On the Pole
Quotes from A CONVERSATION WITH JAY LEYDA
Leipzig 1964
My need for a producer:
RL: I’ve always felt slightly guilty about the fact that I haven’t the foggiest idea what I want to make a film on. Or I may have a definite idea and it doesn’t come to pass and somebody says “go make a film on such and such” and I think well that’s a stupid story and then get fascinated in trying to make a film out of it; trying to solve it as a film problem. For instance I was appalled when we went to make Eddie Sachs and the Indianapolis Race.
JL: I don’t know about that.
RL: I thought of course what a stupid idea -- I don’t want to film a motor-car race -- No -- No -- you know how it is -- what the hell for? So we go out there and Drew dug out a leading driver who turned out to be a compulsive talker. Most of the drivers just sit around sort of chewing their cud. But this one guy, we were riding in his car with him and didn’t know what to shoot -- we were supposed to make a little ten-minute film... but we were driving with him and his wife... I think they were going to a luncheon and we thought we ought to photograph this luncheon. He was driving, oh, about eighty miles an hour on a highway -- and he just, without prompting, started to describe how you drive the Indianapolis Race. He was sort of going out of his mind. He’d say “Then you know I come into the straightway and I do something crazy -- I take my hands off the wheel and I flex my fingers and as I come into the turn I put my foot all the way down and I go uhmph like that and I go... and the front wheels start to slip and I go round the curve whoooo” and in the film itself it’s absolutely wild. I was in the back seat and Drew up front with the recorder and we started to shoot and shoot.
JL: Your sound camera was that ready?
RL: But we had it with us -- I only had to pick it up.
JL: Fine.
RL: And we started to get this insane film. Wild things happened, like his wife describing with bliss “How wonderful” she said “if you ever have an accident, have it in Indianapolis, They have such wonderful plastic surgeons. Why, they even put the eyelash holes back into his eyelids”.
JL: It sounds like more than ten minutes.
RL: No, it ended up an hour film. They went back the next year and the next. Always a camera on her. There was a five-car crack-up right in front of her. And she’s just standing there waiting for Eddie. She doesn’t give a damn about any of the others, you know, wheels flying -- while she was watching and finally she decides to scream as she saw him heading for the smash. And you see him, with the other camera shooting on him, you see him just swerving through it and as he goes he waves. What goings on! All in actual time with just the two cameras. Those are these crazy flukes.
JL: Well the producer had nothing to do with that?
RL: Well, in the sense that I have never...
JL: Oh I see, the assignment couldn’t have come from you.
Pause
RL: There is a big difference between the enacted films and this. For example, in “On The Pole”, the first Edie Sachs film, just before the race begins, with three hundred thousand spectators watching, Edie Sachs gets into his car and they always have a moment of silence in memory of those that have given their lives here (Edie gave his life last year, he was killed last summer in the race, burned to death) -- so everybody bows their heads and they play some sort of mawkish music on the PA system. Well Edie is in his car and there is this sentimental ballad, Carry Me Back to Old Indiana or something, sung by the local baritone and Edie sits there in his car crying. Then he crosses himself and prays with his hands together. His mechanics are sort of embarrassed, pull out a wad of cotton waste or something to mop him up. His chief mechanic leans down and whispers to him, you can’t hear what’s going on. Then Edie leans over the side of the car, blows his nose on the bricks and BOOM! He is off at a hundred and seventy-five miles an hour. Now okay, If this -- if you were dealing with this as a theatrical film you could, after the film, have all sorts of discussions, which would be perfectly valid. Was it properly written? Was there sufficient background to motivate this kind of behavior. Then, was it well directed? Was it well acted? Was it all these things -- which are perfectly valid questions when you go to a theatre.
JL: Has anyone ever talked about that moment in the film that way?
RL: No. It’s silly -- you can’t. It has no meaning. So what you’ve got are two fundamentally different things. Here you’re dumped with it. I don’t know any more about it than you do, about why.
This film also includes the first time that I acknowledged my existence as a participant. Drew and I were sitting with Edie Sachs having a coffee – as I was filming -- when another driver came up. Edie introduced me and as I nod in greeting, the camera nods too!
Leipzig 1964
My need for a producer:
RL: I’ve always felt slightly guilty about the fact that I haven’t the foggiest idea what I want to make a film on. Or I may have a definite idea and it doesn’t come to pass and somebody says “go make a film on such and such” and I think well that’s a stupid story and then get fascinated in trying to make a film out of it; trying to solve it as a film problem. For instance I was appalled when we went to make Eddie Sachs and the Indianapolis Race.
JL: I don’t know about that.
RL: I thought of course what a stupid idea -- I don’t want to film a motor-car race -- No -- No -- you know how it is -- what the hell for? So we go out there and Drew dug out a leading driver who turned out to be a compulsive talker. Most of the drivers just sit around sort of chewing their cud. But this one guy, we were riding in his car with him and didn’t know what to shoot -- we were supposed to make a little ten-minute film... but we were driving with him and his wife... I think they were going to a luncheon and we thought we ought to photograph this luncheon. He was driving, oh, about eighty miles an hour on a highway -- and he just, without prompting, started to describe how you drive the Indianapolis Race. He was sort of going out of his mind. He’d say “Then you know I come into the straightway and I do something crazy -- I take my hands off the wheel and I flex my fingers and as I come into the turn I put my foot all the way down and I go uhmph like that and I go... and the front wheels start to slip and I go round the curve whoooo” and in the film itself it’s absolutely wild. I was in the back seat and Drew up front with the recorder and we started to shoot and shoot.
JL: Your sound camera was that ready?
RL: But we had it with us -- I only had to pick it up.
JL: Fine.
RL: And we started to get this insane film. Wild things happened, like his wife describing with bliss “How wonderful” she said “if you ever have an accident, have it in Indianapolis, They have such wonderful plastic surgeons. Why, they even put the eyelash holes back into his eyelids”.
JL: It sounds like more than ten minutes.
RL: No, it ended up an hour film. They went back the next year and the next. Always a camera on her. There was a five-car crack-up right in front of her. And she’s just standing there waiting for Eddie. She doesn’t give a damn about any of the others, you know, wheels flying -- while she was watching and finally she decides to scream as she saw him heading for the smash. And you see him, with the other camera shooting on him, you see him just swerving through it and as he goes he waves. What goings on! All in actual time with just the two cameras. Those are these crazy flukes.
JL: Well the producer had nothing to do with that?
RL: Well, in the sense that I have never...
JL: Oh I see, the assignment couldn’t have come from you.
Pause
RL: There is a big difference between the enacted films and this. For example, in “On The Pole”, the first Edie Sachs film, just before the race begins, with three hundred thousand spectators watching, Edie Sachs gets into his car and they always have a moment of silence in memory of those that have given their lives here (Edie gave his life last year, he was killed last summer in the race, burned to death) -- so everybody bows their heads and they play some sort of mawkish music on the PA system. Well Edie is in his car and there is this sentimental ballad, Carry Me Back to Old Indiana or something, sung by the local baritone and Edie sits there in his car crying. Then he crosses himself and prays with his hands together. His mechanics are sort of embarrassed, pull out a wad of cotton waste or something to mop him up. His chief mechanic leans down and whispers to him, you can’t hear what’s going on. Then Edie leans over the side of the car, blows his nose on the bricks and BOOM! He is off at a hundred and seventy-five miles an hour. Now okay, If this -- if you were dealing with this as a theatrical film you could, after the film, have all sorts of discussions, which would be perfectly valid. Was it properly written? Was there sufficient background to motivate this kind of behavior. Then, was it well directed? Was it well acted? Was it all these things -- which are perfectly valid questions when you go to a theatre.
JL: Has anyone ever talked about that moment in the film that way?
RL: No. It’s silly -- you can’t. It has no meaning. So what you’ve got are two fundamentally different things. Here you’re dumped with it. I don’t know any more about it than you do, about why.
This film also includes the first time that I acknowledged my existence as a participant. Drew and I were sitting with Edie Sachs having a coffee – as I was filming -- when another driver came up. Edie introduced me and as I nod in greeting, the camera nods too!
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