experiencing stigmata. I’m talking about just basically living a decent life.
RS: Well, the question I have is this: In
Kundun
it’s not just that the little boy is absorbed in his religion. I always see him as this kid up in the equivalent of—
MS: The window overlooking the third floor front. [
Laughs.
]
RS: —the window over the street. And he’s looking through his telescope. Or he’s grinding his little movie camera that will show him images of a world he’s never seen personally. And it’s one of the more touching qualities of that little boy that he wants to know more.
MS: And learn about the world.
RS: And so I, of course, immediately said there’s some analogy here between him and you.
MS: I don’t know if I took that in consciously in any way. I mean, that’s fromMelissa Mathison’s script, from the story of theDalai Lama.
RS: But it’s there.
MS: It might very well be. But I was more interested in the young boy who was devoted to his spiritual life, as in
Europa ’
51,
when the woman becomes a person who tries to help people.
RS: I’ve never seen that film.
MS: It’s a fascinating film. [Roberto Rossellini’s 1951 film, starringIngrid Bergman, traces a careless, conventional woman’s conversion to sainthood.] I mean, I’mgoing to sound like a public service announcement. But there is the danger that if you give to somebody, you might get a gun back, get shot at. But there is something about changing that basic dynamic between people. It depends on whether you’re able to give. I found it fascinating.
RS: But getting back to NYU and that first, I guess you could call it, life-changing experience of formal film studies.
MS: The first year atWashington Square College, if you were thinking about majoring in communications or motion pictures, you had to take a history of motion pictures, radio, and television. AndHaig Manoogian was the one who taught that—once a week, two and a half hours—everything from theLumière brothers to
The Great Train Robbery
to
Variety, Greed,
then finally, maybe
Nights of Cabiria
or something else from Fellini. He was a very dynamic speaker, with a magnetic personality.
He’d just get up on that little stage on Waverley Place near the main building of Washington Square College and start talking, and he didn’t care if anybody was listening. He just kept going on and on and on and on. And younger people were coming in and he’d say, Okay, you don’t come back, you don’t come back, “because some of you kids think because we’re showing movies, it’s fun. Get out.”
RS: That appealed to you?
MS: Well, he was very serious about it. I’ll never forget, the second week, one of the young people remarked that there was no music with the silent films. Haig said, “What do you think this is, a show?”
RS: What did Haig think it was?
MS: He was teaching about film. He was showing different developments, he had so much to tell us, and it was only two and a half hours a week. And an hour and a half is a film. You only have at most an hour to set it in context—he showed one German expressionist film, and then had to talk about the whole movement in less than an hour.
You could see that he cared about this very much. And I felt the same way. So the passion that I had put into the church wound up being placed here, in film.
In Haig Manoogian’s classes in 1960—I always point this out—you only had maybe a little over forty years of cinema to catch up with. Which was very doable. Besides which, only a few countries had a lengthy film tradition: England, France, and Italy, that’s it. We didn’t see anything from Asia until Kurosawa came on in the 1950s.
RS: It’s a point I’ve often made, too. I believe it was theoretically possible, in the period you’re talking about, for an individual to have an all-encompassing knowledge of world cinema. It’s impossible now.
MS: Impossible. Especiallysilent cinema—it’s a whole other language.
RS:
RS: Well, the question I have is this: In
Kundun
it’s not just that the little boy is absorbed in his religion. I always see him as this kid up in the equivalent of—
MS: The window overlooking the third floor front. [
Laughs.
]
RS: —the window over the street. And he’s looking through his telescope. Or he’s grinding his little movie camera that will show him images of a world he’s never seen personally. And it’s one of the more touching qualities of that little boy that he wants to know more.
MS: And learn about the world.
RS: And so I, of course, immediately said there’s some analogy here between him and you.
MS: I don’t know if I took that in consciously in any way. I mean, that’s fromMelissa Mathison’s script, from the story of theDalai Lama.
RS: But it’s there.
MS: It might very well be. But I was more interested in the young boy who was devoted to his spiritual life, as in
Europa ’
51,
when the woman becomes a person who tries to help people.
RS: I’ve never seen that film.
MS: It’s a fascinating film. [Roberto Rossellini’s 1951 film, starringIngrid Bergman, traces a careless, conventional woman’s conversion to sainthood.] I mean, I’mgoing to sound like a public service announcement. But there is the danger that if you give to somebody, you might get a gun back, get shot at. But there is something about changing that basic dynamic between people. It depends on whether you’re able to give. I found it fascinating.
RS: But getting back to NYU and that first, I guess you could call it, life-changing experience of formal film studies.
MS: The first year atWashington Square College, if you were thinking about majoring in communications or motion pictures, you had to take a history of motion pictures, radio, and television. AndHaig Manoogian was the one who taught that—once a week, two and a half hours—everything from theLumière brothers to
The Great Train Robbery
to
Variety, Greed,
then finally, maybe
Nights of Cabiria
or something else from Fellini. He was a very dynamic speaker, with a magnetic personality.
He’d just get up on that little stage on Waverley Place near the main building of Washington Square College and start talking, and he didn’t care if anybody was listening. He just kept going on and on and on and on. And younger people were coming in and he’d say, Okay, you don’t come back, you don’t come back, “because some of you kids think because we’re showing movies, it’s fun. Get out.”
RS: That appealed to you?
MS: Well, he was very serious about it. I’ll never forget, the second week, one of the young people remarked that there was no music with the silent films. Haig said, “What do you think this is, a show?”
RS: What did Haig think it was?
MS: He was teaching about film. He was showing different developments, he had so much to tell us, and it was only two and a half hours a week. And an hour and a half is a film. You only have at most an hour to set it in context—he showed one German expressionist film, and then had to talk about the whole movement in less than an hour.
You could see that he cared about this very much. And I felt the same way. So the passion that I had put into the church wound up being placed here, in film.
In Haig Manoogian’s classes in 1960—I always point this out—you only had maybe a little over forty years of cinema to catch up with. Which was very doable. Besides which, only a few countries had a lengthy film tradition: England, France, and Italy, that’s it. We didn’t see anything from Asia until Kurosawa came on in the 1950s.
RS: It’s a point I’ve often made, too. I believe it was theoretically possible, in the period you’re talking about, for an individual to have an all-encompassing knowledge of world cinema. It’s impossible now.
MS: Impossible. Especiallysilent cinema—it’s a whole other language.
RS:
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