Tom McCamus in Torso. Pic from Gothic Phantom's Lair
Excerpt from Zeitgeist Films 1998: Tom McCamus
Let it come down The Life of PAUL BOWLES
A FILM BY JENNIFER BAICHWAL
A ZEITGEIST FILMS RELEASE
“Paul Bowles opened the world of Hip. He let in the murder,the drugs, the incest, the death of the Square... the call of the orgy, the end of civilization; he invited all of us to these themes...”
– Norman Mailer
Let it come down The Life of PAUL BOWLES
A FILM BY
Jennifer Baichwal
PRODUCED BY
Nick de Pencier
Jennifer Baichwal
WITH
in order of appearance Paul Bowles
William Burroughs
Phillip Ramey
Jonathan Sheffer
Ned Rorem
Gustavo Romero
Marguerite McBey
Joe McPhillips
David Herbert
Mohammed Mrabet
Mohammed Choukri
Allen Ginsberg
Amina Bakalia (Cherifa)
MUSIC BY
Paul Bowles
performed by The Eos Orchestra
with Moroccan music
by various artists
READINGS BY
Tom McCamus
CANADA • 1998 • 16MM • COLOR • 73 MINS
A ZEITGEIST FILMS RELEASE
Let it come down THE LIFE OF PAUL BOWLES
Against a backdrop of the exotic landscape of North Africa, the enigma of iconoclastic writer Paul Bowles (author of The Sheltering Sky) begins to unravel. Interviews with the reclusive Bowles, who speaks with unprecedented candor about his work and his controversial private life, are intercut with the conflicting views of his detractors and supporters. Highlights include exclusive footage of the last meeting of Bowles, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg in New York; footage of Bowles translating Moroccan storyteller Mohammed Mrabet; the first and only film appearance of Cherifa, Jane Bowles’ lover, who is rumoured to have
poisoned Jane to death; detailed treatment of Bowles’ work as a composer and coverage of the 1995 Eos festival of his music at Lincoln Center, for which Bowles made his first trip to New York in 35 years; Bowles giving, for the record, his final opinion of Bertolucci’s 1990 film version of The Sheltering Sky; and readings of Bowles’ work by celebrated Canadian actor Tom McCamus.
Intimate, unorthodox and poetic, LET IT COME DOWN lifts the veil from a literary legend who has always been shrouded in mystery.
“It’s terrific...like a Francis Bacon painting.
It’s the conversation with Paul Bowles you always wanted to have.”
— David Cronenberg
Introduction
Paul Bowles, who has lived in Tangier, Morocco for over fifty years, is the quintessential iconoclast. He left the United States for good in the 1940s after building an illustrious career as a composer, rejected the heroic identity requisite to expatriate American writers and buried himself in the culture of North Africa. A writer’s writer, his associations span the elite cultural circles of this century. At twenty, he was an intimate of Gertrude Stein and Aaron Copeland; at thirty the peer of Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal; at forty, literary godfather to Beat writers William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. His unorthodox marriage to writer Jane Bowles-both were gay and had significant relationships with others throughout their marriage-is
legendary. Together they formed the magnet which drew an extraordinary group of writers and artists to the exotic freedoms of Morocco before independence. In this definitive film biography, the notoriously laconic and reclusive Bowles finally speaks out on the subjects he has remained silent about over the years. Lying in bed at his home in Tangier and smoking kif with an elegant black cigarette holder, he reflects on his life, his work, Jane, love and his friends with unprecedented candour. Now 87
years old, his tone is almost omniscient, as though he is surveying both life and death from some lofty interim vantage point. The film is built around this self-revealing monologue, with various voices breaking in to comment, dispute and clarify. Chief among these is William Burroughs, who acts as a sort of commentator on Bowles’ version of his life.
Director Jennifer Baichwal’s association with Bowles dates back to her early twenties when she ran away to Morocco, drawn by his dark, sinister prose. Subsequent visits have deepened their friendship, culminating in the interview which is the basis of the
film. Breathtaking footage of Morocco, from the twisted medinas of Tangier and Fez to the hypnotic beauty of the desert, becomes a metaphor for Bowles’ interior world. Diverse archival material evokes the atmosphere of North Africa in the ’30s and ’40s. The film includes interviews with Bowles’ late friends William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and David Herbert, as well as analysis—some of it harsh—from Moroccan writer Mohammed Choukri. There are compelling scenes of Bowles translating storyteller Mohammed Mrabet from Dharisian into English and unprecedented footage of Jane Bowles’ lover Cherifa, who is rumoured to have poisoned Jane to death, on film. Filling this out are readings from celebrated Canadian actor Tom McCamus and detailed treatment of Bowles’ work as a composer.
Cast of Characters
Jane Bowles was born Jane Sidney Auer in New York City in 1917. She has been called “one of the finest writers of modern fiction in any language” by John Ashbery. An habituée of Lesbian and Bohemian circles in New York in the late 1930s, she met Paul Bowles in 1937. They were married the following year. Her first novel, Two Serious Ladies, was written in 1941 and was described as “a landmark in twentieth century American literature.” It was not, however, a commercial success and Jane, who once said that “it was simply not enough to write for 500 of one’s goony friends,” found it increasingly difficult to work. When the Bowles moved to Tangier permanently, Jane fell in love with Cherifa, a Moroccan peasant woman. Over the years, Cherifa became an increasingly powerful and destructive presence in Jane’s life. Suffering from alcoholism and manic depression, she had a severe and debilitating stroke in 1957, and spent the next sixteen years in and out of hospital. She died in 1973, in Malaga, Spain.
Bibliography: Two Serious Ladies (novel, 1943); In the Summer House (play, 1954); Plain Pleasures (stories, 1966); Feminine Wiles (stories, 1976); My Sister’s Hand in Mine: The Collected Works of Jane Bowles, 1978
William Burroughs’ friendship with Paul Bowles dates back over forty years. They met when Burroughs lived in Tangier in the 1950s. He died in August, 1997.
Allen Ginsberg met Bowles when he travelled to Tangier to see William Burroughs and help transform Naked Lunch from a pile of pages, which were strewn all over the floor of Burroughs’s filthy hotel room, into a manuscript. He died in April, 1997.
The Hon. David Herbert is second son of the fifteenth Earl and Countess of Pembroke. He first came to Tangier in 1932 with Cecil Beaton and remained there until his death in 1995. The quintessential expatriate, he was Tangier’s pre-eminent host and
unofficial social arbiter for over 50 years. He was very close to Jane Bowles, and always
claimed that if Paul died, he would marry her.
Mohammed Choukri is a Moroccan writer who was illiterate until the age of twenty. He most famous book, For Bread Alone, which was translated by Paul Bowles, won him instant notoriety as it described in graphic detail a childhood on the streets of Tangier: the International Days, so celebrated by foreigners, from the indigent Moroccan point of view. He now claims that Bowles is an exploiter of Moroccan culture and knows very little about it, despite his years there. Paul Bowles discovered the prodigious storytelling talents of Mohammed Mrabet in Tangier in 1965. Since then they have collaborated on over ten books. Mrabet tells
Bowles the story in Dharisian (the local Moroccan dialect), which is also recorded into a tape recorder. Bowles then transcribes and translates. Although they have not worked together in twelve years, they had a rare visit during our 1994 shoot in which Mrabet
made up a story on the spot that Bowles simultaneously translated; the result is unprecedented and compelling footage of them working together.
Phillip Ramey is an American composer and friend of Paul Bowles; from 1977 to 1993 he was the annotator and program editor of the New York Philharmonic. He has been greatly instrumental in reviving interest in Paul Bowles’ work as a composer. He lives in New York City, but spends half of each year in Tangier.
Ned Rorem is a composer and music critic who has known Bowles since 1940. He was a frequent and notorious visitor to Tangier during its wild International Days. He lives in New York City.
Jane Bowles met and fell in love with Amina Bakalia (Cherifa), an illiterate peasant girl selling grain in the Tangier market, in 1948. She spent the next 20 years with her, trying to win her affections. Cherifa’s reputation is as a forbidding and sinister figure who practiced black magic on Jane and Paul and eventually poisoned Jane to death. Here, in her first and only appearance on film, she tries to set the record straight. Jonathan Sheffer is the conductor and Artistic Director of the Eos Orchestra, which
held the festival of Paul Bowles’ music at Lincoln Center in September, 1995.
Joseph McPhillips III is headmaster of the American School of Tangier. He travelled to Morocco in the early 1960s and has lived there ever since. A long-time friend of Paul and Jane Bowles, he has also commissioned theatre scores from Paul Bowles for performances at the American School, including productions of “Oedipus the King” and “Caligula.”
Marguerite McBey is a wealthy expatriate painter who has lived in Tangier since the 1930’s. Considered Tangier “royalty”, she became a lesbian after her husband died. She has painted portraits of both Paul and Jane Bowles.
Tom McCamus is a celebrated stage and screen actor. He won a Genie Award for Best Actor for David Wellington’s I Love a Man in Uniform and a Best Actor nomination for his role—reprised from the Stratford Festival—in Long Day’s Journey Into Night. He also won a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter. He has spent many seasons at the Shaw Festival and the Stratford Festival, in numerous notable roles.
The Filmmakers
Jennifer Baichwal(Director, Producer) Jennifer Baichwal was born in Montrèal and grew up in Victoria, British Columbia. In
1990, she received a fellowship and an FCAR scholarship to study at McGill University, where she obtained a First Class Master of Arts in Religious Studies. Her first documentary Looking You In The Back of the Head asked thirteen women to try to describe themselves and was first broadcast, to critical acclaim, on TVOntario’s From the Heart. She is currently in post production for Unlikely Pilgrimage, which was shot on location in India in October, 1998 for TVOntario’s The View From Here. She also has
films on renowned American poet John Ashbery (Saying It to Keep it From Happening) and artist Christiane Pflug (Black Pflug) in development. She has been a regular contributing critic to CBC Newsworld’s On the Arts for visual art and literature since 1994. Let it Come Down is her first feature.
Nick de Pencier(Producer, Director of Photography) Nick de Pencier began making short films while at McGill University in the late 1980’s. He then moved to New York City and worked as a researcher for PBS in their documentary film division. Gravitating back to his native Toronto, he began working in production on feature films including White Room, South of Wawa, and On My Own. He was an assistant director to Adrienne Clarkson on Artemesia, production manager on John May’s feature Rubber Carpet, and producer of Jim Allodi’s short film Link-Up. He also produced and directed the video segments and interviews for the CD ROM Understanding McLuhan, published by Southam/Voyager. He was a producer resident in the Canadian Film Centre’s 1997 Producers’ Lab, and was selected to produce Cold Feet, one of their four Short Dramatic Films. He also is producer and cinematographer for Unlikely Pilgrimage which was shot on location in India in October 1998, and has a feature narrative film in development with writer/director Jim Allodi.
As a Director of Photography, de Pencier has shot music videos, industrials, documentaries, segments for The National, and contributed regularly to CBC Newsworld’s On The Arts and Ph@t TV. He has also directed and photographed seven modern dance performance films which have received national and international broadcasts and won awards at international festivals.
Music in the film
Compositions by Paul Bowles
Suite for Small Orchestra
The Wind Remains: A Zarzuela based on Federico Garcia Lorca
“April Fool Baby” from Secret Words: A Suite of Six Songs
Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra
Pastorela: First Suite
All the above are performed by The Eos Orchestra which was formed in 1995 to reinvigorate concert music as a living art form, and to attract, engage and reflect a diverse and evolving audience. It is dedicated to the creation of new compositions, the rediscovery of neglected works, and to the performance of a repertoire not bound by labels. The Ensemble is comprised of a stable yet flexible group of artists drawn from the ranks of the finest experienced and emerging New York musicians. The Eos Ensemble is part of Eos Music, Inc., a not-for-profit organization established in September 1994 and dedicated to music-related interdisciplinary artistic collaborations and educational programs. Under the direction of its Artistic Director and Conductor, Jonathan Sheffer, the Eos Ensemble made its debut in two sold-out concerts featuring the music of Paul Bowles at Lincoln Center in September 1995. The works used in this film were all part of those programs, which included several premieres and, in some cases, the first performance of some of Bowles’ compositions in fifty years. They are all available on “The Music of Paul Bowles” from BMG Classics 09026-68409-2
Excerpts from the Sonatina for piano and from “Tierra Mojada” of the Six Latin American Pieces played by Gustavo Romero
Moroccan Music
Aqlal Moqaddem Mohammed ben Salem and ensemble
Reh dial Beni Bouhiya Chikh Hamed ben Hadj Hamadi ben Allal and ensemble
Mouwal Chikha Fatoma ben Kaddour
Rhaitas and Tbola Sadiq ben Mohammed Laghzaoui Morsan and ensemble
Mellaliya Embarek ben Mohammed
Ya Souki Hakim Hazan Isaac Ouanounou and members of the Hevrat Gezekel
Qsida Midh Maallem el Hocein and ensemble
All Moroccan selections taken from “The Music of Morocco”
recorded and edited by Paul Bowles for the Library of Congress, 1972
Welcome Home, Paul Bowles
used courtesy of the Master Musicians of Jajouka
Recitation of The Holy Quran
by Surats Yasin & Al-Rhman
courtesy of MECAH Quran Recording © 1994 (tel. 1-800-590-1585)
Credits
DIRECTOR Jennifer Baichwal
PRODUCED BY Nick de Pencier & Jennifer Baichwal
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Nick de Pencier
ADDITIONAL CINEMATOGRAPHY Jim Allodi
EDITOR David Wharnsby
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Roland Schlimme
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Daniel Iron
READINGS Tom McCamus
PRODUCER/SOUND RECORDIST (1994 SHOOT) Denise Holloway
RESEARCH/BOOM (1994 SHOOT) Evan Solomon
MUSIC RESEARCH Rodney Sharman
ARCHIVAL RESEARCH Benjamin Wilchfort
TITLE DESIGN Malcolm Brown
This film was made possible with the generous assistance of:
Scalo Publishing for the use of Paul Bowles’ photographs; The Harry Ransom Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin; Shift Magazine;
Betsy Carey; Gotham Book Mart Inc., NYC; Peter Garland; Phillip Ramey; Head Gear Animation; Black Sparrow Press; Rhombus Media; Estate of
Gertrude Stein
Rehearsal footage of “April Fool Baby” used with kind permission of the Eos Orchestra.
Selected footage of Paul Bowles and Ahmed Yacoubi in Hans Richter’s 8 X 8:
A Chess Sonata In 8 Movements courtesy of Arthouse, Inc. and Ursula Lawder.
Footage of Gertrude Stein from the film Paris Was a Woman, used courtesy of Jezebel Productions.
Footage from The Sheltering Sky used with kind permission of Recorded Picture Company Limited.
Photographs of Paul Bowles listening to phonograph, Paul Bowles smoking, Jane Bowles and Cherifa on the street, Jane
Bowles and Cherifa with others and Paul and Jane Bowles with woman at piano by Terence Spencer. Used with permission.
“Music, His Music, Lures Bowles Back” & “A writer and composer returns to his hometown”
© 1995 by The New York Times. Reprinted by permission.
reproductions of PLAYBILL ® used with kind permission of Playbill Incorporated, NYC.
Allen Ginsberg photographs used with kind permission of the Allen Ginsberg Trust.
Photographs by Paul Bowles reprinted from the book Paul Bowles:
Photographs, Scalo Verlag AG, Zurich, 1994.
A ZEITGEIST FILMS RELEASE
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