Two, three years later, they're in Europe, already thrown out and they're in Berlin and the Berlin television people said, 'We'll put it on television'. And they worked for like three weeks to produce a television version of... and everything was in it, all the melodrama and everything. And they presented it on television and Julian and Melina and the cast watched it and after it, we have to send immediately a telegram to Jonas that that is the film, this is... this is ridiculous what they did. So, it was my version that to became really the version and that faithful version carefully done didn't work at all, did not work at all.
[Q] Then is it true that when it won the prize in Venice that people actually thought it was a documentary of some real?
I... they sent me the reviews, they had some... some really... and some of them with the... 'Oh, he's attacking the United States Army', you know, that you know, they were very nice permitting him to go into it and film. Not all, some knew, but there were two or three reviewers who did not realise that it was really a theatre piece made real. I was not even there, I did not even know that it was shown, I found it from the newspapers. David Stone sent it without telling me, sent it to Venice and that's how it got there... And P Adams Sitney was in Venice that weekend, but he was so poor and broke and the night when the film was screened and then celebration, he was so poor he was in some play he did not know he would have gone there, he did not know either. So, that's the footnote of The Brig, which is still, there is a lot of camera, the energy of it is created with a camera, camera movements, really.
And of course, I remember, five or six already after Vietnam, the play, they recreated, they staged the play and I think it was Philadelphia and they invited me to take a look at their play and they showed also the film and then, like the... after Vietnam, all of it looked like so tame, so... already so much other violence was if you looked already on television or was taking place that was much more violent and this looked very, very tame. So I said during a discussion... I said, 'The only way today that you can still get the same reaction would be if you would actually go and hit an audience with a stick on the head, you know, from the stage, and nothing'. Everything else is very... no matter what you do or... it looks like a mild version of reality. Things have changed since, that much. But still, the energy of violence remains because of the camera, I think my camera work.
[Q] And you hand-held, on your shoulder?
Yeah, I had it all attached to myself.
[Q] But it was a heavy thing you work on, wasn't it?
Heavy, but not so heavy, it's manageable.
