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1. Your movie is basically a long advertisement for a book of poetry. What are your feelings about self-promotion and marketing?
From the moment that Kate Greenstreet told me she wanted to include a dvd with her second book, The Last 4 Things, I began wondering what kind of "special features" could be on the disc along with whatever videos she made -- deleted scenes, a making-of, an interview with the director, trailers? In the long run, all my ideas about what would be fun to add to Kate's dvd funneled down to creating a featurette called My Own Eyes -- an "interview collage" built around a Q&A I'd do with Kate, illustrated with her leftover footage.
Because I am not a poet, I have no reason for any kind of ambivalence about marketing. I love marketing. I always have. As a kid, I had posters on my walls, I dug album covers, I was into all the stuff of music promotion (buttons, t-shirts). I examined good ads on television -- I was interested in what they could do and how they were constructed. I judged books by their covers.
Ideally, marketing can be a kind of art in itself, or nearly.
Any book is a building with an obvious front door and that door is always unlocked if you know how to read: flip it open, see for yourself. But I like to enter a house through the kitchen, and I like to hear an interview with an author as an introduction to a book.
Strictly speaking, My Own Eyes is not self-promotion because I didn't write The Last 4 Things. But I am the poet's husband, that's near enough. For me, the term "self-promotion" doesn't have a negative spin. It brings to mind a band from the late-'70s or early-'80s, just starting out, and maybe their bass player has designed a poster for an upcoming gig, "xeroxed" it, and now the drummer, the rhythm guitar player, and the guitar player's girlfriend are hitting the streets with a pile of posters and a stapler and a few rolls of masking tape, alive with hope that this time the audience will be more than their 7 friends.
2. What is that white stuff on the blue plate?
That's salt. It came in the mail from Denmark.
3. Is that Hoover Dam?
Yes it is. And (in the second lunch scene) that's a Boulder Dam souvenir plate I picked up in a junk shop in Keyport, NJ, long before we'd been to Hoover Dam. Same dam, different name. I'm in favor of name changing, generally.
The video captures that we used for the cover of The Last 4 Things were pulled from footage shot at the dam. (We were driving from a reading in Tucson to a reading in Las Vegas. We arrived a little later than planned.)
4. Who made the music in the movie?
Except for those 19 seconds of Dylan doing "Like A Rolling Stone" (it was playing in the car when Kate was shooting; you can hear her singing along a little), and the 11 seconds of Stewart Copeland drumming (from an interview with him that I found online), nearly any music in My Own Eyes that lasts longer than a second was made by me & Kate. All the instrumental passages (that banjo part was assembled from pieces of banjo loops offered in Garageband -- everything was put together in Garageband). Then there's a bit of a Laura Veirs song ("me and my baby had a conversation"), James Brown briefly ("man made the car...to take us over the road"), and a line from Miracle Legion ("don't let the truth come between us"), plus a lot of radio junk (found when roaming across the dial and back), and couple of artifacts we lifted out of a cassette of music of mine from about 30 years ago.
5. If you intended My Own Eyes to be on the dvd that comes with the book, why didn't it get on there?
I couldn't finish it in time. As we got close to the final deadline for the dvd (after missing several earlier final deadlines), we decided to have My Own Eyes appear online instead. Then I tried to finish it before the book was published.
On September 11, 2009, we set off on a 73-day book tour. I was working on My Own Eyes right up until the morning we left, still believing I could have it done before we departed.
On the tour, day after day, I stood in the back of rooms where people asked Kate questions about her process and about her book, knowing I had good answers to some of their questions but those answers had remained at home, languishing in a partly-edited, musicless, and overlong documentary. (At its largest, My Own Eyes hit 45 minutes before slowly getting boiled down to 29.) I didn't end up feeling that the dvd would've been better with My Own Eyes on it -- the way the dvd is now seems entirely right for the book -- but I did wish that anyone who wanted to know more could've found My Own Eyes online.
The opening scenes (of Kate's hands and the book of leaves) were shot on November 13, 2008. I finally got the completed video online a couple of nights ago, on October 19, 2010.
6. Why did you put some of the questions and answers in text?
Our conversations were recorded before Kate knew she was going to write a second section for the book and add another video to the dvd. I wanted "56 Days" to be mentioned in My Own Eyes, and although we could've gone back and recorded more interview, I decided, partly because the video for "56 Days" features subtitles, to have every mention of "56 Days" happen in writing rather than talking.
I know some people don't like having to read while watching a movie. But I figured a movie about a poet and a book of poetry could contain some written words.
On the other hand, I get something out of Kate's writing when she reads it aloud that I don't get from the page, so I also represented "56 Days" by including her reading several pages of it, taken from a recording that was made during the tour.
7. The sound quality in that recording of a reading is a little rough in spots -- why did you choose that particular audio for your movie? Do you have a fondness for lo-fi?
Well, I admit that I do at times prefer to have things sound a little scuffed. That reading in Las Cruces was bootlegged by Joshua Wheeler, who kindly sent me a copy, and while it isn't the very cleanest recording of a reading of Kate's that I might've used, I love something about the tone and the vibe of it. The sound in the hall that night was great, but the flavor of Josh's recording produces an effect that higher-fidelity audio wouldn't: it evokes my whole experience of being on the road. It somehow suggests all the venues we went to, all the days and nights in all the states we passed through. The merits and flaws of the recording allow it to serve as a representative. It also reminds me of that one day, November 6th, of being back in New Mexico, of the people I met and things that happened -- I'm not assuming that what was really good for me about that day is being conveyed on some level to every viewer & listener, but don't you get a slight smell of woodsmoke?
Whenever there's clipping in the recording, I set in a subtitle to clarify the line Kate was saying, which established one of the elements of the detour's visual presentation.
8. I'd like to see My Own Eyes but all I have is a beater laptop with an operating system too old to play movies, or the video is choppy when I try to watch it, or it's taking forever to load on my machine, or maybe I want to show this to a class when I teach Kate's book but we aren't hooked up to project stuff from online -- any ideas?
Sure. Write to me (maxgreenstreet @ gmail dot com) and tell me your problem. I'm going to burn a few dvds of My Own Eyes and I'll mail you one (while supply lasts). If I get tired of doing that, I will alter this answer. Thanks for your interest.
9. All those stills in that section where you ask Kate if she thinks of herself as a photographer, are those photos Kate took?
Yes. I chose photographs of hers that I'm fond of. I think my selection seemed a little funny to her.
10. And all of the paintings that we see, are those Kate's also?
Yes.
11. The voices that aren't you or Kate, who are those people?
Mainly you're hearing lines we've enjoyed from movies or British television. Juliet Stevenson as Rosalind Franklin in Race For The Double Helix, Bernard Hepton as Toby in Smiley's People. Christopher Walken, of course ("The ice...is gonna break."). And some poets appear: Amiri Baraka, C.D. Wright, and William Carlos Williams ("Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?"). Serving as a kind of layering, there's some stuff from Wim Wenders' Alice in the Cities and from the 1995 film of Persuasion. That's Dirya Satia's singing from Ruby In Paradise, and at the very end that's Brian F. O'Byrne as The Consultant in The International ("The ramp is the only way out."). Levon Helm in The Right Stuff, Dinara Drukarova in Since Otar Left, Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity, and Gillian Welch from an episode of Sessions at West 54th Street. And some others, including Kate's brother Frank from a tape he sent to her when she first moved from the East Coast out to California.
12. In addition to using Kate's leftover footage, you shot some of this yourself, right?
I shot pretty much all the video that is of Kate. I wanted there to be enough images of the author included so that My Own Eyes could work as a biographic documentary.
There's a black & white area made from 12 shots of a Peterbilt truck. I shot & assembled that. And I shot a couple of other things, like our plates at lunch, and my hand writing in the closing credits.
For the section where Kate is reading from "56 Days," I used a ton of other people's pictures and video from all over without permission. I hope that can be seen as collage and not disrespectful (or illegal) mis-use of images owned by others.
But the bulk of the movie is made from footage that Kate shot but didn't need. (I think of Walter Murch saying Coppola made Apocalypse Now at a ratio of a hundred minutes of film shot for every minute used.)
13. Do you want to make more movies of your own?
No. Or not anytime soon. I'm really looking forward to going back to being half of the crew for videos Kate makes and to working with her on her soundtracks. I am excited about doing more film music with her, getting better at arranging, and composing music that is more subtle.
14. I understand that you wanted to help publicize Kate's book but I'm supposing you must've had other reasons for making a movie. What else motivated you to continue using your available time to get it done and out?
After watching countless documentaries about artists, I wanted to make a film that would express some feelings I have about how "real people" are presented. And since I could use so much video that Kate shot, I was confident that I could create a movie about her work that would reflect the style of her work.
While visiting the world of contemporary poetry, I've met a lot of people I enjoyed. I wanted to say a few things to them. We would not become friends in the conventional sense, instead we would meet at readings, at before-reading dinners or after-reading drinks, then we might not see each other for a year or two and bump into one another in a different town. In making this film, I felt I could communicate some of the affection or gratitude I feel, either within the film itself or when I contact people to tell them that I've made a movie.
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