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INTERVIEW FOUR: "What is Bananas about, Woody?" "The film is about the lack of substance in my movie." "You mean in America?" "No, there's lots of substance in America, The theme is that the film is empty. The lack of substance puts you to sleep. It's an hour and a half nap." "Why have you made it then?" "To confuse my enemies who, are legion." "And what do they want?" "To make me think like them." "Which is what, exactly?" "Numerically." "And you think?" "In letters, usually."The next day, Woody is sitting on the arm of the very large sofa again waiting for the next interviewer. "I didn't get to the jazz club last night," Woody says, "The screening ran too long." As he sits he rolls a two shilling piece over his fingers, like a small-time hood in a Hollywood musical. Over and over the coin tumbles, from finger to finger, with never a miss.
"I taught myself to do it," Woody explains, peering out from behind his glasses, "As a party trick. Actually, there's nothing worse for impressing a girl."
INTERVIEW FIVE: "Are you in analysis?" "Yes, I have been for the past 13 years." "And what has the analyst done for you?" "He's agreed with me, that I need treatment. He also feels the fee is correct......"
"How about your parents?" "My mother speaks to me once every two years and asks me when I'm going to open a drug store. My father is on my payroll." "Were they always like this?" "Yes but younger." "And you're an only child?" "I am an only child, I have one sister." "And she's not connected in your life?" "Not in any way. She's just someone I know as a person my mother gave birth to some years ago."
Woody is fully booked for the next year. He is going to star in the film version of his Broadway play, Play it Again, Sam. "They didn't want me in it until Bananas started doing well. I wouldn't want to direct. I'm doing it to get more people in to see my films."
After that, he goes out to the coast to direct the screenplay he's written based on Dr. David Reuben's, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask. "It's gonna be a funny film about sex. Truly. What people would call dirty." Woody keeps busy. He does occasional pieces for the New Yorker and has written a play which is going to open at the American Place Theater in New York.
"I won't write for Broadway again. It forces you into a cycle of writing amusements, light comedies, that a certain kind of people like to see. I won't write a film like Bananas again either."
"They say it's a political film but I don't really believe much in politics, Groucho has told me that the Marx Brothers films were never consciously anti-establishment or political. It's always got to be a funny movie first."
"It's possible that violence will be needed to bring about a change. I'm not convinced otherwise. I don't understand a government that can firebomb villages in Indo-China but not poppy fields in Turkey."
First published in "Rolling Stone", September 30, 1971
This article is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author. Robert B. Greenfield has recently published a book, "Dark Star: an Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia". He is currently working on another about Timothy Leary and is involved in several theatre and film projects.
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