UNEXPECTED CONVERSATION: Orson Welles

In this episode, Rick connects with writer, director, and actor Orson Welles. His work spanning the worlds of radio, television, film, and theatre, Welles is widely regarded as “the ultimate auteur.”

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Rick Rubin?

  Tetragrammaton.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  Prop is a stage term. It's an abbreviation of the expression "stage property."

• 0:28Rick Rubin?

  Give me an example.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Anything that you may see up on a stage besides the actor and the scenery is likely to be a prop. For example, your ex-girl is a prop, and the Romeo's vial of poison, and the telephone and dial aim for murder, they're all props.

• 0:43Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  And they're props in real life, and we're self-conscious. We put our hands to our neckties and light a cigarette, all that sort of thing. In other words, a prop is just what it means in the dictionary. It's something to prop ourselves with. It's a crutch, something to lean on.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  I remember, the first night I was ever in Hollywood, I was speaking. After dinner, speaking. I'd been introduced as a great after-dinner speaker. I don't know quite why, because I'm not. But I had been, and this is a great Hollywood dinner. Every star I'd ever seen in my life, I was tremendously impressed. There they all were, and a lot of other grand people besides Maharajas and all kinds of title folk, and I'd been called upon.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Of course, being very frightened and very eager to please, I started a funny story, which I'd heard that day. And I'd gone on for a while. When it dawned on me that I'd forgotten how it ended.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  I continued with the story. I hoped that somehow I'd find an ending, somehow be able to invent one. And the people were all looking very eagerly, waiting for the finish, because they knew that although the story was very boring, it must be boring for a purpose.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Obviously, it was boring, because the end was going to be so tremendously amusing. They often looked at me eagerly, and I continued and continued, and I thought... How in heaven's name can I get out of this thing?

• 2:17Rick Rubin?

  So what did you do?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  I could pretend to faint or drop dead or rush out and yell "fire!" Continued to invent comical finishes that elicited no titters whatsoever.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Quietly and secretly praying to myself to heaven.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  And then my prayer was granted. Ever since then, I've been a great believer in the efficacy of prayer because just as I'd given up hope, just as I was wondering how I could get out of this situation, the walls started to shake, the chandelier fell down from the ceiling onto the table, the people jumped out of the table. This was California, remember?

• 2:56Rick Rubin?

  Wow!

• 2:57Speaker 01

  It was an earthquake.

• 2:59Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  I was saved. My Hollywood career was saved by an earthquake.

• 3:04Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about doing theater in Europe.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  First-night audiences are always an experience. In this theater, I faced the very first first-night audience of all in Dublin, that grand capital of eloquence and violent opinion where where audiences enjoy and a delight in the privilege of free speech and you can sometimes hear as much dialogue from the gallery as from the stage itself. Where first nights often end in literal riot. And actors have been known to seek police protection from the public they're trying to entertain. Well, here I am in Dublin on that very first of all my first nights. Now, there's a reason for this lofty calm. It's the bliss of ignorance.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Like a baby on a trapeze or a drunk taking the crest to run on the seat of his trousers, I was happy because I didn't know any better. For underneath all that makeup is a brash young amateur who hasn't seen his sixteenth birthday and there's no assurance like that of the utter greenhorn. Nobody, least of all an aspiring actor, is scared of being hurt until he's fallen on his face. You've all seen Donald Duck and Flute the Pup in the Disney cartoons when they run off the edge of a roof or off the ledge of a cliff. Run quite a distance, then they happen to glance down when they realize where they are. There's nothing under them, they fall.

• 4:30Rick Rubin?

  So you don't know what to fear yet.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Well, a beginner is rather like that. He goes tripping merrily out into space. No technique or no knowledge, anything of that kind. Treading air as a swimmer treads water and then suddenly realizes where he is. In a theater full of people.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  And he realizes what that means. Then the happy dream changes to a nightmare. Terrible truth has just dawned on me, that an audience is not so much a compliment to an actor's ego as a challenge to his capacities.

• 5:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Well, I've just received my first challenge. This was Ireland, remember, where audiences take a sort of professional pride in unpredictability. It wasn't until many years later, in fact, only recently, that the police had to be called out to protect me from the wrath of an Irish audience, but that's that's another story. Maybe I'll tell that some other time. But I had already received by that very first night of all, a pretty good intimation of what was in store for me in the future. I remember the line that I'd just spoken. I'll never forget that line as long as I live. Pretty girl had just left the stage, Betty Chancellor, Dennis Johnston's wife.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  And I was supposed to look after her in my characterization as the as the wicked old archduke, watch her go lecherously and chortle, and say, "A bride fit for Solomon."

• 6:04Speaker 01

  He had a thousand wives, did he not? Now, just at this moment, when I said that line, "He had a thousand wives, did he not?"

• 6:12Speaker 01

  A voice, somewhere in the audience, about the fifth row of the store, spoke up. I said, "He had a thousand wives, did he not?" And the voice said, "That's a dirty, black Protestant lloy. Wow." Well, I've given that remark a good deal of serious thought. As a matter of fact, I've been brooding over it for about twenty years, and I still haven't thought of an adequate reply.

• 6:36Rick Rubin?

  How could you?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  And anyway, that moment, the sound of that voice was my first experience of feeling like somebody unfortunate in Disney. That's when it was borne in upon me with frightful force that as an actor, I wasn't so much skating on thin ice as walking in thin air. When I realized where I was, I started to fall.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  That's a long time ago. I've been falling ever since.

• 7:11Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  And speaking of falling, it was actually a fall that saved me in Act Five. I was supposed to die of apoplexy in Act Five. Actually, I was half-dead from fright. I was supposed to draw my sword, shout wildly, ring the bells, and fire all the cannons, and then slump lifelessly into my throne. But I had just made the terrible discovery that an audience is not necessarily a group of friendly well-wishers. That an audience can be a a pit full of ravening lions, and besides, there was the commentator in the fifth row. So I pulled at the sword and discovered that it was stuck in the scabbard. Well, of course, it was stuck in the scabbard. It was opening night. It always happens. There's a little invisible man who goes backstage on every opening night and

• 7:57Speaker 01

  glues the swords into all the scabbards and short-circuits the telephones and jams a few doors. That's purely routine. As I say, I was a beginner. I didn't know about the invisible little man, so I pulled at the sword and pulled and pulled. And after a while, discovered that I was left with nothing but my death speech. So, in a voice which reverted to the warble of a boy soprano, I cried shrilly, "Ring the cannons and fire all the bells." The effect of this was stupendous. And before anyone out front could volunteer another comment, and in a mood of suicide, I flung myself headfirst down the whole flight of stairs.

• 8:36Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Made as it was in the full muscular flower of my boyhood, that was quite some dive. It was the only thing I could think of at the moment. I didn't care whether it killed me or not. It almost did. But also, it brought down the house.

• 8:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Because the Dubliners, besides being very keen critics, are also generous. And I don't suppose that anything like that backflip had been seen on the shores of the Liffey before.

• 9:02Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Here was an actor who could fall on his head and really make you believe it. In all the long, striving years since my debut, I've never received such an ovation.

• 9:16Rick Rubin?

  That's an amazing story. Did you always want to be an actor?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  You see, I'd come to Ireland, not to act, but to be a painter. I'd always wanted to be a painter. In the spring of that year, I'd arrived, bought the donkey and cart, travelled about Connemara, and found myself in Dublin in the autumn of that year, without what are technically referred to as financial resources. I had a few shillings, but I blew those on a good dinner and a ticket to the theatre. The theatre was the gate. And on the stage, I recognized in a minor part, a young fellow that I'd known in the west of Ireland. For a while, he's a folklorist. I went backstage to say hello to him. And he introduced me to the directors, Edwards and McLeamore. And I heard myself introducing myself to them as a noted actor from the Broadway stage.

• 10:01Rick Rubin?

  Why'd you tell them that?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Now, what had possessed me? I don't know why I told that, but the idea of earning my living as an actor was so preposterous that it seemed to me probably that the a preposterous story was the only possible way of proposing it.

• 10:16Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Some reason, they they gave me the job. It was a very good part. I'd intimated that I was willing to stay on in Ireland for a short season if sufficiently interesting roles could be found. The first interesting role was The Archduke, and that's how I started, as I say, in the theatre. It was an easy start. I must confess to you that nothing's been easy since then.

• 10:41Rick Rubin?

  Do you think it was beginner's luck, or do you think it was something else?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Every year, I learn how much I've yet to learn. But on that first night of all, I made an important discovery. I learned that an audience can be a very fierce creature. It can turn suddenly dangerous.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  That fierceness is generally in defense of the fragile miracle which is expected every evening in the theater. The audience defends that miracle. The artist presides over it. Nobody performs that miracle. Everybody contributes to it, and above all, it must not be treated lightly. Respect in the presence of that miracle is a part of the normal respect of the professional for his job.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  And I learned that job and learned to love the theater. Respect naturally followed.

• 11:42Rick Rubin?

  Did you have a strong idea going in of what to do as an actor?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  When I started playing in a play, it was like playing a game. I didn't care whether I won or not. Now, of course, I do care very much, and I often find myself on the losing side of things, but I wouldn't trade my love for the theater, for all the hits on Broadway in the West End. And I'm not proud of my start. I'm not proud of having begun in the theater as an adventurer. And I'm most sincerely grateful to the angry gentleman in the fifth row who raised his voice in the darkness of that Dublin theater and made me the precious gift of stage fright. It was the beginning of respect. Very shortly thereafter, as I told you, I threw myself on my head.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Seemed the only thing I could do, falling on my head is probably what made me an actor.

• 12:40Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Certainly it's what made me a professional.

• 12:44Rick Rubin?

  Do you find that changing your appearance helps to find the character you're playing?

• 12:50Speaker 01

  In most of the films that I appear in, I put on a false nose, usually as large as I can find. And right at the start of my career as an actor, I was playing in a play called Moghu of the Desert, which was in blank verse. I was playing the role of Khosroy, king of the Persians. And he had an enormous nose, like one of those Persian miniatures that you see. I put it on, began here and ended there, beard and so on. And in the second act, I had to come out with a young lady, very pretty young lady, and a gentleman had to attempt to assassinate me. Another gentleman, Moghu, the title role, whipped the dagger out of the would-be assassin's hand.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  On the opening night, the first night of this play, instead of whipping the dagger out of the assassin's hand, he whipped the nose off my face. And I was revealed as you see me now.

• 13:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  And of course, I was very embarrassed, didn't look very Persian, so I put my hand in front of my face. I had a long love scene to play with the young lady in blank verse.

• 13:59Rick Rubin?

  With your hand over your nose.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  You can imagine how well that went down on the first night in Dublin. You were as beautiful as the desert. I don't know what all finally... I had to say a line at the end of the scene, at climactic point. I had to say to Moghu, "Had you not brought me into the temple at the time you did, Lord Moghu, I might have lost my throne." And instead of which, I said, "Had you not brought me into the temple at the time you did, Lord Moghu, I might have lost my nose." At which point, everybody burst into derisive laughter and the curtain slowly fell.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  That of course is a first night that I'll never forget.

• 14:40Rick Rubin?

  How were the reviews in your early days?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  For us, a critic at a first night is rather like a fairy godmother at a christening. From our point of view, it would be so much nicer if the critics would only come on last night. Then they could exercise their undoubted flair for funeral orations. I remember one first night in Boston, it was, Henry the Fifth. We were doing a show on a revolving stage, there's a turntable, big circular stage that turns. And when it came the great moment of the charge, I see you stand like greyhounds at the slips and so on. I had devised

• 15:18Speaker 01

  a plan which involved real bows and real arrows.

• 15:21Rick Rubin?

  Really?

• 15:22Speaker 01

  This was folly on my part, as it later turned out, but I had a large target made of cork, just in the wings, and forty of the English soldiery, played by Harvard men, students from the University of Harvard, this was in Boston. Forty of these stalwart fellows were to shoot their arrows into the wings, into the cork target. However, the revolving stage started to turn a little bit too soon.

• 15:53Rick Rubin?

  Oh no.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  There I was, saying, "Cry God for Harry England and St. George," and as I said it, the turntable slowly moved so that instead of looking off stage left, we were looking straight into the audience, and forty bows and arrows were pointed right into the theatre. And I thought to myself, as I came to the tag, well, they're university fellows, they're not going to just shoot into the audience. And so with a certain amount of confidence, I launched into the great line, "Cry God for Harry England and St. George," there was a tremendous roar. And I noticed with horror that the roar was from the audience, because indeed they had shot the arrows into the audience.

• 16:35Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Forty of them. We even scored a direct hit on the dean of critics.

• 16:41Rick Rubin?

  What are the odds?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Thought of the story because of what sometimes can happen to a critic on a first night. Critics really ought to be more careful. I'd like to dedicate a little story about a critic and a show of ours. It's a murder story.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  About a critic who didn't like our shows. Name was Percy Hammond. Poor fellow, dead now. As I told you, it's a murder story. The play was Macbeth, which was laid in a West Indian island suggestive of Haiti at the time of the Black Emperor Jean Christophe.

• 17:17Rick Rubin?

  Well, it sounds like a great idea.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  It worked surprisingly well. Because the actors were very good and changing the blasted heath to the fetid jungle wasn't as ridiculous as you might think. Because there was all that vitality on the stage and the actors were so good and of course, above all, the witches, translated terribly well into witch doctors, voodoo witch doctors. And these witch doctors were specially imported from Africa because the governments in the West Indies took the view that there was no such thing as voodoo. So we had to go all the way to the Gold Coast and import a troupe, and they were quite a troupe.

• 17:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Headed by a fellow whose name was Asadatta Daforo.

• 17:58Rick Rubin?

  Did they speak English?

• 18:00Speaker 01

  The only other member of the coven who had any English was a dwarf with gold teeth by the name of Jasper. At least, we called him Jasper up in Harlem. I don't know what his African name was. He had a diamond in each one of those gold teeth. He was quite a character. Fairly terrifying. The other members of the troupe not only spoke no English, but didn't seem to want to speak at all. They confined their communications to drumming.

• 18:26Rick Rubin?

  It sounds like an incredible production.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  I suppose that the entire history of Shakespeare and the theater has never been a a request on the first day of rehearsal for twelve live goats. Part of the cast, we said, "What?" And Asadatta said, "Goats. Black goats for to make devil drums."

• 18:52Rick Rubin?

  How did you find the goats in New York City?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Well, we couldn't just go out and look for twelve live goats. We had to requisition them. This being a government project, we had to file the requisitions in triplicate. You can imagine what went on in Washington. I heard about that. But the goats were finally provided. The sacrificial knives were sharpened. And the accompaniment of wild shrieks from the voodoo priests. The poor beasts were sacrificed. You can imagine the effect it had in the community of Harlem. And the whole Lafayette Theatre was reeking suggestively with the odor of blood.

• 19:29Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Finally, the drums were ready. And the drumming began. The legend grew backstage and indeed, all over the community of Harlem, that to touch the drums was to die.

• 19:41Rick Rubin?

  Wow, did anyone touch the drums?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Indeed, one poor stagehand did touch a drum and did fall from a high place and break his neck. And after that, Asadatta and his rhythm boys were treated with a bit of respect. And then we opened with Macbeth. And the drummers were fine. And the voodoo sequences, that is, the witch scenes, went very well indeed. And everybody seemed to like the show. Critics were very kind to us, except for Mr. Percy Hammond, who was a very good critic.

• 20:13Rick Rubin?

  Did Percy review the show?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  I don't want to speak disrespectfully of the dead, but he did write a notice in which he said that Negroes should never be allowed to play anything except Negro subjects. Which went down, of course, very badly up in Harlem and was taken to be an unfair attack on the Negro race. And at the height of discussion on this subject, I was approached by Jasper, who said to me, "This critic, bad man." And I said, "Yes, he's a bad man." "You want we make berry berry on this bad man?"

• 20:55Rick Rubin?

  Did you know what he meant?

• 20:57Speaker 01

  All this dialogue's very much like the Native Berrys in Tarzan and so on. I apologize for it, it's really what went on. I said, "Jasper, go right ahead and make all the berry berry want to."

• 21:09Speaker 01

  They said, "We start drums now." I said, "You go ahead and start the drums, just be ready for the show tonight." They said, "Drums begin now, he die twenty-three hours from now."

• 21:21Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Drumming began, fine, show went on. I went home, woke up next morning, proceeded along ordinary course of work and bought the afternoon paper to discover that Mr. Percy Hammond, for unknown causes, had dropped dead in his apartment.

• 21:42Rick Rubin?

  Wow, so you got to see a voodoo ritual carried out successfully in real time in New York City?

• 21:51Speaker 01

  I know this story is a little hard to believe, but it is circumstantially true. And I thought it might be interesting, some of our critics, to hear what can happen.

• 22:05Rick Rubin?

  So you're putting critics on notice?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Well, this is another voodoo witch doctor. It's a Brazilian. I ran into him in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro, a few years ago. I'll tell you the story, before I do, I want to assure you that I I don't advocate voodoo, I don't even believe in it. And that last story about the critic, well, he died, we all do die, and I'm sure that Percy Hammond, who had a wonderful sense of humor, would like to know that the story of his passing has been woven into a Broadway legend.

• 22:35Rick Rubin?

  It's odd for you to say you don't believe in voodoo after that story. What happened in Rio?

• 22:41Speaker 01

  In the case of Brazil, we were down there making a documentary film, partly for the government, but mostly mostly for a Hollywood studio, this was at the time of the good neighbor policy. And it was my task to make a large technicolor documentary on the subject of the carnival.

• 22:58Rick Rubin?

  Hmm.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  And so we took up the whole question of samba and the samba orchestra. And when I'd nearly finished the film, it occurred to me that the origins of samba lay in voodoo ceremonies, particularly in shangu, which are practiced up in the favelas, those strange native settlements on the mountains which are right in the midst of the city of Rio. And so I arranged with a good deal of difficulty to film a voodoo ceremony.

• 23:30Rick Rubin?

  How did you manage that?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  We had protracted conversations with the head of the group. And an advance payment was arranged for. He came to my office in Rio to discuss it. And it was my unhappy lot to have to tell him that the filming was off because I had just received word from Hollywood that the president of the film studio had been removed. That sort of thing happens not only in South American governments, but also in film studios. Had been rather abruptly removed. A new president was in his place. And the entire project was off. There was no more money to spend on voodoo ceremonies.

• 24:07Rick Rubin?

  Oh, no.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  And the witch doctor assured me that this was deeply offensive and that he and his group took it very badly. And I said, I was most sorry about it myself. And I didn't want to finish the film. And I did hope he understood. But he said, we have spent money. We have bought entirely new costumes.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  And I said, well, I'm awfully sorry, but there just isn't any money from Hollywood to pay you. And I don't know how I can explain to this new administration that the voodoo ceremony must continue, certainly not in the time already agreed on. And I was called away to the telephone again. And had a long conversation on the phone, begging and pleading to be allowed to finish this picture, which we rather liked. The material was very interesting. And I thought it would be a good thing to finish since so much effort had gone into it. And I was pleading my cause for some time, praying that we would be able to. And I came back to the office and found that on my desk,

• 25:09Speaker 01

  in a script of the film, was a long steel needle.

• 25:14Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  It had been driven entirely through the script. And to the needle was attached a length of red wool.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  This was the mark of the voodoo.

• 25:27Rick Rubin?

  So the film was cursed.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  The end of that story is that it was the end of the film. We were never allowed to finish it.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  There are more things in heaven and earth, Rachel, than I dreamed of in our philosophy.

• 25:42Rick Rubin?

  Yes. Before stage, you got your start in radio, didn't you?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  I was, uh, for many years, radio commentator in America. During that time, of course, I had occasion to speak on a great variety of subjects. Of all those subjects, one of the most interesting stories, one that sticks most vividly in my memory, had to do with a Negro soldier. Boy had seen service in the South Pacific. He was on his way home. Home was in one of the southern states. He was on a bus on the way he fell ill. He asked the bus driver to let him off. Bus driver refused, abusively. There was an argument, at the end of which a policeman was called in, who dragged the boy out of the bus, took him behind a building, and beat him viciously.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Then when he was unconscious, poured gin over him, put him in jail, charged him with drunkenness and assault.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  When the boy regained consciousness, he discovered that he was blind.

• 26:47Rick Rubin?

  Oh my God.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Policeman had literally beaten out his eyes. Now, of course, that sort of policeman is the exception. That sort of policeman is a criminal in uniform.

• 27:01Rick Rubin?

  It's a terrible story.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  I had the satisfaction of

• 27:07Speaker 01

  being instrumental in bringing that particular policeman to justice.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Case was brought to my attention, and I brought it to the attention of the radio public, and we did finally manage to locate this man and to bring him into a court of law.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  But there is another sort of police abuse.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  And I think we all suffer, more or less. And we suffer at the hands of good policemen. Decent policemen. Policemen doing their duty.

• 27:37Rick Rubin?

  What do you mean?

• 27:39Speaker 01

  These are all a little petty annoyances. Don't seem very important, but add up to an invasion of our privacy and an assault against our dignity as human beings. I'm brought in mind for all this because just now I've had my passport renewed. And it made me think of all the forms and police questionnaires we have to fill out.

• 28:02Rick Rubin?

  The government bureaucracy is crazy-making.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  One of the unpleasant things about your passport, getting a new one, of course, is that you have to have a new picture, which you invariably look older and sometimes a little worse than older. The idea.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  I wonder why it is that so many of us tend to look like criminals in a police lineup when we have our picture taken for a passport.

• 28:26Rick Rubin?

  It's true. Why do you think that is?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  I suppose it's the unconscious foreknowledge of the scrutinator which our likeness will be subjected that gives us that hangdog guilty look.

• 28:40Rick Rubin?

  What's the purpose of all this paperwork?

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Really? Theoretically, of course, a passport is supposed to be issued for our protection. But on how many frontiers and how many countries I've handed over my passport with all the emotions of a an apprentice forger trying to fob off a five-pound note on the Bank of England. Guilty conscience, I suppose. But well, it's there's something about being ticketed and numbered. It gives the man the feeling of being a piece of baggage or a convict.

• 29:12Rick Rubin?

  It does seem over time our freedom is continually more and more challenged.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  One can't help thinking wistfully of our father's day when the world hadn't grown so small that one could move about in it without being watched so closely. Nowadays, of course, we're treated like demented or delinquent children. And the eyes are always on us. Our father's day, of course, there weren't any passports. The only countries that required an entry visa were Montenegro and Russia.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  And here I am in the hands of the police. This is an illustration of a story happened to me in a country that I think had better be nameless. Enough trouble in the world as it is. First of all, I'd better explain that I carry, or at least carried, what Mr. Roosevelt once described when I showed it to him as the cheapest diplomatic passport in the world.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  In an American passport, I don't know whether it's true in an English one or not, but in an American one, on the front page, there's a place that says, "In case of death or accident, please notify", and then you usually put the name of some near and dear one. In my case, I put, "In case of death or accident, please notify Franklin D. Roosevelt, Washington, D.C."

• 30:28Rick Rubin?

  He was president at that time.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  But at the time of this story, when I was stopped by the police, Mr. Roosevelt had died, Mr. Truman was president, and an election was coming up in which Truman was running against Dewey. Now, I made the mistake that a great many of my fellow countrymen did. I imagined that Mr. Dewey was going to win. And because I wasn't very fond of Mr. Dewey, I had written in my passport, "In case of accident, please notify Thomas Dewey, White House, Washington, D.C." My thought being that the least I could do to devil Mr. Dewey would be to arrive in a coffin some morning. And it was therefore that passport which I handed to the police at eleven o'clock one wintry night in the mountains,

• 31:12Speaker 01

  when they jumped out in the road in this country, which as I say, that'd be nameless, and withdrawn guns, demanded what it was that I had in my baggage.

• 31:23Rick Rubin?

  Were they border guards or customs police?

• 31:26Speaker 01

  There wasn't any frontier, there couldn't be any question of customs. So I asked them cheerfully and by way of conversation whether this was a raid on dope smugglers or black marketeers or whatever. They didn't feel like joking, they said, "It is not for you to converse with the police. Open your bag." And I said, "Well, I'm afraid to because the bag will blow up." And they asked me what I meant by that, and I explained that I had an atom bomb, a small one, in the bag, so wired to the catch that if you opened the bag, there'd be a dreadful explosion. Why, I said, that I was going to La Scala, I didn't like the opera, and I was angry at the management, I was going to make an outrage, and that was what I had in my bag.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  They said, "You mustn't joke with the police." Argument went on some time. Very unpleasant, it's got to be about two in the morning. One of those long-drawn-out practical jokes that you regret.

• 32:20Rick Rubin?

  It's amazing that you kept it up that long.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  And finally, they got around to looking at my passport. I was, of course, grateful, most grateful that they did, because when they saw the name Thomas Dewey, they said, "Oh, excuse us, Mr. Dewey, please continue."

• 32:36Rick Rubin?

  Wow, that's great.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  And I don't know quite what that story illustrates. Except that it shows that passport does have its purpose.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  I don't want you to think from the story that I'm an anarchist. I'm against the police on principle, or that I believe in fighting them by practical jokes. Much less by lawlessness, just the contrary.

• 33:00Rick Rubin?

  Wow, you've had an incredible life on the road.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Now, I know I was wrong to make all that trouble for those police in the mountains of that nameless country. But you see, I do a lot of traveling. I've been traveling all my life, as a matter of fact. I was born in America, but raised partly in China. Sent about the world good bit before the war and great deal during it and even more afterwards. I have an office in one country and a studio in another. The last film, for example, was made in four countries. So I have a good deal of experience in crossing borders and coping with with the coppers all over the world. And it is true, you know, that we're invited

• 33:49Speaker 01

  in the travel posters to be tourists. And once we attempt it, we do discover, I'm afraid, that we're guilty until proven innocent.

• 34:01Rick Rubin?

  That's a terrible feeling.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  That being so, I think a word or two about red tapeism and bureaucracy, particularly as it applies to freedom of movement, might be in order. Sure, that's true of all of us. Think of all those forms we have to fill out, for example. You know what I mean by police forms. We get them in hotels and in frontiers. In every country all over the world, we're asked, state your your sex, male or female, for example. Well, obviously, I'm a male. I'm a man. Why should I have to answer that? State your race and religion in block letters.

• 34:32Rick Rubin?

  Why?

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Well, now, why should I have to confide my religion to the police? Frankly, I don't think anybody's race is anybody's business. I'm willing to admit that policeman has a difficult job, a very hard job. But it's the essence of our society that the policeman's job should be hard. He's there to protect, protect the free citizen, not to chase criminals. That's an incidental part of his job. Free citizen is always more of a nuisance to the policeman than the criminal. He knows what to do about the criminal.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  I know it's very nice to look out of our window in our comfortable home and see the policemen there protecting our home. We should be grateful for the policemen, but I think we should be grateful too for the laws which protect us against the policemen.

• 35:17Rick Rubin?

  Which laws do you mean?

• 35:19Speaker 01

  There are those laws, you know, and they're quite different than the police regulations. But the regulations do pile up. Forms keep coming in.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  We keep being asked to state our grandmother's, father's name in block letters and to say whether we propose to overthrow the government in triplicate Y and all that sort of thing.

• 35:42Rick Rubin?

  Why do you think there's so much red tape?

• 35:45Speaker 01

  You see, the bureaucrat, and I'm including the bureaucrat with the police as part of one great big monstrous thing. The bureaucrat is really like a blackmailer. You can never pay him off. The more you give him, the more he'll demand. If you fill in one form, he'll give you ten. Now what are we going to do about it? Obviously, if we go on giving in to this thing. Will you say, just a minute, you say, for example, why shouldn't we give in to it? Why should we make trouble for the policemen? Well.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  The truth is, why, why should the policeman make trouble for us? Why should he ask these things that are stated quite clearly in our passport?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Our passport tells us everything that the policeman does need to know. Why should we make trouble? Well. We don't because we don't want to get into trouble with the police. We're told that we should cooperate with the authorities. I'm not an anarchist. I don't want to overthrow the rule of law, the country. I want to bring the policeman to law.

• 36:47Rick Rubin?

  You mean government overreach?

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Obviously, individual effort won't do any good. There's nothing an individual can do about protecting the individual in society.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  I'd like it very much if somebody would make a great big international organization for the protection of the individual. That way, there could be officers at every frontier. And whenever we are presented with something unpleasant and we want to fill one of these idiotic questionnaires, we could say, "Oh, no, I'm sorry. It's against the rules of our organization to fill out that questionnaire." Oh, and they say, "Albert, it's the regulations." We say, "Very well. See our lawyer, because if there were enough of us, our dues would pay for the best lawyers in all the countries of the world. We could bring to court these invasions against our privacy and test them under law." Wouldn't be nice to have that sort of organization.

• 37:39Rick Rubin?

  Less rules would be great.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  It'd be nice to have that sort of card. I see the card as fitting into the passport, a little larger than the passport, with a border around it in bright colors, so that it would catch the eye of the police, and they'd know who they're dealing with. The card itself should look rather like a union card, I should think, or a card of an automobile club. And since its purpose is to impress and control officialdom, well, obviously, it should be as official-looking as possible, with a lot of seals and things like that on it. And it might read something as follows. "This is to certify that the bearer is a member of the human race.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  All relevant information is to be found in his passport. And except when there is good reason for suspecting him of some crime, he will refuse to submit to police interrogation on the grounds that any such interrogation is an intolerable nuisance, and life being as short as it is, a waste of time. Any infringement on his privacy, or interference with his liberty, any assault, however petty, against his dignity as a human being, will be rigorously prosecuted by the undersigned ISPIAO."

• 39:00Rick Rubin?

  What is the ISPIAO?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  That would be the International Association for the Protection of the Individual Against Officialdom.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  If any such outfit is ever organised, you can put me down as a charter member.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammatin?

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Counter-culture? Tetragrammatin. Sacred geometry? Tetragrammatin. The avant-garde? Tetragrammatin. Generative art? Tetragrammatin. The tarot? Tetragrammatin. Out-of-print music? Tetragrammatin. Biodynamics? Tetragrammatin. Graphic design? Tetragrammatin. Mythology and magic? Tetragrammatin. Obscure film? Tetragrammatin. Beach culture? Tetragrammatin. Esoteric lectures? Tetragrammatin. Off-the-grid living? Tetragrammatin. Alt spirituality? Tetragrammatin. The canon of fine objects? Tetragrammatin. Muscle cars? Tetragrammatin. Ancient wisdom for a new age.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath, and see where you are drawn.