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I Would Have Been A Soldier: An Interview With Nicolas Roeg

I found Nicolas Roeg leaning on The Blue Bar of New York’s poetic Algonquin Hotel at 6.35 one Friday evening in 1977. He was wearing a black and white check cowboy shirt, corduroy jacket and jeans over highly polished pointed high heel cowboy boots. In front of him on the bar hovered a precarious mound of documents ranging from a xeroxed catalogue of the Russian Film Archive to a 100 page love-letter-in-progress stuffed into a dog-eared manilla envelope. Next to him sat a beautiful young girl with a Botticelli face.

Born (1928) and raised in England, Roeg entered films as soon as he’d done his military service, starting as a clapper and quickly becoming a widely respected and successful cameraman. His first film (Performance with Mick Jagger) shocked the film-world, was heavily censored, confiscated by the US customs and blocked by its own producers for two years, but immediately became a classic on its release in 1968. Walkabout, Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell To Earth followed, earning Roeg a reputation for innovation, the unexpected, and controversy, but a confirmed place among the most important film makers of his time because he manages to reach a large audience while remaining true to his own visions.

At 49, Nicolas Roeg maintains the spirit of a lyric, vagabond poet (his speaking voice is reminiscent of Dylan Thomas although he claims to be famous for a dull monotone rumble). He next plans to make Illusions starring Sissy Spacek and Art Garfunkel. But when I met him, he was in New York to direct a commercial for Revlon, and, typically, had no idea whether or when he was flying to London or LA, but in a series of rapid phonecalls from his hotel, and a studio where he was viewing rushes of the previous day’s shooting, he agreed to give High Times his last evening in New York.

After getting to know each other in the bar, and making a date to meet the girl with the Botticelli face for a late dinner, we took the elevator to the 11th floor and his elegantly appointed suite. While Roeg made a series of phonecalls to friends around the world, I plugged in my tape recorder and attempted to create an appropriate atmosphere by re-arranging the furniture and scattering a few books (Short Letter, Long Farewell by Peter Handke and From A to B and Back Again by Andy Warhol) on the coffee table. At a nod from Roeg, I switched on the tape recorder, and this is what we said.

VICTOR BOCKRIS: Are there only a handful of really good film makers in the world today?

NICOLAS ROEG: There are a lot, but only a handful are being looked at because film is a very young art. Have you read Mankiewicz’s book All About Eve? In the preface he writes about the actor and where did action begin? One day in a deep dark cave everybody was sitting in their bearskin, leopard or tigerskin clothes and someone shrieked out, got up, stuck two feathers up his ass and danced around and behaved like a chicken. And then he went back and sat down and put on his tigerskin trunks. The next night someone said: “Why don’t you do that again?” He said – “What!” And that’s where acting is. It’s not learning about projecting. Performing is a very serious thing. It begins in the cave when someone says “I’ve had it! I’d just as well run around and look like a chicken.” I like the performer, and the nearest thing to a great performer is the balladier. It’s not really so far away from its roots. The balladier’s job was to tell stories and sing ballads. Richard Couer De Lion was saved by the balladier … I was asked about David Bowie: I’d spent twelve hours with him when we first met and when I went back to Los Angeles someone in the studio said: “Well, it’s very interesting, but can he act?” I said “But this man has had 40,000 people spellbound on his own, sticking a finger in the top of his trousers. What actor could command 40,000 people to look at them because even David says he’s not Joan Sutherland. They’re coming for his performance and what he has to say. They wouldn’t come for Warren Beatty. So what do we mean by actor?”

BOCKRIS: Is there any way you can describe the difference between working with Jagger and Bowie?

ROEG: I think that’s an amazingly static question. It’s a question that I’m sure every woman – and damn it why not say this – is asked about their different men. Every woman is continually asked: “How can you go out with a little thin guy and also a big strapping guy?” I don’t know. They’re both interesting. There’s no answer to that.

BOCKRIS: But don’t you find that some actors tend to turn you on more than other actors?

ROEG: Of course. But at the time, it’s like a love affair. You know, is it true? Were you really in love with him? Were you really in love with her? You can never say yes of course I was. You just say – “Not like you” – because the new one is the new one. Actually your question, to an individual like myself, is very much like life and can be applied to life. Which actor did you prefer? Which love did you prefer? Well I don’t know. You fall in love two, three, four times, maybe twenty times, fifty times, one hundred and fifty times, three thousand times … it doesn’t matter. I now love you. Let that suffice. I now am making this film. Let that suffice. All my energy is going into that. I mean, what past films meant are rather like love affairs. I wouldn’t make a comparison between Mick and David. At the time they meant everything to me.

BOCKRIS: Does it give you a strange feeling to see actors or actresses you’ve worked with in other people’s movies?

ROEG: Yes it does. Well, with Julie Christie it’s a little different because I’ve known her a long time and I’ve worked in a lot of films with her, but since Don’t Look Now, I think I would get jealous if I saw her in somebody else’s film. I’ve been very lucky with the artists, because somehow the ones I thought would be absolutely right for the part after writing it, all agreed. With Sissy Spacek, for example, who’s agreed to be in my next film Illusions (playing opposite Art Garfunkel), I first saw pictures of her. I’d seen Badlands and I was thinking about the girl. I went to see Carrie and then I met her. I’d already talked to her when I saw Three Women in Cannes. I thought she was wonderful and it confirmed my thoughts. She’s extraordinary. We talked and talked. She knows the person who is in Illusions very well indeed. And to have an actress of that calibre, who is still at the point of developing her range, not playing the part that she’s so right for is sad not only for me but for the movie business (Roeg has wanted to make Illusions for a year but is caught in a financial, legal bind). But I think if you really concentrate hard enough on something it will come true. But most people don’t want a lot of things to come true, they want them to stay static. Don’t rock the boat.

BOCKRIS: Did you see Mick Jagger in his other films?

ROEG: I saw Ned Kelly again recently on television. It’s an excellent film, very underestimated. He’s very good.

BOCKRIS: Did he indicate to you whether he was going to continue acting?

ROEG: He’s reached an extraordinary position, Mick, hasn’t he. Actually in his life, I suppose, he has everything materially that he needs. It’s not publicised much, but he leads quite an extensive social life and I think he sort of gets satisfaction from that. He’s got other things that give him satisfaction, to quote one of his songs. I’m only satisfied by one thing.

BOCKRIS: You’re only interested in film?

ROEG: I’m interested in other things, but film’s the only thing that gives me satisfaction.

BOCKRIS: That’s what keeps you going?

ROEG: That and love.

BOCKRIS: I was wondering whether you saw various themes running through all your work?

ROEG: Yeah, you can’t do a lot of things in life, you only really repeat yourself. You’d always like another shot at something. But you don’t think about it, you don’t change what you get, you can’t find the finite. I always think in terms of some kind of love story and I just continue to make love stories really, I suppose, because it’s an exciting human condition. What amazes me is that a lot of ‘clever’ people, especially critics, say “Oh, not another love scene.” You never hear them say “Not another walking scene, not another eating scene, not another fighting scene.” It’s always a lovemaking scene that is ‘another one’. And that’s a much more interesting thing to be shooting than eating I think and a lot more can be said between two people. In fact it’s very close to the edge of all contact. It’s the greatest contact, so you get into very difficult acting. It’s much easier to do other things than act love scenes.

BOCKRIS: You have that famous scene in Don’t Look Now between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. I was told that you actually had them making love in that scene.

ROEG: That’s not true. They could have if they’d wanted to. I would have let them … It’s rather flattering that people think they did.

BOCKRIS: How often are you in love?

ROEG: All the time. Yeah, I’m a sucker. I’m a sucker for it. Passion.

BOCKRIS: Which is your most successful film? Which made the most money?

ROEG: I really don’t know the answer to that. I’ve got percentages in all my films and I’ve never seen one single check. And not one of them has lost money. Without arrogance, I know that a lot of people have seen Don’t Look Now, a lot of people. I don’t know anyone of the age of 28 who hasn’t seen Performance, but the studio tells me that it’s still losing. It doesn’t really make sense, unless you realise that there is something between the shifting of the economic situation. Everybody in life has two aspects of their personality: desire and need. Desire is one thing, need is another. Corporations have a desire that a film makes good, and their need that it should. And if you have a whole mass of product you shift your need to desire and your desire to need and you balance your books. Well, that’s a kind of legitimate thing, but I’m totally disinterested in it. Performance is supposed to be a minimarket: “Nobody has seen that film, nobody went you see …” And then I keep bumping into people who’ve seen it. I guarantee the guy in the lift has seen it. And yet it didn’t make money. How do you work that out? You know, The Big Balloon made $12,000,000 … Well, beautifully, one must ignore that, because they know too it’s a game. And that’s why I’m staying in The Algonquin in a suite, because my movies lost all that money.

BOCKRIS: Was one of your films outstandingly difficult to make compared to the others?

ROEG: The Man Who Fell To Earth was the most demanding. I left a lot behind me when the film was finished. I was trying to do something with the syntax of film that at the time was very difficult to explain to the crew. The artists were wonderful. They realised what I wanted, but there wasn’t time to help the crew to understand, and it made it a very isolated experience because gradually one found oneself cut away from any kind of observation from people who were close to you.

BOCKRIS: Is it true that there was a scene in the uncut version (the American distributors cut 22½ minutes from Roeg’s original) where Candy Clark peed down her leg when David Bowie revealed himself as an alien?

ROEG: That’s right. I’ve no idea why they cut that out. I don’t think they liked it, but it’s something that happens. “I peed myself with fright” is a phrase that has its roots in truth. It was a charming thing, she just “phizz!” did it wonderfully. And it was really a moment of absolute truth, it was such a big shock that a physical thing happened. BAAH! (Roeg throws himself back against the wall.) She almost flew against the wall.

BOCKRIS: Do you think fear is a major activating factor in people’s lives in the United States?

ROEG: Yeah. I think it’s a very interesting word, fear. I’ve never really heard someone say that before. I hate to say yes, because then one could rush off with a whole series of thoughts about why did I say yes, but … yeah, and then I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I suppose fear is a part of a lot of other emotions, isn’t it? It’s part of what makes people keep in a continual state of discontent. That’s one aspect of its ability. What’s that marvelous quote: “The only enemy I fear is time.”

BOCKRIS: Do you ever get worried that you won’t make another film?

ROEG: No. Because I think if it has to be it has to be. I really don’t care to just go on shooting movies.

BOCKRIS: How old were you when you directed your first movie?

ROEG: I’ll tell you something that my last movie was about: time. And the curious thing is this question is rather nice because of the obsession with time in the present day world, because actually it is a present day issue. Time is going. We’re fading as fast, or as slowly, as we decide. Chatterton was dead at 21. Chatterton committed suicide and all his poems were scattered, half were burned. Shaw never wrote a play before he was 44. How old was I? How long had I been here? I’d been around for 36 years. For 36 years I’d been doing things. How old was I?

BOCKRIS: Why do you take so long between each movie? (Roeg has waited two years between each of his films, filling in his time and pocket directing commercials for Revlon.)

ROEG: After I finish a film, I get into a foolish state and I do foolish things. I recognise the stupidity of it, but I suppose I’m thrashing around trying to find some other aspect of the human condition I find I want to broaden myself with, to move about and around and to try and find a metaphor for. Because I like to try and hang onto things that particularly interest me. I’m not really what is pigeonholed as a director. I could just take a job directing, but I don’t want to. I love making films, I feel most alive and I don’t lead a foolish and stupid life. In between projects I can be very foolish. I’m stupid. But to encourage people into making films is a very difficult affair. They really want a man who takes a job and says he will direct their film. But having been a cameraman I could have stayed a cameraman to do that job because I love films and I would have photographed the things. John Huston said that film making is really a rather melancholy affair because you lose so much of yourself if you really put it into the film. You’re continually being drained. So I suppose I get nourished in between films by behaving stupidly, waiting for something, waiting for Godot. I’m damned if I know.

BOCKRIS: Why are your films controversial?

ROEG: Something makes people uncomfortable about the underlying subject matter. However much it’s covered up in terms of plot, the underlying truth is almost pagan. The premise of the thing makes people a bit uncomfortable. It makes me a bit uncomfortable.

BOCKRIS: What makes your films relate so specifically to the anxiety of our times. It seems like they portray the anxious edge.

ROEG: If you keep on and on about something – which I tend to do in my own life – you tend to reach the point of being close to crazy. I mean really intensely crazy, on the verge of madness in the tradition of Strindberg. I feel very sympathetic to people who get into that state. In Performance, for example, we had a scene where we wanted to use a real Magritte painting. We knew two or three people who’d got Magrittes and we wanted to borrow them, but they wouldn’t lend their paintings. I was determined to get it. So we talked to the studio and the studio said, “Oh, that’s quite ridiculous.” And I said “We can rent one from a gallery, I know what gallery we can rent it from.” And the guy said, “Are you crazy? You can get a print. Rent a Magritte! That’s really … you don’t know what you’re doing.” I said, fuck it, I am going to get it on that set. We are going to have a real thing. We don’t want to photograph a print. So all right, if they won’t get it we’ll rent it ourselves. We rented it. When that painting came on the set it changed the atmosphere of the set. And Mick had a look … because the print wouldn’t have done it. It was behind him. He takes down a fake painting and puts up the Magritte. Even the prop man was … “Cor, 40,000 pounds.” It created a tension. I mean, Mick was performing in front of it and it gave a different tone … I believe that’s true. We rented real diamonds for Anita Pallenberg to put on. It gives a different tone when someone feels the weight of them as opposed to the painted paste. They give a person a different authority than fake things do. Everybody says “Look at this, 180,000 pounds!” It’s very different than saying – “Here’s your diamonds dear. They’re supposed to be real.” It changes the performance.

BOCKRIS: What’s been the strongest personal influence on your life that’s affected you as a film maker?

ROEG: I’m not being facetious when I say this: I had a lot of Italian and French meals in Soho in London that changed my attitudes towards life and loving and affections. I guess it’s only people that change your mind. It’s all to do with human exchange. That’s the biggest influence on me. When I thought about film, I thought about how I would want to see people behave on film.

BOCKRIS: Do you have any particular cinematic influences that you’re aware of?

ROEG: I’m being influenced by this conversation! Actually, no. To be influenced by something is to copy and no one wants to intentionally be a copyist. I’ve got a lot of children, I’ve got dozens of children all over the world, and if I said to one of them “Did you trace it?” that’s the most insulting thing I could say. Are you influenced by things is like saying are you copying someone else. Of course not. I’m only a child.

BOCKRIS: What was the first job you had when you left school?

ROEG: I was a pilot. I loved flying. Actually, you’re the first person I’ve ever told that I flew. I liked the idea of parachuting.

BOCKRIS: What’s it like?

ROEG: Very pleasant. Adrenalin is a nice thing to have. And I remember coming to the conclusion that it only runs in the veins once in a while when I was about 16: I climbed to the top of an Olympic Board in a place called The King Alfred Swimming Baths in Brighton to have a look. And there was this little girl that I was particularly fond of and she was swimming away. As I was standing on the edge just having a look with no thought of doing anything she shouted “Hey Nick, Nick!” And I knew that I had to do it, or else climb all the way down … and she was lying on her back waiting. I said fuck it and dived off. The thrill of it was desperately exciting.

BOCKRIS: You once said, you didn’t mind your children watching television a long time because they’d learn to read stories through pictures. Do you think film will ultimately replace literature?

ROEG: How can I say this without appearing as outmoded as – oh damn it, why shouldn’t I say it: McLuhan is only now beginning to be understood. The end of the Gutenberg Galaxy is the end of the press. Film makers aren’t related to literature. I had a conversation once when I was working on this film script with Harold Pinter. We were having a drink during work and he said “Now look here,” in an earnest voice, “what would you have been, Nick, if you hadn’t been in films?” And I said “Well, it’s a question I’ve often pondered to myself. It’s easy for you, you know, because you’re a writer. And so in the eighteenth century you would have been a writer, and what would I have been? I would have been a soldier, or an adventurer, a fellow who runs the church.” The thing is, I’m not that static within these particular set of angles, but I guess I’d have been a soldier.

After the interview I made a fool of myself attempting to continue the interview in the back of a Checker cab and at Elaine’s, where Roeg was trying to carry on with the girl with the Botticelli face (whom he had apparently met when she was six), who had come into his suite in the midst of the interview making it hard for both of us to concentrate. They finally got rid of me, but I felt bad about having cut into her time with him so invited Roeg to tea with William Burroughs at my flat two weeks later. The characters in the following transcript are identified by their initials: LM = Legs McNeil (cartoonist and writer for Punk magazine); NG = Nick Roeg (don’t know why he is identified as G rather than R); Bockris = Victor Bockris; PB = Peter Beard (like Clark Kent, an anthropologist, writer and genius); JG = James Grauerholz (William Burroughs’ secretary); WB = William Burroughs; BG = Bobby Grossman (the photographer).

LM: Did you like working with Bowie?

NG: Yes I did.

LM: Do you like him?

NG: Very much, yeah. He’s a very good fellow.

LM: Really? Well like I really want …

NG: He has a wonderful … he’s a great guy.

LM: Really? Seems like a real charmer.

NG: He’s a very very extraordinary … very strange and different kind of human being. He’s a great charmer, also very cold and not … what is really attractive about him is he has no (Peter flushed the toilet and all conversation is drowned out by flushing toilet like Concorde landing) sentiment at all so that you’re not … He is at the moment now … that’s it. You can’t charge it.

BOCKRIS: Candy Clark isn’t in New York now is she?

NG: No.

BOCKRIS: Peter said he met her the other night at Elaine’s.

NG: I know he didn’t.

PB: (Screaming from bathroom where toilet is still roaring) WELL NICOLAS WHO WAS IT MAN? IT WAS THE OTHER ONE YOU’RE CONSTANTLY TALKING ABOUT!

NG: Oh God.

BOCKRIS: It was this girl he met at Elaine’s and I was trying to tell him who it was.

NG: It wasn’t Candy. I spoke to Candy today.

BOCKRIS: It wasn’t Julie Christie, it wasn’t Jenny Agutter. Who was it?

NG: I don’t know. It’s Peter that met her. I didn’t meet her.

BOCKRIS: WHAT DID SHE LOOK LIKE? PETER! I have Candy Clark’s new publicity shots I got in the mail today.

NG: Really?

BOCKRIS: Oh yes. Come here. They’re on my wall.

NG: Well David Bowie is an excellent guy. (We walk into my room to look at photographs of Candy.)

JG: Well is one of you guys going to get it together to get out Punk Number Nine?

LM: Um …

WB: Well?

LM: Soon.

WB: What’d’ya mean by soon?

LM: Well … we’re in between money.

JG & WB: YEEEEAAAAHHH …!!!!????

LM: Some guy offered us $50,000. The guy that bought CHERI and some other magazines. So we might go with him. I don’t know though. You know.

JG: Somebody’s trying to buy you?

LM: Well not buy us, but … but … in … you know. Who knows? But these people are always talking you know. TALK TALK TALK

(Doorbell rings.)

JG: American Express is taking you over?

NG: (Strangled voice in distance from next room) But I was in that picture! I mean, they cut me out Peter … they cut me out!

(Enter Bobby Grossman.)

BOCKRIS: Oh Hi Bobby! Come on in (introductions).

PB: (Coming back into living room from bedroom.) He’ll know who it was because as soon as I was introduced to her it was one of these girls that you’re constantly rapping about so I said “Urh … I know all about you. Don’t worry.” And she said “OOOAAAAAWWWHHH, NICKLAS ROEG EYH?” In whatever accent.

NG: (Drily) She has a Texan accent. Candy’s got a Texan accent.

PB: It wasn’t Candy then.

NG: Someone else. It almost makes my heart want to stop when I realise that.

WB: (Talking about Graham Greene) It’s a good book. It’s got a strange shape. He’s suddenly saying you’re a bad Catholic. That’s a very good book.

NG: I’m interested you liked Brighton Rock because that’s very rare because that’s an overlooked book in literature. Hands up who’s read Brighton Rock? Good! Excellent! Go to the top of the form. And stay there till I come for you.

JG: What is that one about?

WB: It’s about boys – seventeen-year-old boooooiiiyys. With razor blades strapped on their fingertips or something. I never got into that razor blade thing exactly …

NG: That razor blade …

LM: He’s like a punk.

WB: Very very punky. He was in London …

LM: They’re all English punks.

JG: Yeah. English punks.

NG: They have punks in California. But it’s rather like Tamla Motown. Do you really believe that it’s punk? I don’t believe it.

(I have been in the bathroom during the last segment of conversation and now the explosion of the toilet commences again drowning out all conversation.)

WB: Do you know a writer named Jack Munro?

NG: Who was that?

WB: Well he was sort of the original punk and his father called him Punky. He died in 1948, he had a very serious motorcycle accident hitting somebody who was on a bicycle and …

NG: Well punk is a very good word. It’s an old English word …

LM: I mean Shakespeare used it.

JG: What is the origin of this?

NG: It originally meant prostitute.

LM: That’s right.

BOCKRIS: That was Shakespeare’s use.

NG: No, punk is a very old English word.

WB: For a prostitute?

NG: Yes. It’s in the dictionary. Very good.

LM: But no one used it, you know, it was nothing before we did the magazine.

NG: Actually in fact it used to be used in the Forties in the movies.

LM: Oh right … right. Oh well they use it every night on TV after these big chase scenes on TV they say … you know they can’t say you silly motherfucker I’m gonna knock the shit out of you …

NG: So they say punk …

LM: Yeah right, then they bring him down to the …

(END SIDE TWO OF TAPE/SWITCH TO SIDE THREE.)

NG: I guess it must have different connotations in America. I love the subtle differences in the language. Americans are able to cut it down and make it much slicker where we say lift you say elevator.

BOCKRIS: I agree. That’s good. Elevator’s much more … I don’t know.

NG: It’s quicker.

BOCKRIS: Yeah?

NG: Than lift?

BOCKRIS: Yeah much quicker. Somehow.

NG: Where you say automobile we say car.

WB: You say underground.

NG: Tube we say.

WB: Yeah, Tube. How did that get … tube? I don’t know. It doesn’t look like a tube at all the underground. It isn’t shaped like a tube. It’s sort of like that (making shape with hands).

NG: I came over on the Concorde.

LM: Was it good?

NG: Incredible.

LM: Is it real skinny?

NG: It’s very small, but it’s quite amazing. It’s quite thrilling. Three and a quarter hours … and it’s travelling at the speed of a bullet.

LM: Wow!

BOCKRIS: It’s not. It’s not travelling at the speed of a bullet.

WB: No, it’s …

NG: It is travelling at the speed of a bullet.

WB: It’s travelling at the speed of a rather slow bullet, a bullet with not much muscle and a lot of …

NG: It’s travelling at fifteen hundred miles an hour.

BOCKRIS: That’s the speed of a regular bullet?

WB: No, it’s a …

NG: That’s a …

BOCKRIS: It’s not a machine gun.

WB: No, it’s the speed of the old black powder bullets.

NG: It’s a bullet.

WB: Yes.

NG: So I mean it’s marvelous to think that a bullet is just travelling along with you. Mind you it’s not a bullet coming the other way.

WB: If you were hit by this thing you wouldn’t even be able to see it because it was coming towards you so fast.

NG: When you think that this airplane … if a fighter from the Second World War went after it the bullet couldn’t catch it.

LM: REALLY?

NG: It would just tap it da da da da da da da.

WB: Hmmmmhmmmmmhmmmmmmhmmmmmhmmmm

NG: And then it just goes tee tee tee tee tee teeeee that’s amazing, it’s beautiful. All those people in those black helmets with straps and goggles.

LM: Do they have stewards and like everything? Are they good looking on the Concorde?

NG: They’re extra good looking.

This is an extract from Making Tracks with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, soon to be republished in the US and UK.