Keith Lock, Interviewed
Interview conducted by Chelsea Keen with assistance from Tj Alston, Alex Jokinen, and Bing Wang on March 20th, 2015. The interview was conducted at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and is reproduced here in full with minor changes made for flow and ease of readability. All changes have been approved by Keith Lock.
Take Two: Can you describe, in general, the independent film scene in Toronto between the years 1965 and 1972? What were some prominent practices and characteristics? Were there any you feel were distinctly “Toronto"?
Keith Lock: The filmmaking scene was really small. There were only a few people who were making films at the time and they were all pretty well independent, I think. Expo ‘67 sort of created a consciousness for film. The National Film Board had a pavilion called Labyrinth where they showed a lot of films. It was sort of like a new way of thinking about films and I think that inspired a lot of people. I was a student in 1967 at North Toronto Collegiate. That's where I met Jim Anderson. One day we decided we would do a film instead of a written project and so that's how we started making films.
Jim was very interested in films and filmmaking and his locker was right beside mine and that's how I got interested. I was interested in photography before that and he was really interested in film. We took a film course in a place called The Three Schools, which was sort of a private film school in the Annex and we met this guy, Ian Ewing, and he was like no one we ever met and he really inspired us. He was one of the first hippies we ever met. Most of the other people in the course dropped it because they just couldn't go with his strange ideas – his “hippiness.” He had a class after school on the subway where we rode up and down on the subway and talked about film. It was the idea of being part of the world rather than being part of the classroom and set aside. Another time we went to theatres on Yonge Street that would play triple bills and a lot of times people in the audience would just go there to get warmed up. They were sort of street people. It was this very strange kind of place and he took us there and I saw really trashy films. I remember the title of one was called the Mini Skirt Mob. I think it was a Roger Corman film or something. But [Ewing’s] notion was that everything was film, everything was cinema and it was all worth. You have to experience everything and he said never walk out in a film because that's your problem if you don't like a film.
He once told me that 20 minutes of black leader would tell me a lot about the inside of your head. He was very inspiring. Black leader is just like just totally unexposed film, right? So he said if I gave him 20 minutes of black leader, it would tell him a lot about my thoughts as a filmmaker.
In those days there was no division between experimental and narrative and documentary. It was all just everyone doing things. I remember going into the CFMDC in their first year. I think they started in ‘67 so that must have been the first year. And we walk into the room in Rochdale – [Ewing’s] girlfriend was the coordinator or something, Clare Myers - and we had a folding table and under the table there were two cardboard boxes with films in them and that was our entire collection. He showed us David Cronenberg’s From The Drain. Other films were much more experimental, just sort of notions. People would just sort of make films. That was the distribution center.
There were a lot of Americans in Canada because of the Vietnam War and they were an influence because they brought a lot of fresh ideas - anti-war ideas and also the idea of collectives, things like that. Jim Murphy, for instance, from New York, and there was a much bigger centre there. You had Jonas Mekas and they had a lot of other film culture things that were new to Toronto.
I remember when I was a teenager - because you're asking about what the scene was like - everyone was just trying to make their own way. They didn’t really have models on how to make films, or what does a filmmaker do, or anything like that. You probably know Clarke Mackey. He made a film called the Only Thing You Know - he teaches at Queens - and he was just a couple years older than me and when he was a teenager he made a film on nothing days and it was really a short film with no story. He was a young person and he made this feature. I think it might've been through Ian Ewing, Jim Anderson and I made a super 8 film that won an award in Amsterdam, so we won the best super 8 for animated film and Jim won the Grand Prix, so those two big awards, both from the same kind of people. That opened a lot of doors. So no one really knew what they were doing. They're all trying to make it up as they go along, in a sense, and Clark is making this feature film. He had nude scenes, or a love scene or something, with the actors in no clothes. So his idea was, to make it egalitarian, the entire crew had no clothes. But, because I was a teenager, I wasn’t allowed in the room and I had to sit outside, and he showed me how to adjust / modulate the sound. So I’m sitting in front of the sound recorder, the Nagra, and I had to balance the needle, and they had feed from the microphones from the room that they’re shooting in, and they're all naked and I’m sitting there, and he showed me how to record sound. His whole thing was there is no mystique about making films. You just do the things and you make film. There's no mystique. He taught me on that day how to balance a needle - to keep it out of the red and keep it above a certain number and you’re fine. So I just sat there, chasing the needle and I recorded sound for him over a day and they're all naked in there. It’s really funny to think back on it because now they don't do stuff like that. Now they sort of know there is a certain practice that you do. Like, “okay now we’re shooting a love scene”, “okay”, well, the actors are naked or they have underwear on or something but everyone else just stands around in their clothes. It’s just another day, kind of thing. So, it was pretty interesting, very exciting, very exciting to be part of it and to be included. That was really important to me.
You said everyone was just trying to figure it out. Did any of the filmmakers have any specific goals? Why were people drawn to making films?
Why were people drawn to making a film? That's a good question. That was more like a calling. You just kind of got the bug to do it and there were a few examples, like Don Shebib’s Goin’ Down the Road from... was that 1971? Or 69? I saw that in my last year of high school. That was an example of a successful film and that was shot completely indie - what we would call indie today - but that’s how the film industry was at the time.
So maybe people wanted to be like Shebib but they also wanted to have their own kind of form, like Cronenberg made Stereo. When I saw Stereo, it had two screens and people are saying ‘oh no that's not what it was, it was just on one screen’ but when I saw it, it had two screens. That’s why it was called Stereo. It had two screens and it had different things going on in the screens. There was not really any story and Ian Ewing was in that, I think. So it was sort of a small scene where people would call on people that kind of knew what was expected of the actors and whatnot.
I was in a film that Ian made called Eat Anything and what he did was he just took a camera - and in those days having sync sound, like having audio with your picture, was a new thing and having a portable, what we called a portable camera, which was 20 pounds of camera - he just took it around to his friends that he knew and asked them some questions about “What do you think God is?”or something like that, and he just edited them together. So I was in one section. I was riding my bicycle and they had the car from Goin’ Down the Road - that Chevy - because Ian was the Assistant Editor working with Don Shebib and Shebib couldn’t pay him anything. So, in lieu of payment, he gave them the Chevy. So Ian had this car and it even had the flames and everything on the side. But the good thing about it was that it was a convertible, so it was really good for a camera car. So they were driving in that, and Clark Mackey and Ian were friends, so Clark had the Éclair - the 16mm camera - and the top was down and he was in the back. I was on my bike and I had a neck mic on with a cable - they didn't have wireless mics back in those days - so I had a cable running to the back of the car where someone - I don’t know if it was Ian - was sitting with the Nagra. We’re going down University Avenue and we got to Queens Park and he’s asking me these questions and I'm cycling and talking at the same time. And if I went too slow, the mic would start to pull, like it would tighten, and that would be kind of dangerous. And then, if I went too fast, it would drag on the road, and then there was the danger that I would run it over and then I would get tangled up and then I’d crash. So it's kind of like trying to keep just the right amount of distance between the car and talking away. Then he made the film and my section was on CBC. Then, one day after it screened, someone recognized me on the street. I had my bike and was locking it up or something and someone said ‘I saw you on TV!’ That was pretty fun. Amazing, you know?
You were a founding member and the first chair of the Toronto Filmmaker’s Co-op, which I understand came out of Rochdale College. Can you elaborate on how it got started?
Some people who were smarter and older than me - I was probably 17 or something - they had thought about this idea of a film co-op. The idea of a co-op was very current in those days and I think that it was one of those ideas where it's an alternative system to paying money to do something, but you have a bunch of like-minded people. So I guess somebody from the Board of Education - I just can't remember her name right now - called me up and said they were having a meeting and said I should go. So I went and that was the first meeting of the Co-op. It was in Rochdale and I remember everyone set cross-legged on the floor. We just talked and I don’t remember exactly what we talked about but that was the first meeting and then they started the Co-op. CFMDC was already in existence. Then some time after that, it had been up and running and there was no structure. But they found out that to qualify for the Canada Council, or something like that, they had to have a Board of Directors. They had to have this sort of structure in place. But they were all anarchists and didn’t believe in this kind of structure to do something. They just thought that if you wanted to do it, you do it. You get a bunch of people and you work that out. But they had to do it this way. It was imposed on them from the outside. So, they started a Board and they needed a Chair and, because it was all imposed on them, they said “okay, let’s put Keith as Chair because he's Chinese and that’s like Chairman Mao.” So that was kind of like how I got to be Chair. And I was in absentia. I wasn't even there. I was living up north at the time. So that's how I became the first Chair. They needed a name and so they put me in there. But that was the attitude at the time. It was sort of like The Funnel in later times.
One story I’ve told before about Rochdale is that it was like that. It was supposed to be like a University. It was part of the U of T. It was supposed to be a completely free University and it had it had a Board or something, a counsel, but they were all these anarchists so they would do kind of crazy things. On St. Clair Avenue, there's this building that used to be owned by the Imperial Oil Company, and it was at the top. It was a sort of a tower. And every year at Christmas time they would turn out the lights of the windows so it would spell “Noel.” It was right at the top of the hill and Rochdale was just South of them at the bottom of the hill. So they always felt that they were looking up at Imperial Oil, at “Noel.” So, the Rochdale Board decided they would send another message that they worked out on the North side of Rochdale facing Imperial Oil - they wrote “fuck off.” So they figured out which rooms had to turn out their lights and which rooms had to turn them on. But they were anarchistic, so they didn't always leave their lights on or off, so sometimes you could sort of look at it then it said “fuck off” or something. But it wasn't as clear as Imperial Oil, who really had it perfect. You could really see the “Noel.” But that, to me, sort of exemplifies Rochdale. That was the spirit of what they were doing.
You worked as an assistant to Quebec director Claude Jutra and also as the cinematographer for several films by Michael Snow. Can you tell us about these experiences? How did they affect your work?
They were both people I really idolized. I saw Mon Oncle Antoine, that was a great moment for me. I really felt that this is what a national cinema is. It was a very defining moment for me. Then, I had a chance to work with him. He was in town and he was making his first film in English with Margaret Atwood's book Surfacing. I really want to work on it. I think I was in the Directors Guild at the time, or I joined to do this, but I went and they hired me. I wrote about it in a book, The Reel Asian book. It’s this story… I really wanted to work with Jutra, he was one of my idols.
How old were you at the time?
This time I would be in my 20’s. That film was ’77, I think. I would have been 26 or 25. In those days it was kind of like Mandy. You know mandy.com?
The website for hiring film jobs?
Yes. So they didn’t have the Internet, right? But they had trade papers. So there is a trade paper called… I forgot what it was. Anyways, it was the business paper and it would have ads, and they were looking for Assistant Director for this film Surfacing and Jutra was Director and I thought, “wow.” So I went down for the job interview and the guy kind of looked at me… I was really skinny and sort of small - I weighed under 120 lbs to put it that way. He took me out to the back and he had a pickup truck and a canoe. It was obviously a test that he didn't think I was going to pass. So he told me to put the canoe on the pickup. But I had been living up North when I made a film and I used a canoe everyday. So I put the canoe up perfect and I tied it and I knew how to tie a proper knot and everything. So the guy gave me the job. Then I went into the office and he’s signing me up, and somebody said ‘how come you hired him?’ and the Production Manager said “oh because he’s the best candidate.” So, great! I was in. I went up and I was Jutra’s assistant. I think it was the third AD works with the Director. So it was incredible. Jutra’s so unlike most other directors and, also, a lot of the crew in those days, nobody went to film school. Like, if you were an electrician and worked as an electrician on a film, then I remember on Surfacing, the electrician’s job before that was that he worked at Canadian Tire in the electrical department. So that's how people got into working on feature films in those days. It wasn’t the infrastructure of training. So Jutra, because he was so not very forceful at all, and they used to call him “Cloud” - I don’t know if it’s just because they couldn’t pronounce his name - but he showed me a few things. One time, on just a little connecting scene, he let me stand in his spot and get the feel. So that was really neat.
So how did that affect your own work? Did it influence ways of working? Aesthetically?
I think so. Jutra never shouted. There was always a certain way. I could see how that influences your actors even when you’re not giving them directions because they follow you. If you’re a certain way then they’re like that. I think that’s why Jutra got so much humanity in his performances. Part of it is just the way he is. That was really neat.
What about being the cinematographer for Michael Snow?
I saw Wavelength at the CFMDC because they distributed it. He was living in New York at the time with Joyce Weiland and then they decided to move to Toronto. They came up and Jim Murphy, my friend of the CFMDC, introduced me to Snow when he was in the office. Snow was shooting Rameau's Nephew and he needed background performers. So there was a scene in a bus - and I can't remember the exact scene of the camera because it was so weird - but he needed people to be sitting on the bus as passengers, so I did that. He was shooting on a Bolex and was trying to set up in the aisle of the bus and he was having problems getting it in the spreader, so I just jumped out of my seat and set it up for him. Then after that, he asked me “do you want to help me shoot it?” So I said, “yeah sure” and so I started working with him. I really liked his films and in those days people would be very angry because there wasn't the education and the training that there is now. People would say “I know what a film is and that is not a film and you don't know what you're doing” - that kind of stuff. People who are hired to shoot something and they would say “you don’t fucking know what you’re talking about” and “I'm not going to do that, you're an idiot.” But I wasn't like that. I saw Wavelength at the Distribution Centre and then they showed it at York when I was in my undergrad and the professor that showed it said, “Look, I’ve got to show this film. It's on the course. I’ve got to show it. What can I say?” That's how he set it up. Then he’s playing it and so all the students are hissing and making catcalls and rolling up paper and throwing it at the screen so that you’d be watching it with all these things flying. Jim Anderson and I were both in the same course and we had a lot of ideas about film and I remember sitting there watching Wavelength. You know how it zooms? I remember watching it zoom and all these spit balls are flying, and the hairs on the back of my neck started standing up. You get that moment where you just feel so strongly for that film, and it was in that kind of atmosphere where people were demeaning it and mocking it, and then you realize what a strong vision it is. So I was really happy that I could work with Michael. Mike. He always said “call me Mike.” He was so unpretentious with me. He’ s really nice. So I worked on all of the films he shot in Canada in the 70s. Not La Région Centrale, but all the others I worked on with him. I shot for his book of photographs. So I learned a lot. I really liked him. His thing is like, “you don't really have to make a film like that” and “you don't have to tell stories, there's no way to make a film. You can have your own ideas.” That was really influential. Stuff like that.
You often collaborated with Jim Anderson in your early years as a filmmaker. Can you describe what you both contributed to the filmmaking process?
Working with Jim is still my ideal in a lot of ways. We just knew what each other were thinking. We had this sort of sign language for something. I think you need two people to make a film. That’s the minimum number of people. And that was it. It was me and Jim. We'd be shooting something and he’d be like, “do you want to shoot this or should I shoot it?” and if he had a strong feeling for the film and for the photography then he would shoot it. Otherwise, we just worked it out very quickly, usually very simply. We were just able to do things spontaneously that actually worked. It’s still my ideal. I’ll probably never find a collaborator who I can work with in the same way. Of course, you can never be 17, 18, 19 again. But he would sort of discover stuff and tell me about it and he had his tastes and I learned the alternate universe from him because my tastes were different. I really liked the National Film Board and he would go “Well, ya, Norman McLaren or something” but there were certain of their films that he thought were just boring. Then in my high school yearbook, they asked, “what do you want to do?” or “what’s your goal?” And I wrote, “I want to win an Academy Award” and that was, to Jim, the worst thing anyone could ever say. He didn’t talk to me for a day after that.
We recently screened your films with Anderson, Touched (1970) and Arnold (1971). While Touched utilizes studio, cinema vérité and animation techniques, Arnold follows a narrative structure. What was the driving force behind your experimentation’s with film styles?
Touched was actually a commissioned film. So, it was a job. It was commissioned by the International Red Cross, and they wanted to present it at the UN or something. I think it was using media, like slides and those kinds of things. In those days, that's what media was - to encourage connections between international things. I don't quite know because I wasn't part of that discussion. But it was never presented. We were making a film for it but the program never went forward so they ended up giving us the material. We had a meeting with them and Jim kind of insisted. So they give us a negative and we edited the film into Touched. So we were discovering cinema vérité and we used animation and drawing on film, which we had done before. It was sort of “Marshall McLuhan.” I really liked Marshall McLuhan and I read all his books and everything. So that notion of the tactile - even the title Touched - so that was the idea. I don’t know what else to say about it. A lot of people liked it and it won a documentary award somewhere. It was shown at Sir George Williams University, which is now Concordia. It was shown around a lot. We recorded the soundtrack for it and we cut the negative for it ourselves. That was when I started to feel like I could be a filmmaker. I could be a professional filmmaker.
With Arnold, I don't think we really knew cinema verité, and Arnold is a narrative, so I don't think we drew any distinctions between them. But, Arnold was absurd. The absurdity was sort of the philosophical underpinning, and that sort of came out in Arnold. It was shot in my dad’s store in Chinatown and then Jim had an apartment just a block North on Elm Street, right near Ryerson, probably, and that's where we shot. My dad’s store was sort of like a safe place, and we always hated when students made films and don't use whatever locations are easy. Like, usually the school and they just look terrible. We really hated that. So it was sort of a safe place and also a real location. The other students didn't really understand what we're doing
In an interview with Phil Hoffman, you say that at the time Work, Bike, Eat (1972) was made, “making Canadian films was more like a religion than an industry.” Can you explain what you meant by this?
It hasn't changed, sadly, in certain ways. Especially back then, if you saw a film it was always made somewhere else. That was one of the things I really liked about Goin’ Down the Road. It was shot in Toronto and it was places that I recognized and people I recognized. I thought, “oh, this is what it must be if you live in the United States. This must be your entire movie going experience. These people live in your world and this is a movie about that and you just connect with it.” I think that people at the time had the idea to make Canadian films but there weren't very many examples and it hasn't changed a lot. It was a religion. It was what we wanted to do, but we didn't talk about it that way because it was kind of corny. But we wanted to make films about real life and it had to be here. Life does not always happen elsewhere and that’s what we wanted to do. We wanted to make films here. I remember my film teacher, Jim Bevrdige, used to give me a ride home and one day he said to me “what level of filmmaking do you see yourself working at?” and I said, “I'm happy right where I am now.” Since then, there's been times where I wished I had taken that job working on a TV series, or that kind of thing, because I probably would have made a lot more money.
Are you still making films now?
Yeah, I'm working at the National Film Board right now. I'm doing research for a doc. First time I’ve ever worked with them. And I'm not a doc maker, per se. I’ve done a couple of TV docs, but I don’t see myself as a doc maker. So this is kind of a new area for me.
As an independent filmmaker who has achieved national and international levels of success, how would you describe your contribution to filmmaking in Canada? How pivotal were these early years in the development of your career as a filmmaker?
I think I'm really on the margins and I've always been that way. Plus, I think that most people have never heard of my films. But, I think as an artist and as a creator, I find I am always going back. You can't be 18 again, ever. But I always think back. Those are very formative years. It's like when you're a teen, whatever kind of music you listen to when you're 18 sort of shapes your life, sadly but truly. Thinking like that was sort of pure. You didn't totally know what you were doing and that's sort of what makes it good - those accidents or just being able to see something that you have never seen before.
In the mid 1960s a group of filmmakers, including John Hofsess, Michael Hirsch, Glen McAuley, David Cronenberg, Robert Fothergill, Sam Gupta, and others created what would become the Canadian Film Makers Distribution Co-Op. What was your relationship with these people at the time of the CFMDC’s founding? To what extent were you involved in the CFMDC?
Glen McAuley – I don’t know who he is at all. Were those the founders of the CFMDC?
A few of them were. Some were just filmmakers at the time.
I don’t know all of them. Okay, David Cronenberg and Robert Fothergill. He wasn’t a filmmaker, exactly. But he was really influential. He was a really good guy. Grenada Gazelle - she was in… what’s that collective?... General Idea. Have you ever heard of General Idea? It was an artist collective back in those days - she really liked Bob Fothergill. I was really involved in the CFMDC later. So in the late 60s and early 70s, I was very involved with it. I lived in a co-op house with people who were all working at the CFMDC, and the Film Co-op. Those two groups were very closely linked. They were still in Rochdale at the time and I was a big part of it and later I was on their board for 9 years but that was in the 80s. They seemed to be an important part of the scene. Both their offices were in Rochdale, so there was a lot of crazy stuff around there. When I think about it, I think of the people. Curwen Cox, he was part of the CFMDC, and Sandra Gathercole. I recently watched Goin’ Down the Road again and I saw her name as one of the assistants to Shebib. Curwen Cox was an American expatriate and Jim Murphy was an American expatriate. They were up from the big town. I remember they were telling me that they came to Toronto from New York and they said “okay let's see what this town is” and they walked up Yonge Street and after a while they got past the downtown part and they thought, “oh, is that it?” So they had that kind of attitude. But they also brought a lot to it. I think they were very glad to be in Canada and they really brought a lot to it.
They had a Volkswagen Beetle - the original Volkswagen - and I don't know who owned it but they used to call it the company car, so it was either owned by the Co-op or the CFMDC. One day, they were driving in it and they got to Queens Park and they didn’t know that they were supposed to go around, so they ended up driving through the middle of Queens Park. I just remember the people. I remember the graffiti in the washrooms at Rochdale. Sometimes it was so profound and sometimes very funny. One time, the boy’s washroom was closed for renovations or something, so everyone had to take turns in the girl’s washroom. I remember some of the graffiti was just hilarious. Like, there was a box for used tampons and someone had written on it “vampire teabags.” And then there used to be a Jesus freaks commune or something - that’s what they were called - on the 4th floor, so someone in the washroom had written “Jesus Saves” - just typical - and then someone had written underneath “he gets a rebound, he shoots, he scores.” Then sometimes it would be like Japanese poems. Quite touching.
Do you know John Hofsess’s Redpath 25? Were you at the Cinethon when it was first shown in Toronto?
I heard about it, but wasn’t there. I didn’t hear about it until later. John Hofsess had a magazine… Cinema Canada was it?
He wrote for Take One.
Oh, that’s right, Take One. What was it called?
Redpath 25… Did you hear about that?
Someone else was telling me about that. I didn’t know about it. Those guys were a few years older than me. And in ’67, that was before my time. I didn’t know anything. My introduction into the world was 1967 through Ian Ewing, and he knew Cronenberg and Fothergill and Hofsess, but I didn’t know them.
When you're making films with Jim Anderson, once were they were completed, where were they screened? Was there a community built around get-together screenings?
There wasn’t a lot of festivals or things like how there is now. There wasn’t a lot of venues but they would get shown. Like Arnold was shown at universities. I think it was shown at Sheridan College. They would have special screenings, like one-off screenings. It's kind of fuzzy. It was shown at a modern theatre and there where a lot of people - film students, filmmakers, like young people there. So, at the part of the film where he picks up the knife and he cuts off the amaryllis bulb and people just shrieked, like the whole theatre. They really liked that part. I keep thinking the theatre was central, like the Colonnade or something. It's Avenue Road and Bloor on the south side. Now it's not very happening. I don't know if they have a theatre in there. The Colonnade – I can’t even describe it. It’s on the south side of Bloor between Avenue and Bay and I think the Japan Foundation is in there now. There are stores in there now. But it's like if you go and it just feels like very 70s or 60s or something.
Was there a defining filmmaker or defining film of the period, what would you say it would be?
For a narrative film, I like Goin’ Down the Road, still. But that’s hard because there’s such a broad spectrum. Like of the indie films, there is just so many... I don't think I could say any one film. I liked Goin’ Down the Road and was very impressed by that. That was more mainstream. There’s a Jack Chambers film called Circle. I really liked that and was really influenced by that. All of Michael Snow, like Wavelength, I was really impressed by that.
Were you engaged with any of Joyce Wieland’s work?
Yeah, for sure. I worked with her, too. I shot the video stuff for her film about Tom Thompson. It was done in the 70s - The Far Shore. I really liked her one film called 1933. The way she used text on screen. I really liked that and I used that in one of my films later. In those days when you're working in analog, putting text on screen that was really a big deal and no one had really thought of that. She just put the one “1933” and it was right across the entire film. It was so brilliant in a way because it just plays against all the scenes in the film and sort of creates resonances. I was really impressed with that. Sailboat I was really impressed with. Do you know Betty Ferguson? I was quite good friends with both those people. She did some films and I would shoot the titles for them and the credits. I just used rubber stamps on paper and shot it on Nikon.
How did Betty Ferguson fit into the scene? She was friends with Joyce Wieland and Michael Snow?
Ya, they knew each other from New York. And she was married to Graeme Ferguson who was a well-known Doc guy, and they actually founded IMAX. So they were really smart. There was an Australian patent that had a loop. So the 70mm film, it’s quite wide. In order to move celluloid films you use a claw that pulls it down and then you have sprockets that take up. But, because it’s so heavy, it meant that the print would wear out very quickly, with the claw pulling down. So there was an Australian patent called the Rolling Loop. So instead of using a claw, the movement of the film is like when you pick up the end of a skipping rope and go like that [flicks wrist] and you see a wave go down. So that’s what was used to move the film. It would do that [flicks wrist] and create a wave and the next frame would go in place over the aperture, over the gate. It's very gentle. When you go to see an IMAX film you never see scratches and that's what made IMAX possible. So they had this patent, it was an Australian patent that they just knew that would be the key. They just had a few thousand dollars or something and they had to get money to get this thing going. So they called up an investor, like some big rich person who’d invest, and used the money that they had to rent the penthouse, like the most expensive hotel room in a hotel in New York, and they told the investor “okay, meet us there.” They spent ever cent they had to rent this hotel room and then the investor came in and they explained the IMAX thing to him. They owned the patent. They had acquired this patent and that was the key to the whole thing. So this guy thought “these people must know what they're doing.” So they got IMAX going that way. So Joyce and Betty are really close friends. I used to go out there. She had a farm in Fergus, Ontario. She’s still there. I know her son. I used to hang out there sometimes.
Is there anything else you want to add?
I’m really impressed that you guys are interested in this stuff. It’s important to me that you would even know about these people and events. People don’t know about it at all. But you can definitely see a progression. Like, a director progression just from David Cronenberg meeting with Bob Fothergill and just deciding to show films.
Keith Lock: The filmmaking scene was really small. There were only a few people who were making films at the time and they were all pretty well independent, I think. Expo ‘67 sort of created a consciousness for film. The National Film Board had a pavilion called Labyrinth where they showed a lot of films. It was sort of like a new way of thinking about films and I think that inspired a lot of people. I was a student in 1967 at North Toronto Collegiate. That's where I met Jim Anderson. One day we decided we would do a film instead of a written project and so that's how we started making films.
Jim was very interested in films and filmmaking and his locker was right beside mine and that's how I got interested. I was interested in photography before that and he was really interested in film. We took a film course in a place called The Three Schools, which was sort of a private film school in the Annex and we met this guy, Ian Ewing, and he was like no one we ever met and he really inspired us. He was one of the first hippies we ever met. Most of the other people in the course dropped it because they just couldn't go with his strange ideas – his “hippiness.” He had a class after school on the subway where we rode up and down on the subway and talked about film. It was the idea of being part of the world rather than being part of the classroom and set aside. Another time we went to theatres on Yonge Street that would play triple bills and a lot of times people in the audience would just go there to get warmed up. They were sort of street people. It was this very strange kind of place and he took us there and I saw really trashy films. I remember the title of one was called the Mini Skirt Mob. I think it was a Roger Corman film or something. But [Ewing’s] notion was that everything was film, everything was cinema and it was all worth. You have to experience everything and he said never walk out in a film because that's your problem if you don't like a film.
He once told me that 20 minutes of black leader would tell me a lot about the inside of your head. He was very inspiring. Black leader is just like just totally unexposed film, right? So he said if I gave him 20 minutes of black leader, it would tell him a lot about my thoughts as a filmmaker.
In those days there was no division between experimental and narrative and documentary. It was all just everyone doing things. I remember going into the CFMDC in their first year. I think they started in ‘67 so that must have been the first year. And we walk into the room in Rochdale – [Ewing’s] girlfriend was the coordinator or something, Clare Myers - and we had a folding table and under the table there were two cardboard boxes with films in them and that was our entire collection. He showed us David Cronenberg’s From The Drain. Other films were much more experimental, just sort of notions. People would just sort of make films. That was the distribution center.
There were a lot of Americans in Canada because of the Vietnam War and they were an influence because they brought a lot of fresh ideas - anti-war ideas and also the idea of collectives, things like that. Jim Murphy, for instance, from New York, and there was a much bigger centre there. You had Jonas Mekas and they had a lot of other film culture things that were new to Toronto.
I remember when I was a teenager - because you're asking about what the scene was like - everyone was just trying to make their own way. They didn’t really have models on how to make films, or what does a filmmaker do, or anything like that. You probably know Clarke Mackey. He made a film called the Only Thing You Know - he teaches at Queens - and he was just a couple years older than me and when he was a teenager he made a film on nothing days and it was really a short film with no story. He was a young person and he made this feature. I think it might've been through Ian Ewing, Jim Anderson and I made a super 8 film that won an award in Amsterdam, so we won the best super 8 for animated film and Jim won the Grand Prix, so those two big awards, both from the same kind of people. That opened a lot of doors. So no one really knew what they were doing. They're all trying to make it up as they go along, in a sense, and Clark is making this feature film. He had nude scenes, or a love scene or something, with the actors in no clothes. So his idea was, to make it egalitarian, the entire crew had no clothes. But, because I was a teenager, I wasn’t allowed in the room and I had to sit outside, and he showed me how to adjust / modulate the sound. So I’m sitting in front of the sound recorder, the Nagra, and I had to balance the needle, and they had feed from the microphones from the room that they’re shooting in, and they're all naked and I’m sitting there, and he showed me how to record sound. His whole thing was there is no mystique about making films. You just do the things and you make film. There's no mystique. He taught me on that day how to balance a needle - to keep it out of the red and keep it above a certain number and you’re fine. So I just sat there, chasing the needle and I recorded sound for him over a day and they're all naked in there. It’s really funny to think back on it because now they don't do stuff like that. Now they sort of know there is a certain practice that you do. Like, “okay now we’re shooting a love scene”, “okay”, well, the actors are naked or they have underwear on or something but everyone else just stands around in their clothes. It’s just another day, kind of thing. So, it was pretty interesting, very exciting, very exciting to be part of it and to be included. That was really important to me.
You said everyone was just trying to figure it out. Did any of the filmmakers have any specific goals? Why were people drawn to making films?
Why were people drawn to making a film? That's a good question. That was more like a calling. You just kind of got the bug to do it and there were a few examples, like Don Shebib’s Goin’ Down the Road from... was that 1971? Or 69? I saw that in my last year of high school. That was an example of a successful film and that was shot completely indie - what we would call indie today - but that’s how the film industry was at the time.
So maybe people wanted to be like Shebib but they also wanted to have their own kind of form, like Cronenberg made Stereo. When I saw Stereo, it had two screens and people are saying ‘oh no that's not what it was, it was just on one screen’ but when I saw it, it had two screens. That’s why it was called Stereo. It had two screens and it had different things going on in the screens. There was not really any story and Ian Ewing was in that, I think. So it was sort of a small scene where people would call on people that kind of knew what was expected of the actors and whatnot.
I was in a film that Ian made called Eat Anything and what he did was he just took a camera - and in those days having sync sound, like having audio with your picture, was a new thing and having a portable, what we called a portable camera, which was 20 pounds of camera - he just took it around to his friends that he knew and asked them some questions about “What do you think God is?”or something like that, and he just edited them together. So I was in one section. I was riding my bicycle and they had the car from Goin’ Down the Road - that Chevy - because Ian was the Assistant Editor working with Don Shebib and Shebib couldn’t pay him anything. So, in lieu of payment, he gave them the Chevy. So Ian had this car and it even had the flames and everything on the side. But the good thing about it was that it was a convertible, so it was really good for a camera car. So they were driving in that, and Clark Mackey and Ian were friends, so Clark had the Éclair - the 16mm camera - and the top was down and he was in the back. I was on my bike and I had a neck mic on with a cable - they didn't have wireless mics back in those days - so I had a cable running to the back of the car where someone - I don’t know if it was Ian - was sitting with the Nagra. We’re going down University Avenue and we got to Queens Park and he’s asking me these questions and I'm cycling and talking at the same time. And if I went too slow, the mic would start to pull, like it would tighten, and that would be kind of dangerous. And then, if I went too fast, it would drag on the road, and then there was the danger that I would run it over and then I would get tangled up and then I’d crash. So it's kind of like trying to keep just the right amount of distance between the car and talking away. Then he made the film and my section was on CBC. Then, one day after it screened, someone recognized me on the street. I had my bike and was locking it up or something and someone said ‘I saw you on TV!’ That was pretty fun. Amazing, you know?
You were a founding member and the first chair of the Toronto Filmmaker’s Co-op, which I understand came out of Rochdale College. Can you elaborate on how it got started?
Some people who were smarter and older than me - I was probably 17 or something - they had thought about this idea of a film co-op. The idea of a co-op was very current in those days and I think that it was one of those ideas where it's an alternative system to paying money to do something, but you have a bunch of like-minded people. So I guess somebody from the Board of Education - I just can't remember her name right now - called me up and said they were having a meeting and said I should go. So I went and that was the first meeting of the Co-op. It was in Rochdale and I remember everyone set cross-legged on the floor. We just talked and I don’t remember exactly what we talked about but that was the first meeting and then they started the Co-op. CFMDC was already in existence. Then some time after that, it had been up and running and there was no structure. But they found out that to qualify for the Canada Council, or something like that, they had to have a Board of Directors. They had to have this sort of structure in place. But they were all anarchists and didn’t believe in this kind of structure to do something. They just thought that if you wanted to do it, you do it. You get a bunch of people and you work that out. But they had to do it this way. It was imposed on them from the outside. So, they started a Board and they needed a Chair and, because it was all imposed on them, they said “okay, let’s put Keith as Chair because he's Chinese and that’s like Chairman Mao.” So that was kind of like how I got to be Chair. And I was in absentia. I wasn't even there. I was living up north at the time. So that's how I became the first Chair. They needed a name and so they put me in there. But that was the attitude at the time. It was sort of like The Funnel in later times.
One story I’ve told before about Rochdale is that it was like that. It was supposed to be like a University. It was part of the U of T. It was supposed to be a completely free University and it had it had a Board or something, a counsel, but they were all these anarchists so they would do kind of crazy things. On St. Clair Avenue, there's this building that used to be owned by the Imperial Oil Company, and it was at the top. It was a sort of a tower. And every year at Christmas time they would turn out the lights of the windows so it would spell “Noel.” It was right at the top of the hill and Rochdale was just South of them at the bottom of the hill. So they always felt that they were looking up at Imperial Oil, at “Noel.” So, the Rochdale Board decided they would send another message that they worked out on the North side of Rochdale facing Imperial Oil - they wrote “fuck off.” So they figured out which rooms had to turn out their lights and which rooms had to turn them on. But they were anarchistic, so they didn't always leave their lights on or off, so sometimes you could sort of look at it then it said “fuck off” or something. But it wasn't as clear as Imperial Oil, who really had it perfect. You could really see the “Noel.” But that, to me, sort of exemplifies Rochdale. That was the spirit of what they were doing.
You worked as an assistant to Quebec director Claude Jutra and also as the cinematographer for several films by Michael Snow. Can you tell us about these experiences? How did they affect your work?
They were both people I really idolized. I saw Mon Oncle Antoine, that was a great moment for me. I really felt that this is what a national cinema is. It was a very defining moment for me. Then, I had a chance to work with him. He was in town and he was making his first film in English with Margaret Atwood's book Surfacing. I really want to work on it. I think I was in the Directors Guild at the time, or I joined to do this, but I went and they hired me. I wrote about it in a book, The Reel Asian book. It’s this story… I really wanted to work with Jutra, he was one of my idols.
How old were you at the time?
This time I would be in my 20’s. That film was ’77, I think. I would have been 26 or 25. In those days it was kind of like Mandy. You know mandy.com?
The website for hiring film jobs?
Yes. So they didn’t have the Internet, right? But they had trade papers. So there is a trade paper called… I forgot what it was. Anyways, it was the business paper and it would have ads, and they were looking for Assistant Director for this film Surfacing and Jutra was Director and I thought, “wow.” So I went down for the job interview and the guy kind of looked at me… I was really skinny and sort of small - I weighed under 120 lbs to put it that way. He took me out to the back and he had a pickup truck and a canoe. It was obviously a test that he didn't think I was going to pass. So he told me to put the canoe on the pickup. But I had been living up North when I made a film and I used a canoe everyday. So I put the canoe up perfect and I tied it and I knew how to tie a proper knot and everything. So the guy gave me the job. Then I went into the office and he’s signing me up, and somebody said ‘how come you hired him?’ and the Production Manager said “oh because he’s the best candidate.” So, great! I was in. I went up and I was Jutra’s assistant. I think it was the third AD works with the Director. So it was incredible. Jutra’s so unlike most other directors and, also, a lot of the crew in those days, nobody went to film school. Like, if you were an electrician and worked as an electrician on a film, then I remember on Surfacing, the electrician’s job before that was that he worked at Canadian Tire in the electrical department. So that's how people got into working on feature films in those days. It wasn’t the infrastructure of training. So Jutra, because he was so not very forceful at all, and they used to call him “Cloud” - I don’t know if it’s just because they couldn’t pronounce his name - but he showed me a few things. One time, on just a little connecting scene, he let me stand in his spot and get the feel. So that was really neat.
So how did that affect your own work? Did it influence ways of working? Aesthetically?
I think so. Jutra never shouted. There was always a certain way. I could see how that influences your actors even when you’re not giving them directions because they follow you. If you’re a certain way then they’re like that. I think that’s why Jutra got so much humanity in his performances. Part of it is just the way he is. That was really neat.
What about being the cinematographer for Michael Snow?
I saw Wavelength at the CFMDC because they distributed it. He was living in New York at the time with Joyce Weiland and then they decided to move to Toronto. They came up and Jim Murphy, my friend of the CFMDC, introduced me to Snow when he was in the office. Snow was shooting Rameau's Nephew and he needed background performers. So there was a scene in a bus - and I can't remember the exact scene of the camera because it was so weird - but he needed people to be sitting on the bus as passengers, so I did that. He was shooting on a Bolex and was trying to set up in the aisle of the bus and he was having problems getting it in the spreader, so I just jumped out of my seat and set it up for him. Then after that, he asked me “do you want to help me shoot it?” So I said, “yeah sure” and so I started working with him. I really liked his films and in those days people would be very angry because there wasn't the education and the training that there is now. People would say “I know what a film is and that is not a film and you don't know what you're doing” - that kind of stuff. People who are hired to shoot something and they would say “you don’t fucking know what you’re talking about” and “I'm not going to do that, you're an idiot.” But I wasn't like that. I saw Wavelength at the Distribution Centre and then they showed it at York when I was in my undergrad and the professor that showed it said, “Look, I’ve got to show this film. It's on the course. I’ve got to show it. What can I say?” That's how he set it up. Then he’s playing it and so all the students are hissing and making catcalls and rolling up paper and throwing it at the screen so that you’d be watching it with all these things flying. Jim Anderson and I were both in the same course and we had a lot of ideas about film and I remember sitting there watching Wavelength. You know how it zooms? I remember watching it zoom and all these spit balls are flying, and the hairs on the back of my neck started standing up. You get that moment where you just feel so strongly for that film, and it was in that kind of atmosphere where people were demeaning it and mocking it, and then you realize what a strong vision it is. So I was really happy that I could work with Michael. Mike. He always said “call me Mike.” He was so unpretentious with me. He’ s really nice. So I worked on all of the films he shot in Canada in the 70s. Not La Région Centrale, but all the others I worked on with him. I shot for his book of photographs. So I learned a lot. I really liked him. His thing is like, “you don't really have to make a film like that” and “you don't have to tell stories, there's no way to make a film. You can have your own ideas.” That was really influential. Stuff like that.
You often collaborated with Jim Anderson in your early years as a filmmaker. Can you describe what you both contributed to the filmmaking process?
Working with Jim is still my ideal in a lot of ways. We just knew what each other were thinking. We had this sort of sign language for something. I think you need two people to make a film. That’s the minimum number of people. And that was it. It was me and Jim. We'd be shooting something and he’d be like, “do you want to shoot this or should I shoot it?” and if he had a strong feeling for the film and for the photography then he would shoot it. Otherwise, we just worked it out very quickly, usually very simply. We were just able to do things spontaneously that actually worked. It’s still my ideal. I’ll probably never find a collaborator who I can work with in the same way. Of course, you can never be 17, 18, 19 again. But he would sort of discover stuff and tell me about it and he had his tastes and I learned the alternate universe from him because my tastes were different. I really liked the National Film Board and he would go “Well, ya, Norman McLaren or something” but there were certain of their films that he thought were just boring. Then in my high school yearbook, they asked, “what do you want to do?” or “what’s your goal?” And I wrote, “I want to win an Academy Award” and that was, to Jim, the worst thing anyone could ever say. He didn’t talk to me for a day after that.
We recently screened your films with Anderson, Touched (1970) and Arnold (1971). While Touched utilizes studio, cinema vérité and animation techniques, Arnold follows a narrative structure. What was the driving force behind your experimentation’s with film styles?
Touched was actually a commissioned film. So, it was a job. It was commissioned by the International Red Cross, and they wanted to present it at the UN or something. I think it was using media, like slides and those kinds of things. In those days, that's what media was - to encourage connections between international things. I don't quite know because I wasn't part of that discussion. But it was never presented. We were making a film for it but the program never went forward so they ended up giving us the material. We had a meeting with them and Jim kind of insisted. So they give us a negative and we edited the film into Touched. So we were discovering cinema vérité and we used animation and drawing on film, which we had done before. It was sort of “Marshall McLuhan.” I really liked Marshall McLuhan and I read all his books and everything. So that notion of the tactile - even the title Touched - so that was the idea. I don’t know what else to say about it. A lot of people liked it and it won a documentary award somewhere. It was shown at Sir George Williams University, which is now Concordia. It was shown around a lot. We recorded the soundtrack for it and we cut the negative for it ourselves. That was when I started to feel like I could be a filmmaker. I could be a professional filmmaker.
With Arnold, I don't think we really knew cinema verité, and Arnold is a narrative, so I don't think we drew any distinctions between them. But, Arnold was absurd. The absurdity was sort of the philosophical underpinning, and that sort of came out in Arnold. It was shot in my dad’s store in Chinatown and then Jim had an apartment just a block North on Elm Street, right near Ryerson, probably, and that's where we shot. My dad’s store was sort of like a safe place, and we always hated when students made films and don't use whatever locations are easy. Like, usually the school and they just look terrible. We really hated that. So it was sort of a safe place and also a real location. The other students didn't really understand what we're doing
In an interview with Phil Hoffman, you say that at the time Work, Bike, Eat (1972) was made, “making Canadian films was more like a religion than an industry.” Can you explain what you meant by this?
It hasn't changed, sadly, in certain ways. Especially back then, if you saw a film it was always made somewhere else. That was one of the things I really liked about Goin’ Down the Road. It was shot in Toronto and it was places that I recognized and people I recognized. I thought, “oh, this is what it must be if you live in the United States. This must be your entire movie going experience. These people live in your world and this is a movie about that and you just connect with it.” I think that people at the time had the idea to make Canadian films but there weren't very many examples and it hasn't changed a lot. It was a religion. It was what we wanted to do, but we didn't talk about it that way because it was kind of corny. But we wanted to make films about real life and it had to be here. Life does not always happen elsewhere and that’s what we wanted to do. We wanted to make films here. I remember my film teacher, Jim Bevrdige, used to give me a ride home and one day he said to me “what level of filmmaking do you see yourself working at?” and I said, “I'm happy right where I am now.” Since then, there's been times where I wished I had taken that job working on a TV series, or that kind of thing, because I probably would have made a lot more money.
Are you still making films now?
Yeah, I'm working at the National Film Board right now. I'm doing research for a doc. First time I’ve ever worked with them. And I'm not a doc maker, per se. I’ve done a couple of TV docs, but I don’t see myself as a doc maker. So this is kind of a new area for me.
As an independent filmmaker who has achieved national and international levels of success, how would you describe your contribution to filmmaking in Canada? How pivotal were these early years in the development of your career as a filmmaker?
I think I'm really on the margins and I've always been that way. Plus, I think that most people have never heard of my films. But, I think as an artist and as a creator, I find I am always going back. You can't be 18 again, ever. But I always think back. Those are very formative years. It's like when you're a teen, whatever kind of music you listen to when you're 18 sort of shapes your life, sadly but truly. Thinking like that was sort of pure. You didn't totally know what you were doing and that's sort of what makes it good - those accidents or just being able to see something that you have never seen before.
In the mid 1960s a group of filmmakers, including John Hofsess, Michael Hirsch, Glen McAuley, David Cronenberg, Robert Fothergill, Sam Gupta, and others created what would become the Canadian Film Makers Distribution Co-Op. What was your relationship with these people at the time of the CFMDC’s founding? To what extent were you involved in the CFMDC?
Glen McAuley – I don’t know who he is at all. Were those the founders of the CFMDC?
A few of them were. Some were just filmmakers at the time.
I don’t know all of them. Okay, David Cronenberg and Robert Fothergill. He wasn’t a filmmaker, exactly. But he was really influential. He was a really good guy. Grenada Gazelle - she was in… what’s that collective?... General Idea. Have you ever heard of General Idea? It was an artist collective back in those days - she really liked Bob Fothergill. I was really involved in the CFMDC later. So in the late 60s and early 70s, I was very involved with it. I lived in a co-op house with people who were all working at the CFMDC, and the Film Co-op. Those two groups were very closely linked. They were still in Rochdale at the time and I was a big part of it and later I was on their board for 9 years but that was in the 80s. They seemed to be an important part of the scene. Both their offices were in Rochdale, so there was a lot of crazy stuff around there. When I think about it, I think of the people. Curwen Cox, he was part of the CFMDC, and Sandra Gathercole. I recently watched Goin’ Down the Road again and I saw her name as one of the assistants to Shebib. Curwen Cox was an American expatriate and Jim Murphy was an American expatriate. They were up from the big town. I remember they were telling me that they came to Toronto from New York and they said “okay let's see what this town is” and they walked up Yonge Street and after a while they got past the downtown part and they thought, “oh, is that it?” So they had that kind of attitude. But they also brought a lot to it. I think they were very glad to be in Canada and they really brought a lot to it.
They had a Volkswagen Beetle - the original Volkswagen - and I don't know who owned it but they used to call it the company car, so it was either owned by the Co-op or the CFMDC. One day, they were driving in it and they got to Queens Park and they didn’t know that they were supposed to go around, so they ended up driving through the middle of Queens Park. I just remember the people. I remember the graffiti in the washrooms at Rochdale. Sometimes it was so profound and sometimes very funny. One time, the boy’s washroom was closed for renovations or something, so everyone had to take turns in the girl’s washroom. I remember some of the graffiti was just hilarious. Like, there was a box for used tampons and someone had written on it “vampire teabags.” And then there used to be a Jesus freaks commune or something - that’s what they were called - on the 4th floor, so someone in the washroom had written “Jesus Saves” - just typical - and then someone had written underneath “he gets a rebound, he shoots, he scores.” Then sometimes it would be like Japanese poems. Quite touching.
Do you know John Hofsess’s Redpath 25? Were you at the Cinethon when it was first shown in Toronto?
I heard about it, but wasn’t there. I didn’t hear about it until later. John Hofsess had a magazine… Cinema Canada was it?
He wrote for Take One.
Oh, that’s right, Take One. What was it called?
Redpath 25… Did you hear about that?
Someone else was telling me about that. I didn’t know about it. Those guys were a few years older than me. And in ’67, that was before my time. I didn’t know anything. My introduction into the world was 1967 through Ian Ewing, and he knew Cronenberg and Fothergill and Hofsess, but I didn’t know them.
When you're making films with Jim Anderson, once were they were completed, where were they screened? Was there a community built around get-together screenings?
There wasn’t a lot of festivals or things like how there is now. There wasn’t a lot of venues but they would get shown. Like Arnold was shown at universities. I think it was shown at Sheridan College. They would have special screenings, like one-off screenings. It's kind of fuzzy. It was shown at a modern theatre and there where a lot of people - film students, filmmakers, like young people there. So, at the part of the film where he picks up the knife and he cuts off the amaryllis bulb and people just shrieked, like the whole theatre. They really liked that part. I keep thinking the theatre was central, like the Colonnade or something. It's Avenue Road and Bloor on the south side. Now it's not very happening. I don't know if they have a theatre in there. The Colonnade – I can’t even describe it. It’s on the south side of Bloor between Avenue and Bay and I think the Japan Foundation is in there now. There are stores in there now. But it's like if you go and it just feels like very 70s or 60s or something.
Was there a defining filmmaker or defining film of the period, what would you say it would be?
For a narrative film, I like Goin’ Down the Road, still. But that’s hard because there’s such a broad spectrum. Like of the indie films, there is just so many... I don't think I could say any one film. I liked Goin’ Down the Road and was very impressed by that. That was more mainstream. There’s a Jack Chambers film called Circle. I really liked that and was really influenced by that. All of Michael Snow, like Wavelength, I was really impressed by that.
Were you engaged with any of Joyce Wieland’s work?
Yeah, for sure. I worked with her, too. I shot the video stuff for her film about Tom Thompson. It was done in the 70s - The Far Shore. I really liked her one film called 1933. The way she used text on screen. I really liked that and I used that in one of my films later. In those days when you're working in analog, putting text on screen that was really a big deal and no one had really thought of that. She just put the one “1933” and it was right across the entire film. It was so brilliant in a way because it just plays against all the scenes in the film and sort of creates resonances. I was really impressed with that. Sailboat I was really impressed with. Do you know Betty Ferguson? I was quite good friends with both those people. She did some films and I would shoot the titles for them and the credits. I just used rubber stamps on paper and shot it on Nikon.
How did Betty Ferguson fit into the scene? She was friends with Joyce Wieland and Michael Snow?
Ya, they knew each other from New York. And she was married to Graeme Ferguson who was a well-known Doc guy, and they actually founded IMAX. So they were really smart. There was an Australian patent that had a loop. So the 70mm film, it’s quite wide. In order to move celluloid films you use a claw that pulls it down and then you have sprockets that take up. But, because it’s so heavy, it meant that the print would wear out very quickly, with the claw pulling down. So there was an Australian patent called the Rolling Loop. So instead of using a claw, the movement of the film is like when you pick up the end of a skipping rope and go like that [flicks wrist] and you see a wave go down. So that’s what was used to move the film. It would do that [flicks wrist] and create a wave and the next frame would go in place over the aperture, over the gate. It's very gentle. When you go to see an IMAX film you never see scratches and that's what made IMAX possible. So they had this patent, it was an Australian patent that they just knew that would be the key. They just had a few thousand dollars or something and they had to get money to get this thing going. So they called up an investor, like some big rich person who’d invest, and used the money that they had to rent the penthouse, like the most expensive hotel room in a hotel in New York, and they told the investor “okay, meet us there.” They spent ever cent they had to rent this hotel room and then the investor came in and they explained the IMAX thing to him. They owned the patent. They had acquired this patent and that was the key to the whole thing. So this guy thought “these people must know what they're doing.” So they got IMAX going that way. So Joyce and Betty are really close friends. I used to go out there. She had a farm in Fergus, Ontario. She’s still there. I know her son. I used to hang out there sometimes.
Is there anything else you want to add?
I’m really impressed that you guys are interested in this stuff. It’s important to me that you would even know about these people and events. People don’t know about it at all. But you can definitely see a progression. Like, a director progression just from David Cronenberg meeting with Bob Fothergill and just deciding to show films.