Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A film director known for his independent feature films.
On the island
Eight records
The Magic FluteFavourite
I just find it uh supremely beautiful and that is my all-time favorite musical composition.
Prelude and Fugue No. 21 in B-flat major, BWV 866 (from The Well-Tempered Clavier)
Harpsichord, which I wanted. Prefer, really.
Again, I've always liked it very much. I like the Saint John passion. It's rather hard to decide between the two which ones I wanted. But I find it, you know, uh tremendously dramatic music, which I think the selection will show, and I've always found it uh extremely moving, beautiful like magic flute.
I couldn't go to a desert island without taking uh Indian music with me. So I've chosen this this record by uh the singer Kumar Gandharva.
Three Preludes: No. 2 in C-sharp minor
It's good that it has something to do with New York. It's like a sort of New York disappearing beneath the waves with all its sort of glittery lights and receding into the distance, this Gershwin piece.
Frühling (from Four Last Songs)
Oh, uh record number six is going to be one of the four last songs of Ricard Strauss, sung by Elizabeth Schwarzkopp.
And this piece of Philip Glass music was in keeping in a way with my mood after finishing Heat and Dust. It was um restful in a sort of low key way. And I I think I felt content. Anyway, I never seemed to get tired of it, so I think it'd be good for Desert Island.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:38Why did you move [to Oregon]?
My father was a lumberman, and he and his partner opened a sawmill. This was in the days of the Depression, and the partner, my father's partner, had a lot of capital, or some capital in any case, and my father had a lot of energy, and the two of them together combined their resources, and they went to Oregon and reactivated a sawmill there, where I grew up.
Presenter asks
4:20Can you remember any early films that made a big impression?
You could say I was a like a thinking child when I was, say, 11, 12, 13, along and there. Films like mostly, I suppose, Gone with the Wind and then films like The Wizard of Oz and movies like San Francisco I liked very much. I liked Westerns.
Presenter asks
4:20Had you decided that films was what you wanted to do?
Well, by about that time, yes. I would say when I was about 15 or so, I decided to work in films. I decided that I would be a set designer. The whole decor side of it, everything to do with sets, interested me then. And so an architect friend of ours told me that the best way to prepare for that was to become an architect. So when I went to the University of Oregon, I enrolled in an architecture course.
The keepsakes
The book
Marcel Proust
I started reading that in 1960, and I'm still not quite done, so I would have the time to read it and finish it. I'd also have the time to reread it, which would be important. And I think it's the kind of book on Desert Island that you'd need to have to remind you of civilization.
The luxury
I know that sounds crazy, but I really would have to have that. Lots of hot water and a very good spray and that can be organized. I mean, it might be terrible to be on a desert island without being able to bathe.
Presenter asks
9:49What was the first concrete proposition that you cooked up between you [and Ismail Merchant]?
Well, he wanted to make a a film in India with American participation, and I put him in touch with some Americans that I knew who wanted, in fact, to go to India and do a feature film. And uh he met them and and uh there was another director and another writer and uh he was going then to produce their film. I was merely going back to India to finish another film that I had started there before. Well, the film that he was planning to make fell through. And he then offered to me the chance to direct the householder. Yes. Which was my first feature film.
Presenter asks
19:18How did you get on using a major star [Raquel Welch]? Did this throw the balance?
I don't think so, really. The thing is that we didn't always treat her like a star. And she said she didn't want to be treated like a star. She wanted to be treated like an actress. So we did treat her like an actress and a member of a company of actors. And this was in some way upsetting to her because perhaps there were so many people there who weren't the kinds of people she knew in Hollywood. I mean, there were a lot of foreigners. There were a lot of people from New York City working with her. And she was suspicious. And she wasn't really very happy making that film. But on the other hand, she was very good. And I'm glad she did it.
“I really didn't like the University of Southern California that much, or it was in fact that I didn't I wasn't all that happy in Los Angeles, so I decided to uh go to Europe and make a film in Venice, which was a a documentary film.”
“I told him that I wanted to make a film on Indian miniature painting and he gave me a little money to do it. It didn't cost very much. And I began that film, which took a long, long time because I didn't really know anything about India, and I didn't know anything certainly about Indian painting.”
“I used to see B B C adaptations of James novels on television. Henry James, of course. ... And I used to think, well, hell, why can't I do that? Why should the English be doing this? I mean, after all, I mean, I should be doing this. Why are they the only ones who get to do it?”