Laurie Simmons in "Romance" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

LAURIE SIMMONS: I was interested in 
work that I saw in New York,in the ‘70s,

that used photography in a 
completely unique way for me,

more ephemeral, works of art, 
things that could disappear,

only existed for a minute, that 
needed to be documented with a camera.

The most important thing to me when I 
started to shoot my first photographs

which would be the late ‘70s,

was that I was an artist using photography 
as a tool and not a photographer.

(MUSIC)

I was making these setups in my studio 
juxtaposing pieces of furniture,

walls, wallpaper, tops of books, just 
everything was a crazy, chaotic mess and yet,

in the end I had a very still, 
quiet moment where I’d frozen time.

I was conscious of creating another 
kind of reality that was pristine

and still and quiet and beautiful,

and lots of times devoid of people 
because life felt very chaotic to me.

I expected the viewer to believe that they 
were entering a real place that really existed,

a place where time stood still.

(MUSIC)

In making this movie I did 
something that I always wanted to do

which is to literally bring my work to life.

(MOVIE CLIP)
TED: Hey, listen Todd, I’m so sorry.

TODD: No Ted, it’s...it’s all right, honestly. 
The best man got the promotion. End of story.

TED: Thanks. Nice tie.

TODD: Thanks. I should have 
worn a red tie to the interview.

TED: No. No, no.

TODD: Green? With white spots. 
What the hell was I thinking?

SIMMONS: I cast these puppets because 
I thought they were great looking

and I really believed that 
they could carry a narrative.

(MOVIE CLIP)
DANNY: Donny?

DONNY: Yeah?

DANNY: Remember last Father’s 
Day when we went downtown and

bought ties for our dads with our lawn money?

DONNY: Sure.

DANNY: And we both liked that red striped tie?

DONNY: Uh, I don’t remember…

DANNY: And you said how dumb it would look if 
our dads walked into work wearing that same tie?

DONNY: Uh-huh. Yeah…

SIMMONS: I got a chance to revisit my work 
and figure out what would happen if suddenly

I was looking at the photograph and characters 
started to talk to me or sing or dance.

(MUSIC)

The hand puppets were designed to be 
contributing members of a community

so they are businessmen and housewives 
and doctors and nurses and grandfathers.

(MUSIC)

The challenge of making a movie 
was really making a movie.

The initial image is like one of my 
photographs but everything’s moving.

Everything’s talking.

Everything’s in color.

PUPPETEER: She is gorgeous.

SIMMONS: I had to think about things in a 
way that I’d never thought about them before,

with a kind of depth and breadth that was 
unimaginable to me before I actually did it.

JUNE: What is it you’re trying to say, May?

MAY: I just never thought you 
were capable of being so divisive.

JUNE: Divisive?

MAY: It means sneaky.

JUNE: I know what it means.

MAY: You ought to. You live it.

LARRY: We never saw it coming.

JERRY: Well how are Danny and May handling it?

LARRY: Good as can be expected, Jerry.

JERRY: I guess that that promotion meant 
more to Todd than anybody thought it did.

LARRY: Jane and I thought he was a shoo-in.

But your boy got it.

We were all pretty surprised.

SIMMONS: My inner life about my own work 
was very theatrical and very narrative

but that’s something I was 
always afraid to express.

Because I came of age in a time 
when cool distance in the work

and a more conceptual turn 
of mind was very important.

It was very important to me.

So I had a very secret inner life 
about the pictures that I was making.

I had music in my head that was sort 
of playing while I was shooting.

The opportunity to have my interest in 
music and my interest in these visual images

kind of converge in this 
movie is very important to me.

It was very emotional for me.

(SONG)

(MUSIC)

Act Two is a different story

because those dummies are dummies that I had made

for a series of works that 
I made in the early ‘90s.

The dummy is such a metaphor 
for lying and telling the truth

the way the ventriloquist is able to 
say whatever he or she wants to say

through this other character.

They’re absolutely identical except 
for different suits of clothing.

The series was called CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN

and it was about these kind of minute differences

in the way we look or the way we act

that make us feel like we’re 
so profoundly different.

The original idea was to use the girl 
dummy all the way through Act Two.

As the music became more complex,

as the emotions and the 
thoughts became more complex,

I wasn’t sure that a puppet could carry act two

and that was when I decided that the 
puppet would become a real woman.

(SONG)

It would have been too uncomfortable to think 
about Meryl Streep portraying me in the movie.

The first time I saw her it was very unsettling.

We met at the wig shop and I walked in

and Meryl had her back to me

and she stood up and turned around

and I saw her in the dark wig and 
there was one moment where whoa,

this is very eerie, this is very odd.

She became the character.

It wasn’t about me anymore.

Act One really did give me a chance to explore 
love within a family and love among neighbors

and problems in a family 
and problems with neighbors.

—SIMMONS: Then I just need another 
little signal to give for playback

—and then we go right into the song,

—so you may not know what that signal is,

—or I may just feel it and 
tell him to hit playback.

Act Two has an element of romance.

The action between the girl and the dummy and the sad love songs and the wistful, regretful mood.

Maybe because I was thinking so much about the

American Songbook and musicals 
and moving a narrative forward.

Maybe that’s why romance 
finally came into my work.

(SONG)

MERYL STREEP: It’s a very interesting mix of 
being in a love song and standing outside of it

and seeing the mechanics of how it works.

All the layering of the…

the backgrounds and the laid in rain or snow

and all the things that conspire to 
make us believe in these romantic ideas.

(SONG)

STREEP: I was really impressed by her 
in how she was able to make a lyric.

I think of her as a visual artist.

It’s a hard thing to do to 
match a lyric to a melody

and she did it beautifully and 
made it easy to kind of, uh,

have an emotional flow through the music.

(SONG)

SPEAKER: Number two please.

(SONG)

SIMMONS: I remember when I first thought 
about shooting the objects on legs.

I was thinking I need to do something different.

So the first one that I shot was the camera and 
I placed it on a friend of mine, Jimmy Desanto,

he taught me everything I know about photography.

It seemed so fitting to put 
this camera on top of him,

put a pair of white tights on him and 
photograph him as Jimmy the Camera.

(SONG)

I always saw the walking objects as being 
a more physical expression of my work.

So ending on the note of the dance 
seemed completely appropriate to me.

I chose the Pocket Watch to 
be the star of Act Three,

the character that would elicit the 
most sympathy and the most compassion.

I knew the Birthday Cake with her 
pink toe shoes would get the part,

and the Pocket Watch longed to get the part,

never had a chance to show his/her stuff...

WOMAN: Thank you...lovely work.

SIMMONS: And really maybe was the best 
for the part, but nobody really noticed.

WOMAN: Okay everybody thanks 
so much for coming. Good night.

SIMMONS: Perfect.
MAN: How about(?) that?

SIMMONS: Then we wonder what would 
have happened if the Pocket Watch

got to actually dance in front of 
the producer/choreographer/director?

WOMAN: Great.

MAN:…dead center

WOMAN: Let’s just go through this. Yeah?

MAN: Great.
SIMMONS: The whole thing with her is as much as…

which is what you’re doing as much of the 
stage as she can take because it’s her stage,

her moment, and I think it’s...

WOMAN: That’s what. Yeah…

SIMMONS: Yeah, I think it’s happening.

WOMAN: Okay

(MUSIC)

SIMMONS: I’m very interested in stopping time.

And starting time.

(MUSIC)

There is that aspect of 
time that I’m playing with,

that it’s elusive and unnoticed yet really 
in the end the most important thing.

(MUSIC)

Regret is the prevailing emotion,

the prevailing thought that 
brings the three acts together.

It’s very much about the different 
guises of regret, the notion of regret.

(MUSIC)

So it ends on a note of really what 
might have been, if I just had a chance.