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65 One on One: Charles Burnett and Charles Lane Charles Burnett and Charles Lane/1991 Published in American Film, August 1991, 40–43. © 1991 American Film Institute. Reprinted by permission. “I saw one of Charles Lane’s films, A Place in Time, in Paris in 1980. There was a special program of Black American films screened at the FNAC. His film went over big. I met him a year later at the Berlin International Film Festival. He was wearing a trench coat that made him look like Humphrey Bogart. He had become very much the business man, chain-smoking, Scotch on the rocks at 7 a.m, with business cards that looked like something one would give out on Halloween night. He had just obtained a lawyer who was going to help him with a film he had been wanting to do for ages, Thou Shalt Not Miscegenate [now in development as Skins], which has become quite the theme of several films being made now. The sad part was that it took so long for him to get his next film off the ground. He is a filmmaker who should have been making films right after he did A Place in Time. Viewers are in for something special now that Charles is finally on the scene.”—Charles Burnett “I first met Charles Burnett in 1981, at the Berlin International Film Festival. He was presenting his award-winning film Killer of Sheep. I found Charles to be quiet, gifted, and confident. The following year I borrowed five hundred dollars from Charles to pay my rent and phone bill. Eight years later, in 1990, I managed to pay him back—because that’s the kind of great guy I am. In all sincerity, Charles Burnett is a gem of a friend.”—Charles Lane 66 charles burnett: inter views Lane: Let’s start by discussing favorite films. I’ll start by asking you . . . Burnett: What my favorite film is? Well, one comes to mind recently because it was just shown. It’s L’Atalante by Jean Vigo. It is a film I marvel at. You wonder, how could someone construct a film like that, with that vision? I find it is very difficult just to conceive of something like that. That’s one reason why I like it, and secondly, because it works on all levels and it is just very cinematic, just poetry. Lane: Do you have a favorite type of film? Burnett: No, not really. Whatever works. I like neorealism a lot, because the subject matter and style of those films are so close to the kind of things that I’m interested in. And because of the fact that they speak about the same kind of situation, of this physical notion of getting at the truth. Lane: There are three at the top of my list, and they are Hollywood movies. One would be North by Northwest, you know, the Hitchcock film. To me that film was perfect in terms of combining the elements that I like—comedy, action, drama, romance, good musical score. San Francisco is another Hollywood movie from 1936, from MGM in its heyday. I like that because it has a big, historical . . . Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald . . . like a bit of a musical. But it is also about the history of San Francisco in the 1906 earthquake, and it is about religion and it’s about opera, and it’s, like, a conglomeration of many things. And it all comes out nicely in the end—I find that fascinating. The third is a 1969 movie, Midnight Cowboy, which is not a Hollywood movie because no one wanted to make it. It’s like Dances with Wolves— no one wanted to touch that movie. It was made in spite of everybody, and it kicked big butt. It has a heartfelt sincerity about it, and comedy. The thing about comedy is that I just discovered it. Over the years, it was never the main thing in film that I liked. Burnett: Really? Lane: Yeah. Burnett: It’s strange because, after seeing A Place in Time, you think of Charlie Chaplin’s Gold Rush and Limelight. Lane: I started out in film as a dramatist . . . Burnett: Yeah. Lane: . . . Serious issues. I did not respect comedy, and I did not respect black-and-white and silent films. I just did [A Place in Time] a challenge. Because I respected Hitchcock, I understood the power of visual filmmaking and certainly the...

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