Because the filming process was so organic and there was no script, the film [Dream of Life] was literally telling us what it wanted to be in the editing room.
I wasn't familiar with Patti [Smith ]much at all. When I was asked to photograph her, my wife said, "Oh my God, Patti Smith!" So I looked at some Robert Mapplethorpe books and I recognized those pictures.
We were just hanging out and getting to learn about each other. But I think trust was a really big thing. Patti [Smith] is a good friend, somebody I can talk to.
Over time it just got more and more intense as far as the trust factor. For example, when we started editing the film [Dream of Life], I thought, man, I need to make sense of all the footage I have; I need to ground the film. And one day I was hanging out in Patti's [Smith] bedroom, which is where Patti works, and in the corner of her bedroom is this great chair, and that's when she began showing her personal things to me. The camera was there, and we realized that we were really making the movie and making sense of the footage in the movie.
I think those moments in Patti's [Smith] bedroom really helped the film [Dream of Life] out, and those moments existed because of the trust between us. There isn't any real self-consciousness in the film because we all like each other.
The only self-consciousness in the film [Dream of Life] is anyone's natural shyness.
We had a hodgepodge of footage. We didn't film [in Dream of Life ]all the time - we would just film periodically, so nothing was synced and nothing was slated.
The film [Dream of Life] came together when we started editing; it was organic, it became nonlinear and it was its own animal. And I didn't want to tame it, either. I wanted it to be different. It's not your typical documentary.
That was an amazing experience [making Dream of Life]. It's hard to imagine that we were editing every day for a year. And it was pretty extraordinary; it also went by super fast. But every day was an experiment.
We just grew to trust each other [with Patti Smith] more and more over the years. Most of the time I didn't even have a movie camera.
When I went to Detroit, I was very naïve, actually, and I think Patti [Smith] picked up on that quite quickly.
I like not knowing too much about somebody I'm photographing, because the process also becomes an experience for me to learn about .
I quickly realized that Patti [Smith] was somebody very special.
I do remember, the first time we met [with Patti Smith], the door opening with a squeak. And then there was this very beautiful girl looking out.
I shot [Dream of Life] all on 16-millimeter, and I just wanted to learn about Patti [Smith].
It took 12 years to put this film [Dream of Life] together, but it was not until toward the end of those 12 years that I looked at Patti [Smith] and said, "Maybe we should do something with this footage."
I came up with more money, took all the footage, got a great editor and made this film [Dream of Life]. But I really didn't go into it with the intention of making a movie.
I never went to film school, so I just sort of learned on my own.
Sometimes my fashion pictures can look a little bit like documentary style pictures. So having a camera in my hand was normal.
Patti [Smith] was my experiment, to be honest. And the film is what we got out of it. At the end of the day, I learned a lot about how to make a film.
[Through the making of Dream of Life] I learned about being patient, perseverance, having a dream, a goal. I learned that I can accomplish something despite not knowing anything about it when I begin.
For me to see the film [Dream of Life] on a big screen - it's pretty extraordinary.
I became Patti's [Smith] messenger, basically, and the film is my view of how I learned about Patti.
I remember when we were at Sundance, we were in Robert Redford's screening room, and I had never seen the film look so beautiful or sound so great. It was really big and really powerful, and I had a sense of accomplishment in finishing a project like this.
I was making a film [Dream of Life] about Patti [Smith], but I was taking pictures, too.
"I just wanted to be Patti's [Smith] messenger and get her word out there."
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