Following the modest success of All the Vermeers
in New York, which I sold in some European markets, and thus had
some earnings with which to work, and seemingly in a good creative time,
I decided to shoot a film again in a rural setting, but this time -
and this is true - rather than return to the yellow-orange palette of
Montana and Utah where I’d shot other films, I wanted to shoot
in a green setting, with the color being a determining factor in my
choice of setting. So I returned to Oregon, where I’d lived a
year in 1973, and with which I was somewhat familiar.
At the time the topic of childhood sexual abuse, “recovered memory”
and the like were a very hot-button issue in America, the kind of topic
which normally gets a knee-jerk response from most people, for or against.
The shrill manner in which this, as other things, and the then-recent
introduction of “talk” (read “scream”) radio,
as with Rush Limbaugh, reduced public discourse to a shouting match
in which sides were already taken and set, prompted me to conclude that
the social trust which a culture must have to function was in process
of breaking down in America. And I wished to address this in a film.
Beginning with a very vague and basic idea, involving the timber industry
(one of the major economic bases of Oregon), and its cultural contradictions,
I drove to Oregon, inquiring with a friend, Ron Finne, about possible
lumber mill towns to check out. He suggested a few and I spent a week
zig-zagging the Willamette Valley area, back roads, searching for a
setting. Most of these places were either in the flat areas of valleys,
which I visually did not want, and a few which were set elsewhere were
simply a bit too far into redneck roughness to fit the overall idea
I had. Driving out from Corvallis, I passed one such town lacking the
visual qualities I sought and headed on to the coast. Just inland from
the Pacific by 7 miles, approaching Newport, I found myself in Toledo,
which sits on a steep set of hills on the Yaquina River, where in its
front yard a large Weyerhouse corporate paper mill sprawls. The vertical
streets, the classic small-town American architecture and Main Street
instantly drew my attention. A bit of nosing around found a lumber mill
just out of town, one specializing in large timber used for mining and
construction. I quickly found a motel in Newport, Toledo having only
a rather depressing railroad hotel for accommodation.
A few weeks of researching and inquiry begot
ready permission to shoot in the mill, the cooperation of the building
permit man at the city hall, and overall 100% help from those to whom
I talked. I settled into a bluff-top motel overlooking the Pacific in
Newport, and began to write. As well, at an audition at the Performing
Arts center there I found a good actress, Kate Sannella, who plays a
major role in the film. The basic idea developed quickly and I wrote
the major sections of dialog in the weeks in Newport while doing my
research. Actors were rounded up in my usual manner - through references
and suggestions from friends - and again I returned to Tom Blair, despite
the unpleasantries of the Sure Fire shoot, as he fit perfectly the character
I had in mind. And he is a damned good actor. Before returning to the
Bay Area I talked with some motels to secure housing for the cast and
crew for the return. Ellen McLaughlin had worked in Tony Kushner’s
Angels in America and was suggested by a friend.
Shooting was mid-April to mid-May with a Panavision
35mm rig which Bob Harvey provided for free. He’d been at a Sundance
summer seminar to which I’d been invited with Vermeers,
and at that time had offered use of the camera and I had earlier checked
in with him to confirm this, which he’d done. This camera has
several things which other 35mm don’t, and reminded me of my first
camera, a 16mm Bolex. The Panavision has a film-plane matte slot, usually
used for masking to 1.85 or whatever ratio, during shooting. I manufactured
several DIY mattes, dividing the screen left/right, and top/bottom.
The camera also can run backwards, and Panavision let me have one of
the two reverse running magazines they had, so I could do in-camera
split screens without taking the film out of the camera. These practical
matters had a determining effect on the aesthetics of the film, in which
the split screen is used to subtly underscore the narrative content
which explores the divisions within the community and the household
portrayed. I spent about a month in and around Toledo, taking still
pictures with a 35mm camera, finding the “look” of the film,
and in fact many “shots” which appear in the film. The entire
visual aspect of the work was fully developed prior to shooting, not
with a story-board, but with still pictures and a conscious strategy
for using visuals to cue the content of the overall film. For example,
almost all shots of men in relation to men are direct and frontal, or
profiled; shots of women are almost all oblique, from 45 degrees to
side, and often above or below. This choice was meant to reflect the
frontal manner in which men tend, with each other, to act socially,
whereas women in my experience tend to be more indirect. Or, as another
example, in order to let the split screen work without seeming to jump
out as a trick, from the very first shot the screen is divided in half
by some kind of line set vertically down the center of the screen. It
might be the edge of a window, a corner, a shadow, but in about 2/3rds
or perhaps more of the images, a line will be found dividing the screen
in halves. When the split screens arrive in an aggressive manner for
narrative purposes, the audience has discreetly been conditioned for
this division of the screen to be perfectly natural.
Shooting was akin to the pattern of the Vermeers
shoot, with a camera available for a month, but less than half of those
days – 12 - used for shooting with actors, and with the acting
days usually compacted into a matter of hours, or perhaps at most 4-6
hours on a few days. While I had three or four major scenes written,
and these constituted the core of the story, I had the actors go visit
the places where we were shooting, and work on scenes on their own for
the setting. Tom Blair and Marshall Gaddis hung around the lumber mill
office a few times, gathering information and ideas, and wrote the text
for their scenes there, under my guidance. Much of what they wrote had
a sit-com feeling, which I axed, either prior to shooting, or later
on the editing bench - only a bit of that is retained. Thomas Moore,
who came on his own impetus, having seen some of my work in Vienna,
from Austria on a government grant to be in the film presented an odd
problem of what to do with a German accented young man, and I decided
to cast him as a rambling Jesus fanatic, and had him rummage the Bible
for something appropriate and then set he and Blair together to cook
up a scene around that. The rest had been scripted, or at least a basic
idea for the other scenes had been established, in some cases then being
improvised - such as the scene in which Tom and wife go fishing.
Filming went very nicely, with Rita Roti as
my camera assistant. Rita is a small tough wiry young woman who, at
first, to prove her mettle, was hoisting the Panavision camera and other
heavy equipment on her own, insisting she needed no help. After a bit
I persuaded her it made sense to let me help as the things were damned
heavy and I was happy to do such work, and I would think nothing less
of her should she accept the muscle. She was fantastic all the way through.
John ----, who had done sound for me on Vermeers
came out from New York and did an excellent job, though there was considerable
friction between him and Rosenthal, whom he had spotted for a phony
early on. He had the right number well before I did.
On completion of shooting, which concluded in
good spirits and with a sense that a good film was at hand, I returned
to San Francisco and did a quick basic edit. I then had to go to Europe,
and in my absence under Rosenthal’s decision and somewhat against
my will, Mark Redpath edited some of the film - the lumber mill sequences.
His “editor’s” viewpoint was diametrically opposed
to mine, and when I returned and saw the result, I had to dismember
it all and start all over again. Still, editing went rather quickly,
and work with Erling Wold on the music took over. I collaborated closely,
and attended rehearsals and recording - always for me an interesting
and engaging process in which I learn a lot. We had a little trouble
- a bit my fault as I had requested that an accordion be part of the
instruments - with one musician, accustomed to polka who had a difficult
time with Erling’s eccentric rhythms. Erling’s work with
embedding the ambient sounds of the lumber mill and environment into
the music, as I requested, came out very well, with music emerging out
of the place, or the sounds of the place rippling inside the music.
My only “complaint” is with the long piano notes which slur
in the sequence in which the camera passes over Drift Creek - the complaint
is not with Erling’s music, but that most cinema projectors can’t
actually hold a constant 24 fps, and his long held notes wobble a fair
bit most times, to my ears painfully so. Thank heavens for digital now,
which deletes such problems.
I consider this film as certainly among my best,
and for a budget of $105,000, in 35mm, I’d have to say pretty
much of a miracle.
The Bed You Sleep In premiered at
the Berlin Film Festival, 1993, receiving extravagant praise, and securing
sales made by me to German TV, and distribution in Italy. In the US,
while also receiving very positive reviews, typically, it did not obtain
a distributor - though I think this was largely owing to the utter ineptness
of Henry Rosenthal in the world of business. After the Berlin festival
I moved to Europe and was not on hand in the US to attempt to tend to
such things, and in fact, shortly after the festival and Rosenthal’s
complete failure to tend to business there, I requested that we terminate
our partnership, of which you may read more in the section dealing with
this matter.
[Note: The Bed You Sleep In is available in
DVD and VHS from a company called Vanguard,a DVD which has been called
by some as technically the worst DVD ever; it is a judgment with which
I concur. Henry Rosenthal made an illegal contract with this company
for their distribution on tape and DVD, and he and they are solely responsible for the excrable quality of the DVD and VHS
tape. In 35mm projection Bed is a film, as noted by many critics,
of extraordinary beauty - that Rosenthal would accept and Vanguard would
market such a dismally done DVD is a testimony to their complete disinterest
in art.]
"Jost alternately juxtaposes distended, alienating images of
the near desolate industrial town, idyllic shots of the lush and scenic
northwestern landscape, and elliptical (and deliberately fractured)
episodes of Ray's business and domestic life in order to examine the
dynamic, often conflicting interrelation between independence and
survival, personal freedom and anarchy, self-discipline and moral
law."
- P. Acquarello Strictly Film School
"I truly believe that everyone in this movie was on Valium.
It has to be the slowest movie I have ever forced myself to watch
to the end. I still can't believe I made it through the whole thing
without falling asleep. Everyone in the movie talked in slow motion,
pausing after every third word. There were shots of the town, which
would seem like forever and for what reason? Like, shots of a side
of an old building, shot of a town street, etc. The only way I would
recommend this movie to anyone is if they were having trouble sleeping."
- User Comment Internet Movie Database
