Projections for "Lulu"
At this moment the phone rang and I found myself talking to Miss Sarah Caldwell, artistic director of the National Opera Company. Miss Caldwell told me that she was preparing a production of Alban Berg’s opera Lulu. Berg died before he had completed the score for Lulu, which was based on Wedekind’s play. Miss Caldwell had gone through Berg’s notes and found outlines of brief films that Berg had intended to create and project as part of the opera... Would I be interested in creating such films to be incorporated in her production? I answered to the effect that I would love to but was afraid that tomorrow someone would tell her that she had asked the wrong person: “...but Sarah! He makes documentaries!” As I recall it, she asked if I was a little bit crazy and if so, then perhaps I could come up to New Hampshire where she was working and we could talk.
A vacated boarding school. A stream of people arriving; important people, singers, conductors, designers... public relations people, journalists... all waiting to talk to Sarah Caldwell. I ran into a friend from Harvard; we had worked together on a theater piece as undergraduates; he too was waiting for Sarah; we chatted. We chatted a lot. It seemed hopeless. Chaos. I looked at my watch and decided that I had better things to do in life, and asked about a flight to Boston. Miss Caldwell suddenly introduced herself and asked if I could wait till late that night so we could meet and talk... midnight! I waited and we met on the school stage. A boy of about 13, Dennis Crowly, was with us. He was to sing the part of the schoolboy that smokes cigars and wouldn’t interrupt. There was a long table covered with green baize, a PTA-type coffee urn at one end, a case of Pepsi at the other, and a bottle of Courvoisier in the center. Miss Caldwell and Dennis drank the Pepsis, I drank the coffee and we never touched the brandy.
Sarah Caldwell and I talked for three hours with no interruptions. I have, since then, worked on many projects with her. I have never known her to dismiss an idea out of hand. She never says, “Oh that’s corny....” You take every idea and you try it out... and you go on to another, until something begins to build. Curiously, I have very rarely encountered people with this open, playful and productive bent of mind. We had a wonderful time. The project was on: my first encounter with the spirit of Lulu.
After much trial and error my collaborator, Roger Murphy, and I came up with some interesting film projections. A central problem was to get rid of the “realistic” look of film and the giveaway format of the rectangular “screen”. We wanted images in motion to “appear” rather than obviously starting a “movie”. Roger found a magic piece of aluminized Mylar -- mirrored plastic that we used to distort images -- in a shop on Canal Street. We distorted in projection as well as in recording. We projected on many surfaces... but the choice of a Lulu was basic to our success. We might have used the lady that sang the part but she was too busy to spend time in our foolish endeavours. I had been reading Wedenkind and Nietzsche in search of the Lulu myth... a young woman of exceptional beauty, fascinating to men and to women, a hedonist perhaps but certainly not a trollop; innocent, impetuous, and ultimately dogged by a train of disastrous relationships... I was staying at the Chelsea Hotel and Edie Sedgwick, one of Andy Warhol’s Super-Stars, was living down the hallway. Edie became our Lulu. She wore the same costumes and wigs and makeup. A tragically accurate choice.
A touring opera company is a man-made disaster, especially in the lesser cities of the United States. One-night stands in ancient former movie Palaces with stages sometimes no more than 17 feet deep! Every performance presented new problems for our projections. Chicago was the one great exception. There was time for a rehearsal, the union provided a young and willing crew and the Chicago Opera House has one of the largest stages in the world. There our efforts paid off and made it all worthwhile.
I had come to know “Lulu” the hard way.
The last image of Lulu with blood soaking into her hair was not shown until Chicago. Miss Caldwell was nervous about it. When I had filmed the scene, I forgot to stop down and when I realized this, we had to wash the fake blood out of the hair, get another sheet, make some more blood; we did it over again with the proper exposure. When the prints came back from the lab, I looked at them and it was the over-exposed version that we used; it has a wonderful dead look.
A vacated boarding school. A stream of people arriving; important people, singers, conductors, designers... public relations people, journalists... all waiting to talk to Sarah Caldwell. I ran into a friend from Harvard; we had worked together on a theater piece as undergraduates; he too was waiting for Sarah; we chatted. We chatted a lot. It seemed hopeless. Chaos. I looked at my watch and decided that I had better things to do in life, and asked about a flight to Boston. Miss Caldwell suddenly introduced herself and asked if I could wait till late that night so we could meet and talk... midnight! I waited and we met on the school stage. A boy of about 13, Dennis Crowly, was with us. He was to sing the part of the schoolboy that smokes cigars and wouldn’t interrupt. There was a long table covered with green baize, a PTA-type coffee urn at one end, a case of Pepsi at the other, and a bottle of Courvoisier in the center. Miss Caldwell and Dennis drank the Pepsis, I drank the coffee and we never touched the brandy.
Sarah Caldwell and I talked for three hours with no interruptions. I have, since then, worked on many projects with her. I have never known her to dismiss an idea out of hand. She never says, “Oh that’s corny....” You take every idea and you try it out... and you go on to another, until something begins to build. Curiously, I have very rarely encountered people with this open, playful and productive bent of mind. We had a wonderful time. The project was on: my first encounter with the spirit of Lulu.
After much trial and error my collaborator, Roger Murphy, and I came up with some interesting film projections. A central problem was to get rid of the “realistic” look of film and the giveaway format of the rectangular “screen”. We wanted images in motion to “appear” rather than obviously starting a “movie”. Roger found a magic piece of aluminized Mylar -- mirrored plastic that we used to distort images -- in a shop on Canal Street. We distorted in projection as well as in recording. We projected on many surfaces... but the choice of a Lulu was basic to our success. We might have used the lady that sang the part but she was too busy to spend time in our foolish endeavours. I had been reading Wedenkind and Nietzsche in search of the Lulu myth... a young woman of exceptional beauty, fascinating to men and to women, a hedonist perhaps but certainly not a trollop; innocent, impetuous, and ultimately dogged by a train of disastrous relationships... I was staying at the Chelsea Hotel and Edie Sedgwick, one of Andy Warhol’s Super-Stars, was living down the hallway. Edie became our Lulu. She wore the same costumes and wigs and makeup. A tragically accurate choice.
A projected image which constantly distorts, made as a psychological backdrop for Sarah Caldwell’s production of the opera “Lulu”. The actress is Edie Sedgewick of Warhol Factory fame.
A touring opera company is a man-made disaster, especially in the lesser cities of the United States. One-night stands in ancient former movie Palaces with stages sometimes no more than 17 feet deep! Every performance presented new problems for our projections. Chicago was the one great exception. There was time for a rehearsal, the union provided a young and willing crew and the Chicago Opera House has one of the largest stages in the world. There our efforts paid off and made it all worthwhile.
I had come to know “Lulu” the hard way.
The last image of Lulu with blood soaking into her hair was not shown until Chicago. Miss Caldwell was nervous about it. When I had filmed the scene, I forgot to stop down and when I realized this, we had to wash the fake blood out of the hair, get another sheet, make some more blood; we did it over again with the proper exposure. When the prints came back from the lab, I looked at them and it was the over-exposed version that we used; it has a wonderful dead look.