Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Two Takes.
Directed by William Greaves.
Starring Patricia Ree Gilbert, Don Fellows, Audrey Henningway, Shannon Baker, William Greaves, Bob Rosen, Jonathan Gordon, Susan Anspach and Steve Buscemi. Out on Blu-ray75 mins/ 99 mins.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: that's its name, don't wear it out. Though, on the evidence of the film academic in the documentary included on this disc, once you have got the hang of the pronunciation and get the order straight in your head – the Symbio, the Psycho, the Taxi and the Plasm - you can't stop yourself from saying Symbiopsychotaxiplasm at every possible opportunity. It's a good title: initially forbidding and trays wanky but also intriguing and playful and ultimately a good fit.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is two films for the price of the one. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One is an experimental film-within-a-film-within-a-film shot in 1968 over nine days in Central Park that then went unreleased till the early nineties. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take Two and a Half is a follow up made in 2005 with leftover footage from the original experimental film-within-a-film-within-a-film followed by some new film-within-a-film-within-a-film footage shot 35 years later with many of the original cast and crew. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is a project that appears able to go off in all kinds of directions; you never know what might be coming next. But the most unexpected thing about Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is that it's quite a lot of fun.
Take One. Greaves plays himself as a director overseeing a variety of actors playing out the same scene of a couple arguing because she believes he has been flirting with another man. All the time a film crew films the film crew filming the action as well as anything else of passing interest that is going on in the park. At any one time, they may be as many four cameras working at the same time, each focused on different angles and people. This is interrupted by shots of the crew filming themselves having an earnest discussion about the director's methods and the purpose of the project, when he's not around.
All of which makes it sound like a tedious academic exercise but the footage has a lightness of heart and a sense of freedom that means it flies through its brief running time. It offers viewers the illusion of a film being made up as it goes along, while simultaneously making them very aware of how this reality has been painstakingly constructed through the editing process. The appeal is partly nostalgic, taking us back to the heady revolutionary days of the late sixties where anything and everything seemed to be up for grabs and open to negotiation. For a film bore, split screens and young people crammed together in small spaces discussing the overthrowal of the establishment has the same nostalgic twinge as mini-skirts or Sgt Pepper. But the film's revolutionary dynamic is flipped by having the central authority figure be a black director in charge of a mostly white film crew and cast, a black man who isn't angry but benign and little befuddled.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm takes in a range of concerns that Greaves accumulated over a varied career that saw him start out in the Actors Studio in New York, work extensively in films and on Broadway before jacking in acting and heading north to learn about documentary filmmaking at the National Film Board of Canada. He had a decade of experience prior to this directing a series of films about the black experience and it was a major left turn for him to go off for a week or so and film this.
Among the many theoretical interpretations of the film is that it is an expression of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Theory or a comment on Vietnam, a provocation on how far people will follow bad leadership before rebelling. But what it is mostly about is surely the complexity of the film making process and the strange magic of acting.
If you take anything from the film, it is The Clap. All the time, crew members are constantly clapping, replicating the function of the clapperboard, to help editors to sync the sound to the images. All the way through the film the screen (or screens when the image is split) is filled with loads of people with lots of heavy and expensive equipment trying to record an intimate moment between two people. It's a fascinating dichotomy: while the cumbersome mechanics of filmmaking work to limit what can be achieved, the various couples performing the dialogue seem capable of generating limitless alternatives.
The variety of interpretations the performers can spin on the scene and the nuances that arise from costume or location changes can appear overwhelming. To be a film director is to be constantly answering questions and making decisions. This is just one scene and a few lines and just from that the range of options seems endless, and the weight of the responsibility crushing. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is a great film about how impossible it is to make a good film.
Or at least Take One is. After years of editing, Greaves submitted his film to Cannes but the projectionist mixed up two reels before a vital screening and it wasn't selected. Twenty years later Steve Buscemi was at the Sundance Film Festival with Reservoir Dogs and went to a screening of it where the projector broke halfway through and Greaves appeared before the audience offering to take any questions while it was being fixed. He became a cheerleader for getting the second part made and eventually Steven Soderbergh came through with the financing.
Take Two and a Half though feels like a group of people re-enacting capturing lightning in a bottle, trying to re-improvise the improv of their youth. It is longer and more sluggish though the two actors who return from Take One (Henningway and Baker) do wonders with the new scene of their characters hooking up 35 years later, particularly when Greave throws psychodramatist Maria Karp into the mix. It also has the effortless poignancy of passing time: the same people in the same place doing the same thing but somehow it's just not the same. The energetic, idealist soundman of Take One now looks like Brando playing the role of Danny Baker.
Supplements.
Discovering William Greaves (2006), a documentary on the director’s career, featuring Greaves, his wife and coproducer Louise Archambault Greaves, actor Ruby Dee, filmmaker St. Clair Bourne, and film scholar Scott MacDonald
Directed by William Greaves.
Starring Patricia Ree Gilbert, Don Fellows, Audrey Henningway, Shannon Baker, William Greaves, Bob Rosen, Jonathan Gordon, Susan Anspach and Steve Buscemi. Out on Blu-ray75 mins/ 99 mins.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: that's its name, don't wear it out. Though, on the evidence of the film academic in the documentary included on this disc, once you have got the hang of the pronunciation and get the order straight in your head – the Symbio, the Psycho, the Taxi and the Plasm - you can't stop yourself from saying Symbiopsychotaxiplasm at every possible opportunity. It's a good title: initially forbidding and trays wanky but also intriguing and playful and ultimately a good fit.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is two films for the price of the one. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One is an experimental film-within-a-film-within-a-film shot in 1968 over nine days in Central Park that then went unreleased till the early nineties. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take Two and a Half is a follow up made in 2005 with leftover footage from the original experimental film-within-a-film-within-a-film followed by some new film-within-a-film-within-a-film footage shot 35 years later with many of the original cast and crew. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is a project that appears able to go off in all kinds of directions; you never know what might be coming next. But the most unexpected thing about Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is that it's quite a lot of fun.
Take One. Greaves plays himself as a director overseeing a variety of actors playing out the same scene of a couple arguing because she believes he has been flirting with another man. All the time a film crew films the film crew filming the action as well as anything else of passing interest that is going on in the park. At any one time, they may be as many four cameras working at the same time, each focused on different angles and people. This is interrupted by shots of the crew filming themselves having an earnest discussion about the director's methods and the purpose of the project, when he's not around.
All of which makes it sound like a tedious academic exercise but the footage has a lightness of heart and a sense of freedom that means it flies through its brief running time. It offers viewers the illusion of a film being made up as it goes along, while simultaneously making them very aware of how this reality has been painstakingly constructed through the editing process. The appeal is partly nostalgic, taking us back to the heady revolutionary days of the late sixties where anything and everything seemed to be up for grabs and open to negotiation. For a film bore, split screens and young people crammed together in small spaces discussing the overthrowal of the establishment has the same nostalgic twinge as mini-skirts or Sgt Pepper. But the film's revolutionary dynamic is flipped by having the central authority figure be a black director in charge of a mostly white film crew and cast, a black man who isn't angry but benign and little befuddled.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm takes in a range of concerns that Greaves accumulated over a varied career that saw him start out in the Actors Studio in New York, work extensively in films and on Broadway before jacking in acting and heading north to learn about documentary filmmaking at the National Film Board of Canada. He had a decade of experience prior to this directing a series of films about the black experience and it was a major left turn for him to go off for a week or so and film this.
Among the many theoretical interpretations of the film is that it is an expression of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Theory or a comment on Vietnam, a provocation on how far people will follow bad leadership before rebelling. But what it is mostly about is surely the complexity of the film making process and the strange magic of acting.
If you take anything from the film, it is The Clap. All the time, crew members are constantly clapping, replicating the function of the clapperboard, to help editors to sync the sound to the images. All the way through the film the screen (or screens when the image is split) is filled with loads of people with lots of heavy and expensive equipment trying to record an intimate moment between two people. It's a fascinating dichotomy: while the cumbersome mechanics of filmmaking work to limit what can be achieved, the various couples performing the dialogue seem capable of generating limitless alternatives.
The variety of interpretations the performers can spin on the scene and the nuances that arise from costume or location changes can appear overwhelming. To be a film director is to be constantly answering questions and making decisions. This is just one scene and a few lines and just from that the range of options seems endless, and the weight of the responsibility crushing. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is a great film about how impossible it is to make a good film.
Or at least Take One is. After years of editing, Greaves submitted his film to Cannes but the projectionist mixed up two reels before a vital screening and it wasn't selected. Twenty years later Steve Buscemi was at the Sundance Film Festival with Reservoir Dogs and went to a screening of it where the projector broke halfway through and Greaves appeared before the audience offering to take any questions while it was being fixed. He became a cheerleader for getting the second part made and eventually Steven Soderbergh came through with the financing.
Take Two and a Half though feels like a group of people re-enacting capturing lightning in a bottle, trying to re-improvise the improv of their youth. It is longer and more sluggish though the two actors who return from Take One (Henningway and Baker) do wonders with the new scene of their characters hooking up 35 years later, particularly when Greave throws psychodramatist Maria Karp into the mix. It also has the effortless poignancy of passing time: the same people in the same place doing the same thing but somehow it's just not the same. The energetic, idealist soundman of Take One now looks like Brando playing the role of Danny Baker.
Supplements.
Discovering William Greaves (2006), a documentary on the director’s career, featuring Greaves, his wife and coproducer Louise Archambault Greaves, actor Ruby Dee, filmmaker St. Clair Bourne, and film scholar Scott MacDonald
- Interview from 2006 with actor Steve Buscemi
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Amy Taubin and production notes by William Greaves for Take One
