The Books: The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town, edited by Lillian Ross; ‘Beckett’, by Jane Kramer

Next up on the essays shelf:

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town (Modern Library Paperbacks) is a collection of “The Talk of the Town” pieces in The New Yorker, grouped by decade, which is a lot of fun because you can see how the “voice” of the magazine developed, and how “The Talk of the Town” has grown and changed over the years.

A fantastic meeting of the minds, in 1964, and Jane Kramer was there to observe and report in this great “Talk of the Town” piece.

Samuel Beckett, by the 1960s, was famous and already famously reclusive. You could not get him for an interview. He never spoke of his work. His plays, Waiting for Godot and Endgame, in the 50s, had announced him as a new and important voice, avant-garde, pulsating with ominous significance and existential angst, which was a reflection of the anxieties of the post-War world. (Although you’d never get him to say something like that.) They’re great plays. If you know anything about Beckett then you probably know that he has one of the more draconian Estates out there (comparable to Joyce’s, although even more so). If you do a Beckett play, you do Beckett’s version, otherwise you do not do it. He kept tight control over all of his works, and that control has continued after his death. It has led to some interesting battles.

BUT. Let me get to this “Talk of the Town” piece. Beckett’s American publisher Barney Rosset set up a subsidiary company called Evergreen Theatre, where the playwrights/screenwriters he represented could make their short films. It was all very exciting, and vaguely European. The studio system was collapsing, European films were filling the art-houses of America, and the public was eager for something different, challenging. Of course they were all still flocking to the drive-ins to see stuff like this, but there was this whole other underground starting to burgeon and flourish. Mr. Rosset, and his Evergreen Theatre, had big plans. They were going to film three short works by three giants of the day: Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Harold Pinter. And Samuel Beckett’s Film was the first one they shot. (And, if I’m not mistaken, the only one. They spent a lot of money, and lost a lot of money.)

An awesome team was put together. Alan Schneider, a big-wig theatre director and member of the Actors Studio, was the director. He had directed a ton of Beckett’s theatrical productions. The great Boris Kaufman was the director of photography. A young guy named Joe Coffey was the cameraman, and he would go on to shoot Kramer vs. Kramer, Fame, The Cotton Club, Birdy. And they convinced the legendary Buster Keaton to take the lead role of “O”. (Keaton was not their first choice. Beckett wanted Zero Mostel.) Buster Keaton, by the mid-60s, was appearing in all of these Bikini Beach Blanket movies, an exercise in absurdity if ever there was one. But hey, a job’s a job, and Keaton was nothing if not practical. Beckett maintained control over what was happening. Schneider was his “eye”, but it was Beckett’s vision that was to be expressed.

They shot in New York City, and it was deathly hot, and Keaton had a lot of exterior business, running through a junky vacant lot. Much has been made of Keaton’s oblivious attitude towards pain. He either had a high tolerance for it, or pain didn’t register to him at all. He began his career as a wee tot, being man-handled and thrown about on vaudeville stages by his father. His father would pick up the kid and throw him into the orchestra pit. The audiences roared. Keaton’s poker-face developed early, and was always part of his strange otherworldly presence. It was a blank face and so you could project emotions onto it. He did not insist on his own interpretation. I find much of his stuff to be damn-near tragic, but that could just be my own projection. That’s the beauty of it.

Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett

There’s a great piece by Kevin Brownlow about an interview he got with Beckett, about Film, and Brownlow knew that this was a rare opportunity indeed. Beckett never talked to no one about nothin’. There’s some great stuff there, and some great anecdotes about Keaton during the 1964 filming of Film, like this, from Beckett on Keaton:

His movement was excellent – covering up the mirror, putting out the animals – all that was very well done. To cover the mirror, he took his big coat off and he asked me what he was wearing underneath. I hadn’t thought of that. I said “the same coat” He liked that.

I like that, too! Keaton would be dead in two years.

Film is only 17 minutes long. It is about a man who fears being perceived. He cringes away from being seen. He wears a scarf over his face. He turns his pets’ heads away from him. He puts a blanket over the mirror. We know that it is Buster Keaton in this film, and we don’t see his face until the final moments. That seems to me to be a shame – depriving us of his face – but it’s part of the big reveal at the end. There’s some wonderful bits of business. I love the bit about him putting the cat and dog out of the room, in particular.

I’ve always been a bit confused at people who find Beckett un-clear, or ambiguous. His stuff has always seemed straight-up clear to me (and sometimes even obvious). Especially this film with Keaton. It seems totally obvious to me what is going on, it’s all there in Keaton’s body language, the camera placement, and the progression of events.

You can view the film here.

Beckett – Film (1964) from Luigi Morganti on Vimeo.

So Jane Kramer, writer for The New Yorker, heard that Beckett was in town for the shoot, and they were filming in a studio on the upper East Side. She went and visited the set. There is one exterior shot, and then the majority of the film takes place in the bleakest apartment known to man. (It reminds me of This Gun for Hire and Le Samourai, with the pets, the bird in the cage, the bleak surroundings.) Kramer sat on the sidelines and talked to Beckett a little bit, and watched the filming.

It is an indelible snapshot of two gigantic characters of the 20th century, Beckett and Keaton, and I am grateful that it exists.

I will excerpt a bit from the end.

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town (Modern Library Paperbacks), edited by Lillian Ross; ‘Beckett’, by Jane Kramer

Schneider strode by and off the set, and we followed. We asked him about the film.

“It’s really quite a simple thing,” he said. “It’s a movie about the perceiving eye, about the perceived and the perceiver – two aspects of the same man. The perceiver desires like mad to perceive, and the perceived tries desperately to hide. Then, in the end, one wins.”

We asked Mr. Schneider who did win, and he said that he thought the perceiver won. “You know, people come in here and ask Sam ‘What do you mean?’, trying to make him something obscure, befuddling, inscrutable. Well, I think he’s the most crystal-clear poet – notice, I say poet – writing today. ‘Godot’? ‘Endgame’? They’re lucid. Maybe it’s just that we’re afraid to hear what they’re trying to say.”

Mr. Schneider strode on, and we turned back to Mr. Beckett, who was listening to a young woman from the studio. “Sam, the teen-agers love your novel ‘Murphy’,” she said. “They laugh and laugh.”

Beckett smiled. “Well, it’s my easiest book, I guess,” he said. He then told the woman that he was returning to Paris, where he lives, as soon as the film is finished.

“You should have been around for the exteriors,” said Coffey, who had walked over to the crate. “We shot under the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was perfect. The street we were on was semi-demolished and desolate. It looked as though the street was all that existed, all there was – a world blocked off.”

Beckett nodded in agreement. “Pearl Street, it was,” he said.

Coffey edged away from the crate and beckoned to us. “You know, Sam’s incredible,” he said. “He grasps his own work visually. He can think cinematically. He spotted Pearl Street as the place right away, when we were driving around.”

Coffey looked admiringly over at Beckett, who was now engrossed in wordless conversation with Mr. Keaton. Keaton, with a disarming dead pan, was digging into one of his trouser pockets, looking for change. He dug deeper and deeper, through the proverbial hole in the pocket and straight down to the cuff. Upon reaching the cuff, he pulled out a quarter, held it up triumphantly, and handed it to Beckett. Beckett threw back his head and laughed.

“Sam, they released ‘The General’ again, you know, with foreign subtitles,” Keaton said at last, in a low, gravelly voice. “It went all over Europe, and all of a sudden everybody loved it. A German lady even sent me flowers.” He paused thoughtfully. “Now, why couldn’t she have sent them forty years ago?”

Beckett laughed again. “You could’ve used them then.”

“O.K., let’s go, Buster!” Schneider called, as Kaufman wheeled the camera into place for another take.

Beckett left his crate. He reappeared a moment later on the scaffolding, looking over a makeshift rail, chin in hand.

Keaton, his face averted, was groping along the wall, clutching the green blanket. When he reached the mirror, he flung the blanket over it, blocking out all reflection.

“Cut!” called Schneider. “How was that? All right, Sam?”

“Exactly,” Beckett said quietly.