Lauren Hutton | Interview | American Masters

Speaker I guess the first thing to think about is the relationship between a model and photographer is one of solving problems. And.

Speaker The problem is a bad dress. Funny this, weird that how to make it look beautiful and sometimes they are beautiful. How to show it at its most beautiful and at the same time make something new.

Speaker Make something that hasn’t been seen. So it’s a question of solving problems and craft working out a craft. And Dick was a. A genius at this, I think, because he worked almost like an actor works in a lot of ways.

Speaker What he did do things he worked like as a director with an actor. And at the same time, he was an actor himself because he would become whatever was necessary. He would take a part of himself and expand that part, which is the way an actor works, good actor to take to suit the character.

Speaker He would be one sort of person. When he did fashion photographer and then he would use another part of himself. I’m sure when he went did the American West. And then within that, sometimes I would hang around and see him or come in early when he was working someone else before, you know, he was about to work with me and I would see him working with someone else on the set. And so the way he dealt with Ruchika and talk to Ruchika was entirely different than the way he talked to me. And. You know, I guess he used the whimsical side of his personality and has a certain lightness of being is always in his fashion photographs. They are not. They don’t take themselves very seriously. And yet, at the same time, they sort of, you know, blast you because they’re so beautiful. And he also would tell stories with them. Was one page.

Speaker We just want to say that, Dick.

Speaker So you go on.

Speaker Picking up from that, you said to me he’s the most emotional of all. And and you also say you’ve got a lot of emotion out of us, assuming that a lot of photographers would like to do that.

Speaker How do you do it?

Speaker Well, you know, when you’re really creating together, I mean, when a group of people are doing something together, when it’s a circus theater or a film or a fashion shoot there. No one is a star. There are no stars. And with Dick, he was right. The most emotional of all the great photographers that have worked with the few. Because he would really play with this. It was like his playground. And you were always very excited when you went into work because it was like being able to join the circus for a day. And we would just invent things, you know, we would charge through the vogue in the old days would have. It was a major operation and there would be tables laden with, you know, 300 pairs of shoes, two giant long tables, have another four tables over here with jewelry and belts and scarves. And that’s aside from all the racks of clothes. And there would be an editor dialis, a hairdresser, makeup person, the model or models and his assistants himself.

Speaker And when we cooked, it was it would be like everybody was.

Speaker No one was touching ground. Same time, you know, you just sort of be who hovering hovering above everything. And it was it was very thrilling and very exciting. And I think the fact that he would get very excited like a kid in this playground when he saw something, when it was really working, when the clothes work and the light was happening, get in his leitman. And when when everything worked, when the hair was blowing the right way or this was happening and you were happening, all of us were working together. Dick would say, oh, fantastic. And you could tell it was true. This we believe now after awhile, you can tell, you know, when it was working and it wasn’t.

Speaker And it would make you go that extra distance and you get that much more excited.

Speaker Everybody, like I say, it was like for a string of a great football team, everybody would become excited and thrilled. I was serious creative energy going on, unlike work I’ve done since, I guess since the 80s, beginning of the 80s. And unlike what I hear for the most part about work being done today.

Speaker Oh, of course. Well, my my two great photographers that I spent the most time with was Avidan Pen.

Speaker I was really lucky.

Speaker There were very, very different with Dick. It was like being with another kid in the sandbox. You know, what are you going to find today under the sand and with pen? It was Mr Pen. Well, a lot of the girls called my call at the very end of our call, Mervyn. I told him I was running off to Hollywood mystery.

Speaker He said, watch out. He said, you’ll lose your SO.

Speaker When I escaped pen, it was quite serious. I had worked with Dick maybe five times and was still being turned down by pen secretary. I don’t think anyone ever saw me. It was Pat is great. You know, it was major domo at the door.

Speaker Is. Chariot?

Speaker No. Who’s the guy? Guards Haiti’s no Chad. Yeah. Pat would be there at the door and you’d come in and she’d look over your book and she said, no. She said, you’re not ready for Mr. Penn. She defended back new during Vogue covers and spreads and everything. But in a way, she was right. Because Penn required serious concentration and serious discipline.

Speaker Something that I think a great deal of models since they come into it.

Speaker It’s children in their teens early from high school, even though it didn’t happen to me. But they don’t have a lot of concentration.

Speaker There’s that old joke. How many supermodels does it take? No, no, not it. See, here’s an example. Why does it take a supermodel?

Speaker Twenty five minutes to drink a glass of orange juice? Because on the carton it says concentrate.

Speaker So we didn’t do you know, we didn’t have a whole lot of discipline focusing except the giant Germans who Penn mostly worked with exclusively. When I came into Penn studio and finally Pat decided maybe I was ready for Mr. Penn and I met the great Penn. Penn said that I must work for Kodak because I talked all the time and he couldn’t look at pictures, but we would talk about what was happening in the outside world and Bloomingdale’s. But in pens, there was no music, very, very serious tones. And once you got into it, knew him. You know, we talked a lot about a lot of different things, but it was a very serious thing.

Speaker No music in the days of those days of rock and roll, you know, with the Beatles hitting and the Stones just making it and everything was a big deal. No rock and roll in the 60s. And he was the only studio New York City out of thousands. You know, that was true of certainly hundreds.

Speaker Yeah, monastic is pretty good. I was thinking Cathedral like, but, you know, it was a small little little space.

Speaker A monastic is right. So. Absolutely, absolutely, I remember my first meeting, Dick.

Speaker There were first three three first meetings with Dick. He looked I came as a role model.

Speaker I mean, you know, I got a meeting with the Great Abbadon. It was we went on go sees every day. I would try to make usually wound three and I would try to make four more for myself outside my bookers.

Speaker I I got there and he went through my book rather quickly and then asked me who shot this and who shot that.

Speaker And I remember thinking he was his own assistant because he looked too young and he was too lively and he was, too.

Speaker Too much like a kid, another kid, even though he’s probably in his 40s, when he’s really maybe, you know, he’s probably just about before he had too much. Child energy had too much energy to be the Great Avidan.

Speaker I thought. I didn’t think it was thick, but it was and he thanked me very much, was very kind and very polite, but, uh, I don’t I wasn’t ready for him either. You know, you see, I was like five, seven and a half. And he was working with girls or six feet, you know. And he he worked with these swans, Sean Swans. And I was sort of this a little American cygnet. So it would be for Swan turns into Swan.

Speaker Uh. And then Diana Vreeland, I met Diana Vreeland in her office and she liked me.

Speaker I think because I looked like these kids that she was seeing on the street, because what was happening when I was sixty four and a half was almost 1965. And the youthquake was about to happen. You know, half of America was under 25. And we didn’t wear it because we didn’t wear girdles. We didn’t wear three hours of makeup. And it was another breed. Fashion was still sort of in the 50s. It was coming out of that post-war Christian, your Belle Epoque. All that business, it was still haute and it hadn’t really hit the streets.

Speaker And DV saw these kids. And I think I look like one, you know, short of sort of fine looking slightly cross-eyed. They used to always when he was very far away up on a ladder, something shooting down it. Yeah.

Speaker Are your eyes straight or are they are they are they uncrossed?

Speaker Because you will really say I try to you know, because when I used to get frightened in the first few years I was in New York, I was right.

Speaker No time. My eyes were always closed. So we get straightened out.

Speaker You do develop empathy with the early museum that.

Speaker Guess the meeting, the first meeting with you. What did you do?

Speaker OK. OK.

Speaker So now the first time I was actually booked for Vogue with Avidan was extraordinary because they had been working with these giant Germans since these. Great.

Speaker Swans that were you know, they were jagwar coats and every single piece of their makeup had their names on it, you know, typed out and they put things down in order. And I, like, had a brown paper bag with some stuff thrown in it. And I was sort of in a mess. And I got on the set. And, of course, I wasn’t ready for together yet. And I got there on the set after being made up for our hair for hours.

Speaker And he said, I tried to do a couple of poses, you know, like this or something. And I was probably very frightened, too. And he as kind as he could. And he was pretty kind, really, because he didn’t frighten me. He said, well, this isn’t quite right. You should now. Where are you from? And I said, well, I was for just I really grew up in the swamp of Lawrenceville. What did you do there? And I said, well. I lived in the woods a lot. You know, I fished a lot and I ran around in the woods in these kind of woods were like and I described our swamp. And he said, well, why don’t you try doing some of that stuff? Because, you know, you run flat out. I was always being chased by boys because girls weren’t allowed in the woods. No girls in the woods rule. And if the boys caught you round 13, you know, sex was sorting. We know what it was, but we knew that there was something there. So I had to outrun all the boys so I could jump over logs and, you know, palmetto bushes and everything and.

Speaker So he said, jump.

Speaker And I jumped. And I think that started the running jumping pictures. And we our first set of pictures. I’m in flight. Every single one, I’m up off the ground.

Speaker And once those pictures came out, I was triple booked for the next decade until basically I quit and started making movies.

Speaker Oh, scrutineer, you know. He and Diana Vreeland and Pen were that were made my career, really. Absolutely. And they you know, Dick would.

Speaker He would sort of cross fertilize all models together. He would show me some little foot movement of shrimp dance and he’d probably show Rouche go some little arch of mine and this one that. And he would teach us all different things that he saw from each girl. And like I say, he was.

Speaker I think he not only was different for his fashion photography than he was for his other work, but I think he was different between us, that he was like an actor and would actually turn into different parts of himself, whatever it was needed to make a conspiracy. Co-conspirators.

Speaker If he had a story, a narrative that was in his. For a series of pictures, what he discussed with you want.

Speaker Yes, Dick, when one of the best things about the studio was storytelling, Dick is still one of the best storytellers I’ve ever met in my life.

Speaker And he had lots of stories and he would tell me about wonderful stories of people from the D.A. are when he did that great picture being in Washington that day. Two things that went on in Hollywood with all these very different people, from Audrey Hepburn to Marilyn to this one to that one.

Speaker And sometimes we would invent little stories, not tell him all my stories, because I was always going rushing off to Africa and doing things like come back, tell him stories, and we would make up stories to enact in different places. There was one we took a long trip to Paris, I think was my first. Well, I guess my first Paris collections were a pen.

Speaker I wanted to. I only did two collections. Parents is practically on time I’d ever been in Paris or those two times.

Speaker And Francis with pen. And the second was a dick. And we did a long story. And it was a story about a grown, lost woman who is still a little girl, which pretty much be the description of every model, I think, in that time and maybe even now. And, you know, you see someone wearing, you know, half million lives, really jewels and thousands of dollars worth of clothes and wandering around and through the streets of Paris, usually alone.

Speaker And.

Speaker Sometimes, you know, sometimes pictures were joyful, but there were an awful lot of, uh, sad lost ones.

Speaker You know, to wondering where where someone’s headed or what’s going to happen to them after this time is gone. Which is the classic model problem since Stickied known it, since when did Dick start doing Fashion Forty’s? Yeah, I mean, he’d seen a lot of girls, but it does.

Speaker Could I have my water?

Speaker We talk about and that is that when you come to New York as a young girl and you suddenly turn into this thing, this is sort of.

Speaker Well, it’s like a perfect work of art. And everybody, it’s alive. Work of art and everybody seems to want something from it.

Speaker Your agents, your bookers, men you meet, women you meet, all sorts of things. And you’re really most girls come in as teenagers. So they can’t they don’t know how to protect themselves against people that are 20 and 30 years older. They haven’t gone through even the slightest adjustment you make through college into womanhood. So it’s what I call the hard Bud syndrome that they’re they sort of like these beautiful buds that never get a chance to open the way a woman opens as you learn your way through the 20s and 30s because you’re always on no seem paper and you’re just running around through airports and and being with much older, much more sophisticated people.

Speaker So you get this brittle veneer of sophistication that really doesn’t do anything except help you ordered restaurant, you know, find your way from one airport to the next.

Speaker And one of the things that Dick did for us and one of the ways I think he got such great pictures was he. We knew he wasn’t going to hurt us. We knew we were safe in his place. And it was sanctuary, both his studio and hands, because an awful lot of photographers either came one to you or had other people there, or there was always some something going on that you’d have to sort of figure out in the 20 people that were standing around what was happening there. And Dick’s was a safe place. And you knew that, you know, sometimes you had a top off or you were showing, you know. Very seldom were nudes down there and in those days. But, you know, sometimes you’d had to have a top off to show a bare back or this or that. And we were very frightened of all that because it’s very vulnerable. Most people in studio were men. And, you know, you’re a young girl and you’re it’s all dark out there. But, you know, there are those guys that you don’t know and it’s and there’s someone with a machine in front of its face because that’s relationship. Usually you’re talking through a machine, someone behind it, and it’s scary.

Speaker And with Dick, we knew he was never going to do anything to harm us. He was like a safety net. And.

Speaker I think that gave us a chance to bloom, at least on the paper.

Speaker You know, we were protected there and also it sends.

Speaker It was great. It was I it was it was enormous fun.

Speaker I mean, it really was like, you know, going to recess. It wasn’t going to work.

Speaker What a security.

Speaker I saw it, I saw it. You know, I think for a second when we made it and I haven’t seen it since. So I love to see it again. My little young self. Vaguely. Yeah, I. He wanted me to be a movie star. I think I just start making movies. And then of course, I was pretending. I was acting. Acting, I was acting to act. I had never taken acting lessons I didn’t know anything about as way above my head. You know, I tried to act with my hands in my pockets all the time so no one see them shaking. It was all bluff and bravado and posing, I’m afraid, for a very long time.

Speaker So Dick said, you’ll be movie star and we’ll have all the people doing things that hand you phones and doing this. And it was sort of like combination, I guess, what any supermodels life is like now. There’s, you know, five people trashing you at one time and your got your agent on the phone talking about this. And you’ve got to make it to an airport. By the time you sort of like a day, you know, you to rush out and go to an airport for something else and.

Speaker That’s what I remember of it, and I remember he tricked me.

Speaker There was some wonderful trickey made at the end of it, which I’ve now forgotten. But I remember thinking that that’s the way all directors. That’s the way I assume directors were.

Speaker And I soon found out they weren’t at all like that, except for the rare few of which I’ve had, maybe one half that they would know you enough to like.

Speaker When you had to act surprised, they would surprise you because it’s too hard to play surprise to act surprised they would do something behind the camera to trick you. And at the end of this, I remember Dick tricked me in some way, but I don’t know what it was.

Speaker Well, maybe when I see them.

Speaker Right.

Speaker Yeah. Did you see the others? I’ve never seen the others either. Man Jackie Houston did one did when I did one. Someone else. Who was it?

Speaker Twiggy. Yeah.

Speaker Yeah. June Roquet was a material company. What I do remember a lot about it is it was that it was when Dick was very much I mean, I think he just wanted to do things that, you know, he wanted to do. He didn’t want anyone telling him what to do. In other words, he was his own ad agency. Then people would come to him and they’d say, well, we’ve got this product. And June Ropa was a material company, I believe. And they said to them, well, let us dispense with the actual business. He said, all you have to do is sell the dream. You have to sell an illusion. You have to show an idea of glamour and associate your name with it. And this was a very early idea because this was properly done and I would say 71, 72, something like that. That’s the early times to be thinking that way. People think that way now onto television a little bit.

Speaker You’re seeing the dawning of that. But that was major, major stuff then, which he’s always done. Certainly not all way along his career.

Speaker Well, that was just a tremendous once again, change of my life. The first pictures he took of me, as I say, I was a model who at that time I I only had three more months to live because when you start modeling, you give yourself about a year.

Speaker If you don’t make it in a year, the agency, whatever agency with drops you and you pretty much should leave town because means you’re not gonna make it. Very few people keep hitting out after that. I have been turned down by five agencies. I finally got into the last one. I went to the best last. I lean forwards. And she’d accepted me more because because I got into a good school, I think, than the way I looked. And I was going on go sees every day.

Speaker I got about one job every two weeks doing like an hour with showroom modeling, photography. Girl girls never did runway then, but I did some runway just to give me money to get on the subway and to go see another photographer. So I had gone through and I’d had maybe six jobs by then in eight months.

Speaker And when D.V. sent me to Dick.

Speaker And we shot those pictures as very first pictures after that. That was it. It was over. I was triple booked and from then on, triple booked means if one booking falls out for some reason, there’s another one there and another one there. People can’t.

Speaker There isn’t enough time on you to satisfy everyone. So then after doing this for about 10 years, modeling and taking off more and more time to see the world, which is the reason I started to model first place, I want to educate myself and. Travel. I, uh, I got the idea about a contract because I read on the front page this guy, Catfish Hunter, I made a contract. It was baseball players, first baseball player that had a giant sports contract. So.

Speaker And he said he had to have it because his life was youth oriented, youth oriented, and would only last a short time. I thought. Yikes. That’s us. So I started telling everybody that I wanted. I, I asked my boyfriend who told me how to do it. He said, first of all, book out of all cosmetic contracts, don’t let anyone cosmetic bookings.

Speaker They paid like 400 hours a day then to the big girls. And he said, don’t refuse to take them.

Speaker And he went crazy. It was a scandal. She said, can’t possibly do that.

Speaker I then told my book, just do it anyway. Don’t take them away. When asked you for one, tell them I want a contract. And then I told my photographers I worked with and I told Dick and Dick got it instantly and he then changed it to an exclusive.

Speaker He said the idea of them buying my entire business. So I worked for no one but one of these cosmetic companies. And of course, the cosmetic company was Revlon because they were the biggest in the world after Avon and Dick worked for them. And the problem was Charles Rabson hated me.

Speaker He absolutely hated me. I had crossed eyes. I was wasted my teeth. I was sure it was sort of funny looking. I didn’t, like, look like, you know, what he was used to.

Speaker And he they had shot me in the beginning when I first started my career. And then I never worked for Revlon again. And Dick were for more time. So he went to Rabson and said. You know, you’ve got this company, S.H., our ultimate to it’s been in the red for 10 years.

Speaker You won’t let go of it because your name’s on it, but you’ve got to do something. They were doing drawings that really boring old brocade patterning sketches really nowhere. And he said, I want to take that and put it into the 20th century, 21st century and take it out of the black. And he said, I’ll I’ll go away. I’ll think about the whole thing. And you pay for the test. But he said, you got to give me complete control over. I pick the model, I pick the setting. I do all that.

Speaker And then you could look at them and said, OK. So Dick knew all along what was going to do. He went off and got to rest. I think I went off and got arrest. He told me to go get arrest. We came back and we did these wonderful pictures in the studio with me and they were beautiful. And Dick then made a meeting with Rabson. You went up? He laid them all out. And the first thing Rabson said to him was.

Speaker They said it’s the one you hate. So that was that, you know, I mean, that sort of started the contract and it was the first contract modelling history and basically changed the business from a business to an industry because everyone understood. I mean, overnight almost there were have, you know, half dozen more contracts within the same year. And models fees went from 500 to 400 a day within a month to fifteen hundred two thousand a day overnight. And people suddenly understood that if the canny old Fox, like Rabson knew was going to pay a large amount of money for someone, then that meant that we were rare and it was worth.

Speaker And, of course, of course, it’s true.

Speaker Kate Moss, having not been photographed by the best photographers in the world and having had the best makeup, the best hair, the best stylist, the best editors and the best visions of all these people overlaid on her would not look like Kate Moss that looks today. No model would, is there made supermodels are made there. You know, you’ve got the basic bones that take light. Well, sort of an accident of birth and then.

Speaker Divas are made by all these other people. Great models are made, a lot of women don’t understand that. Looking at the pictures, I think, oh, why don’t I look like that? But in fact, no one would look like that unless they had been through the great schools, the School of Avodart, the School of Penn, the School of the Great Editors’, the school of, you know, the great Heiferman, the great makeup man magpie’s sort of thing. You pick from all these different visions what you look good as. And you’ve got to have that and your eye becomes more and more educated. Dick was a great educator of its two. He taught me an extraordinary amount of things about everything from where to go to get your shoes to just all sorts of things, political maneuvers, how to make a speech and hit the right thing. Most things I couldn’t remember really, but I something must have slipped off because I think I think I did go through the school Abbadon.

Speaker And one of the reasons that the pictures, his fashion pictures in particularly are so joyous is that we all knew we were getting an education as well as making something beautiful and being part of a real team. You know, the photographer wasn’t a star. We weren’t the star, the editor wasn’t. It was you know, it was a real little tribe of was a circus troupe working together.

Speaker That was quite.

Speaker Together, we went through Revlon, the Revlon campaign worked for 10 years.

Speaker Twenty one years ago, I signed with them again just two years ago. Twenty two was twenty two years ago and I knew two years ago. So 20 years after the original campaign started by me and Dick. They picked me up again at almost 50. It’s very clever of them. They should have never dropped me. And I’m sure had Dick and I have been together through all of that.

Speaker They never would have, because Dick would have seen to it that they use their minds and that they understood that there was this giant world of women coming, that we’re not going to be part where their mothers had been parked and that they didn’t want to be made invisible when they turned 40. And that, in fact, they had a great deal of money and a great deal to say.

Speaker And most of them had to have jobs to stay middle class and that they had control of their own, you know, birthing apparatus, their own jobs, and very, very often more so than any generation history, their own lives, and that they weren’t images of themselves and would have figured that out. Unfortunately, a terrible thing happened, which we have since resolved, thank God, because I missed him so much. I was just too too bad. And that was that. A year into our contract, when we when Dick showed Rabson the original test contra pictures, he got a contract from Reps and to shoot that. And there was some problem, I think, over money because, you know, Dick was being very well paid and Reverend didn’t think he should pay in that much for it, I think.

Speaker And I was being extraordinarily well-paid, too, and I’m not sure what it was, but I know that the reverend called me in at the end. Dick’s contract was four year mines for three years. Rabson called me the ETX in at the end of that year and said, I’m not going to use Abbadon anymore.

Speaker And I said, Oh, I said La Rock. And. And I said, But. But we must. I said, well, when I started turn purple. And this is like a big time old tycoon, you know.

Speaker And I’d known for extraordinary eccentricities, you know, known for being the kind of guy I would cut off his nose if you crossed him to spite his face sort of deal. And I had my contract, which was for three years, that I had to always approve three photographers.

Speaker So had I been the person that I am now and had I had more control over my mind at the time and had not leaned as much as I did then on other advisers, you know, I would have said, well, I’m going to break my contract with you.

Speaker I’ll go in breach of contract. Dick and I started this together and I wouldn’t finish it together.

Speaker And even if Rabson gone crazy and soon me, which in fact, now I realize, you know, how you see your own model, you couldn’t do that.

Speaker But I was too young, you know, and I just didn’t understand. And I think it hurt Dick’s feelings very, very much because we didn’t work together again after that for a very, very long time. And I see. And it was something that was sort of like a hole in my work.

Speaker So, you know, in and I missed him. You know, we just did too much. We had too much fun together. But we’ve since worked until he understands.

Speaker We talked about some specific, specific images. The scope for this candlelight vigil was black bathing suit, the bare breasted in the making.

Speaker Do you remember the setting and how the whole thing was?

Speaker We’re here.

Speaker The picture that was turned into a postcard for the Museum of Modern Art. And then later a poster of me with my job. You can’t see it’s me. My head’s straight up and there’s one bare breast inside this suit.

Speaker And we’re on a beach in Exuma. Was this wonderful sort of lark where a mess of it all had a lot of fun.

Speaker The studio had gone off on this trip to the Caribbean together.

Speaker And the very beginning, Polly Mellon was the editor and she brought these usual trunks and trunks. So accessories. And Dick said came in and I wore, you know, very little jewelry. You just start wearing ring. I didn’t wear anything.

Speaker And I think Dickered observed a lot of his models didn’t really where all the things that we were selling or showing in vogue. So I remember he went in and he said just it was stunningly brave thing. He said, no, no accessories. He’s a pack all up. We’re not doing anything. He said, I want to find some little something. And somehow we came up with a pearl glued inside my ear so it didn’t look like a ball of wax. But the fact that it looks like a pearl. And that’s the only thing I wore the whole time I was there.

Speaker I didn’t wear these masses of accessories and things that we had been wearing in the 60s up to them.

Speaker And we just basically he he made everybody play for three or four days until we all relaxed and had a great time. We just went to the beach and had big dinners and told stories and had fun and got to know each other. And then I remember it was in October because Halloween night we sort of went trick or treating in Exuma, which is pretty weird. And we did this strange stuff with Red. The Weegee board did things. And then after about four days off, which was unheard of, I don’t think they would dare do it now because you just don’t do that. You know, the meter’s ticking every minute, so you don’t take four days off and relax and play. And after three or four days, we just burn through the sitting. We did extraordinarily. I mean, every picture was wonderful and we did probably 18 pictures a day or something like that. And we did the whole sitting in like two days and packed up.

Speaker No, no, no, no. Like I say, one of the because you felt so protected with Dick and because, you know, there was nothing sort of see me in any way about him.

Speaker You would if Dick suggested something, you don’t really think about it.

Speaker You felt safe. You didn’t. There was one place, his pen studio with one place where you really didn’t need a censor in your mind going all the time. Okay. What’s he going to do with that? Later is going solo. Years go there were going to hurt me. You have to think about that. And so we felt very safe. And I think that what happened was it was a plunging bathing suit leotard and the buttons were on button and he, you know, ticket proleague. I think he’d been Lascher recently. So I’ve been watching Seale’s. No, I mean, from his is what I used to call his real trips and his real work to his fashion work. He was always cross pollinating real world into his fashion work.

Speaker And I think he’d been up in Antarctica and had seen seals.

Speaker So he got this idea of oiling me all down. And these these buttons were open. And then I remember I think I made a move. My breast popped out and he said, that’s nice. He said, let’s just put that over there and keep it. And, you know, I mean, that’s usually things if all by accident, usually, you know, we get in suddenly and we would really work it. It always terrifies me when I’m on the set now and a photographer takes two or three rolls and then that’s it. And I’m doing more or less the same thing and every roll. I mean, we would really invent work and spend time and keep moving and always try to better what we had done the day before, what we’d done the week before, the month before, the years before. We were constantly we had our own standard and we were constantly trying to raise our own standard, you know, raise our own watermarks, speak.

Speaker And it was thrilling. I really had very little need for any other creative outlet when I was working.

Speaker Where you start. As soon as you say something like what is the evidence of best? Or is there one that, yeah, you never can never use the word best because there were thousands of best. One that hits you first. As soon as you say it to me, it’s like a file cabinet. You know, those indexes round index.

Speaker Where they’re called phone files. You just see I see them flip right through. You see the Monroe that as we’re pounded, Dorothy Parker, the DEA are the the beekeeper, the, uh, just goes on. I guess what I liked.

Speaker What I talk about, I guess, would be the one that I saw at the Whitney retrospective of Antonioni and his wife, his new wife. And it was it was extremely erotic.

Speaker I mean, really erotic, dizzyingly. And what it was, was it was just Antonioni standing there. He’s had a stroke. So one side of his face was was pulled down or so or not mobile. And he had on what jacket, I think, sports jacket and pants. And standing next to him, it’s his young wife, very beautiful. And she sort of got his hand there holding hands. They’re saying, I like that she’s there like this. And she’s got his hand pressed into her groin. She’s looking at this these long eyes. They go live in Italy. And Antonio. And she’s there like this. And it makes you swoon.

Speaker It was so hot. And that’s really hard to do with two adults, one of whom is in his 70s or 80s.

Speaker And they’re both fully clothed. That’s that’s pretty amazing.

Speaker They just my love is happy that knew him and didn’t know it. And, uh.

Speaker You know, I think that everybody extraordinary can be very difficult at times, because that is how in many ways you become extraordinary by fighting for what you think is right, whether it’s right or wrong sometimes.

Speaker But I can’t think of anybody who has ever really worked with Dick.

Speaker It doesn’t love him and will love him forever, you know, no matter what. So.

Speaker What’s their assault?

Speaker At the tribute, I don’t know how I can say that again. But you want to listen back in here, ask where that squeak is.

Speaker You may even hear me. But there was a big fear when she said, will you be a clean son?

Speaker No, it’s right there. It’s just, you know, I can. I’m brilliant. Voicing over.

Speaker OK.

Speaker Now, what was I saying? Who am I? Where am I? Does that resonate. Hmm. Well, it’s impossible to say such a thing as a best picture, of course, but because when you say that you use the card catalogue flips through of thousands of pictures, that will be with you forever. Once you’ve seen them.

Speaker You know, Dick had a nuclear a nuclear trigger, nuclear trigger on their finger. And when he shot somebody, they say shot.

Speaker But the one that really that I think of because I guess I’ve never seen it before. The Whitney retrospective, he has a portrait of Michelangelo Antonioni and his new bride. And it was swooning. The erotic swooning. Did didn’t understand their mix company. Well, when it was younger and right now and know what it was, was just Antonioni, who is probably about 78, I guess a two. And he’d had a stroke. So one side of his face was immobile.

Speaker They were staying at a little jacket on a pair of khaki pants, I think, shirt. And he’s standing there with his bride. Both are facing forward looking in the camera. The first portrait and the second portrait. He’s still standing there. He’s got one side of his face. It’s workers like little smile right there. And she looks gorgeous. Woman in her 30s had his hand and they had been holding hands in front picture. And then and this one, she’s got his hand that she was holding only a few seconds before. And she’s taking this hand and she’s got it pushed into her groin. And she’s looking up at him and he’s looking at the camera. And it’s amazing.

Speaker And to see a picture that sad erotic from two fully grown adults, clothed, fully clothed adults, one of whom is in the 70s, is pretty amazing.

Speaker And they can do that. Precious few of its can.

Speaker In the best sense of eroticism, you know, it was adult and sexy and exciting. And one of the things about Dick, I guess, is he is he’s magical. And after working with him, you come away feeling magical. You know, stardust rubs off. And I you say he can be different things with different people, whatever he needs.

Speaker I think he changes into because to make them feel safe enough for her to give this flat out flash of eroticism and adoration to the man she loved in front of a camera, I think she was an actress is, uh, that’s quite something.

Speaker That was one of Dick’s way, one of the six ways of cross-fertilisation was dancing and what? Well, since most of us danced, there was rock and roll studio always there.

Speaker He would see the the way the other girls were dancing and then show me who didn’t dance, who’d never dance, who was a wallflower all through high school. I was too embarrassed. That’s the only place I wasn’t embarrassed.

Speaker Dance to this day was in the cabinet studio. I said, Oh, that’s right, I don’t dance.

Speaker And he could. He could turn into what was needed to be turned into. He could do what was needed. Yeah. Yeah. These little woo little leather house slippers that he would wear in the studio that he would sort of sloughed from this area to the other area, always full of energy and excitement.

Speaker And he would get up there and dance and he would do the most complicated steps up in the air. I mean, he would get up in the air and boy, I figure Dick could do it.

Speaker I had to be able to do it so I would do it then, you know, I would dance to do things that I didn’t do. And I’m sure lots and lots was done.

Speaker I know. And and this cross-fertilisation thing worked a lot of ways. One time he told me to do something completely silly. So I. I had very flexible bones and was double jointed. And I stuck my toe in my mouth at seven, you know, and I ripped off my my toenail that was a little overgrown. I take it up here and stick it up here and take it off. And about two, three, two months later, I saw that picture on Goldie Hawn in Vogue to develop a spread goal that he had shown her, because I guess they didn’t use it when I did it.

Speaker And he was she was a comedian and he was trying to find something funny for her set visual said comedian. And he showed her by my foot in the mouth. You know why Toronto is so did that. And I remember you could tell Dick. You would tell Dick something about. I remember the old studios, but I must’ve been sixty seven. And I told Dick that he really had to get the mothers of invention because Frank Zappa had just been sitting down. But I mean I was sitting down at the cafe what you like, you know, it was as big as a matchbox downtown and only hipsters and weirdos were going there. And I said, this guy’s the best Frank Zappa. You got to hear him. You should shoot him.

Speaker And next thing you know, he’s got Zappa studio and the same thing with, uh.

Speaker You know, Big Brother, the holding company, Janice Janice came to work one morning and there was Janice in the dressing room, she had a Southern comfort in her back back pocket and with Della joint the size of a stogie and her hair. And to my everlasting regret, I said, Oh, no, I’m working on. So I turned her down.