Swank in The Arts; 101; USA Film Festival

Good evening. I'm Patsy Swank and I'm so happy to be back, especially to be working in an area of the news that I so enjoy and value. I think I'll tell you right away that art means a lot more to me than something that hangs on a wall or happens on a stage. I think the urge that creates art influences and is influenced by everything else that happens and this program will be planned accordingly. This week we are in the large middle of the eighth annual USA Film Festival. It's Southern Methodist University. The festival's director, G. William Jones, and two of its visiting luminaries, Judith Christ, Critic for the New York Post and TV God, and director Martin Ritt, are here with me. We'll be talking about film, Captain Letters, please, in just a few minutes. The public event of the week was also the art event of the week. The formal dedication of the New Dallas City Hall in a ceremony under the famous slanting front of that building that was first conceived by Mayor Eric Johnson, resurrected by Mayor Wes Wise, and finally occupied by Mayor

Robert Folsom. They all spoke Sunday and then a crowd of thousands rushed past the cut ribbons into the lobby to roam the roomy carters and look up at those vaulted ceilings and down those four stories of centered space and to look at lots and lots of art assembled by Irving Levy and the City Hall Arts Committee. There's a handsome collection of work lent by 40 Dallas artists for a year, more about that later, a collection of 40 lithographs, color lithographs from the private collection of Raymond and Patsy Nashor, and a gallery full of the work of art students of the Dallas Independent School District. Today, Mrs. Joan Mondale was to see that building in that art for the first time, along with another collection that Dallas Museum Director Harry Parker has assembled from Southwest museums. These paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and crafts will hang in the vice presidential mansion in Washington for the coming year. That tour was the

first of a series of full events for a full day for Mrs. Mondale, and I'll have more to talk to you about that later. On Saturday, in a typically gallant and gracious gesture, Stanley Marcus stood by the pool in front of the City Hall and looked at the gracefully turning Mary Bright Red floating sculptures and dedicated them to the memory of his wife, Billy, who had died not much more than 24 hours before. It was a small and moving ceremony attended only by the Marcus family. The sculptor, Marta Pan, come from Paris with her husband for the occasion, a few city officials and a few members of the press. It was a suitable celebration for Billy Marcus, who never needed large crowds or the center of any stage to get accomplished what she wanted done. What all that was, we never will know because she didn't require credit either. She just worked very hard and laughed a lot and had wonderful earthy flashes of wit and great compassion, and it's hard to imagine what this city is going to be like without her.

The great sculpture debate is settled. Sir Henry Moore will come to Dallas probably in September to install and present his three-piece work for the Plaza of City Hall. He will come back to the city which he says has given him the best understanding of America. The problem if you recall was that the three-piece work overran the $300,000 already given by W.R. Hahn in memory of his wife and armed with a carte blanche from a few Dallas citizens who feel that the city simply must have that sculpture. Mayor Robert Folsom and city manager George Schrader called on Sir Henry when they were in England recently. He named a price they accepted it. I don't know what the figure was. I might be able to find out, but it's private effort and private money. They give it, I'll take what it buys from Sir Henry Moore. Twenty-one years ago the Dallas Civic Ballet Society was chartered and this past weekend it came

of age. At least the professional arm of a three-pronged organization arrived at the kind of undertaking that was only a gleam in the eye of the founders. It was a program made up of two world premieres, an American premiere, and a repeat of a ballet that the company had introduced two years ago. All of it was the work of living choreographers. James Klauser, Yaku Sharia, Brian McDonald, and George Skibin, the last, of course, the artistic director of the Dallas company. The Friday opening was a full evening beginning with the Klauser, a kind of smooth, super classic, punctuated with calculated awkwardnesses that veered only now and then to the cute. It is a lemonade in the shade with mosquito bites, sort of work, and it is a little too long, but the lights, the costumes, and the dancing were all fresh and sharp.

How much to Jerome Robbins, an extract from a longer ballet by the young Israeli dancer choreographer Yaku Sharia, got its first American viewing. The programming eye confessment very little to me, rather I enjoyed an abstraction of bodies in not too predictable chains of movement and steps Sharia had devised for them. An earlier visit to a rehearsal session had added to that. Sharia has great inventiveness and vitality in working with his dancers. He reminds me of an artist drawing in charcoal. The performed work had more finish, of course. This company is not yet cohesive enough nor strong enough to do full justice to what he asks, but it was a coming effort and worth watching. Skibin is a romantic. We know it and expect it and we got it to early music by Benjamin Britain in romantic encounters, a pleasant interlude before the evening's principal offering. That was a new setting by the Canadian choreographer Brian McDonald of Stravinsky's

Ride of Spring. That ballet was first set by Vasylov Naginski and head as its theme the emergence of mankind from the primordial ooze. The ballet itself shot out of a sea of white tutus and classic traditions and it rocked the international ballet world. Mr. McDonald's piece won't do that, not because it isn't fascinating, cunningly made and furiously danced by the entire company, but because a society turned continuously in on itself just gets to be a big bore. Barbarity at the dawn of time may be more engaging than man's current inhumanity to man. Given that base, McDonald's work is a razzled-asal piece, heightened by William Eckert's effective set of rises and falls of texture and scrim, lighting grids, and McFarlane's own back walls probably scrubbed for the occasion. Certainly the company gave it everything at top energy. The pace was unrelenting and the tension and excitement were never allowed to flag.

This company still has a long way to go, but it seems at last to be moving on a solid path, training, developing, encouraging at an even pace all of the elements that build a strong company. Production details still need to be cleaned up, stragglers disturb, a sloppy curtain call, spoils enthusiasm. But I got a sense of purpose and adventure and the willingness to risk for it, and I like that. Just before the Azaleas come the films, the critics, the directors, and the stars. And we know that it's USA Film Festival time at SMU. That's the real spring of G. William Jones,

who midwife the festival one has brought it into the eighth year of its bloom. It's a time when we always hope to see that down to earth, sometimes lyric critic Judith Crest of the New York Post and TV Guide, who can love a film like Mama Thanksgiving and hate it with the same abundant grace. This year there's a new face, the redoubtable one of Martin Ritt, independent, and I don't mean just rich director. Also occasionally lyrical here with his new film Casey Shadow, which Miss Chris picked for one of her entries in the festival. They'll let's start with the basics. There are a lot of film festivals and a lot of people have a lot of different kinds of fun at them. What do they really do? Why have one? Well, I can tell you the reason we had this one. There are indeed a lot of film festivals, and eight years ago we figured that nobody had the right to start yet one more unless it had something unique to do, something unique to contribute. And at that time, even as now,

it was apparent to me that if any film from the world over gets short shrift at festivals, at celebrations of films, it's the American film, which is terribly ironic, because you ask anybody across the world, where are some of the most exciting things happening in film? They say the USA. So we started the festival to redress that historic imbalance. And we do come to an orgy of viewing of new and old films. We take a week off and spend it in the dark and love it. Would you care to assess what festivals there are that are more or less comparable or maybe complementary to the dance festival? It's hard for me to compare, because this is the only one I choose to come to, mainly because of the very point that Bill made, where it is not the business man, and it's not the starlet that is the important part of the festival, but it concentrates on film and does so, I think in a uniquely democratic manner. That's what I like

about your festival. And that is that the student, the film buff, the housewife, everyone can become involved with the films, which holds center stage, which is what matters. Well, what do they do for the people in the business? I mean, beyond launching, beyond a certain amount of publicity, why do you want a film of yours in a festival? Well, I always, I'm proud to have a film on a festival. And I think it's, what Bill said is very important. I do feel it's very important that a festival in this country be committed to American films. I am very concerned with the growth of the American artists in films or in any other form, and I feel too often there's not been sufficient commitment from the community and from the country itself to the artist. And since it's been a way of life that I've pursued when I've been able to work,

I am committed and deeply committed to that. I have taught and taught again and again, and taught only last year I get at the act of studio in Hollywood. And we'll teach again, and we'll lecture again at universities and go wherever there are people committed to things that I feel are important to my country. Well, let's get to Casey. It was your choice, Ms. Chris. What was it about it that made you pick it for this festival? Well, in a way, Casey Shadow is very much the American film tradition. It's a family film in that it is about a family. It's an animal picture. It's a horse movie, but uniquely, I think, one that holds people just a little more important than the horses. Just a little, so it's not to alienate the horse lovers. Above all, it raises a moral issue

that adults face, and I think that young people and children have to understand. And it is a family film that has a great deal of sentiment, but no sentimentality. You wake? No, sir. Wake up, ma'am. We're not going to carve you up, Casey. We're going to hang in, smoke, and the meal tastes better then. Was that supposed to be funny? Yes, it was. Well, what did I say instead? That it won't matter all that much if he's lame tomorrow. I'll go you on better. If he's lame tomorrow, I'll make him sound. You can't. You can't. Usually, with a cult as young, you can. The mussels heal quickly, and the bones

need no time at all. Now you go sleep now. And if you ever blow him out again, ever, I will hang you and smoke you and eat you for breakfast. You sleep now? Yes, sir. I've been filling out his registration papers. We're going to call him Casey Shatter. It's all right with you. We have anti-heroes. We have dozens of anti-heroes. Is the day of the anti-hero done? Is it ever possible for the society to have a hero, a heroic situation, a noble situation in the sense that we associate them with so much of the literature of the past and I mean

staging and film and as well as written work? I think that we've reached the point, the era of what I choose to call not too deprecatingly, the era of the feel good movie, that the negatives and the anti-heroes have now filtered into that mass medium of television. Everybody is rotten, rotten, rotten, and you have your Deus Ex Machina, whether he's called Kojak or whether he's called Dr. Somebody or whoever it is, who of course comes to your rescue in the last five minutes, but you've been watching rotten, rotten, rotten. Film I think movies are far more sensitive to the feeling of the immediate reaction of the American people and I think that we're moving toward an era of positivism and yet it's a far more sophisticated positivism. Compare Casey Shadow, say to a Lassie movie

and you see how far we have gone and how much we believe young people can perceive and understand. Is this the reaction that you're getting from the young people that you deal with? Yes, really it's not the anti-hero anymore, it's probably the death of the perfect hero. Now our heroes are much more realistic, they have thorns and warts and they're in shades of gray rather than black and white, but yeah the young person is able to accept that kind of hero now. Where does television come in all of this? We've been talking about film. Anybody answer who wishes? Television comes at the bottom, up to now. Well, we began to discuss this yesterday. The worst that can be said for some films, even if they don't work, they really try to make something entertaining. They're not made to sell soap and not made to sell

penzoil or soap suds or shoelaces. If a product, an entertainment product is made with a prime object of selling soap, there is no way an artist can beat that rap. Because if he does anything first class, the people who want to sell soap are going to kick it out anyway, they don't want them, they don't want him around, they don't want that kind of trouble. I think that's said in concrete. Yes, where the end is totally material, there is no chance to do a first class, maybe you'll, unless you happen to bump into a genius who happens to come to work and tell of his and before anybody knows this genius is flashed across the screen and done something extraordinary. He won't be working them more than a week or two because they can't control them and they can't control what he says or does. They have to be able to control you and control what

you say and do in order to sell that product. So public television is the only place you can do anything of any quality and you just have to watch television every day if you can. I only watch it when I'm getting ready to cast a movie because I feel I may bump into an interesting actor and I have on occasion cast apart from something I've seen on television. But generally the orientation is only only money. You must understand that with most of the people in film that none of those people ever thought they would make money. None of the actors or directors who are now famous and some of them rich. If you would offer them a job when they were 25 for 10 or 15 thousand dollars a year they would assign their their souls to the devil and signed with you for 20 years. All those things happened afterwards. The impulse is a totally different impulse. Do you look a little quizzical, do you agree? Well I wouldn't be that absolute about it. I do find an occasional flicker in the wasteland. It is rare, hard to come by, but I

have to admit I'm not a total moron. I am a bit of a compulsive watcher. I think things like Mash or Barney Miller are totally enjoyable. I think perhaps if you don't watch television with any regularity it is a far more enjoyable thing. Also if I may be slightly cynical I don't think that public television of which I am an ardent supporter has reached its ultimate perfections. I think it has a long, long way to go. I wish there could be a little more interaction between the two lines of television. Of course television is abysmal, but it is also because many people of quality are refusing to fight their way into it. Well there is still an awful lot

of things to talk about. Foreign films, emerging new stars, new directions and criticism, the whole financial future of the industry, cassettes, discs. I guess we couldn't have gotten around all of it anyway. Thank you all for coming. Judith Christ, Martin Red, G. William Jones. Here is something lovely for you to see. A small Henry Moore, if there is such a thing as a small Henry Moore, look at it for a moment. And here are some of the things that you may want to see here during the coming week. At the Aiming Carter Museum, opening March 16th, the forgotten

season, winter landscapes by Georgia Dury, snow scenes, by a New England artist of the mid-1800s, not so well known as Courier and Ives, but particularly American in his art. At the Manhattan Clearing House, beginning Friday, March 17th, an important contemporary dance festival. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, performances by two important companies, the Dallas Black Dance Theater, and the Repertory Dance Company of the Southwest in performance. Coming next week, March 20th and 23rd, dance workshops by Sally Bowden, guest artist from New York's construction company, Dance Studio, and a former faculty member of Merce Gunningham. At the Warehouse Living Arts Center in Corsicana, through Saturday, the Corsicana Panorama by Ed Blackburn, Jim Malone, and Vernon Fisher, a large-scale multimedia environment, camera oscura projections, overdrawn images, real objects, and written text, with noises from the street,

three of the most adventurous artists in Texas. Theater 3, through Saturday, after the fall, Arthur Miller's autobiographical drama, with Hugh Fagan as the central figure. Saturday and Sunday, the Cresofska Ballez-Jones, Ivan Naj of the American Ballet Theater, has an impressive list of guest dancers, and a program, including the Aurora, Don Quixote, Pada Duda, and Chilby scene, Laysil Fied, and a new work as Spanya by the company director, Nile Cresofska. At the Fort Worth Art Museum, opening Sunday, Stella, since 1970, a major retrospective of 26 pieces documenting the direction that this new art artist's work has taken since his last big show

with the Museum of Modern Art. And the USA Film Festival, of course, will continue through Sunday. I hope you get to enjoy at least some of these. Next week, barring, unforeseen news developments, our guests will be members of Voices of Change, a very group of musicians devoted to presenting music, which for some reason or another has not been heard in Dallas. They will be performing, and showing how they get ready to perform. I hope you'll be back. Good night.