There were other faces from that Beat scene on the Destroy DVD I recognized...
FR: It also attracted the support of other mavericks like Ira Cohen, the poet and photographer and Hamri who at the time was Morocco’s greatest living painter and who invented the vision of Joujouka music that he and Gysin promoted. In the end the show did help put Gysin back on the map. Other people who had seen the energy shown in Gysin’s work also began promoting his posthumous reputation, which led to three books, other than Man from Nowhere : Storming the citadels of Enlightenment with William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, which Joe Ambrose, Terry Wilson, and I did for the show. That and related published material from the Here to Go Show are now collectors items and outside the budget of many fans and interested people.
So, what did you feel was the purpose of this release on DVD format ?
JA: The movie was out on VHS globally through Atavistic in the States and through John Bentham’s Screenedge everywhere else. Like everybody else who had videos out, suddenly there was DVD and endless possibilities arose.
FR: It was also an opportunity to put in some galleries of the work that was shown and to republish tributes from various people that participated in the show.
JA: Doing a Director’s Interview gave the chance to put a bit of context onto a rather unconventional film which had to be filmed guerilla-style, due to ongoing guerilla conditions.
What was the magic between Burroughs and Gysin that this DVD portrays? What was the significance of their work ?
FR: They toyed with magical ideas such as the “Cut-up Method” applied to word, sound and film. Their concept called “The Third Mind”: advocated a method of artistic collaboration which proposed that collective ideas produced new concepts that went beyond the extent of their parts.
JA: Burroughs was a trail blazer who left his mark on so many aspects of 20th century culture. Gysin was a close pal of his at some stage, when they hung out together in Tangier and at the Beat Hotel in Paris.
FR: There was also their perverse and deep connection with the spiritual and political myths surrounding Hassan I Sabbah, the “Old Man of the Mountain” and leader of the Hashishin/Assassins of the 11th century. In Hamri and Joujouka they found the magic of Pan/Boujeloud, the goat man. In Joujouka they found spirituality predating the religions of “the book”.
Yet Gysin wasn’t able to have the same, I dont know... public persona, cultural clout, that Burroughs had ?
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