As Above, So Below | Larry Clark

thank you also for coming out to the second night of our weekend long retrospective of films by Larry Clark a filmmaker and professor of film at San Francisco State University Clark was born in Ohio and attended Miami University in Oxford where he quote raised a lot of hell as the president of the black student union in 1970 he drove his Volkswagen Bug across Route 66 to Los Angeles where he enrolled in film school at UCLA there he became a central member of a group of filmmakers uh Innovative black filmmakers including Charles Burnett Highway garima and Julie Dash who came to be known collectively as the LA Rebellion Round of Applause tonight we look at films that Clark contributed to while at UCLA beginning with hourglass directed by highly garima with Clark as cinematographer followed by the horse from 1973 directed by Charles Burnett with Clark at work behind the lens as assistant camera person and also in front performing alongside Gordon Houston and Maury Wright following those two films we will present uh Clark's own long form short as writer director As Above So Below we would be happy to present these films on any occasion but we're especially honored to have Larry Clark with us here in person Larry will join me on oh yeah Larry I'm gonna have yeah we come on up and say a few words and we'll start the show hello I'm glad to see everyone here [Applause] I I hope you enjoy the films these were some of the first works of of of our film so of course they are uh as flawed as a first word can be in his magical as the first word can be um Heidi garima was in the uh theater Department he was an actor a very good actor and uh he decided to transfer into the film department I met him um before he transferred the day before he transferred and uh uh I told him about the film department and I gave him some film and the rest is history with Charles Burnett Charles uh was really a hard worker and I was very happy to work with him on uh the horse and with As Above So Below had a film Workshop uh called pasla uh was at a place called pasla the performing arts society of Los Angeles that uh was the brain that was the direct artistic director was vantyle Whitfield and I set up a film Workshop there to train uh uh young people how to make film I was at UCLA and whatever I learned one day I would go into the community and teach the next day with UCLA's equipment and uh so some really good people came through that department throughout to our Workshop one was Roderick Young Who was the DP on passing through along with George Gaddis and also the DP uh on uh As Above So Below As Above So Below was the first film that he shot then he went on to shoot uh watch Stacks uh and he also was a cameraman on uh the Muhammad Ali George Foreman uh fighting Zaria when we were Kings so but he started out in the film workshop and this was his first work as a DP and we had a lot of fun doing it anyway I hope you enjoy the the the the films uh their first films but uh you can kind of see where we started Larry thanks so much for joining us again here tonight um so it's always amazing for me to go through the credits of the Ellie Rebellion films and find how many films each of you I mean you all worked on each other's films um Julie Dash was credited as on sound for passing through last night Charles Burnett was a camera operator I'm passing through you obviously shot hourglass and you were camera operator and the horse in actually on screen how did that kind of collaboration come about I mean I'm sure was part of just being a student at UCLA but was it particular was there something particularly meaningful to work on each other's films at that period of time for you um you know I didn't think about it at the time I just sort of a a organic thing that happened you know it wasn't forced or anything like that um and uh you know the thing with as I mentioned before with students is that uh students aren't reliable to work on a film from beginning to end because they have their own work to do but they will help when they can you know uh so uh that's why I developed uh my film workshop at uh uh paslow on 87th Vermont where I really had a dedicated crew and then students uh friends and it would help we would always help each other when we could you know and so it worked out really well yeah did that collaboration extend sort of into discussing I mean like hourglass and the horse are you clearly very strong like a tourist you know Visions um although you know different Visions I mean as above so below very strong you know obviously personal Vision when you're working on each other's films you know in that way did you talk about like was there a lot of back and forth about hey why are you doing this or why are we doing this or uh okay there was a play Place on north campus uh called the gypsy wagon and I'm sure no one here knows anything about the gypsy wagon but they saw hamburgers and stuff like that and there was a place outside to sit and so there were these tables and we would almost every day every other day we would get the group of us would sit around the table and discuss films not necessarily our films but all kinds of films like Cinema Novo films and Italian air realism uh um Japanese films African films and we would get into these raging arguments where I'd be shouting and screaming at each other you would think we were arguing over money or something like that but it was about a film that we saw and we were trying to take it apart and you know the the the friends call it you know this is a Dubai you know debate and we were really debating you know and so we were going we were learning a lot from just challenging each other you know and there were a couple people outside of the department that sort of I got involved to Desmond in targets from South Africa for a long time I thought he was in the film department but he was actually in uh African studies and he was enamored with film and and so it was a group of us that would and Julie was in there too and and we would just discuss films you know uh and occasionally we would discuss each other's film you know but not in detail you know uh um because we all had our own personal Vision you know and we respected each other's Vision you know the outlier was our great friends of mafanaka who we have tremendous respect for uh but but he he was very different when the rest of us you know and uh but I you know I love Jamal but he didn't participate in these these discussions at all uh he used to laugh at it and say I'm not like he revolutionaries I'm going to Hollywood you know and he made three feature films as a student the only person in film history to make three feature films as a student and all of them made money and he even laughed at us harder when he drove to school one day in a powder blue Rolls Royce but uh yeah so it was it was it was all in good fun you know uh and uh so you know Charles talked about the horse but we didn't know much about it you know Judy talked about Daughters of the Dust a long time before she made it you know she had this idea and she was researching uh the Jersey islands and the Gullah people and and so she talked about talked about that film for a long time before she actually made it and likewise with Charles he uh a killer sheep he he talked about that film and uh he was going to organize this whole Community to work on this film and I said well Charles when you're going to start he said well I gotta wait until Gene gets out of jail I said well I thought Jay must be this fabulous actor you know I said well can you recast it with someone else he said well no no because uh Gene has to be in it I said well why is that because a member of the community and since uh and so everybody expects him to be in it you know so finally Gene got out of jail and Charles started this film and if you ever saw a killer she Gene has this small role in it he's sitting in the car with a with uh Bracey a guy named Bracy and uh they're talking and then you think there's a windshield in in the car but then he reaches through the windshield and gets a can of beer off the off off the hood and that's his big moment and but Charles you know waited for him because so we talked about that you know and we all had our own way of doing things you know and actually looking back on it we really kind of respected what each other was doing and didn't get in the way of each other you know in terms of offering negative criticism uh of a project that was going to start you know yeah so you were um working in still photography um before you got to film school and you had mentioned earlier that your your plan was to become a cinematographer and you were a cinematographer on our hourglass and Camera operator on the horse when did you when did you have that make the decision or how did you come what was the process where you went from okay writing and directing how many um that's what I want to do now when did you sort of shift your focus uh it was there were two things that didn't happen uh one uh I noticed that it was hard for uh people that trust um me in terms of shooting their films a couple people did Marie call danis he did a couple short films on a shot of our film and then shot this and so that kind of irked me a bit but what it really was is that the first film that we did at pasla the person who directed it didn't finish it and uh he sort of realized that film was not for him he wanted to pursue a different course and you have to respect that you know um and so I had to tell van Whitfield who was the the artistic director of paslow and uh also the person who put uh I think he he gave us 900 to do that film I had to tell him that uh the film was a bust you know that was a hard conversation for me to to begin to have with him and he listened patiently and finally when I told him it wasn't going to happen he sort of laughed he said I figured that was going to happen so now you have to try again and I'll give you uh one thousand three hundred dollars to do this next film and I thought there's no way I can let this film fail you know uh because he had put so much trust in his and that was not common in those days you know to put that any amount of money into a film and uh for African-American especially in a cultural institution like that and so I decided I would direct the film because I knew if I directed it I was going to finish it because I didn't want to have that same conversation but I didn't want to disappoint van again and so it was summer I think it was August and I ran out of money and so I decided that I was going to do at the hardware I was going to fast and while I wrote the screenplay for as above so a little so I fasted for 13 days the first three days were the toughest it was anybody ever passed you know the beginning all you can think about is food you know and then all of a sudden it sort of kicked in and uh and that the the film came about because I was in the lobby of melness Hall and a Japanese-American friend of mine who was also in the film department uh he said Larry you got to see this and what it was it was a uh a report that was being submitted to the house on American activity committee basically what to do with Negroes and so the everything that comes over the radio comes from that that proposal that was put forth to the house of American Activities Committee every line of it I wrote none of that and fortunately cooler has prevailed in The Proposal was shoved you know and um so uh uh I I wrote the screenplay and then uh um van gave us a 1 300 and that's when I made this film for I I mean I definitely want to talk about all the different layers of As Above So Below but I wanted to go back a little bit and talk about so the way the film school was set up at UCLA it may still be the same is when you entered the film school when you started you did what was called a project one film and and that was they just gave you a camera an eight millimeter camera and just no classes yet just go ahead and make something and that's what hourglass was highly agreements project one film right then after the project one film you do a project two film which my understanding was it's supposed to be like about a 10 minute short without sound yeah without saying without without things now but as above so below was your project to film yeah and so quite a bit longer than 10 minutes and definitely with sound what did they say when you turned it in uh nothing they could say because it was beyond what they had imagined and right you know a film student could do you know uh it was you know it was our whole thing was they mystify film that all of us Charles highly Oliver as we talked about the demystication of the process you know um because film historically had been mystified for example in the very beginning during the during the the before there was sound um the uh the camera when the camera ran out of uh film The the camera people would excuse everybody from the set because it was too dangerous for them to be there and partly because it was nitrate film but partly because they wanted to take a break you know and uh uh and and so that sort of the process of film from the very beginning was very much mystified you know um and and and and also that's a great way to keep your job you know so that you know the idea that anybody can make a film I mean then you lose your job you know or can be a camera operator so my whole idea was demystify the process so if I learned something in class by the end of the week I was taking that information back to the to the community along with UCLA's equipment which they didn't know about and teaching people in the film workshop and Roger Gillen was one of those people and he caught on really fast he was really just talented Michael Clark and uh in fact Julie Dash was in the film Workshop right before she was in my workshop she was in a a workshop in New York a studio Museum in Harlem had a film workshop and I think she was in that and so that's that's where I met Julie when she came down to the film workshop and uh uh um and so the idea was uh to demystify the process and uh uh uh we ended up with a film that van liked he actually uh before this film was completed van got a a new job at the National Endowment for the Arts on in public a new division called public arts and he was sending funding a lot of public art on the community different communities all over the country so when I finished this film he actually showed it that the National Endowment for for the the uh arts and he says say you know the young people need money to do art otherwise this was my this is what might happen so he is so he used my phone so I was leveraged to get more for other people doing more sensible art than me well I mean one of the questions that I had with that somewhere related to that I think is um horse Taps caught score in the film I mean it functions in some in some ways like a like you know like a typical film score it underscores the emotions and in the meaning of film but in other ways it's it's present as its own object in a way it it demands its own attention and it also seems to run to play a Counterpoint to the HUAC testimony that runs across which also sort of interrupts the storyline and there seems to be it's not a dialogue it's definitely but it's more of like a conflict between the two yeah in Horus and so there's there does seem to be like two like multiple different ways of fighting back Liberation there's the armed struggle but there's also I mean there's also horse Taps got the creative struggle that that form of Liberation can you talk about your work with Horus and did you talk with him about how you wanted the score to work or he said this is how I want the score to work what was that conversation well first like the creative struggle was really important I remember the first time we opened up a camera case and we looked at it and and the black student was standing next to me saying this is a gun it's a weapon which it is you know but what was your question again well I threw a bunch in there um I mean the first one is that that let's go back to that that yeah okay yeah so with with as above Silver law was really a learning experience and that's one reason why I was I I I took it as a challenge because you don't get the opportunity uh uh if you don't have money uh to practice and film and music and art you get a chance to practice because you can do it pretty much by yourself with a small group of people with film it's expensive and you just don't get that opportunity so I wasn't going to waste it on a 10 minute film without sound that I knew I could do in my sleep you know so it was it was a learning experience and also we're at the workshop and that's what it was and so the same with Horus it was a learning experience you know he had he had never scored a A film before and so uh in some places it works really well in some place it doesn't work as well as it should be just like we were all making mistakes on this film and and that's the way you learn you learn you know from your mistakes you know and uh and also from the things you do right but especially from your mistakes so um it was a learning experience yeah but I mean I I think the film I think his score functions like as a as a very significant point of meaning throughout the whole film um but you know it's interesting because we talk about you're in film school you're learning you're passing that knowledge on but we also I mean you and I talked a little bit earlier and but also about the LA rebellion filmmakers in general part of what you had to do when you got to film school was unlearned unlearn all the movies you'd seen unlearn all the ways that African-Americans have been represented and trying to find new ways of of representing your own voice in your own Vision absolutely and that's one reason why we ignore mostly we really ignored Hollywood all together it wasn't like we were anti-hollywood we just never considered it and we were fortunate enough that uh Alice L Taylor who was the the only black instructor in the department and that's a long story how he got there because the department really didn't want him and I think the first year of his contract uh his pay was paid for by uh mafundi Cultural Center in Watts but he was the first person to have a class called African Asian Latin American Cinema later some places it was taught as third world Cinema and so he introduced uh us early on to like I said before the cinema Noble in Brazil Global Roja and Nelson Pierro dos Santos and the Cuban films you know Lucia memories under the development uh the films of Santiago Alvarez um um the seven his film 79 spring times the Ho Chi Minh and the story of the battle and and then also he introduced us to Japanese film Japanese uh films like the film's like Akira Kurosawa and mizoguchi and and so that is really and also and uh not in his class but we became aware of Italian realism uh and so that was kind of like what fed us you know that's what inspired us you know uh because um the motor production and most of those films were similar to ours even in the Japanese films because those films the the the they were made after World War II uh and the the the the motion picture industry have been destroyed during the war and same as in Italy uh they didn't have have hardly two boards to nail together and they had to figure out how to make films and so you get The Bicycle Thief you know uh in an African Cinema likewise you know so you learn how to uh make your limitations work for you rather than against you you know you don't worry about what you have you ever worry about what you would not which you don't worry about what you don't have you know you just work with what you have and you find out that the limitations can can actually make you stronger I have a couple more questions and I'll turn it over the audience um we'll have microphones on either side so just raise your hand and when I point you some will bring a mic and you can ask a question um so a couple more questions before we turn it over color obviously we see it in the paintings you know on screen beforehand but in the films you know very bold colors very striking compositions um in passing through but also I mean very clearly here in As Above So Below the screen goes red you know all at once um the uh the room where uh Gene hotty's having the conversation and the bold red you know but then there's also the church sequences where the it's kind of a bluish tint over those sequences can you talk a bit about how color functions and As Above So Below okay uh some of it was just very practical uh the the red leader uh initially I was going to have black leader run there I thought it would be more dramatic but I changed my mind because I figured back then in the 70s uh film shown in community if that screen went black people would turn around thinking of something wrong with the projector so I decided a black leader was not a good idea so I decided to put red there so it was clear that the Jackson was okay you know so that was just purely functional you know it wasn't a it wasn't a creative decision it was just uh keeping in mind that if I if I had if I put black leader there then you know the people would think it was something wrong projection uh the Red Room um you learn by your mistakes the Red Room is striking but it also Red Is Not Great for uh African-Americans especially depends on what uh how dark or how light you are the darker you are um red if if you stand close to a red background and it can bleed into your face you know uh likewise that's just a challenge of of skin tone uh and also uh for example if you're white oh there's such a thing as they call it Caucasian beige and and it's a certain beige and and they don't like to use it because if you're white you kind of blend into the background you know so so you have to be aware of that because basically you're trying to make people look good you know it's like basic photography you know and so there's some do's and don'ts and if you know that there's a problem and you decide to do it then you you figure out how to do it and so I just kept them away from the walls you know and I just wanted that dramatic punch and also uh um it red was kind of like a political statement you know if you CR if if you were back then if you were political worthy Martin Luther King of Malcolm X the idea was that you were in Communists inspired you know so it was red you know yeah so we talk a lot about your work behind the camera I want to talk a little bit about your work in front of the camera and the horse um how did that how did it come about that you you ended up on camera how did you feel about being a performer uh Charlie twisted my arm I I I I I was in children's my father signed me up at Children's Theater when I was five years old and I was very shy and I hated it you know I I mean I just didn't like being on stage you know and and my big performance was in the emperor doesn't have clothes or something like that and and they they cast me as a little guard that my line was I was supposed to come to the door at the right time and say his majesty to King me and I mean another kid you know and we totally forgot to play what's going on we were backstage having a good time and we realized the play was happening we didn't know where they were we were running toward the door we tripping fell through the door at the right time and so that was the end of my acting career at the age of five and so we went to shoot uh the horse and the actor oh it was a really good actor too uh I had incredible face it was just a tragedy that he bailed on on Charles at the last minute we went to pick him up and he just bailed he just didn't want to do it you know and so I was assistant cameraman and so Charles said well you know you have to play Ray I said say well Charles I really don't you say look there's nobody else here so I'm thinking okay I'll be in my horse and nobody will ever see this film you know so I I I did the the part you know uh um and uh uh and that's that there's a story about Orson Welles in the third man and someone asked him why he took that role since he's not doesn't even show up in the film until like halfway through and he's like yeah but everybody's talking about that character for the first half of the film it's a little bit like the horse they're waiting for you to show up yeah there's no small rolls no um so any questions from the audience just raise your hand we'll have a mic come down any questions from the audience right down here we'll bring them we'll bring a mic down to you uh Larry thank you so much for uh coming to speak with us uh one thing that I kind of found very striking about both this film and uh passing through and it's sort of true about a lot of the LA Rebellion films is the very different way you guys shoot Los Angeles um I'm kind of wondering how conscious uh you were of shooting a city that has been interpreted through a Hollywood lens throughout most of its on-screen history right and and I was very much aware of that in both films and I'm from Cleveland Ohio all right and so uh I was talking to a friend of mine who's also from Cleveland Ohio and he was saying you know whenever I think about home think about Cleveland I always see it in black and white you know even if I dream about Cleveland I see it in black and white I said me too you know so but Cleveland has a special look more every city in the country has a different look from LA with LA you kind of just see to the Horizon there's nothing back there and so I wanted to uh to to have to have things have your eyes stop on something so I chose the locations on passing through and as opposed both so below carefully because I I didn't want the eye to go off to the Horizon you know I wanted it to stop so um both films have a they don't classically look like La you know uh I mean you know it's LA because some you know because it's La Rebellion all that but um I tried to uh make the film look like it was any place but L.A yeah so I was very much aware of that that's a good thank you question from the audience raise your hand bring a mic to you I've got one more while we're waiting so both passing through and As Above So Below you make like very extensive and I think really powerful use of archival documentary footage um what was it what was your process of for tracking this footage down and and the research that went into finding the footage you needed well there were certain key uh uh companies the Greenberg film library in New York for example um they had cataloged um amazing they had to think you could basically look up what you wanted in a catalog you know uh so um I wanted to uh uh the Dominican Republic for well that seemed I have a friend a childhood friend who um joined the military before Vietnam and while he was in the military they were assigned to go to the Dominican Republic and he refused to go because he said that uh this was just a police in action he said no that we're going to get involved so he refused to go and his company went and they made it really difficult on on his base so he decided he would join his base and so that that so those that story about the Dominican Republic is something that was told to me about childhood friends and what he saw in the Dominican Republic house he said uh um they shot up a Volkswagen and and decapitated a guy and just skipped his head down the street for kicks you know and then another friend who was uh in Vietnam told me about the fragging thing and um so uh I just basically for Dominican Republic just looked up Dominican Republic the year and there was some footage of uh of of our involvement not a lot but enough just to make that that and then the Vietnam Vietnam footage was the same thing I got that from I think uh a company here in Los Angeles that sold uh stock footage so you could buy that stock footage relatively cheap for uh non-commercial uh films yeah so I just basically bought it one more question from the audience all right here and there hi thank you so much for being here and for sharing your films um my question was regarding the diner scene uh with the waitress and uh her praising Jesus and later on in the church those scenes seemed very satirical and giving your relationship with religion I wanted to know if you could talk about that a little bit more well the church saying uh this is another thing that I didn't write any of that uh I turned on the radio it was uh they used to have these radio programs with these Services put a mic by the radio recorded it transcribed it and and that went into the film so I didn't write any of that dialogue that's actually came from a church service you know um and uh so uh but also with uh be in the restaurant the church has been uh Central to liberation of of of of of of African Americans all the way back to slavery as you probably know that a lot of slave rebellions and escapes were planned in the church and they had uh language that they were used there was uh songs that they were saying there was Excellence from the Bible that would say we're going to leave on this day and such and such a person and we're going to go on the Underground Railroad you know so the church uh was was very important uh for escaping slavery and and uh and likewise in Civil Rights Movement I mean it wouldn't have happened without the church you know um uh Martin Luther King and many many other ministers you know we're Central to the civil rights movement and so it was only continuity that b would be in the church you know um and she would be spouting the gospel and she was not suspect you know she was just someone that was a church lady you know so it probably was just recognizing the centrality of the church and and and the civil rights movement and the struggle against slavery so that was it was just a no-brainer you know to do that and it is kind of satirical because the church has its own contradictions you know um and uh so uh it you know it's not perfect and when you really think about it is it's you have to see the humor in it too thank you well Larry I want to thank you so much for being here tonight and Larry will be with us again tomorrow night um for a q a following uh cutting horse so please come back for that it's fantastic film um and Larry thank you again so much okay