Arthur Penn: New Edition

Inevitable Violence

Arthur Penn in Canada Movie 18 (Winter 1970–71): 26–36. This interview was conducted on three successive mornings in November 1969 during car journeys to shooting locations for Little Big Man. Text approved by Arthur Penn. RW: Hitchcock said that for him the film is complete with the finalizing of the shooting script. Welles said that for him the essential creative act takes place in the cutting room. Where do you consider that you make your films? AP: I would think more in the cutting room. I think it was George Stevens who said that the filmmaking process could be divided into three parts, the preparation of the script, the actual shooting , and the editorial process, and that the first and third were the more important. I would subscribe to that. The actual shooting, although sometimes passionate and very rewarding, is, however, the making of a kind of basic raw material from which one will eventually extract a film. That is absolutely not true in Hitchcock’s case. He goes in and his shot is defined to carry out the intention of an idea, and it does, usually, awesomely well. But that doesn’t seem to be the case for me. RW: There is far more cutting in Alice’s Restaurant than in your previous films. AP: It is related to the nature of the material. There is a lack of linearity . There isn’t a steady scene in Alice’s which is self-contained and carries through to its own intention. There is a constant group of parallel themes which are running off at the same kind Arthur Penn in Canada 119 of nervous time, and I think the necessity to switch back and forth, and not to stay with one experience to its termination accounts for that. I think it is more a result rather than an intention or a deliberate technique. RW: How far do you supervise the editing of your films, and how far is the editing already in your head when you’re shooting? AP: Well, the editing in a certain sense is in my head—one can’t really shoot without having a kind of final assemblage in one’s head. But, for instance, I am at this moment shooting the latter portion of Little Big Man on a cold snowy day in Canada, and it is difficult for me to predict at this moment what the rhythm of this scene should be at the end of, say, two and a half hours of film. I could give an educated guess, but I wouldn’t want that to be my sole option when the time came to put the film together ; consequently, there are other variables which I shoot, in terms of close ups and other angles, which would give me the opportunity to alter the rhythm of a scene. I am becoming more and more taken with rhythm in film—not any kind of deeply advanced theory but something visceral. And to answer your question about the editing room—I don’t in that sense supervise cut by cut, since I have an extremely brilliant editor [Dede Allen], but what I do say to her very often is “That’s not happening right, that’s just not up at the tempo I think it should be,” and we often argue back and forth, where she’ll say, “But isn’t this the value that you think most important?” and I’ll say, “No, I don’t think it’s most important. I think it’s a value, but I don’t think it’s as important as, let us say, a kind of reckless energy at this point that should be accumulating in the film, that isn’t, and if we stop to make so fine a point we’re going to lose that kind of thrust.” So in that way I participate in the editing, but it’s really an ongoing dialogue between Dede and me for months, and it’s frequently heated, but always a loving one. RW: The way in which you shoot—cutting each scene down into several pieces, filming each piece in fairly long takes, but several 120 robin wood times with the camera position changed with different lenses for close-up, medium shot. . . . Is this common practice now as a way of shooting? What advantages do you feel it has? AP: I think it...