(calm piano music)
- We move through life very fast,
and it's not a matter of how long you live,
it's a matter of how well you live,
but that's the theme sort of of Camus's
The Happy Death.
There are people die young, but they die happy
because they've done a whole lifetime's worth.
I remember as a kid thinking about
how an insect, a mosquito, dies in two days,
and I used to worry about the mosquito,
saying does the insect know it only lives two days?
I mean, today and tomorrow, it's going to say,
God, my life is half over,
and of course the answer is no.
The insect does not know. That's its lifetime.
(calm piano music)
Death is a funny thing,
and it's obviously on the back of everyone's mind
or their psychology whether they want to admit it or not.
I play a game, in fact, it's a cute game, stupid game
in my elector, in Zoetrope,
I always used to turn the light out
and go down in the dark, would scare girls,
and so I take the light out the elevator,
and I go down from the eighth floor to the first floor,
and in that elevator, I decide that I'm going to die,
and I have to make my peace,
and at first I'm scared, when it gets down to the sixth floor,
and then I start thinking about my kids,
how nice my son is, how nice my daughter is,
how beautiful my family is, my wife, my house,
the work I've been able to work in,
and by the time I'm getting to the first floor,
it's like, my God how lucky I've been,
and then I get down, and the door opens,
light comes out, and I was prepared for death.
But no, the door opens, and I walk out,
and I still have more life.
(calm instrumental music)
- Your brother August once said that your films
are not so much autobiographical as bio-imaged.
- He's such an interesting guy.
Bio-imaged, what does that mean?
- Oh that's what I was going to ask you.
What do you think he meant by that?
- Well I think if I understand
the concept correctly, it would seem
that all fiction is bio-imaged
in that ultimately, at the foundation,
you only have yourself, your feelings,
your perceptions, and your life upon which
to base fiction, and so you could say it's bio-imaged,
it's based on what you've seen,
what you've felt, but then you create images
or situations or characters on top of that.
One would guess that you'd have to write it,
it would have to be your story, but maybe not,
because like the Godfather
certainly became a film very much intermingled
in my life, and it was a novel
that existed long before I did,
and it certainly could've been made
by another director, but you know,
as novelists always tell people who say
oh you know, that's you, or what does that come from,
maybe that's what the bio-imaging thing is
is that you know you draw on whatever you have,
and so you're never quite conscious
of where you're getting it from.
Someone told me, he said, I totally understand
your complete body of work,
and I said, well how?
And he said, well because your films
are all about solitude.
The Conversation is about solitude.
The Godfather is about solitude.
On the other side of the solitude
is the party with the family and everyone there.
To you the solitude is the nightmare
and the family and the party and everyone eating
and drinking, that's the happiness.
I said, great because I didn't know that,
but makes sense.
I mean I know that the way I was raised and stuff,
family really meant to me a coming together of everyone,
that meant good times, you know,
and being alone, having polio, and being stuck in a room
'cause I was the kid with the polio and the room
that didn't have any friends and wanted friends
more than anything else, and you know,
that was not good.
I didn't like that.
(calm instrumental music)
I've had a lot of people say how do you feel
that you made all these great pictures,
you know, in your 30s, and that since then,
you haven't made great pictures?
And I said, wow, it would make me feel sad,
but the truth of the matter is
that nobody was saying that they were great pictures
in their time.
Even Apocalypse Now, I remember Apocalypse Now
when it came out, I mean, it got some terrible reviews,
but it was like it's the weirdest thing, so weird.
I saw it on television somewhat recently
in London, it was on television,
it didn't seem weird to me at all.
The times caught up with it.
You know, it's pretty obvious.
("Ride of the Valkyries" by Wagner)