[ Horn Honks ]
[ Shawn Narrating ] The life of a playwright is tough.
It's not easy, as some people seem to think.
You work hard writing plays, and nobody puts them on.
You take up other lines of work to try to make a living-
I became an actor-
and people don't hire you.
So you just spend your days doing the errands of your trade.
Today I'd had to be up by 1 0.:00 in the morning...
to make some important phone calls.
Then I'd gone to the stationery store to buy envelopes. Then to the Xerox shop.
There were dozens of things to do.
By 5.:00 I'd finally made it to the post office...
and mailed off several copies of my plays...
meanwhile checking constantly with my answering service...
to see if my agent had called with any acting work.
In the morning, the mailbox had just been stuffed with bills.
What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to pay them?
After all, I was already doing my best.
I've lived in this city all my life.
I grew up on the Upper East Side...
and when I was 1 0 years old I was rich, I was an aristocrat...
riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort...
and all I thought about was art and music.
Now I'm 36, and all I think about is money.
It was now 7.:00...
and I would have liked nothing better than to go home and have my girlfriend Debby...
cook me a nice, delicious dinner.
But for the last several years our financial circumstances...
have forced Debby to work three nights a week as a waitress.
After all, somebody had to bring in a little money.
So I was on my own.
But the worst thing of all was that I'd been trapped by an odd series of circumstances...
into agreeing to have dinner with a man I'd been avoiding literally for years.
His name was Andr� Gregory.
At one time he'd been a very close friend of mine...
as well as my most valued colleague in the theater.
In fact, he was the man who had first discovered me...
and put one of my plays on the professional stage.
When I'd known Andr�, he'd been at the height ofhis career as a theater director.
The amazing work he did with his company, the Manhattan Project...
had just stunned audiences throughout the world.
But then something had happened to Andr�.
He dropped out of the theater. He sort of disappeared.
For months at a time, his family seemed only to know that he was traveling...
in some odd place like Tibet...
which was really weird because he loved his wife and children.
He never used to like to leave home at all.
Or else you'd hear that someone had met him at a party and he'd been telling people...
that he talked with trees or something like that.
Obviously, something terrible had happened to Andr�.
** [ Piano.:LightJazz ]
The whole idea of meeting him made me very nervous.
I mean, I really wasn't up for that sort of thing.
I had problems of my own. I mean, I couldn't help Andr�.
Was I supposed to be a doctor, or what?
** [ Piano Continues ]
- Hello. - Hello.
- Here you go. - Thank you.
- Yes, sir. - Ah, sir, my name is Wallace Shawn.
I'm expected at the table of Andr� Gregory.
That table will be a moment, sir.
If you like, you may have a drink at the bar.
[ Woman Laughing ]
[ Chattering ]
- Good evening, sir. - Uh, could I have a club soda, please?
I'm sorry, sir. We only serve Source de Pavilion.
Oh, that'd be fine, thank you.
When I'd called Andr�, and he'd suggested that we meet in this particular restaurant...
I'd been rather surprised, because Andr�'s taste used to be very ascetic...
even though people have always known that he had some money somewhere.
I mean, how the hell else could he have been flying off to Asia and so on...
and still have been supporting his family?
The reason I was meeting Andr� was that an acquaintance of mine, George Grassfield...
had called me and just insisted that I had to see him.
Apparently, George had been walking his dog in an odd section of town the night before...
and he'd suddenly come upon Andr�...
leaning against a crumbling old building and sobbing.
Andr� had explained to George that he'd just been watching...
the Ingmar Bergman movie Autumn Sonata...
about 25 blocks away...
and he'd been seized by a fit of ungovernable crying...
when the character played by Ingrid Bergman had said...
''I could always live in my art, but never in my life. ''
WallyI
- Wow. - My God.
[ Wally Chuckling ]
[ Wally Narrating ] I remember, when I first started working with Andr�'s company...
I couldn't get over the way the actors would hug when they greeted each other.
''Wow. Now I'm really in the theater, '' I thought.
Well, you look terrific.
Well, I feel terrible. [ Laughing ]
[ Wally Laughing ]
Good evening, sir. Nice to see you again.
Thank you. Good evening. Ah, I think I'll have a spritzer, if I could.
- Yes, sir. - Thank you.
[ Wally Narrating ] I was feeling incredibly nervous.
I wasn't sure I could stick through an entire meal with him.
Great.
So we talked about this and that.
He told me a few things aboutJerzy Grotowski...
the great Polish theater director...
who was a friend and almost like a kind of a guru of Andr�'s.
- [ Indistinct Chattering ] - He'd also dropped out of the theater.
Grotowski was a pretty unusual character himself.
At one time, he'd been quite fat, then he'd lost an incredible amount of weight...
and become very thin and grown a beard.
- Your table is ready, if you feel like sitting down. - Oh.
- Yes. Thank you.
[ Wally Narrating ] I was beginning to realize that the only way to make this evening bearable...
would be to ask Andr� a few questions.
Asking questions always relaxes me.
In fact, I sometimes think that my secret profession...
is that I'm a private investigator, a detective.
I always enjoy finding out about people.
Even if they're in absolute agony, I always find it very... interesting.
- By the way, is he still thin? - What?
Grotowski. Is he still thin?
Oh. [ Chuckles ] Absolutely.
Oh, waiter? Uh, I think we can do without this.
- Yes, sir. - Thank you.
What about this one?
[ Laughing ] Seven swimming shrimp.
- Ready for your order? - Ah, yes.
Uh, the Galuska - How - How do you prepare that?
[ Wally Narrating ] Andr� seemed to know an awful lot about the menu.
- Dumpling with raisins, blanched almonds. - I didn't understand a word of it.
- Very good, I think. - Hmm.
No, I - I think I'll have the Cailles aux Raisin, the quail.
- Very good. - Oh, quails! I'll have that as well.
- Two. - Great. - Great!
And then I think, to begin with, the Terrine de Poissons.
- Yes. - What is that?
Uh, it's a sort of p�te - light, made of fish.
- Does it have bones in it? - [ Chuckles ] No bones.
Perfectly safe.
Well, um -What is the, um, Bramborov� Pol�vka?
It's a potato soup. It's quite delicious.
Oh, well, that's great. I'll have that.
- Thank you very kindly. - Thank you very much.
Well. [ Laughing ]
When was the last time that we saw each other?
[ Wally Narrating ] So we talked for a while about my writing and my acting...
and about my girlfriend, Debby.
And we talked about his wife, Chiquita, and his two children, Nicolas and Marina.
[ Andr� Laughing ] And I'd stayed back in New York.
[ Wally ] Finally, I got around to asking him what he'd been up to in the last few years.
Oh, God. I'm just dying to hear it.
- Really? - Really.
At first, he seemed a little reluctant to go into it...
so I just kept asking, and finally he started to answer.
...conference on paratheatrical work then.
And, uh, this must have been about five years ago...
and, uh, Grotowski and I were walking along Fifth Avenue and we were talking.
You see, he'd invited me to come to teach that summer in Poland.
You know, to teach a workshop to actors and directors and whatever.
And I had told him that I didn't want to come, because, really, I had nothing left to teach.
I had nothing left to say. I didn't know anything.
I couldn't teach anything.
Exercises meant nothing to me anymore.
Working on scenes from plays seemed ridiculous.
I - I didn't know what to do. I mean, I just couldn't do it.
So he said, ''Why don't you tell me anything you'd like to have if you did a workshop for me.
No matter how outrageous. And maybe I can give it to you.''
So I said, ''Well, if you could give me...
''40 Jewish women who speak neither English nor French -
''either women who've been in the theater for a long time and want to leave it...
''but don't know why...
''or young women who love the theater, but have never seen a theater they could love.
''And if these women could play the trumpet or the harp...
and if I could work in a forest, I'd come.''
[ Laughing ]
A week later, or two weeks later, he called me from Poland.
And he said, ''Well, 40 Jewish women - that's a little hard to find.''
But he said, ''I do have 40 women. They all pretty much fit the definition.''
And he said, ''I also have some very interesting men...
''but you don't have to work with them.
''These are all people who have in common the fact that they're questioning the theater.
''They don't all play the trumpet or the harp, but they all play a musical instrument.
And none of them speak English.''
And he'd found me a forest, Wally.
And the only inhabitants of this forest were some wild boar and a hermit.
So that was an offer I couldn't refuse.
I had to go.
So, I went to Poland, and it was this wonderful group of young men and women.
And the forest he had found us was absolutely magical.
You know, it was a huge forest.
I mean, the trees were so large...
that four or five people linking their arms couldn't get their arms around the trees.
So we were camped out beside the ruins of this tiny little castle...
and we would eat around this great stone slab that served as a sort of a table.
And our schedule was that usually we'd start work around sunset...
and then generally we'd work until about 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning.
And then, because the Poles love to sing and dance...
we'd sing and dance until about 1 0:00 or 1 1 :00 in the morning.
And then we'd have our food, which was generally bread,jam, cheese and tea.
And then we'd sleep from around noon to sunset.
Now, technically, of course -
Technically, the situation is a very interesting one...
because if you find yourself in a forest with a group of 40 people...
who don't speak your language, then all your moorings are gone.
What do you mean exactly?
Well, what we'd do is just sit there and wait...
for someone to have an impulse to do something.
Now, in a way that's - that's something like a theatrical improvisation.
I mean, you know, if you were a director working on a play by Chekhov...
you might have the actors playing the mother, the son and the uncle...
all sit around in a room and do a made-up scene that isn't in the play.
For instance, you might say to them...
''All right. Let's say that it's a rainy Sunday afternoon on Sorin's estate...
and you're all trapped in the drawing room together.''
And then everyone would improvise -
saying and doing what their character might say and do in that circumstance.
Except that in this type of improvisation - the kind we did in Poland -
the theme is oneself.
So, you follow the same law of improvisation...
which is that you do whatever your impulse, as the character, tells you to do...
but in this case, you are the character.
So there's no imaginary situation to hide behind...
and there's no other person to hide behind.
What you're doing, in fact, is you're asking those same questions...
that Stanislavsky said the actor should constantly ask himself as a character:
Who am I? Why am I here?
Where do I come from, and where am I going?
But instead of applying them to a role, you apply them to yourself.
- Hmm. - Or, to look at it a little differently...
in a way, it's like going right back to childhood...
where a group of children simply come into a room or are brought into a room -
without toys - and begin to play.
Grown-ups were learning how to play again.
So, you would, uh, all sit together somewhere...
and, uh, you would play in some way.
- But what would you actually do? - Well, I could give you a good example.
You see, we worked, uh, together for a week in the city...
before we went off to our forest.
And of course, Grotowski was there in the city too.
I heard that every night, he conducted something called a beehive.
I loved the sound of this beehive...
so a night or two before we were supposed to go off to the country...
I grabbed him by the collar, and I said, ''Listen, about this beehive.
''You know, I'd kind of like to participate in one.
Just instinctively I feel it would be something interesting.''
And he said, ''Well, certainly. In fact, why don't you, with your group...
lead the beehive instead of participating in one?''
You know, I - [ Laughing ] I got very nervous, you know, and I said, ''Well, what is a beehive?''
He said, ''Well, a beehive is...
at 8:00 a hundred strangers come into a room.''
I said, ''Yes?'' He said, ''Yes, and whatever happens is a beehive.''
I said, ''Yes, but what am I supposed to do?'' He said, ''That's up to you.''
I said, ''No, no. I really don't want to do this. I'll just participate.''
And he said, ''No, no. You lead the beehive.''
Well, I was terrified, Wally.
I mean, in a way, I felt on stage.
I did it anyway.
God. Well, tell me about it.
You see, there was this song- I have a tape of it. I can play it for you one day.
And it's just unbelievably beautiful.
You see, one of the women in our group knew a few fragments of this song of Saint Francis...
and it's a song in which you thank God for your eyes...
and you thank God for your heart, and you thank God for your friends...
and you thank God for your life.
And it, uh - It repeats itself over and over again.
And this became our theme song.
I really must play this thing for you one day...
because you just can't believe that a group of people who don't know how to sing...
could create something so beautiful.
So, I decided that when the people arrived for the beehive...
that our group would already be there singing this very beautiful song...
and that we would simply sing it over and over again.
One of the people decided to bring her very large teddy bear, you know.
Well, she's a little afraid of this event.
And somebody wanted to bring a - a sheet.
And somebody else wanted to bring a large bowl of water...
in case people got hot or thirsty.
And somebody suggested that we have candles -
that there be no artificial light, but candlelight.
And I remember watching people preparing for this evening.
Of course, there was no makeup, and there were no costumes...
but it was exactly the way that people prepare for a performance.
You know, people sort of taking off their jewelry and their watches...
and stowing it away and making sure it's all secure.
And then slowly people arrived, the way they would arrive at the theater-
in ones and twos and 1 0s and 1 5s and what have you.
And we were just sitting there, and we were singing this very beautiful song.
And people started to sit with us and started to learn the song.
Now, there is, of course, as in any performance or improvisation...
instinct for when things are gonna get boring.
So, at a certain point - It may have taken an hour to get there, an hour and a half-
I suddenly grabbed this teddy bear and threw it in the air...
at which 1 40 or 1 30 people suddenly exploded.
You know, it was like a - a Jackson Pollack painting, you know.
Human beings exploded out of this tight little circle that was singing the song.
And before I knew it, there were two circles, dancing, you know -
one dancing clockwise, the other dancing counterclockwise...
with this rhythm mostly from the waist down.
In other words, like an American Indian dance, with this thumping, persistent rhythm.
[ People Chuckling ]
Now, you could easily see, 'cause we're talking about group trance...
where the line between something like this and something like Hitler's Nuremberg rallies...
is, in a way, a very thin line.
Anyway, after about an hour of this wild, hypnotic dancing...
Grotowski and I found ourselves sitting opposite each other in the middle of this whole thing.
And we threw the teddy bear back and forth.
You know, on one level, you could say this is childish.
And I gave the teddy bear suck, suddenly, at my breast.
And then I threw the teddy bear to him, and he gave it suck at his breast.
And then the teddy bear was thrown up into the air again...
at which there was another explosion of form into... something.
And these -What was it like? You know, this is the -
There's something like a kaleidoscope, like a human kaleidoscope.
The evening was made up of shiftings of the kaleidoscope.
Now, the only other things that I remember...
other than constantly trying to guide this thing...
which was always involved with either movement, rhythm, repetition or song -
Or chanting, because, uh, two people in my group...
had brought musical instruments, a flute and a drum...
which, of course, are sacred instruments -
was that sometimes the room would break up...
into six or seven different things going on at once.
You know, six or seven different improvisations...
all of which seemed, in some way, related to each other.
It was - It was like a magnificent cobweb.
And at one point, I noticed that Grotowski was at the center of one group...
huddled around a bunch of candles that they'd gathered together.
And like a little child fascinated by fire...
I saw that he had his hand right in the flame and was holding it there.
And as I approached his group, I wondered if I could do it.
I put my left hand in the flame and I found I could hold it there for as long as I liked...
and there was no burn and no pain.
But when I tried to put my right hand in the flame, I couldn't hold it there for a second.
So Grotowski said, ''If it burns, try to change some little thing in yourself.''
And I tried to do that. Didn't work.
Then I remember a very, very beautiful procession with the sheet...
and there was somebody being carried below the sheet.
You know, the sheet was like some great biblical canopy.
And the entire group was weaving around the room and chanting.
And then at one point, people were dancing...
and I was dancing with a girl...
and suddenly our hands began vibrating near each other-
like this -vibrating, vibrating.
And we went down to our knees, and suddenly I was sobbing in her arms...
and she was sort of cradling me in her arms, and then she started to cry too.
And then we - then we just hugged each other for a moment.
And, uh, then we joined the dance again.
And then at a certain point, hours later...
we returned to the singing of the song of Saint Francis...
and that was the end of the beehive.
And then, again, when it was over, it was just like the theater after a performance.
You know, people sort of put on their earrings and their wristwatches...
and we went off to the railroad station...
to drink a lot of beer and have a good dinner.
Oh, and there was one girl, who wasn't in our group...
but who just wouldn't leave, so we took her along with us.
[ Chuckling ]
Huh.
God. Well, tell me some of the other things you did with your group.
Well- Oh, I remember once when we were in the city...
we tried doing an improvisation -you know, the kind that I used to do in New York.
Uh, everybody was supposed to be on an airplane...
and they've all learned from the pilot there's something wrong with the motor.
But what was unusual about this improvisation...
was that two people who participated in it... fell in love.
They've, in fact, married.
And when we were - Yeah, out of fear...
of being on this plane, they fell in love...
thinking they were going to die at any moment.
And when we went to the forest, these two disappeared...
because they understood the - the experiment so well...
that they realized that to go off together in the forest was much more important...
than any kind of experiment the group could do as a whole.
So, uh, about halfway through the week...
we stumbled into a clearing in the forest...
and the two of them were fast asleep in each other's arms.
It was around dawn, and we put flowers on them...
to let them know we'd been there, and then we crept away.
And then on the last day of our stay in the forest, these two showed up...
and they shook me by my hands, and they thanked me very much...
for the wonderful work they'd been able to do, you see.
- [ Laughs ] - They understood what it was about.
I mean, that, of course, poses the question of what was it about.
But it has -has something to do with living.
And then on the final day of our stay in the forest...
the whole group did something so wonderful for me, Wally.
They arranged a christening - a baptism - for me.
And they filled the castle with flowers.
And it was just a miracle of light...
because they had literally set up hundreds of candles and torches.
I mean, no church could have looked more beautiful.
There was a simple ceremony, and one of them played the role of my godmother...
and another played the role of my godfather.
And I was given a new name. They called me Yendrush.
And some of the people took it completely seriously...
and some of them found it funny.
But, uh, I really felt that I had a new name.
And then we had an enormous feast, with blueberries picked from the field...
and chocolate someone had gone a great distance to buy...
and raspberry soup and rabbit stew.
And we sang Polish songs and Greek songs...
and everybody danced for the rest of the night.
- Hmm. - Oh, I have a picture.
See, this was - Let's see.
Oh, yeah. This was me in the forest. See?
- God! - That's what I felt like.
[ Chuckling ]
- That's the state I was in. - God.
Yeah. I remember George, uh, told me he'd seen you around that time.
He said you looked like you'd come back from a war.
Yeah, I remember meeting him. He, uh - He asked me a lot of friendly questions.
I think I called you up, too, that summer, didn't I?
Huh.
I think I was out of town.
Yeah, well, most people I met thought there was something wrong with me.
They didn't say that, but I could tell that that was what they thought.
But...
you see, what I think I experienced... was...
for the first time in my life...
to know what it means to be truly alive.
Now, that's very frightening...
because with that comes an immediate awareness of death...
'cause they go hand in hand.
You know, the kind of impulse that led to Walt Whitman, that led to Leaves of Grass.
That feeling of being connected to everything...
means to also be connected to death.
And that's pretty scary.
But I really felt as if I were floating above the ground, not walking.
You know, and I could do things like go out to the highway...
and watch the lights go from red to green and think, ''How wonderful.''
- [ Wally Chuckles ] - And then one day, in the early fall...
I was out in the country, walking in a field...
and I suddenly heard a voice say, ''Little Prince. ''
Of course, The Little Prince was a book that I always thought of...
as disgusting, childish treacle.
But still, I thought, ''Well, you know, if a voice comes to me in a field'' -
This was the first voice I had ever heard.
Maybe I should go and read the book.
Now, that same morning I'd got a letter...
from a young woman who'd been in my group in Poland.
And in her letter she'd written, ''You have dominated me.''
You know, she spoke very awkward English.
So she'd gone to the dictionary, and she'd crossed out the word ''dominated''...
and she'd said, ''No. The correct word is 'tamed.'''
And then when I went to town and bought the book and started to read it...
I saw that ''taming'' was the most important word in the whole book.
By the end of the book, I was in tears, I was so moved by the story.
And then I went and tried to write an answer to her letter...
'cause she'd written me a very long letter.
But I just couldn't find the right words, so finally I took my hand...
I put it on a piece of paper, I outlined it with a pen...
and I wrote in the center something like, ''Your heart is in my hand.''
Something like that.
Then I went over to my brother's house to swim...
'cause he lives nearby in the country and he has a pool.
And he wasn't home. I went into his library...
and he had bought at an auction the collected issues of Minotaure.
You know, the surrealist magazine? Oh, it's a great, great surrealist magazine of the '20s and '30s.
And I never-You know, I consider myself a bit of a surrealist.
I had never, ever seen a copy of Minotaure.
And here they all were, bound, year after year.
So, at random, I picked one out, I opened it up...
and there was a full-page reproduction of the letter ''A''...
from Tenniel's Alice In Wonderland.
And I thought, that -Well, you know, it's been a day of coincidences...
but that's not unusual that the surrealists would have been interested in Alice...
and I did a play of Alice.
So at random, I opened to another page...
and there were four handprints.
One was Andr� Breton, another was Andr� Derain...
the third was Andr� - I've got it written down somewhere.
It's not Malraux. It's, like, someone - Another of the surrealists.
All A's, and the fourth was Antoine de Saint-Exup�ry...
who wrote The Little Prince.
And they'd shown these handprints to some kind of expert...
without saying whose hands they belonged to.
And under Exup�ry's, it said that he was an artist...
with very powerful eyes...
who was a tamer of wild animals.
I thought, ''This is incredible, you know.''
And I looked back to see when the issue came out.
It came out on the newsstands May 1 2, 1 934...
and I was born during the day of May 1 1 , 1 934.
So, well, that's what started me on, uh, Saint-Exup�ry and The Little Prince.
Now, of course today-
today I think there's a very fascistic thing under The Little Prince.
You know, I - Well, no, I think there's a kind of-
[ Laughing ] I think a kind of S.S. totalitarian sentimentality in there somewhere.
You know, there's something, you know - that -
that love of, um -
Well, that masculine love of a certain kind of oily muscle.
You know what I mean? I mean, I can't quite put my finger on it.
But I can just imagine some beautiful S.S. man...
- loving The Little Prince. - [ Wally Laughs ]
Now, I don't know why, but there's something wrong with it. It stinks.
[ High-pitched Laughing ]
Well, didn't George tell me that you were gonna do a play that was based on The Little Prince?
Hmm. Well, what happened, Wally...
was that fall I was in New York...
and I met this young Japanese Buddhist priest named Kozan...
and I thought he was Puck from the Midsummer Night's Dream.
You know, he had this beautiful, delicate smile.
I thought he was the Little Prince.
So, naturally, I decided to go off to the Sahara desert...
to work on The Little Prince with two actors and this Japanese monk.
You did?
Well, I mean, I was still in a very peculiar state at that time, Wally.
You know, I would - I would look in the rearview mirror of my car...
and see little birds flying out of my mouth.
And I remember always being exhausted in that period.
I always felt weak. You know, I really didn't know what was going on with me.
I would just sit out there all alone in the country for days...
and do nothing but write in my diary.
- And I was always thinking about death. - Huh.
But you went to the Sahara.
Oh,yes, we went off into the desert...
and we rode through the desert on camels.
And we rode and we rode.
And then at night we would walk out under that enormous sky...
and look at the stars.
I just kept thinking about the same things that I was always thinking about at home -
particularly about Chiquita.
In fact, I thought about just about nothing but my marriage.
And then I remember one incredibly dark night...
being at an oasis, and there were palm trees moving in the wind...
and I could hear Kozan singing far away in that beautiful bass voice.
And I tried to follow his voice along the sand.
[ Laughing ]
You see, I thought he had something to teach me, Wally.
And sometimes I would meditate with him.
Sometimes I'd go off and meditate by myself.
You know, I would see images of Chiquita.
Once I actually saw her growing old...
and her hair turning gray in front of my eyes.
And I would just wail and yell my lungs out out there on the dunes.
Anyway, the desert was pretty horrible.
It was pretty cold.
We were searching for something, but we couldn't tell if we were finding anything.
You know that once Kozan and I -
we were sitting on a dune, and we just ate sand.
No, we weren't trying to be funny. I started, then he started.
We just ate sand and threw up. That's how desperate we were.
In other words, we didn't know why we were there. We didn't know what we were looking for.
The entire thing seemed completely absurd, arid and empty.
It was like, uh - like a last chance or something.
Huh.
So what happened then?
Well, in those days...
I went completely on impulse.
So on impulse I brought Kozan back to stay with us in New York...
after we got back from the Sahara, and he stayed for six months.
-And he really sort of took over the whole family, in a way. - What do you mean?
Well, there was certainly a center missing in the house at the time.
There certainly wasn't a father, 'cause I was always thinking...
about going off to Tibet or doing God knows what.
And so he taught the whole family to meditate...
and he told them all about Asia and the East and his monastery and everything.
He really captivated everybody with an incredible bag of tricks.
He had literally developed himself, Wally...
so that he could push on his fingers and rise off out of his chair.
I mean, he could literally go like this -
You know, push on his fingers and go into like a headstand...
and just hold himself there with two fingers.
Or if Chiquita would suddenly get a little tension in her neck...
well, he'd immediately have her down on the floor, he'd be walking up and down on her back...
doing these unbelievable massages, you know.
And the children found him amazing.
I mean, you know, we'd visit friends who had children...
and immediately he'd be playing with these children...
in a way that, you know, we just can't do.
I mean, those children - just giggles, giggles, giggles...
about what this Japanese monk was doing in these holy robes.
I mean, he was an acrobat, a ventriloquist...
a magician, everything.
You know, the amazing thing was that...
I don't think he had any interest in children whatsoever.
None at all. I don't think he liked them.
I mean, you know, when he stayed with us...
in the first week, really, the kids were just googly-eyed over him.
But then a couple of weeks later, Chiquita and I could be out...
and Marina could have flu or a temperature of 1 04...
and he wouldn't even go in and say hello to her.
But he was taking over more and more.
I mean, his own habits had completely changed.
You know, he started wearing these elegant Gucci shoes under his white monk's robes.
He was eating huge amounts of food.
I mean, he ate twice as much as Nicolas ate, you know?
This tiny little Buddhist when I first met him, you know...
was eating a little bowl of milk- hot milk with rice -
was now eating huge beef.
It was just very strange.
You know, and we had tried working together, but really our work consisted mostly...
of my trying to do these incredibly painful prostrations that they do in the monastery.
You know, so really we hadn't been working very much.
Anyway, we were out in the country, and we all went to Christmas mass together.
You know, he was all dressed up in his Buddhist finery.
And it was one of those - one of those awful, dreary Catholic churches on Long Island...
where the priest talks about communism and birth control.
And as I was sitting there in mass, I was wondering, ''What in the world is going on?''
I mean, here I am. I'm a grown man...
and there's this strange person living in the house, and I'm not working -
You know, I was doing nothing but scribbling a little poetry in my diary.
And I can't get a job teaching anymore, and I don't know what I want to do.
When all of a sudden a huge creature appeared, looking at the congregation.
It was about, I'd say, 6'8'' - something like that, you know...
and it was - it was half bull, half man...
and its skin was blue.
It had violets growing out of its eyelids and poppies growing out of its toenails.
And it just stood there for the whole mass.
I mean, I could not make that creature disappear.
You know, I thought, ''Oh, well. You know, I'm just seeing this 'cause I'm bored.''
You know, close my- I could not make that creature go away.
Okay. Now, I didn't talk with people about it, because they'd think I was weird...
but I felt that this creature was somehow coming to comfort me...
that somehow he was appearing to say...
''Well, you may feel low and you might not be able to create a play right now...
''but look at what can come to you on Christmas Eve. Hang on, old friend.
''I may seem weird to you, but on these weird voyages...
''weird creatures appear.
It's part of the journey. You're okay. Hang in there.''
By the way, uh, did you ever see...
that play, uh, The Violets are Blue?
No.
Oh, when you mentioned the violets, it-it reminded me of that.
It-It was about, um, people...
being, uh, strangled on a - on a submarine.
Hmm.
[ Sighs ] Well, so that was - [ Chuckles ] that was Christmas.
What happened after that?
- Do you really want to hear about all this? - Yeah.
Well, around that time...
I was beginning to think about going to India. And Kozan suddenly left one day.
I was beginning to get into a lot of very strange ideas around that time.
Now, for example, I'd developed this - Well, I got this idea which I -
Now, it was very appealing to me at the time, you know -
which was that I would have a flag, a large flag...
and that wherever I worked, this flag would fly.
Or if we were outside, say, with a group, that the flag could be the thing we lay on at night...
and that somehow, between working on this flag and lying on this flag...
this flag flying over us...
that the flag would pick up vibrations of a kind...
that would still be in the flag when I brought it home.
So I went down to meet this flag maker that I'd heard about.
And you know, there was this very straightforward-looking guy.
You know, very sweet, really healthy-looking and everything. Nice big, blond.
And he had a beautiful, clean loft down in the village with lovely, happy flags.
And I was all into The Little Prince, and I talked to him about The Little Prince...
these adventures and everything, how I needed the flag and what the flag should be.
He seemed to really connect with it.
So, two weeks later, I came back.
He showed me a flag that I thought was very odd, you know...
'cause I had, you know - well, you know...
I had expected something gentle and lyrical.
There was something about this that was so powerful...
it was almost overwhelming.
And it did include the Tibetan swastika.
He put a swastika in your flag?
No, it was the Tibetan swastika, not the Nazi swastika.
It's one of the most ancient Tibetan symbols.
And it was just strange, you know?
But I brought it home, because my idea with this flag...
was that before I left - you know, before I left for India...
I wanted several people who were close to me to have this flag in the room for the night...
to sleep with it, you know, and then in the morning to sew something into the flag.
So I took the flag into Marina, and I said, ''Hey, look at this. What do you think of this?''
And she said, ''What is that? That's awful.'' I said, ''It's a flag.''
And she said, ''I don't like it.''
I said, ''I kind of thought you might like to spend the night with it, you know.''
But she really thought the flag was awful.
So then Chiquita threw this party for me before I left for India...
and the apartment was filled with guests.
And at one point Chiquita said, ''The flag, the flag. Where's the flag?''
And I said, ''Oh, yeah. The flag.'' And I go and get the flag, and I open it up.
Chiquita goes absolutely white and runs out of the room and vomits.
So the party just comes to a halt and breaks up.
And then the next day I gave it to this young woman...
who'd been in my group in Poland, who was now in New York.
I didn't tell her anything about any of this.
At 5:00 in the morning, she called me up and she said...
''I gotta come and see you right away.'' I thought, ''Oh, God.''
She came up, and she said, ''I saw things - I saw things around this flag.
''Now, I know you're stubborn, and I know you want to take this thing with you...
''but if you'd follow my advice, you'd put it in a hole in the ground...
and burn it and cover it with earth, cause the devil's in it.''
I never took the flag with me.
In fact, I gave it to her, and, uh, she - she had a ceremony with it...
six months later, in France, with some friends...
in which, uh, they did burn it.
[ Laughing ] God.
That's really, really amazing.
So, did you ever go to India?
Oh, yes, I - I went to India in the spring, Wally...
and I came back home feeling all wrong.
I mean, you know, I'd been to India, and I'd just felt like a tourist.
I'd found nothing.
So I was - I was spending, uh, the summer on Long Island with my family...
and I heard about this community in Scotland called Findhorn...
where people sang and talked and meditated with plants.
And it was founded by several rather middle-class English and Scottish eccentrics.
Some of them intellectuals, and some of them not.
And I'd heard that they'd grown things in soil...
that supposedly nothing can grow in, 'cause it's almost beach soil...
and that they'd built - not built - they'd grown the largest cauliflowers in the world...
and there are sort of cabbages.
And they've grown trees that can't grow in the British Isles.
So I went there. I mean, it is an amazing place, Wally.
I mean, if there are insects bothering the plants...
they will talk with the insects and, you know, make an agreement...
by which they'll set aside a special patch of vegetables just for the insects...
and then the insects will leave the main part alone.
- Huh. - Things like that.
And everything they do they do beautifully.
I mean, the buildings just shine.
And I mean, for instance, the icebox, the stove, the car- they all have names.
And since you wouldn't treat Helen, the icebox...
with any less respect than you would Margaret, your wife...
you know, you make sure that Helen is as clean as Margaret, or treated with equal respect.
[ Wally Giggles ]
And when I was there, Wally, I remember being in the woods...
and I would look at a leaf, and I would actually see that thing...
that is alive in that leaf.
And then I remember just running through the woods as fast as I could...
with this incredible laugh coming out of me...
and really being in that state,you know, where laughter and tears seem to merge.
I mean, it absolutely blasted me open.
When I came out of Findhorn, I was hallucinating nonstop.
I was seeing clouds as creatures.
The people on the airplane all had animals' faces.
I mean, I was on a trip. It was like being in a William Blake world suddenly.
Things were exploding.
So immediately I went to Belgrade, 'cause I wanted to talk to Grotowski.
Grotowski and I got together at midnight in my hotel room...
and we drank instant coffee out of the top of my shaving cream...
and we talked from midnight until 1 1 :00 the next morning.
- God. What did he say? - Nothing!
I talked. He didn't say a word.
And -And then I guess really...
the last big experience of this kind took place that fall.
It was out at Montauk on Long Island...
and there were only about nine of us involved, mostly men.
And we borrowed Dick Avedon's property out at Montauk.
And the country out there is like Heathcliff country.
It's absolutely wild.
What we wanted to do was we wanted to take, you know -
We wanted to take All Souls' Eve, Halloween...
and use it as a point of departure for something.
So each one of us prepared some sort of event for the others...
somehow in the spirit of All Souls' Eve.
But the biggest event was three of the people...
kept disappearing in the middle of the night each night...
and we knew they were preparing something big...
but we didn't know what.
And midnight on Halloween, under a dark moon, above these cliffs...
we were all told to gather at the topmost cliff and that we would be taken somewhere.
And we did. And we waited, and it was very, very cold.
And then the three of them - Helen, Bill and Fred - showed up wearing white.
You know, something they'd made out of sheets - looked a little spooky, not funny.
And they took us into the basement of this house that had burned down on the property.
And in this ruined basement, they had set up a table with benches they'd made.
And on this table they had laid out paper, pencils, wine and glasses.
And we were all asked to sit at the table and to make out our last will and testament.
You know, to think about and write down whatever our last words were to the world...
or to somebody we were very close to.
And that's quite a task.
I must have been there for about an hour and a half or so, maybe two.
And then one at a time they would ask one of us to come with them...
and I was one of the last.
And they came for me, and they put a blindfold on me...
and they ran me through these fields - two people.
And they'd found a kind of potting shed - you know, a kind of shed, on the grounds...
a little tiny room that had once had tools in it.
And they took me down the steps, into this basement...
and the room was just filled with harsh white light.
Then they told me to get undressed and give them all my valuables.
Then they put me on a table, and they sponged me down.
Well, you know, I just started flashing on-on-on death camps and secret police.
I don't know what happened to the other people, but I just started to cry uncontrollably.
Uh, then-then they got me to my feet and they took photographs of me, naked.
And then naked, again blindfolded, I was run through these forests...
and we came to a kind of tent made of sheets, with sheets on the ground.
And there were all these naked bodies...
huddling together for warmth against the cold.
Must have been left there for about an hour.
And then again, one by one, one at a time, we were led out.
The blindfold was put on...
and I felt myself being lowered onto something like a stretcher.
And the stretcher was carried a long way, very slowly, through these forests...
and then I felt myself being lowered into the ground.
They had, in fact, dug six graves...
eight feet deep.
And then I felt these pieces of wood being put on me.
And I cannot tell you, Wally, what I was going through.
And then the stretcher was lowered into the grave...
and then this wood was put on me...
and then my valuables were put on me, in my hands.
And they'd taken, you know, a kind of sheet or canvas...
and they'd stretched about this much above my head...
and then they shoveled dirt into the grave...
so that I really had the feeling of being buried alive.
And after being in the grave for about half an hour-
I mean, I didn't know how long I'd be in there -
I was resurrected, lifted out of the grave...
blindfold taken off, and run through these fields.
And we came to a great circle of fire, with music and hot wine...
and everyone danced until dawn.
[ Chuckling ] And then at dawn...
to the best of our ability, we filled up the graves...
and went back to New York.
And that was really the last big event. I mean, that was the end.
I mean, you know, I began to realize...
I just didn't want to do these things anymore, you know?
I felt sort of becalmed, you know, like that chapter in Moby Dick...
where the wind goes out of the sails.
And then last winter, without, uh, thinking about it very much...
I went to see this agent I know to tell him I was interested in directing plays again.
Actually, he seemed a little surprised...
to see that Rip Van Winkle was still alive.
Mmm.
God.
I didn't know they were so small.
[ Andr� Chuckles ]
Well,you know, frankly...
I'm sort of repelled by the whole story, if you really want to know.
- What? - Ah, you know -
Who did I think I was, you know?
I mean, that's the story of some kind of spoiled princess, you know.
Who did I think I was, the Shah of Iran?
You know, I really wonder if people such as myself are really not Albert Speer, Wally.
- You know, Hitler's architect, Albert Speer? - What?
No, I've been thinking a lot about him recently because, uh, I think I am Speer.
And I think it's time that I was caught and tried the way he was.
What are you talking about?
Well, you know, he was a very cultivated man, an architect, an artist, you know...
so he thought the ordinary rules of life didn't apply to him either.
I mean, I really feel that everything I've done...
is horrific,just horrific.
My God. But why?
You see -You see, I've seen a lot of death in the last few years, Wally...
and there's one thing that's for sure about death -
You do it alone, you see. That seems quite certain, you see.
That I've seen. That the people around your bed mean nothing.
Your reviews mean nothing. Whatever it is, you do it alone.
And so the question is, when I get on my deathbed, what kind of a person am I gonna be?
And I'm just very dubious about the kind of person who would have lived his life...
those last few years the way I did.
Why should you feel that way?
You see, I've had a very rough time in the last few months, Wally.
Three different people in my family were in the hospital at the same time.
Then my mother died.
Then Marina had something wrong with her back, and we were terribly worried about her.
You know, so - so, I mean, I'm feeling very raw right now.
I mean, uh - I mean, I can't sleep, my nerves are shot.
I mean, I'm affected by everything.
You know, la-last week I had this really nice director from Norway over for dinner...
and he's someone I've known for years and years...
and he's somebody that I think I'm quite fond of.
And I was sitting there just thinking that he was a pompous, defensive...
conservative stuffed shirt who was only interested in the theater.
He was talking and talking. His mother had been a famous Norwegian comedienne.
I realized he had said ''I remember my mother'' at least 400 times during the evening.
And he was telling story after story about his mother.
You know, I'd heard these stories 20 times in the past.
He was drinking this whole bottle of bourbon very quietly.
His laugh was so horrible.
You know, I could hear his laugh - the pain in that laugh, the hollowness.
You know, what being that woman's son had done to him.
You know, so at a certain point I just had to ask him to leave - nicely, you know.
I told him I had to get up early the next morning, 'cause it was so horrible.
It was just as if he had died in my living room.
You know, then I went into the bathroom and cried 'cause I felt I'd lost a friend.
And then after he'd gone, I turned the television on...
and there was this guy who had just won the something-something.
Some sports event - some kind of a great big check and some kind of huge silver bottle.
And he, you know - he couldn't stuff the check in the bottle...
and he put the bottle in front of his nose and pretended it was his face.
He wasn't really listening to the guy who was interviewing him...
but he was smiling malevolently at his friends, and I looked at that guy and I thought...
''What a horrible, empty, manipulative rat.''
Then I thought, ''That guy is me.'' [ Laughing ]
Then last night actually, you know, it was our 20th wedding anniversary...
and I took Chiquita to see this show about Billie Holiday.
I looked at these show business people who know nothing about Billie Holiday, nothing.
You see, they were really kind of, in a way, intellectual creeps.
And I suddenly had this feeling. I mean, you know I was just sitting there, crying through most of the show.
And I suddenly had this feeling I was just as creepy as they were...
and that my whole life had been a sham...
and I didn't have the guts to be Billie Holiday either.
I mean, I really feel that I'm just washed up, wiped out.
I feel I've just squandered my life.
Andr�, now, how can you say something like that?
I mean -
Well, you know, I may be in a very emotional state right now, Wally...
but since I've come back home I've just been finding the world we're living in...
more and more upsetting.
I mean, last week I went down to the Public Theater one afternoon.
You know, when I walked in, I said hello to everybody...
'cause I know them all, and they all know me, they're always very friendly.
You know that seven or eight people told me how wonderful I looked?
And then one person - one - a woman who runs the casting office, said...
''Gee, you look horrible. Is something wrong?''
Now, she -You know, we started talking. Of course, I started telling her things.
And she suddenly burst into tears because an aunt of hers who's 80...
whom she's very fond of, went into the hospital for a cataract, which was solved.
But the nurse was so sloppy, she didn't put the bed rails up...
and so the aunt fell out of bed and is now a complete cripple.
So you know, we were talking about hospitals.
Now, you know, this woman, because of who she is -
You know, 'cause this had happened to her very, very recently.
- She could see me with complete clarity. - Uh-huh.
She didn't know anything about what I'd been going through.
But the other people, what they saw was this tan, or this shirt...
or the fact that the shirt goes well with the tan.
So they said, ''Gee, you look wonderful.''
Now, they're living in an insane dreamworld.
They're not looking. That seems very strange to me.
Right, because they just didn't see anything, somehow...
except, uh, the few little things that they wanted to see.
Yeah, you know, it's like what happened just before my mother died.
You know, we'd gone to the hospital to see my mother...
and I went in to see her...
and I saw this woman who looked as bad as any survivor of Auschwitz or Dachau.
And I was out in the hall sort of comforting my father...
when a doctor who was a specialist in a problem she had with her arm...
went into her room and came out just beaming.
And he said, ''Boy, don't we have a lot of reason to feel great?
Isn't it wonderful how she's coming along?''
Now, all he saw was the arm. That's all he saw.
Now, here's another person who's existing in a dream.
Who, on top of that, is a kind of butcher...
who's committing a kind of familial murder...
because when he comes out of that room, he psychically kills us...
by taking us into a dream world...
where we become confused and frightened...
'cause the moment before, we saw somebody who already looked dead...
and now here comes a specialist who tells us they're in wonderful shape.
I mean, they were literally driving my father crazy.
I mean, you know, here's an 82-year-old man who's very emotional...
and you know, and if you go in one moment, and you see the person's dying...
and you don't want them to die, and then a doctor comes out five minutes later...
and tells you they're in wonderful shape -
I mean, you know, you can go crazy.
- Yeah. I know what you mean. - I mean, the doctor didn't see my mother.
The people at the Public Theater didn't see me.
I mean, we're just walking around in some kind of fog.
I think we're all in a trance. We're walking around like zombies.
I don't - I don't think we're even aware of ourselves or our own reaction to things.
We -We're just going around all day like unconscious machines...
and meanwhile there's all of this rage and worry and uneasiness...
just building up and building up inside us.
That's right. It just builds up, uh...
and then it just leaps out inappropriately.
I mean, I remember when I was, uh, acting in this play...
based on The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov.
And I was playing the part of the cat.
But they had trouble, uh, making up my cat suit...
so I didn't get it delivered to me till the night of the first performance.
Particularly the head - I mean, I'd never even had a chance to try it on.
And about four of my fellow actors actually came up to me...
and they said these things which I just couldn't help thinking...
were attempts to destroy me.
You know, one of them said, uh, ''Oh, well, now that head...
''will totally change your hearing in the performance.