

Personally!

Jeremy Rossen  27:26 

All right. Naomi, down here, if we can—

Audience  27:32 

Hi, I just was wondering—if you were packing a suitcase full of books now, if you could say any of the titles you think you would put in?

Jonas Mekas  27:43 

I would need ten suitcases.

[LAUGHTER]

‘Cause I don't—I'm not one who likes only: "this is the best, this is the one of musical, this is the best film, this is the best book." No. I like many from different periods, different styles, different countries—it's so rich in every area of culture, of life, it’s so rich! Doesn't fit into one suitcase.

Jeremy Rossen  28:16

Audio books?

Jonas Mekas  28:17

So that I'm really very, very open, and I take—very open to what comes, and I—it's so much—there is so much around us created, so much of, you know, past!

I don't want to deprive myself, reduce myself to one suitcase. No, no.

Jeremy Rossen  28:47 

You wouldn't do an audio book, or a digital– [LAUGHS] Never mind.

Jonas Mekas  28:53

No.

Jeremy Rossen  28:54

Ah—Steven back there on the left.

Jonas Mekas  28:57

It’s so rich!

Audience  28:59 

Jonas—oh, sorry. I know last night you were—you briefly alluded to sort of, I mean, the whole world seems to sort of be the stuff of your art, and you’ve obviously read, and seen so much cinema. And last night, you mentioned Fluxus. But I was also wondering, when you were in New York in the, say, early 50s, was there a meaningful encounter with John Cage at all?

Jonas Mekas  29:26 

John Cage was very much part of the 60s. You know, in the area of music. But, beginning late 50s, all of the arts– I mean, when I arrived in New York, I was very lucky to arrive, and to catch last moments of the classic theater, classic, like poetic—classic music, classic ballet—Balanchine, Martha Graham—and then, to see the changes coming in, suddenly, everything began changing—the theater, the happening theater, then John Cage, and in every art, changes were taking place. And they exchanged, and they intermixed and explored all the possibilities. So that was the period. And John Cage, of course, was only one figure on that board. Yes. Very important figure.

Jeremy Rossen  30:44 

We have one question down here in the front. Great. Wait for the mic, so everybody in the back can hear you as well. Thank you.

Audience  30:58 

Hi. In I Had Nowhere To Go, you have a line about New York being a fairy tale: “Do not regret New York. It's something that you should read about or visit.” What do you love about New York?

Jonas Mekas  31:11 

What I love about fairy tales?

Audience  31:14 

New York—New York City.

Jonas Mekas  31:16 

Oh, New York City! I love New York City because it's my home. [LAUGHS] My home, in a sense that when I landed I was in one thousand pieces, and New York helped to put myself together. So New York and me, we grew together. So it's part of me. We are together. Yes.

Jeremy Rossen  31:54 

I think we have time for one more question.

Jonas Mekas  31:59 

I submerged into New York, like a dry sponge!

Jeremy Rossen  32:02

The lady with the red hair, in the glasses.

Jonas Mekas  32:07

Permitted to absorb good and bad with no discrimination!

Audience  32:14 

Hello, Jonas. I wanted to ask you, you changed to video from film, and you use—

Jonas Mekas  32:21

Yes in late ’89.

Audience  32:25

Right. So you use a Bolex—you can do single frame. And you could even hear last night on the soundtrack, the noise of you making the single frame, and then going back to the running motor. You can't really do that on a video, or can you?

Jonas Mekas  32:39 

No, it's a different instrument. And it’s different. Every tool of making images, like every tool of making sounds, music, produces its own... like, evolves into a different totally world of sound or image. So that video camera—you cannot do with Bolex what you can do with a video camera. And you cannot do with a video what you can do with the Bolex. It opens a completely different angle into reality, and develops its own techniques, its own forms. It’s not the same. And you have to respect and work with that instrument, and what does and what it can do for you. Same as when I was working with Bolex, I stuck, you know, to what the Bolex can do, and I used all the possibilities of it. Same I'm trying to use now the possibilities of cinema to record that other aspects of reality that I could not do with Bolex.

Jeremy Rossen  34:10 

All right. Then I’ll wrap things up for tonight. Join me in thanking Jonas—

Jonas Mekas  34:13 

And there will be other tools coming in—this is not the end!

[APPLAUSE]

Jeremy Rossen  34:18

It’s not the end.

Jonas Mekas  34:22

Digital is not the end!

[APPLAUSE]

Jeremy Rossen  34:24

Not the end. It'll be here for a few minutes.

[APPLAUSE]

Jonas Mekas  34:29 

And there should be no regrets! There should be no regrets at all, that cinema is gone! No, it’s there—cinema is not gone, it’s still there, what has been created, created. But then new. But we keep moving ahead.

Jeremy Rossen  34:50 

Right, exactly. And next week As I Was Moving Ahead will be playing next Saturday—

Jonas Mekas  34:57 

Ahead with all sails open!

Jeremy Rossen  35:00 

All sails open. So mark your calendars. Thank you.

©Harvard Film Archive 

In 2007 Jonas Mekas began releasing one film every day of the year on his website, and the practice continues to this day. Throughout the winter and spring calendars, the HFA will screen a selection of this diaristic project before certain programs, so HFA audiences can enjoy more from this inventive series.