Life Out of Balance // An interview with Godfrey Reggio
by Steve Marsh
When I spoke with Godfrey Reggio, the 81-year-old director of Koyaanisqatsi, it met every expectation, even as he defied every possible convention of the octogenarian. Here was the experimental director of the psychedelic Qatsi trilogy, with a long gray Old Testament-worthy beard and a fishing cap on his head holed up in his office in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
“We’re isolated out on a pier on top of the Erie Basin,” he raved gleefully. “So we’re not under New York State law—we’re under maritime law!”
Image captured during interview
The back wall of his office was completely covered by tacked-up devotional images of nuns and men in dark suits, alongside what appeared to be clippings from newspapers and magazines, and hung-up edited movie scripts with big slashed out red x marks. He chain-smoked American Spirits and at one point fondled a gigantic yet-to-be-smoked joint as he talked about dispensing with the juvenile delinquency of his New Orleans childhood to become a monk of the Christian Brotherhood at the age of 14 before moving to Santa Fe, only for the Order to dispense with him, before he dispensed with the conventions of language and film in Koyaanisqatsi.
“We frame something out of complexity,” he says. “In order to put a limit to it. In art, we call this the frame. In life, it’s language.” Initially, he wanted to avoid having a word as the title of his language-less film. “I wanted to have a visual,” he says. “And I had the one I wanted: the famous Life Magazine image with everybody with their 3D glasses in at Radio City, all looking at the same screen, but you don’t see the screen. But everybody said, ‘you just can’t do that, Godfrey.’ I wanted a word that had no baggage culturally — a word that had more profundity than our own language.”
The word he chose for his debut film, Koyaanisqatsi, means, “life out of balance” in the Hopi language. He borrowed it from his friend David Monongye, a healer from Arizona who lived to be 105.
“David told me, ‘everything that you call normal we call a bad normal, everything that you call real, we call unreal, everything sane is insane,’” he remembers. “It was like music to my ears.”
So how do you make a film about the corrupting influence of humanity on the natural world using only one Hopi word? Reggio knew music would be important.
“In film, music usually supports whatever the madness of the plot happens to be,” he says. “Usually playing a thematic second fiddle, at best. It’s there, it weaves in and out. It’s there to promote drama. It’s to help explicate what you’re seeing.” But with Koyaanisqatsi, Reggio knew that he didn’t want music to manipulate, he wanted it to create. “In Koyaanisqatsi, it doesn’t explicate, it’s a partner. It allows us to together produce the image. It’s the image that we see together.”
For that alchemy to work, Reggio knew he needed to find the perfect musical collaborator for Koyaanisqatsi: and when Philip Glass finally agreed to do it in 1977, he had his guy. The two of them seem an unlikely pair: the Italian pot-smoking fallen monk from New Orleans, and the Jewish modernist vegetarian yogi from New York, but they went on to work together for 40 years, finishing Koyaanisqatsi in 1982 before collaborating on its two follow-ups, Powaqqatsi in 1988 and Naqoyqatsi in 2002. On the occasion of Glass’s 85th birthday, Reggio and I talked about why he knew Glass would be the perfect partner for the film, how their partnership operates, and their newest collaboration, the upcoming NEO NOW.
Steve Marsh: There’s a psychedelic aspect to Koyaanisqatsi. It feels almost synesthetic in the way it operates on different sensory levels, but the truth of the movie is something that all of us can recognize: the idea that we are corrupting the environment we live in.
Godfrey Reggio: These films were not designed to be mental. These are non-mental experiences because of the humiliation of our word. And the word is how we see the world. In that sense, these films are offering you a way to receive the world in which you live. To give voice to something that’s not voiceable, that our language doesn’t describe. I think we’re all mentally ill in that the bicameral mind was created. We have a cameral mind. We’re animals. The bicameral mind produced consciousness. My films question normality or consciousness. So all the notations of the films, its form, or its aesthetics, are spoken to the non-conscious world. Like in dreams, you do not hear words spoken. You see visions given. If you’re an ascetic, it’s called contemplation. So I tried to create, with Philip Glass, an opportunity to see what the language doesn’t any longer communicate.
“These films are offering you a way to receive the world in which you live. To give voice to something that’s not voiceable, that our language doesn’t describe.”
In interviews, you’ve talked about how each of the Qatsi films is a critique of an aspect of our drug-crazed, overly-consumptive society. But so many people have watched this film, young people especially, under the influence and have been able to dissociate and to think more deeply about their place in the world.
In fact, what you’re saying was once the criticism of the film, and was once, for me, its value. I’m not advocating for anyone to do anything. Certainly not white powders. Not that which is concentrated, like if you take uranium and you make it into a bomb, or if you take the coca leaf and make it into cocaine. So for each film in the Qatsi trilogy, I’ve assigned them a drug that represents the world: Powaqqatsi is marijuana and hashish; Naqoyqatsi is full out ecstasy, LSD, all the psychedelics; Koyaanisqatsi, the drug is cocaine, amphetamines, speed. We’re on speed, on drugs, outrunning the future. That’s what Koyaanisqatsi is about. It begins and ends with that vortex.
Do you still smoke marijuana?
My sacrament of choice since I was a young Christian Brother was marijuana, and still is to this very moment! I do feel the holy smoke has enormous medicinal effects. For me it’s sacramental, it’s not a recreational drug. My body is encrusted with it because it allows me to re-see in another perspective the world I live in. So it’s my normal state in an abnormal world. Have I tried all the other drugs? Yes. Sometimes in great excess. I have used cocaine to write with—it inspired me. I liked the rush. But I can’t maintain. And my nose starts to fall off my face and I start to bleed. I can’t breathe and I’m up at 4 in the morning and feeling vacant and “who the fuck am I?” and “what’s going on?”
Did you smoke during the filming of Koyaanisqatsi?
Every morning I get here at 5 in the morning, wake up at 4 usually. The crew stumbles in around 9. We ring the bell at 10. We all assemble. Figure out our day’s work. And I’m here in the morning having holy communion. Getting all pumped up at the day.
Matins.
It gives me clarity. I’m not addicted to it. But cigarettes are addictive, let me tell you. Now, I’m 974 months old, okay? I’ve been smoking tobacco since I was 12 years old. I had to stop when I was a Brother and then pilfered—my sin—a little mission money to buy cigarettes that I would smoke behind the gym. But since I’ve been out in the street, I’ve been smoking. So if I’m gone and I don’t have a cigarette I go nuts. If I don’t have marijuana it’s no big deal. But everywhere I travel everybody offers me marijuana.
In terms of this film being beyond language, when did you know that you wanted Philip Glass to be your partner? By the late 70s, he had done a lot of the experimental minimalist stuff with Steve Reich, and he had done Einstein on the Beach, but not yet Satyagraha, nor much of his extremely visual operatic work. I think he had scored some short documentaries. So how did you know that this was the guy for Koyaanisqatsi?
Well, here’s the thing: I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want to use the word. Not that I don’t value the word. I think it’s a tragedy that we don’t use it. But we live in a visual age, we live in a syntax of visualization. One would see more images in one day today than a person in the Middle Ages would in their entire lifetime. So we’re swimming in images. It’s hard to escape them. So I knew that I wanted music. Now, why music? I could have chosen Mozart or Bach, one of my favorites: The Baroque form, the early form, a transition from the Middle Ages and the Dies Irae and all of that. But I wanted an original composer. So I asked Marcia Mikulak, herself a composer and a pianist, to give me a tutorial for about a month about the living composers who I might be able to collaborate with. And I heard a lot of people actually: I heard Ligeti, I heard Stockhausen—who moved me greatly—I heard Reich—separate from Glass—I heard Tomita—who was doing electronic music, as Stockhausen was in Germany—and then I heard Philip Glass. I heard a piece he composed called North Star which was used on a documentary by Mark di Suvero, the artist. I fell in love with the music immediately for the following reason: I felt it was non-directive. I felt it was not conscious of itself. I felt it operated in two zones, just like your subconscious does. I felt that as a narrative, with the distance it created from the subject, it gave the perfect verb in terms of what one heard, to the object. It was the perfect play for me. His music has the possibility of 100 beats per minute. It’s not the 12-scale form. It’s a form that’s ever-ascending but never getting there. It goes directly to the soul of the listener. It doesn’t proceed through metaphor. It’s speaking to your subconscious. Everyone sees a different picture. Everyone hears a different sound. Philip Glass was a blessing.
How did you get him?
Well, I wrote him letters. I sent telexes. Or whatever it was. Through some gizmo where you type and it comes on a string. I visited New York. Left things under his door. And he was at that point finishing Einstein on the Beach and driving a taxicab to support himself.
He wasn’t necessarily a famous guy when you hired him?
No. The event that he created with Robert Wilson catapulted him into fame. It became one of those huge events of 20th-century art immediately. With the timing, with restructuring the form of opera, because it had a lot of negative criticism from the authority, but huge insight from others. And a big huge public response. He became famous with one show.
With Einstein on the Beach.
It established him and Robert Wilson with an exclamation mark. They were both backstreet performers.
So what stage was Koyaanisqatsi at that point?
It was in the beginning. We had already shot stuff in Four Corners which we were very happy with. And I had shot in St. Louis with the buildings coming down, although we didn’t shoot those, we shot ‘em before they got down, and acquired the demolition footage. We were doing a 16 mm film for 40 minutes, and we were so pleased with what we had that our backer allowed us to go full bore for a longer feature in 35 mm, which would give more visual impact to the image. So all of that was in play and Philip finally saw me in ’77 because of two friends: Rudy Wurlitzer and Jeffrey Lew. They were uprating me in different channels. Rudy Wurlitzer is very well known, he’s from the Wurlitzer jukebox family and he’s also a very close associate and collaborator with Robert Frank. And is a superfine screenwriter. So he got Philip to see me, just to get me off of Philip’s back. And my dear friend Jeffrey Lew, who started 112 Greene Street where all the famous people of the 70s came out for his art—Philip’s first studio was there. Jeffrey is a very controversial figure, considers himself a god blessed sociopath. I had a screening at Jonas Mekas’ Quality Film Archives which was in Soho on Wooster back in the day. Philip came, I showed him footage from Four Corners that we had been doing. First I played Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition because I thought it was the most brilliant composition, and rendered by Mussorgsky it was like genius work. Because I wanted to have an apt contender in the ring, with whom I considered the master. And then I played Philip’s music for North Star and said, “Well Philip, which do you think is the best?” And he said, “Well of course I think mine is. When may we start?” So it was a perfect con job of the subconscious. I’m so happy that we’ve now been partners for 45 years. He’s my only partner in music. I’m his longest partner of anything he’s ever done. He’ll be 85 and I’ll be 82 in a month or so. And we’re doing a project together right now.
What’s the project?
“If I knew what I was doing before I was doing it then it wouldn’t be the project that I wanna do.”
It’s called NEO NOW. It’s been nine years in the making. My films take forever because nobody wants to do a burnt offering except for very few people. Because I can’t offer them the clarity of what I’m doing, but only the clarity of the intention of what I wish to discover. If I knew what I was doing before I was doing it then it wouldn’t be the project that I wanna do. The film is five little mini-films. Stephen Soderbergh and Alexander Rodnyansky from Moscow are the presenters and executive producers.
You’ve worked with Soderbergh before.
On two other projects, yes. He’s our angel. He dumped a good bit of money on me and said, “make a film.” It wasn’t as much as I wanted. I said, “I can’t do it, but give me a day to think about it.” An hour later I said, “I’ll take what you give me, I had a thought.” Boom boom. So we’re making five little mini-films. They’re all about the catastrophe happening now to the world’s children, the world they live in. They’re not of the future, they are the future. So we’re making a film with kids for all audiences. And we’re doing so in a non-spoken manner, but a very articulate manner. Body language, facial expression, eye behavior, gesture. All these kids are not actors, we want only authentic responses and we know how to do that. We operate on a stage 200 feet wide, 100 feet deep, 100 feet high. And we do it all with a little gizmo, not for the big stage, because it’s the little gizmo that everyone is glued to. All the kids of the world, they’re allured, they’re addicted, bought and sold literally. Because kids these days see more than kids have ever seen. These machines are babysitting them to fucking death, okay? So it’s made for that machine, and it gives them a story that is linear and non-linear at the same time. It’s like going to a giant freak show with the big calliope in the middle which we always have going. You’ll just have to see. For me, it’s like trying to tell you what my beatific visions are like.
When did you first realize this concept of the world being degraded by human beings? That something was wrong?
When I was about four years old. It was a behavioral problem. I was one of four members in the family, the middle one, and I flunked kindergarten. Wasted time, annoyed others, couldn’t sit still, kinetic. My daddy worked, but that meant he went to bars every day to do his work as an insurance salesman, speaking Cajun and all. And he taught me to perform and to dance. I was like his monkey getting money. I loved him. He taught me poetry. He taught me the boogie-woogie. Look that up sometime. I saw things that little kids wouldn’t normally see. And then I saw how Black people were being treated everywhere. I didn’t trust what was going on, or the answers that I was getting from anybody, including my daddy and mommy, who I loved. So I made a treehouse and lived in it outside with my big friend Bobby Da Silva. We were little hoods. We’d go rob. My dad was an alcoholic—he wanted me to put the car in the back so we wouldn’t bang the houses next to us. I had daddy’s coat, so we’d take off at 10 and 12 years old in the car. I was able to penetrate the wealthy in New Orleans society by being a pretty boy and hustling and conning my way in. I could dance so I could get in anywhere. And then I decided to get rid of it all and I left all of that. It was like leading to nowhere.
Where did you go?
Like any young person, you want to be like the person you most admire. So when I was in the 7th grade, Christian Brothers were sent to teach at St. Mike’s because the Sisters weren’t doing that well with the boys (we were segregated). And here were these generous people. Who were joyful. Who were giving. Who were not conflicted. Who were willing to spend time with you, listen to you. So I wanted to be like them. I had no idea what I was getting into at all. My mother didn’t want me to go. My father said, “let him go! He has to do what he has to do.” So I can’t thank my pop enough. I bless my mama. She never understood but was eventually happy (until I got thrown out of the Order and then she almost had a collapse). When I joined the Brothers it was like going from la dolce vita New Orleans to the Middle Ages. I had no idea what I was getting into. Like most things, you don’t know how you got there but that’s not important. I was there. So I followed the rules. I became a monk at 14.
So you rejected humanity in a way.
Yeah, but the world was insane, I felt. Definitely New Orleans was.
When did you realize you wanted to become a filmmaker?
Well, it wasn’t film that I thought I could approach it in. As a Christian Brother, I was sent to teach in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They didn’t want me to go to Louisiana because they knew I would get into trouble with Civil Rights and all that, so they kept me in Santa Fe. All Brothers take not only vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, they take the vow to teach the poor gratuitously. We weren’t teaching, we had a few kids in the school, like token kids. There was a whole world of poor kids not in school, in gangs. So to make a long story short I drove my superiors crazy. They finally let me teach and I was a prefect for the seniors who were there as boarding school kids from Mexico. I was a teacher—seventh, eighth, all the way through senior high, and they gave me permission to work with street gangs as well. So I went out and organized street gangs, not as a social worker, but as someone who would organize a family. So that they could empower themselves. The context of the world they lived in, not Me! Me! Me! but Us! Us! Us! That we are the other person. I challenged them and we became a threat to society, because we became organized, and we would follow police around so they wouldn’t brutalize. At times there were even shootouts and people got hurt, some killed. It was a very intense time. There’s a lot to talk about but it would take up too much of your time and my breath. I don’t know if I can say any more about it. But that led me to see the film Los Olvidados by Luis Buñuel. It was like a spiritual experience for me. Not an entertainment. I couldn’t do what the master did, but I showed this to kids on the wall of the barrio in a reduced 16mm version. It became church and I knew that I wanted to make film, that could touch people. It could be sacramental. It didn’t have to be entertaining or clever. It could be soulful, of the soul. So I found a medium working with those kids, and it was to make film.
So when you made Koyaanisqatsi, how much footage did you have that you needed to itemize and then put in order for Philip Glass, or was it an exploration along with Philip?
I’ll tell you how it works: think of a regular film that’s a narrative film. Any subject you want. Love, hate, jealousy, happiness, sadness, whatever. Let’s say the leading lady is Marilyn Monroe to be extreme, to make the point. Do you know how much attention they give to that person and not to the background? They give a little background shot, but it’s the person because that’s the star.
The hero?
The hero of the films is who I call the genius loci. Every location has a genius loci. It has a memory. It has a presence. It’s filmable. You can light it by the sun. It’s visible to the whole world, and because it’s so fucking familiar nobody sees it. You know where I’m coming from?
“‘That which is most present is least seen.’ I’m not the first to say that. That which is closest to us is that which we don’t pay attention to.”
Yes.
“That which is most present is least seen.” I’m not the first to say that. That which is closest to us is that which we don’t pay attention to. So I’m trying to say “Look! Look at the building!” If you arrived here from another planet—which we all did, we’re off-planet joiners now—we don’t live using technology, we are technology. Everything is involved in the environment of technology. Being sensate we become the environment. It’s not by accident that we have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and ears, but in the world we’re living in we’re going to have diodes and 104 trace elements that never were in nature 110 years ago in our bodies. And our doctors telling us how they’re going to splice and redesign us and make money on us, and the metaverse that the crooks are now developing to scheme us out because they’ve already destroyed the world we live in. Now does that sound extreme to you? I hope so. Am I raving? Yes. It’s time to rave. You know “every wall has a door,” someone said. Someone else said, "A Dawn Without A Day." So we’re in "A Dawn" without "A Day," and every wall has a door. What we know is so little compared to what we don’t know. So it’s time to be heroic, it’s time to resist destiny.
“Now does that sound extreme to you? I hope so. Am I raving? Yes. It’s time to rave.”
So how many genius loci did you identify before you started filming Koyaanisqatsi?
I made a list of them. They are the presence of modernity. They’re buildings. They’re food. They’re animals. They’re pedestrians. They’re automobiles. They’re monuments. They’re patriotism. There’s the sick. There’s homeless. There’s the wealthy. All the accoutrements of life that we take as normal: the news, the media, the images of modernity all over the planet. The way we get it through oil and what we take to get that which is hidden in plain sight. The bomb. The military to protect it all. We go to the moon not to go to the moon but to bring the moon to the earth through technology. So it’s all one. You could call it a nihilistic point of view, but we’re beyond that. This is the ability to be hopeless. Humpty Dumpty possessed the courage to be hopeful about recreating another world. Does that sound idealistic? You bet. The most practical thing today is to be idealistic.
So did Glass come along on locations for Koyaanisqatsi or was that on the later Qatsis?
No, he did on all the films. Not as much as I and the crew did, because we stayed for months, but he came for a month in South America (for Powaqqatsi), he came back for Serra Pelada. He was a player. He wanted to see. I like that about him. He gets involved. He’s not just writing some tunes and hoping they’ll float. He wants equity. To give balance, to give love to the image, to the visual that he’s going to relate to.
Would you ever sit with him in an editing bay and go over it frame by frame?
Not so much, but Philip would go on as many locations as his time would permit. He’s been where we filmed gorillas in zoos, in swamps in Louisiana, in abandoned buildings all over the place. Sometimes that happens, and we make selects. He wants the feeling of what we’re doing. Not telling me at this point what to do. He’s accepting that I’m offering him something to write with original feeling. He likes to be there. Then he comes to the studio where everybody loves to see him and he’ll see the selects with me. I can dramaturgically shape scenes for him and the whole crew and see what he responds to.
On Koyaanisqatsi, Philip makes heavy use of repetitive synthesizer loops, but there are moments when the human voice breaks through, like with the choir towards the end of the film.
Let me give you a little background: it’s one of the oldest pieces of music ever written, that’s continued to this day. It’s from the 11th century. It’s the Dies Irae, from the Office for the Dead. Done for a capella voice, both male and female. Usually separately. It’s used by people like Kubrick, it’s used by Lucas, it’s used by the Lord of the Rings. It’s used by Hitchcock. It’s used by Renoir. And it was Philip Glass’s first set of notes. The four magic notes of the Dies Irae are the things that Philip learned when he went to Paris to learn to work with [Nadia] Boulanger. That’s what he was trained on—those four notes. When I was 14, I had been humming and singing the Dies Irae ever since. It’s my baptismal tune into the world, but not of it.
You learned it when you were 14?
Yes, with the Brothers. I lived in a religious community of 120 monks. We would sing every day, the mass of the day. So that was the mass of the dead. And we always had people dying. [Laughs]
That’s about the Last Judgment?
It’s actually a celebration of life. It’s for the living, not the dead. Their life is living in us. It’s a communal piece. But it also houses mystery. And that’s why people like Kubrick used it. If you go to the beginning of The Shining when the car is coming into the Colorado snowdrift monstrosity hotel, Gothic, with all the ghosts, they’re playing another version of the Dies Irae, and remarkably we have a version like that also in the new film NEO NOW, with just a calliope and a foghorn. It’s a classic piece.
How do you communicate in your partnership? Did Philip Glass ever make suggestions on how you filmed the genius loci or did he contribute any ideas to which ones you needed or which order they should be in? And how did you give him notes about his music?
He gives temporal values, emotive values, timings for connecting it all together, and for Koyaanisqatsi he had 13 discrete parts that feel like parts of the body, all part of one body. “Okay, I’ll start on number three.” So it’s his freedom. I don’t tell him what to write, but he has all of the material to respond to. Philip is the first person—except for a few close associates in Santa Fe—I’ll talk to. He’s the only person who’s been on all the projects other than my group in Santa Fe. (With Michael Riesman, I might add, as conductor. A fantastic player.) Philip is the first person I share the ideas with because these projects usually take at least five to seven years (in the case of NEO NOW, nine years) to get the money. There are a lot of conversations sleeping on Philip’s floor, or in the kitchen, or in the basement, or up in the kids' rooms if they’re not there. A lot of time to talk. Philip has the uncanny capacity to listen. To pay attention. He’s insightful. He’s amazing to me. I don’t want to toot his horn too much, I don’t want to embarrass him. But he figures out the words between the words I use, to give them valence. To give them authenticity. To bring closer focus to what they are. To work with him is a dream. Both him and myself, we both have rather large egos. If my ego is large it’s Brooklyn. If his is large, it’s Manhattan. Gigantic. However, let me say that there’s not a bit of vanity in Philip’s ego. And mine I wouldn’t know what it was. I look like a drug addict most of the time. And I am! I gave that up a long time ago. It’s not about how I look. It’s how I act. Philip wants to know what I think. He wants to know if I like it. Well, I only can think for one person: myself. Or maybe the three or four that I happen to be. But no more than that. I have to use my emotive index, the limits that I have, or the judgment that I use. So I’ll say, “Gee, this is beautiful but I can’t use it.” I’ve done that for every project so far, and he’s taken it graciously. Perhaps my favorite piece that Philip Glass has ever written, perhaps—close to it, if not—is a piece I rejected for Koyaanisqatsi.
Facades?
It isn’t that it wasn’t beautiful, it just didn’t fit the liturgy, if I can use that word. The rituals, the spells, and incantations that were flowing out of Philip for Koyaanisqatsi. So I gave that to him. I got to use it in a little film called Evidence that I did. It’s one of his most famous pieces. And I’m using it now in Act 2 of this NEO NOW project. See, you take the music as you take the image, put another frame around it, and it has another voice altogether. So to work with Philip is a blessing. I’ve only worked with him. To be clear, I think I could’ve worked with other people—at least other people wished to work with me, and I would’ve liked that, but I only have a limited life, and I felt there was so much to constantly explore with Philip that I felt lucky to stay with him. Given his age and mine—he being a yogi, standing on his head, healthy and all—and me smoking, drinking, blah, blah, blah, he’ll probably outlive me by a score, but he’s the guy that I want to row the boat with as I go over the falls.