in 1965, i got to know howard hawks, robert mitchum, john wayne, bob dylan,bob neuwirth ...

bob neuwirth/rock salt and nails (written by bruce "utah" phillips) ... 1967.
all this happened in the summer of 1965, a long hot summer i'll never forget ... it happened in new york, chicago, arizona, los angeles ... who else did i meet? let me think ... ...allen ginsberg, sonny and cher, herman's hermits, sam the sham and the pharaohs, lightnin' hopkins, thelonious monk, charlie mingus, archie shepp, john coltrane, albert ayler, sonny rollins, cecil taylor, ... ... and also walt disney, ray bradbury, edward ludwig, stuart heisler, don siegel, richard brooks, samuel fuller, sun ra ... ...

sun ra/friendly galaxy (1965)
back in 1962, i was hardly 19 years old, i edited my own magazine, visages du cinéma, for which i decided to go hunting for interviews in hollywood the next summer, something that had NEVER been done ... in july 1963, i interviewed jacques tourneur, allan dwan, jean renoir, samuel fuller, howard hawks ... .... and raoul walsh on the set of his very last film, distant trumpet ...
as i had decided to abandon visages du cinéma, i gave my first hollywood interviews to présence du cinéma, my favourite magazine at the time .. .. but my friend serge daney insisted that i publish the following interviews in HIS favourite review, les cahiers du cinéma ... so i decided to follow him in the saint graal ... in 1964, with daney, i met leo mc carey for a very long and beautiful interview ... we also got to know buster keaton, joseph von sternberg, george cukor, sam fuller, howard hawks, jerry lewis, frank tashlin ... ....
and it was only in 1965, because daniel filipacchi had bought les cahiers (and i had the new possibility to work for his OTHER magazines as well, salut les copains, jazz magazine, lui, pariscope ...) that i embarked for a year of hard journalism of music, cinema, litterature ... .. although i got the opportunity to spend a whole week on the arizona set of eldorado (howard hawks' film starring robert mitchum, john wayne, james caan), and also got to see bob dylan record nearly half of highway 61 revisited, i got depressed after four months in los angeles (flippacchi didn't pay much) and went home to try and make films ... i didn't make many, but from 1966 (les pieds dans les nuages/et la tête dans la lune) i managed to direct a few things of my own... but that's a totally different story ... i might tell it one day ...