00:12When I went to NYU in the early 60s, 1960 I think it was, it certainly wasn't the NYU we
00:18know today.
00:18It was Washington Square College, which I enrolled in. It was quite small.
00:24And the introduction to film really wasn't a film school so to speak.
00:29There were film departments, along with radio and television.
00:32But the introduction to film was split into the first two semesters.
00:36They were called History of Motion Pictures 1 and 2.
00:40This along with all the other required courses for the first two years of the school.
00:46Our teacher was a man named Haig Mnugian, of Armenian descent.
00:51And from the first class, he talked very, very, very fast, almost like a drill instructor.
00:56And he covered a lot of ground very quickly.
00:59And I remember there, sitting there just, you know, taking endless notes, endless notes.
01:02He'd show a film.
01:04And if he thought a student was just there for, you know, to waste time, just take it easy and
01:11watch movies, he would throw them out, basically.
01:13So he weeded people out.
01:14And in our second year, we took an introductory kind of production course.
01:20We had 16mm cameras.
01:23And it was called Sight and Sound.
01:25And we learned the very basic, the rudiments of filmmaking, the very basic elements of lenses, using 16mm black and
01:33white film.
01:35We did little exercises.
01:36And by the end of the semester, by the end of the year, I think it was, we were able
01:40to make a three- to four-minute film based on what we had learned about the equipment and lighting
01:46and that sort of thing.
01:48And in those classes, more people were weeded out.
01:57What Hague focused on, ultimately, he was heavily influenced by the Italian neorealism and new wave of filmmaking.
02:05But he really focused on the individual voice, the individual stories that you felt that you had to tell.
02:12And he wouldn't let anyone direct unless they had written the film themselves.
02:19Separate from a non-fiction film I'm talking about.
02:22And if you didn't write it yourself, basically, we were out of the class.
02:26I remember one student telling him, you know, I want to direct.
02:30And he says, OK, where's your script?
02:31And he said, well, I need a script.
02:33I'm a director.
02:33He said, no, go write your script.
02:35Otherwise, you can't do it.
02:37He also, we found ourselves at odds because, I mean, he hated melodrama.
02:42He hated, he said, I don't want to see any of you kids going for a shot where somebody picks
02:47up a gun.
02:47He was encouraging everyone to express themselves and protect that spark in themselves and not be influenced by other kinds
02:55of filmmaking.
02:55If they wanted that sort of thing, then go into television or go into another, go to Los Angeles.
02:59It was a different situation.
03:01It was a little different for me because I grew up in a world where, at times, people had access
03:07to guns.
03:07And, you know, that was part of life or a fact of life at times.
03:13So melodrama would turn out to be drama to a certain extent.
03:18And eventually that led to Mean Streets and other films I made.
03:22But that was in the early 70s.
03:24He was really developing individual voices that would make very, very different kinds of film.
03:35What he was finally getting to was the understanding or comprehension of cinema itself.
03:40He never used that word, you know, motion pictures, you know.
03:44You could say film, cinema, movies, but he always said motion pictures.
03:48He was trying to get to, for us to understand what is the potential of the moving image and the
03:55cut, so to speak.
03:58Now, what that means is a kind of immersion in the process.
04:04An immersion in the process, which means not only the writing, the working, and the script, and the page,
04:09or a paragraph could be a script, of course.
04:12But one would have to work it out in the shooting with non-actors, with actors,
04:18or simply images without people in the frame.
04:25It comes to the point of where you take the images and you're in an editing room, quote-unquote,
04:31or a computer these days or whatever, and you put it together to tell a narrative.
04:36Now, the narrative could be about the color blue.
04:40It could be about the color red, you know.
04:44It could be about music.
04:45It could be music itself.
04:50The nature of the actual moving image, even if it's a still image, has another quality,
04:56which is different from a still photograph and a painting and a piece of music.
05:00So all of this is about understanding the value of cinema itself and recreating it constantly,
05:11recreating it constantly from yourself, okay?
05:15And that even deals with narrative cinema, of course.
05:18So what he talked about was always the value of a shot, a value of a shot.
05:22And I didn't understand until we were in the editing process of a number of us.
05:28We'd shoot something with the intention of using it one way or in one section of the film, let's say.
05:34And then at some point when we really get into the editing of the picture
05:38and because of so many different changes and so many different decisions that were made that you don't expect,
05:46suddenly you found yourself using a shot that you thought was meant for one place
05:50and you're using it in another place and it makes sense.
05:53And I remember him becoming very excited when one or two of us did that.
05:57He goes, now you understand the value of a shot.
05:59The shot is a value in and of itself, no matter what you shot it for.
06:05It may not matter.
06:07It may not matter ultimately.
06:09It takes on its own life.
06:10It takes on its own intention.
06:13And it takes on its own essence in a way.
06:16And this is something that you can't teach.
06:19You have to just do it.
06:20But this was the excitement I saw him and the way I saw he was so excited when the student
06:29or one of us, I forget who it was now, when we stumbled on this.
06:34He goes, now you get what I've been talking about.
06:37And we mentioned, yeah, but Professor, he said when Truffaut said that, you know, when he was editing a film
06:44and it's going one way, he would tend to want to cut it to go another way.
06:49And he said, I don't believe that.
06:50And he said, you know, that's part of the process.
06:52He thinks he's doing that.
06:54But he's going to a final, he's going to a final point somewhere in the telling of the story,
07:03whether it's José Jean and whether it's, you know, Le Peau Deux.
07:10I mean, it's going somewhere.
07:17The essence of what he gave us, with the essence, the spark, he was the inspiration.
07:24He was the one to give me the confidence to become a filmmaker, to come from this other world,
07:33to come from this other world and suddenly be able to express myself with film that might even be shown
07:38in theaters at some point
07:40or might be shown to an audience.
07:41You can't learn to make a film in school.
07:45You can have the opportunity to make a film in school.
07:47You have to learn it yourself.
07:49The great thing about the film school is the inspiration and the ability to give you the confidence.
07:54If you have something that you really feel passionate about.
07:58And I think that's the greatest thing any teacher or any guide could give a student.
08:04That is the confidence and the inspiration to make you think, well, you know, it's crazy, but maybe I can
08:12do it.
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