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LAURIE SIMMONS: I was interested in
work that I saw in New York,in the ‘70s,
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that used photography in a
completely unique way for me,
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more ephemeral, works of art,
things that could disappear,
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only existed for a minute, that
needed to be documented with a camera.
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The most important thing to me when I
started to shoot my first photographs
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which would be the late ‘70s,
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was that I was an artist using photography
as a tool and not a photographer.
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(MUSIC)
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I was making these setups in my studio
juxtaposing pieces of furniture,
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walls, wallpaper, tops of books, just
everything was a crazy, chaotic mess and yet,
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in the end I had a very still,
quiet moment where I’d frozen time.
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I was conscious of creating another
kind of reality that was pristine
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and still and quiet and beautiful,
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and lots of times devoid of people
because life felt very chaotic to me.
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I expected the viewer to believe that they
were entering a real place that really existed,
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a place where time stood still.
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(MUSIC)
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In making this movie I did
something that I always wanted to do
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which is to literally bring my work to life.
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(MOVIE CLIP)
TED: Hey, listen Todd, I’m so sorry.
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TODD: No Ted, it’s...it’s all right, honestly.
The best man got the promotion. End of story.
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TED: Thanks. Nice tie.
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TODD: Thanks. I should have
worn a red tie to the interview.
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TED: No. No, no.
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TODD: Green? With white spots.
What the hell was I thinking?
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SIMMONS: I cast these puppets because
I thought they were great looking
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and I really believed that
they could carry a narrative.
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(MOVIE CLIP)
DANNY: Donny?
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DONNY: Yeah?
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DANNY: Remember last Father’s
Day when we went downtown and
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bought ties for our dads with our lawn money?
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DONNY: Sure.
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DANNY: And we both liked that red striped tie?
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DONNY: Uh, I don’t remember…
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DANNY: And you said how dumb it would look if
our dads walked into work wearing that same tie?
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DONNY: Uh-huh. Yeah…
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SIMMONS: I got a chance to revisit my work
and figure out what would happen if suddenly
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I was looking at the photograph and characters
started to talk to me or sing or dance.
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(MUSIC)
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The hand puppets were designed to be
contributing members of a community
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so they are businessmen and housewives
and doctors and nurses and grandfathers.
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(MUSIC)
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The challenge of making a movie
was really making a movie.
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The initial image is like one of my
photographs but everything’s moving.
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Everything’s talking.
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Everything’s in color.
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PUPPETEER: She is gorgeous.
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SIMMONS: I had to think about things in a
way that I’d never thought about them before,
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with a kind of depth and breadth that was
unimaginable to me before I actually did it.
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JUNE: What is it you’re trying to say, May?
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MAY: I just never thought you
were capable of being so divisive.
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JUNE: Divisive?
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MAY: It means sneaky.
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JUNE: I know what it means.
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MAY: You ought to. You live it.
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LARRY: We never saw it coming.
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JERRY: Well how are Danny and May handling it?
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LARRY: Good as can be expected, Jerry.
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JERRY: I guess that that promotion meant
more to Todd than anybody thought it did.
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LARRY: Jane and I thought he was a shoo-in.
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But your boy got it.
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We were all pretty surprised.
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SIMMONS: My inner life about my own work
was very theatrical and very narrative
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but that’s something I was
always afraid to express.
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Because I came of age in a time
when cool distance in the work
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and a more conceptual turn
of mind was very important.
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It was very important to me.
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So I had a very secret inner life
about the pictures that I was making.
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I had music in my head that was sort
of playing while I was shooting.
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The opportunity to have my interest in
music and my interest in these visual images
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kind of converge in this
movie is very important to me.
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It was very emotional for me.
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(SONG)
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(MUSIC)
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Act Two is a different story
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because those dummies are dummies that I had made
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for a series of works that
I made in the early ‘90s.
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The dummy is such a metaphor
for lying and telling the truth
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the way the ventriloquist is able to
say whatever he or she wants to say
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through this other character.
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They’re absolutely identical except
for different suits of clothing.
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The series was called CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN
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and it was about these kind of minute differences
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in the way we look or the way we act
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that make us feel like we’re
so profoundly different.
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The original idea was to use the girl
dummy all the way through Act Two.
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As the music became more complex,
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as the emotions and the
thoughts became more complex,
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I wasn’t sure that a puppet could carry act two
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and that was when I decided that the
puppet would become a real woman.
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(SONG)
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It would have been too uncomfortable to think
about Meryl Streep portraying me in the movie.
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The first time I saw her it was very unsettling.
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We met at the wig shop and I walked in
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and Meryl had her back to me
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and she stood up and turned around
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and I saw her in the dark wig and
there was one moment where whoa,
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this is very eerie, this is very odd.
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She became the character.
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It wasn’t about me anymore.
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Act One really did give me a chance to explore
love within a family and love among neighbors
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and problems in a family
and problems with neighbors.
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—SIMMONS: Then I just need another
little signal to give for playback
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—and then we go right into the song,
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—so you may not know what that signal is,
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—or I may just feel it and
tell him to hit playback.
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Act Two has an element of romance.
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The action between the girl and the dummy and the sad love songs and the wistful, regretful mood.
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Maybe because I was thinking so much about the
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American Songbook and musicals
and moving a narrative forward.
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Maybe that’s why romance
finally came into my work.
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(SONG)
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MERYL STREEP: It’s a very interesting mix of
being in a love song and standing outside of it
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and seeing the mechanics of how it works.
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All the layering of the…
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the backgrounds and the laid in rain or snow
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and all the things that conspire to
make us believe in these romantic ideas.
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(SONG)
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STREEP: I was really impressed by her
in how she was able to make a lyric.
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I think of her as a visual artist.
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It’s a hard thing to do to
match a lyric to a melody
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and she did it beautifully and
made it easy to kind of, uh,
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have an emotional flow through the music.
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(SONG)
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SPEAKER: Number two please.
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(SONG)
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SIMMONS: I remember when I first thought
about shooting the objects on legs.
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I was thinking I need to do something different.
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So the first one that I shot was the camera and
I placed it on a friend of mine, Jimmy Desanto,
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he taught me everything I know about photography.
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It seemed so fitting to put
this camera on top of him,
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put a pair of white tights on him and
photograph him as Jimmy the Camera.
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(SONG)
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I always saw the walking objects as being
a more physical expression of my work.
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So ending on the note of the dance
seemed completely appropriate to me.
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I chose the Pocket Watch to
be the star of Act Three,
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the character that would elicit the
most sympathy and the most compassion.
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I knew the Birthday Cake with her
pink toe shoes would get the part,
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and the Pocket Watch longed to get the part,
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never had a chance to show his/her stuff...
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WOMAN: Thank you...lovely work.
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SIMMONS: And really maybe was the best
for the part, but nobody really noticed.
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WOMAN: Okay everybody thanks
so much for coming. Good night.
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SIMMONS: Perfect.
MAN: How about(?) that?
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SIMMONS: Then we wonder what would
have happened if the Pocket Watch
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got to actually dance in front of
the producer/choreographer/director?
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WOMAN: Great.
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MAN:…dead center
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WOMAN: Let’s just go through this. Yeah?
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MAN: Great.
SIMMONS: The whole thing with her is as much as…
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which is what you’re doing as much of the
stage as she can take because it’s her stage,
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her moment, and I think it’s...
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WOMAN: That’s what. Yeah…
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SIMMONS: Yeah, I think it’s happening.
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WOMAN: Okay
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(MUSIC)
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SIMMONS: I’m very interested in stopping time.
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And starting time.
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(MUSIC)
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There is that aspect of
time that I’m playing with,
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that it’s elusive and unnoticed yet really
in the end the most important thing.
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(MUSIC)
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Regret is the prevailing emotion,
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the prevailing thought that
brings the three acts together.
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It’s very much about the different
guises of regret, the notion of regret.
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(MUSIC)
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So it ends on a note of really what
might have been, if I just had a chance.