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From Athens To Brooklyn
A Conversation With
J im Herbert has been at the center of the
art, film and music scenes in Athens for
the last four decades. The legendary art
professor, painter and filmmaker retired
from UGA last December, and though he still
owns his distinctive old Athens home near down
town, Herbert has reinvented himself as a strug
gling New York artist and now lives in Brooklyn.
In this interview with Pete McCommons, Herbert
talks about his work and his new life.
Flagpole: You came here at a time when the
University of Georgia and Athens were basically
dominated by kids wearing button-down shirts and
khakis, and you came here in jeans and a T-shirt
with long hair and a baseball cap, and now 35
years later, you still look the same.
Jim Herbert: Well, I'm not sure how I came
here. There are some pictures of me back then
with a crewcut, but the actual first time I set
foot here, I think I did have shoulder-length
hair, [dressed] pretty casual and the campus
was a very strange place. It completely emptied
out on weekends. People went back to their
small towns, and girls had to wear raincoats
over their shorts, and they weren't allowed to go
to the Varsity downtown because that was not
a fit place for women to be, and I think they
weren't allowed to smoke on campus. There was
no lounging around on campus, no hanging out
on the green. People were very formal. If you
sat down on the grass, somebody would come
over and ask if you were okay. So, it was a very
different place; the University was more like an
extension of public school. It didn't really have a
college atmosphere.
FP: Were the naked parties going on that early?
JH: Well, they were. The whole hippie period
happened a little bit later in the South, and so
you go all the way up into the 70s. But when
I first arrived here in early '63, that wasn't go
ing on then. It happened a little bit later, when
you had a lot more exhibitionistic behavior,
with people walking around with very revealing
clothing and then parties where people would be
nude, but of course this town was a town of par
ties, rather than bars.
FP: When you came here, you t evolutionized
things in a sense. You were young enough to be
aware of what the students were doing. You not
only taught them, but you turned them on to art
and to being themselves like a good teacher is
supposed to do. And you nad your own work ethic
and work energy, so that you at the same time
were turning out these magnificent paintings, and,
later, the films. Where did all that come from?
JH: Well, I mean, that's very... you certainly
put a good spin on it. I thank you for that. The
way it happened was that, if you have an artist,
you have an obsessive-compulsive, so if an artist
fixes the toilet, they'll spend all day fixing the
toilet and making it perfect. There's a perfection
ist thing that happens... With artists, it's hard
to keep them from creating if it's a task that
they're put to and they're responsible. That's why
artists have to be very careful about how they
spend their time, because they can waste a huge
amount of time that could be devoted to the art.
You know, you lose all your psychic energy diving
into something with all too much perseverance
or whatever.
But with teaching, for me, there were a
number of elements that came together to make
teaching interesting and exciting for me. One
was I enjoyed being around young people. That
was a very good thing and an exciting thing; I
enjoyed the spirit that they had, and the teach
ing is all about an exuberant spirit that you
bring into the studio. In order to paint, you must
12 FLAGPOLEtOM • AUGUST 15,2007
get yourself up for it. You can't just paint a little
at a time and hold back. It's gotta be an all or
nothing kind of thing, at least the way I work.
FP: And you do, apparently, work.
JH: You can go to certain art schools and you
see people hanging around with the look of an
artist, but they don't have any work to show for
it. I mean, you mentioned work ethic. I have a
big work ethic. I really believe people have to
get a body of work and produce things. You learn
by doing; you don't learn by waiting around to
get inspiration. You have to go in there whether
you want to or not. If you're too sick or too
tired, that's not a good day, and maybe you
shouldn't go in, but most of the time...
FP: At what point did you start making films?
You started out making those really painterly
films. How did you go into that?
FP: Did you know him tnrough the art depart
ment?
JH: I knew him somewhat through the art
department. You know, when he was a student of .
mine, he was a very sheltered, quiet kind of guy.
That's a well-known fact, and I actually don't
remember too much about him as my student.
But what I do remember is an occasion in the
old church on Oconee and an initial performance
that they gave...
FP: Were you there?
JH: I was at that, and I remember other in
carnations and changes, but Michael, I've come
to know him over the years rather than as a
younger person. But he was very kind to let me
make a music video completely on my own terms,
a director's cut, if you will, where I would not
have to obey virtually anything. He'd say, "Pick
one of these songs." They didn't want a story
JH: The painterliness of the films briefly came
about through this process of re-photography in
which each frame of the film was analyzed much
like a painter would do. You studied the frame
with the purpose of manipulating the image in
stead of just taking what's there, like a still pho
tographer would do, like [Henri] Cartier-Bresson.
It's all about manipulating moments through
time. Now, however, in the last 10 years—actual
ly longer than that—the last 13 or 14 years, I've
been moving away from re-photography. I still
do some of it, but I'm not as dedicated to it as
I once was. I much more like film that is hemi-/
demi-/ semi-narrative, which doesn't rely so
much on manipulating the image as it does seiz
ing the opportunity of people in a setting. So it's
closer to the tradition of what documentary is.
FP: You also began making music videos.
JH: Well, the music videos came about... I
did a music video for myself before there were
music videos. I r ide a little film called "Pluto"
with the express purpose of having a film that
went with a piece of music I liked from Moby
Grape, and I said, "I'm going to make a little
movie to go with that," and that's very much a
music video idea. So I made a little 16-millimeter
film and without editing it or cutting it in any
way just had the lab put down the music when
the film started, and coincidentally it sort of
ended when the film ended, and that was my
first thing. But really it was R.E.M. and Michael
Stipe that got me into music videos. #
board; they didn't want a treatment or anything.
We'd talk a little bit. Sometimes Michael would
have a very severe, minimalist idea—looking at
waves in water, etc.—and I would say, "Michael,
somebody else can do that better than I would,"
and we'd have that kind of discussion, and he'd
say, "Just do what you want." But there were oc
casions where he and I worked together.
FP: What's one you worked on together?
JH: One of the earliest ones, "Driver 8," was
a collaboration. There was a great moment there
where Bertis hired a helicopter. It was all about
trains. "Driver" in England is an engineer. We
were up at the Chesapeake and Ohio, a huge yard
in Virginia. We were spending a week shooting
Michael with trains and stuff, and Bertis sur
prised us with a helicopter and said, "Come on,
we're going to do a nice aerial shot." And the
really exciting thing about that was that I had to
go out and get out on the struts of the helicop
ter with a 16-millimeter Arriflex, and there was
something called a "monkey strap," I believe it
was called, which is like what a guy in the street
would have if he had a pet monkey on a leash,
and Michael was in the helicopter holding onto
this nylon-web leash, which was in fact strapped
to a seat. It wasn't as if he was going to let go
or something. But the purpose of it was to main
tain a certain amount of rigidity in the line so
that you wouldn't fell off the strut. There's noth
ing holding you out there; you're out there on
the thing handling the camera...
NEWS & FEATURES I ARTS & EVENTS I MOVIES I MUSIC I
FP: You, who wouldn't even ride in an car!
JH: Well, that is a myth: about me not rid
ing in cars. I think Ole Olesen got that started.
I've always ridden in cars, though I've been
aware that cars are not the safest things to be
in. You know, if you're a rider and not the driver,
you are more fearful, because you're not in con
trol. I drove all through high school; I had a
license. So, anyway, I'm out on this strut of the
helicopter, and by the way, the guy driving the
helicopter, the pilot, was a Vietnam veteran, and
he said if you put your eye in the viewfinder, you
wouldn't freak out. But I did take my eye out
from the viewfinder once, and I suddenly realized
what I was doing. But anyway, I popped my eye
back in the viewfinder very quickly. And then
we did a maneuver where the helicopter—we're
chasing trains—and he turned the helicopter
sideways so that I could actually get a better
view of the train. And when we came down he
said, "Well, actually, that was very dangerous,
because it puts tremendous pressure on the rear
rotor, and it can fall off under that maneuver."
Anyway, that's the end of that story, which
is an oft-told tale which is all true. Oh, and we
never used that in the video even though it was
a well-done shot. But Michael and I decided that
it was very routine and very typical and why
bother? Of course it caused Bertis to say, "My
God, we spent $2000 for that and the record
company wants you to put it in," but Michael
was adamant, and I was happy that he was, so
it's not in there, because it's a very humble little
video and it shouldn't have an extravagant shot
like that in it.
FP: Have you continued with your filmmaking?
JH: I have. I actually have a film which is
being edited right now. I moved from short films
to feature films. I have kept [at it] steadily...
usually I go to Italy every summer and make a
film, and the last five or six years, they've been
feature films. In the last two years, they've been
shot in high definition, as opposed to film. I
haven't been as pleased with that as I have been
with film, but there are certain advantages to us
ing that, because you can work the sound better.
FP: What do you think of our new arthouse
cinema, Cine?
JH: What I was so impressed with was. I've
been all over the world with film festivals and
seen state-of-the-art projection in Rotterdam
and especially in Toronto—70-foot screens and
magnificent projection, and I've never seen any
thing better than Cine. That was perfect projec
tion, and sound was gorgeous. I was really very
impressed. I was just floored by the quality of
what's going on in there.
On the other hand, I'm saddened by some
thing: I don't think this town is ever—as much
as I've taught film classes and the drama depart
ment has film and everybody is interested in film,
you never could get a film audience here. I don't
know why, and I think it is a very unusual college
town in that regard. Most college towns have a
following for film, and they often have more than
one theater, one for the older movies that have a
tradition and one for the newer films that might
not have an audience in the commercial theaters.
So, the selection here in just the brief time
I've been here is excellent—excellent films that
they're showing—but, who's going to come to
this movie theater? I'm very worried about it, you
know? And then I read in the New York Times a
film critic saying she preferred to see movies on
DVD rather than in the theater, and I thought, oh
my God, this is such a tragedy. One of the things
I love about movies is the cathedral of the the
ater, getting away from somebody in your living
room and the casualness and the interruptions.
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