Other

Films by

Eric Robespierre

I was a late replacement for the original Director so I had to pick a subject without having much time and decided on doing a film about computers when I walked passed the imposing Currant Institute. The place looked like a fortress and I originally had dreams of doing a ‘mad scientist’ movie but my professor nixed that idea and told me it had to be a documentary or I’d be replaced as well. I was relegated to one computer room and only allowed access to some high school students so I did what any first time director would do, shoot everything that moved and figured I could fix it in the mix. As it turned Ramsey Lewis’s syncopating beat worked perfectly with all the flashing lights, buttons and whirling discs. The irony that we’re watching this film about high school students doing their home work on behemoth IBM computers in a computer room inside the bowel of a huge mathematical facility while the head of the department waxes on about the future of computers that is beyond the imagination of anyone alive at the time, on personal computers that can do more, faster and at a fraction of the size and cost then his IBM’s is certainly profound.

Thanks to the success of Feedout I was allowed to do a second film and I wanted to do a narrative about what goes on weekend nights when boys in cars try to pick up girls on Queens Boulevard, but again my professor nixed that idea so I again had to make a straight documentary. You can imagine how ticked off I was when I saw American Graffiti, but I’m sure we all have stories like that. The one claim to fame I have is this film is the first one to use Beetles music (as well as the Loving Spoonful), and that’s only because I was a lowly film student and music publishing companies took pity on me. Somebody once told me my quick cutting was ahead of its time, but in point of fact like Feedout, my lack of directorial experience left me no other choice but to fix it in the mix. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t put that amateurish wrapping over the Sennheiser, it makes the mic look like a roll of toilet paper. Oh, and I wouldn’t be smoking in either of the films, either.

16 mm

FEEDOUT

1965

KICKS

1966

Written & Directed by

Eric Robespierre

Written & Directed by

Eric Robespierre