Blow Up of Blow Up (2016) - full transcript

This photo
is taken in the studio,

and you can see
Michelangelo sitting

here through this gray glass.

And this is me.

It's really funny
because it looks

as though I'm directing him.

He was doing his
first film in English.

His English was not
amazing, and he needed

somebody to be his ears...

his ears with the actors...

to be able to tell him the
effect of what they would do.



In '66 I was 27.

My first movie.

It's an American movie,
MGM, American budget.

But the artistic mind behind
it was this particularly

European mind of.

We were talking French usually,
and he would explain to me

often what it was that
he wanted actors to do,

but sometimes what he
wanted the crew to do.

He explained to me once why
he was shooting in London.

He said, OK, I had this
story I wanted to do.

The story happens to
concern a photographer.

So he had to analyze where
would it be interesting to make

a film about a photographer.

He said, well, you
could make it in Rome,



but it's been done...
much of it has been done.

Seriously considered New York,
but the attraction of London

was obviously that it
was Swinging London.

There was a scene, there
was a climate of excitement,

and interest, and
change, and new work.

I got a phone call

from someone who said they were
at Harper's Bazaar in England.

And Mr. Antonioni
was in town and he'd

like to watch me take pictures.

And I thought this is a joke.

I had seen all his
movies, and at that time,

Antonioni was god.

And he came down and he
stood right over here.

In 1965 I started
a book shop and art gallery

with two friends of mine, Peter
Asher who was part of Peter

and Gordon, a rock
and roll group,

and my friend John
Dunbar who was the art

critic for "The Scotsman."

We found premises
in Mason's Yard

for the gallery and bookshop.

Mason's Yard is a small
piazza just off of Piccadilly.

That was where the
Scotch of St. James

was located, which
was at that point

the sort of cool rock and
roll aristocracy nightclub

where The Stones, and
The Beatles, and The Who,

and everybody used to meet.

Nothing
like modern discos.

It only held 150 people.

It was the size of a
VIP bar in modern disco,

and it was just a VIP bar.

You were looked at
through a keyhole.

You had to be well-known,
you had to be known to them.

But I was in there
one night and there

was a little slim Italian man
getting a lot of attention,

and I didn't recognize him.

I wondered who he was.

He didn't look like a rock star.

And Kit Lambert said,
well, that's Antonioni,

the famous director.

He's come to make
a film in London,

and he wants The Who to perform
in it and smash their guitars.

And I was very jealous,
and I wanted my group,

The Others to be in it.

But I couldn't tell Kit that.

So I wanted to go up and talk
to him, and said Kit, Kit...

no, no, no.

He's... I'm... My
group's doing the part.

I'm going to see him
tomorrow at the Savoy Hotel.

So I told Kit don't
be a pushover.

I said demand
5,000 pounds or say

you want control of the edit.

And I knew Antonioni
would throw him out.

One of the people
who Antonioni knew in Britain

when he came over here was
Robert Fraser who brought over

a lot of pop art from America...
that Andy Warhol he showed,

for instance, and British
pop artists like Peter Blake,

and Hamilton, and
all of those people.

At Fraser's place he first met
Paul McCartney, for instance,

who was a good friend
of Robert's, as were

the other Beatles and Stones.

Antonioni and McCartney
got on extremely well,

and Paul invited Antonioni
over to his house

and showed him his home movies.

Antonioni was the
most exciting person to meet,

because he had
made "L'Avventura,"

and "L'Avventura" was the film
that changed my mind complete,

or actually introduced
me to cinema.

I remember him coming
to my family house

in Belgravia in London,
which was a very sort

of dead, dull place.

I think he must have been
brought there with

probably because
we were the only

Bohemian family in Belgravia.

So when he came, we
were all very excited.

We spoke Italian, and then
became a friend of his...

so did my brother... and we
went about in London with him.

I think he was very, very
much taken by the excitement

about London... that
there was about London,

and that was going on in London.

And he's interested in fashion,
in the clothes, in the customs,

in the everything that was
considered to be liberating.

This was the first
time that young people had

any money, and they didn't have
enough money, obviously, to buy

cars or to buy houses or
a mortgage or something,

but they had enough money
to buy records and clothes.

And there were
young people doing...

starting little boutiques.

And the two key ones for
the London Underground, one

was Michael Rainey's
"Hung On You."

"Granny Takes a Trip,"
which of course is

famously
in the book address,

which was used in "Blow-Up."

Because they didn't just make
clothes for young people.

They also specialized
in vintage clothes.

It was
color, bringing color,

color to this foggy nation.

The fashion photographers
were doing that in a sense,

and so it wasn't
just superficial,

it was also quite
revolutionary in a way.

As a specialist
in the history of photography,

as somebody who's passionately
curious about the whole story

of the London scene in the '60s,
photography is the dominant

thread for me, and has been
a dominant thread through

my investigation of "Blow-Up."

I've always wanted
to find out more...

who were the
influences, who made

the pictures used in the film.

And I was thrilled to know
that the photographer who one

sees in the opening
credits from behind,

it was David Montgomery.

Some
people called me up and said,

Mr. Antonioni would like you
to come down and photograph

while the film's going on.

Comes the big day and
I take my assistant,

and we go to Brixton Market.

And all these big
movie cameras around,

and hustling, and facing
this way, that way.

One of the men says, OK,
you set up your camera here,

and Donyale Luna, who was
the beautiful black model,

was standing on top
of a little hut.

So I'm shooting
and I'm shooting,

and I stop because
I've run out of film.

We open up the camera and
we're taking the film out,

and all of a sudden
they come running over

and say, what are you doing?

What are you doing?

I said, I'm changing film.

I've run out of film.

And they said, you
don't need film.

This is a movie.

It's make believe.

I said, not make believe to me.

I'm a photographer.

I'm not an actor.

I can't make believe
I'm taking pictures.

Actually, I don't

know how I got in
because I didn't

phone the production company.

I just called the Savoy
and somehow got through

to his suite and said
I was the manager

of The Yardbirds, who
were the second biggest

group in the world.

And I went very prepared
with lots of reviews

and photographs and things.

And I told him I'd
heard from Kit Lambert

that they hadn't
got on very well.

And I said to him that actually
this smashing equipment, which

he was very keen to see, really
wasn't The Who that started it.

I said it was the
Yardbirds who started it

and The Who copied them.

And I said Jeff Beck
always smashes...

or he used to smash his guitar.

He's marvelous at it.

And anyway, I don't how I think
Antonioni just got on with me.

We clicked quite well.

I think he probably
knew I was lying,

but I think he liked that too.

And so he said, OK,
they can come and do it.

"We had to play a film to
change the sets at The Hampstead

Theatre between
the various scenes

in "Adventures in
the Skin Trade."

The shooting had to be
done for next to nothing,

but I was happy to do it in
a surrealist or irrealist

mode in the old black and
white and silent manner.

So there I was when a mysterious
and beautiful woman I knew

called Clare came in with a
handsome elder Italian saying

that they were
looking for locations.

And then I went upstairs to
discover that Clare was with

Michelangelo Antonioni who
was about to film "Blow-Up,"

which would turn out
to be the definitive

statement of how
young life in London

appeared to be right then."

David Hemmings at the
time was absolutely broke,

and we hired him.

We first wanted to
hire Terence Stamp,

but Terence Stamp didn't
like the play too much,

and he knew he
was actually being

thought of to do.

But Hemmings was number
two to Stamp at the time.

He had a spotty acting
career, but he was

available and absolutely broke.

So he came to stay with me in
my river house in Limehouse,

and he had nothing.

So we negotiated for 20 pounds
a week was all he was getting.

I took him to
Limehouse in the East end

on the docks... that part in
London which was still a port,

still functioning as port, where
writer Andrew Sinclair lived,

and he was working
with David Hemmings,

and I went to the
play with Antonioni.

I saw that he had this
energy, and what a capacity

to sort of follow
Antonioni rules,

which was saying very little.

And being used in a way,
you're used as a tool.

And at the same time
he had this quickness

and sharpness which was very...

right for the part.

Hemmings is marvelous.

It's probably his greatest
performance as the young Dylan

Thomas... quite extraordinary.

Energetic, reckless
and ,

he was perfect for "Blow-Up."

So instead of 20
pounds a week, he

left us for the set of
"Blow-Up"... of course,

Stamp had been fired.

He had taken the
role on 7,500 a week

in a Rolls Royce white coupe.

It was the biggest translation
of fortunes I've ever seen.

He was called Thomas
in the "Blow-Up,"

the great photographer
hero David Hemmings.

Because, of course, that is
how Antonioni.

From "Adventures
in the Skin Trade,"

he took out Dylan Thomas.

The photographer
studio was, at that time

in '66, a very sort of
emblematic place because

of Bailey, and your fashion
scene, and King's Road,

and miniskirts.

It was somehow
culturally central.

Antonioni
was meticulous in researching

to create a real authenticity
around his character,

around the details of how
he lived, how a shoot works.

It's underpinned with a lot
of accurate, minute detailing.

Antonioni
asked Frances Windham,

who was an extremely talented
writer of "The Sunday Times,"

he wanted to compose a
kind of questionnaire.

And so what he had was
data about the behavior,

the choices made
by photographers,

their lifestyle, their
attitudes to women,

and to sex, and so on.

Among
the various photographers

that he visited, of course
was David Montgomery.

So what I learnt in that moment
was that the actor who had

played the part of David
Hemmings' assistant actually

wasn't an actor at all.

Reg was David
Montgomery's assistant.

And Antonioni felt no
need to change his name.

This is good.

This is the Hendrix nudes.

This was 1966... a long time ago.

I was doing a shooting
for Harper's Bazaar,

and Mr. Antonioni came down.

I did a photograph of these
girls wrapped in plastic.

We didn't talk much,
and he ended up using...

I think all the girls
that were in the shooting,

they were in the movie as well.

There were three models, one
called Melanie Hampshire,

and another one
called Peggy Moffitt,

and she was the
first Rudi Gernreich

model for the topless
bikini for women.

And then another one
called Jill Kennington

was just one of those
people that could move.

She had natural grace.

The curious thing

was that we weren't
going to be filming

in Shepperton or anything else.

It was actually taking
place in this studio,

which was John Khan's studio.

And I lived here
for a few years.

The
studio, John Kahn's studio,

is in a part of London which
was then quite shabby, quite

scruffy, an area
where you could rent

a big space, not crazy money.

Today it's become so grand
and so expensive, that area.

The studio is at
39 Prince's Place.

If you go to 39
Prince's Place today,

you will be confused because
the facade will not correspond

to what you know from the film.

You have to go around the
corner to Pottery Lane

to find the facade, so
the exterior shots were

made in this nearby street.

When John agreed to
rent the studio out

to Antonioni as the principal
set, he lived in a caravan

in the street outside.

And I gather that
Antonioni would

probably have
preferred that he'd

moved a little further away.

As
far as I remember,

the actual shoot
took about a week.

And it was so out
of character for me

to be what ended up by
being the role of us five

girls being completely
dumb, and stupid,

and very immobile as well.

You know, rather than the usual
animation that I was used to.

He obviously knew exactly
what he wanted from us,

and that was like a tableau,
and he wanted the David Hemmings

character to be
very sort of alive,

and for some reason quite rude.

But he wanted us to
be quite inanimate,

so I couldn't move very much.

I remember feeling
quite restricted.

Jill was one
of the absolute top London

models of the '60s.

John Cowan, with whom she
had that close relationship,

was absolutely at
the top of the game.

He was one of the key
photographers defining what

we know as Swinging London.

But setting that new mood...

energetic, dynamic,
youthful... he was intensely

creative in the early '60s.

They were a golden
couple of a golden moment

in British cultural history.

But for different
reasons they didn't

stay in the
spotlight in the way,

for instance, David Bailey
and Jean Shrimpton stayed

in the spotlight and have
maintained that that presence

as reputations ever since.

We have to remember,
a lot of his great,

great photographs were
made for newsprint,

as opposed to magazines.

He was working for the Sunday
papers and the daily papers,

and one realizes that he made
some of his finest pictures,

destined to have a
life span of one day.

The
interesting thing

is that he kept the
essence of this studio

as it was when John
had it, because he

had such huge great blow ups,
particularly of me, many of me.

So it was interesting.

He did want to show the
energy in those photographs

and have it in the set as well.

So that was good.

I liked that.

Bailey's work was not
what the film was about,

but his character, as in what
David Hemmings was inspired by,

I think possibly came
a lot from Bailey.

But the energy came from
John Cowan, for sure.

The shooting with Veruschka
and David was pure John Cowan.

I mean I'd worked
with him like that.

Sadly, it wasn't when
Antonioni was watching us.

But that didn't matter.

Veruschka was perfect for that
role, and I think completely...

John used to often get up
a step ladder, for example,

and film from the floor,
or the other way up.

You're lying on glass.

I mean he was just
very innovative.

It's changed dimension.

I think it used
to be a lot wider.

The things that
used to happen here,

and I used to live
here for a while.

It's great.

Oh, I feel as if I know
every bit of the floor

as well, where we did
photographs and the filming,

of course.

This used to be
a fabulous space,

and I think when Antonioni
found here, he just

thought it was the bee's
knees, because you could get

a whole film crew in here, and
you could shoot from the top,

which made it very interesting.

And I guess the
Veruschka picture

must have been from here.

I wonder what's
going to happen next.

It's a piece of history, though,
this film being made here.

I didn't realize at
the time that film

would be so significant...

you know, sort of bird's
eye view into London life.

Some of it was
exaggerated, of course.

Well, that's a
director's privilege.

And I never knew what
was in Antonioni head.

He was quite a sort
of philosophical man,

and very quiet.

The most
composed secrets of all

is the models in the
reflective glass,

because it's a key
sequence that embodies

the meaning of the film of
just a man with a camera who's

playing with images, visions.

These are visions that
he's able to control.

And of course, what happens
then is that's something

that he can't control.

The fastidiousness of his vision
was very clear in the studio.

When we came to do
set up, everybody

had to leave the studio,
and Michelangelo would be

in there with the viewfinder.

And he would be working
out what would happen next,

and then he would call
DePalma,

their cameraman, called
the first assistant,

and then he'd call for
the actors, and me,

and they would then
work it out, because he

would design the set up very
slowly, with great care.

The scene with the girls and
the paper, the nude scene,

was, of course, different
again, because there was

the fact that they were naked...

that's difficult, and you have
to close the set and so on.

And the fact also that it
was completely unrehearsed.

You couldn't possibly
rehearse that scene.

So it was just a romp in paper.

I loved that sequence
because that he's

using the paper, which is
part of the photographer's

tool of a photographer that you
see him pulling down the paper,

you know, when he's working
he's changing the sheets.

And here it's used
with wit and style.

My husband
Pierre Rouve was, indeed,

the executive
producer on "Blow-Up,"

working for Bridge Films, which
is, of course, the English

version of Ponti, Carlo Ponti.

One evening... I think I
was drawing the blinds here

in the sitting room, and noticed
that Antonioni in his car

was parked outside on the
other side of the road.

I imagined that Pierre had
invited to come for supper,

but had forgotten
to tell me, and had

forgotten to come back home.

And so I telephoned him and
I said, as far as I can see,

Antonioni's actually sitting
in his car outside the house,

but he doesn't seem to want
to come into the house.

He said, don't do anything.

He's actually a
very, very shy person

and would find it very difficult
to make casual conversation.

So I waited, he waited, and
finally Pierre came home.

He was also working
as a lecturer,

and that meant that he had the
opportunity to invite Antonioni

to visit the Chelsea
School of Art

where Antonioni would have been
introduced to Ian Stephenson

and seen his work, originally.

And over
here, of course, this

is the painting which appears in
the film, and is talked about.

This motif is based on a
Greek classical sculpture.

When described by
David Hemmings,

the artist turned into
a leg in the film,

but it doesn't make
any difference.

In fact, that's more
magical than if they

actually described it.

He didn't fit in anywhere.

He wasn't a pot
painter, he wasn't

an American style colorist.

He was just making these
extraordinary artworks of

all different colored paints.

In a way he suffered for
that, because he's never

in big exhibitions
very often because they

don't know where to put him.

Antonioni could
have been introduced to a range

of artists who,
it might be felt,

represented the spirit of London
at that point in the mid-'60s.

Stephenson is an
interesting choice.

He's somebody who deconstructs
the process of vision

and representation itself.

When
Antonioni came to the studio,

Ian had on his perfectly clean
white t-shirt, beautiful jeans,

hair all combed, and had the
conversations with Antonioni,

and then they went away.

And eventually when Ian was
on the set at some point,

the artist in the film appeared
in a pair of blue jeans

and a very white t-shirt
and his hair all combed,

and Ian must have said to
them, well, I don't look

like that when I'm painting.

And someone must
have just taken a paint brush

and made three or four marks on
the white t-shirt, completely

arbitrary, nothing to do with
anything like Ian's dots.

Assheton Gorton, the
production designer,

came to Ian in the studio
to select some things

to be on the set,
and took virtually

everything out of the studio.

The plaster cast, all the
pots of paints, some easels,

I think there was a
chair, actually... just

sort of in-studio contents
disappeared into a van

and were away for
quite a long time.

So he couldn't actually get
on with what he was doing.

I heard
a lot about Pierre

needing to get up terribly
early in the morning

and having to go down to
Stockwell to make sure

that the right amount
of houses were painted

the right color of red,
because Antonioni would

never have had the wrong red.

It had to be the right
thing, the perfect thing.

Antonioni was
very fortunate in having

an excellent
production designer,

a man called
Assheton Gorton, who

was very sensitive to
locations in London.

So we begin with the Economist
Building, an extremely

modern architecture in London.

What Assheton Gorton did was
to find a shop, and stuff that

full of this kind of debris.

So that we see, if you like,
the relics of an imperial past.

We know that they're
not sympathetic

to the young photographer.

On the other hand, he
seizes upon the propeller.

It's true of Antonioni's
spirit, an ambivalent object.

It's a relic, it's antiquated.

On the other hand, it's
about the era of modernity.

But the main thing he
did was to find the park,

and the park was like a little...

a little theatre.

He wanted a stage set.

It was a park, a London park,
but it felt a compacted space.

When we
arrived outside the park,

by this antique shop, one
could see that the road

was sort of a particular color.

And I learned that they had,
in fact, painted the road.

And this was the
first experience

of the degree of
control of color

that Michelangelo had
developed, from this

where he's so
particular about the color.

It's an art.

It's like painting with color.

As very young and not
experienced in cinema,

I didn't quite understand
why the sun was shining

and we didn't shoot.

And he explained to me
that I need the cloud.

It has to be very English,
it has to be gloomy.

This was another aspect
of the precision, the

artistic precision of his eye.

It
was in '94 or '95

I think that I had the
extreme good fortune

to find the original blow-ups
that feature in the film,

or at least a number of them.

Just over 20 of the original
blow-ups with the drawing

pin holes, where Hemmings
pinned them to the beam

or to the wall.

20 of these photographs made in
the park showing the couple...

is it a gun in the
bushes, is it a body?

That picture story where Thomas,
the photographer, thinks he's

stumbled on a murder.

The evidence, the
evidential pictures.

At first it was a mystery as
to who had actually taken them.

Somehow... I forget how
the connection was made...

I learnt that it
was Don McCullin.

Don McCullin who is such
an illustrious reputation

in the history, known for his
really powerful war reportage.

He was a great photojournalist
covering the great conflicts

of his time.

Antonioni had
asked Arthur Evans,

the onset photographer
for "Blow-Up,"

to take some pictures in a
park, which he did, but Arthur

Evans didn't get them right.

They were too clear, too crisp...

... too
professional in a sense.

And Antonioni realized he
needed something more gritty,

some... when you blew
it up would soon

become this pattern of green.

And through
connections, possibly

through Frances Wyndham, because
both Frances Wyndham and Don

McCullin were working
on "The Sunday Times,"

he was introduced
to Don McCullin

and saw the gritty
style of photography

that he was associated with, and
he became the man for the job.

Most crucial, there is a
body at the end of the line.

Now, McCullin had been,
earlier in the 1960s,

in Cyprus, in other
theaters of conflict

where he had
photographed bodies.

Ian
was invited onto the set

to actually drop some paint
on some of the blank canvases.

And there was a bit of floom
with his hand doing it.

It did show that was how it
was put onto the canvas...

dropped and moved
around and counted.

Antonioni did ask
Ian about trying

to relate the image on the
canvas to the photographs.

And Ian didn't copy them.

He couldn't have copied them.

But he did make some movement
on the surface of the paintings

which represented
the more abstracted

forms on the blow-up
version of the photograph.

Antonioni wanted
to double back on his own film

by having it mirrored in
a painting by Stephenson.

And so he requests that a
painting be made from one

of the stills that Don
McCullin had provided... these,

which have such
extraordinarily highly

charged atmospheres to them.

Because they show the
disappearance of form

in foliage and undergrowth,
then for Stephenson

to then step up to that
and show forms disappearing

in paint as painted marks.

Don McCullin
was the name attached

to the blow-ups
made in the park,

but Don McCullin is the name
attached to the pictures which

Thomas, the photographer,
shows to his agent in the scene

in the restaurant
where they're looking

at the maquette of a book
which he hopes to publish.

And these pictures
are the... they're

the absolute opposite of his
his high fashion pictures.

They're his photographs
of tramps, down and outs,

people in the east
end of London,

the poor, the underbelly
of the dark side,

this glamorous city that people
talk about as Swinging London.

Peter Bowles
had quite an important part

as the agent of Hemmings.

And unfortunately,
on one key day

was very upset because
Michelangelo had cut

quite a long speech, which
is central to the meaning

of the film, really.

And so he was
saying to the peers,

surely this is very important.

You know, surely
I should say this.

And Peter has written very
interestingly about how

Michelangelo said, I'll tell
you why we have to cut it,

that's because it says
what the film's about,

and I prefer people not to be
told what the film's about.

The technique of getting
the actors to do what it was

that he wanted was slightly
different with different actors

in different sequences.

The arrival of Vanessa
Redgrave was very interesting

because she hadn't been part
of the film up till that time,

and she was very intelligent
in working on Antinuromy.

She was proactive
in talking to him

and tried to suck out from him
what it was that he wanted.

And you could see the
intensity of her concentration,

because on the page the
character is nothing.

So she couldn't
prepare this character.

She's a Shakespearean
actress, and she

withdrew all of her
Shakespearean technique

out, and simply existed in front
of the camera in the situation

intensely, vividly, and
had this close relationship

with Antonioni.

Sarah Miles had a...
not a very big part.

And I think maybe that was
a bit of a issue for her.

I think also she
didn't get on well

with Michelangelo Antonioni.

So things didn't go very well,
and then she got annoyed.

I think she got angry.

The relationship with
Sarah was an example

of one that did not work.

The relationship with
Vanessa did work.

With David, it was different.

He was not technical.

He would kind of,
I think, give him

guidelines and get
him to improvise,

to feel free and be natural.

One of the most interesting
things about the film for me

was working with David Hemmings,
because he was enormous fun.

And he had a Jeep.

I think that he had
bought the Jeep in order

to hire it to the film.

I don't know how much
they paid him per week,

but it was a very
clever idea on his part.

We borrowed the Jeep one
night and went camping, David

and his girlfriend and I. We
found a tent, took the Jeep,

drove out of London,
slept in the forest,

and drove back in for
filming the next day.

He shouldn't have been allowed
to take the Jeep because it's

a prop on the film.

He also occasionally
borrowed the Rolls Royce.

He took me and a
girlfriend in the Rolls

Royce up and down
the King's Road.

David was always keen
to have a good time.

Jeep, Rolls Royce, girls,
friend, a good time.

The
filming actually took place

in the Elstree MGM Studios,
which was a great big cabin

of studios, and you walk
into this huge studio,

there in one little corner
right over there that

just is a nightclub set up.

Because the whole place is cold.

They don't have
heating in there.

So to create an atmosphere
of warmth and smoke

and all that is really
very, very difficult.

I have recently bought a
second guitar to the group.

The base player had left.

And Jeff was very keen for Jimmy
Page to come in and play base.

And I told Jeff, I don't
mind, but he won't play base.

I promise you.

After one day he'll say no,
I want to play guitar too.

And I explained to Jeff that
he had to smash his guitar.

He just refused at point blank.

Jeff never smashed a guitar.

He loves his guitar.

They're his children.

He nurses them, he strokes them.

He couldn't believe I was
asking him to smash his guitar.

But eventually he did agree.

We bought a second guitar
from a cheap guitar.

And I said, we're not
going to smash the guitar.

You just push it
through the amp.

You break the amp,
but with your guitar.

And he tried a few
times in rehearsal

and it went quite well,
because the amp broke

without the guitar breaking.

And then at the filming,
he really got into it.

He didn't really get into
it, but Antonioni called

him out in front of everybody.

He said, Jeff, come on.

We've got to do it.

There was a crowd there,
the people filming,

and people wanted to go to
lunch and it was Take 38.

So finally, Jeff didn't really
get angry with the guitar,

he got angry at Antonioni,
and he took his anger

and smashes the amp.

Ah, cut.

Lovely.

Off to lunch.

People often talk
as if Yardbirds

was some great influence
from Antonioni,

but it's completely the other
way around, because Antonioni

sort of broke up the Yardbirds.

Therefore, may have been
instrumental in creating

Led Zeppelin.

So we can put Antonioni
into rock history.

I had a contract
for a certain length of time,

and then I had to
leave the film.

And the film overran...

several weeks over.

I didn't know everything,
and the script is not

a complete record of the film.

There's stuff in the film
which is not in the script,

and the ending is absolutely
one of those things.

So when I saw at the
screening, I saw the ending,

I was quite astonished.

I don't personally
think it's the best

possible ending for that film.

Perhaps there could have
been another ending.

But there's wonderful
things in the film,

and it was a
wonderful experience,

and it was also a very vivid
picture of London at that time.

And the fact that
it's by an Italian

makes it even more interesting.

Once
I'd finished the film,

I sort of was onto
the next thing,

and I did have a very
exciting working life.

And I'd sort of put it to bed.

But you know these
things, if they're good,

they don't go away.

And it's still here.

Still here.

Still being seen and
being appreciated.

So I just think back
and think what a lucky...

lucky I didn't say no,
actually, because I nearly did.

Because I thought I'm
not a stupid model.

I don't want to
portray a stupid model.

But there we go.

Look at it.

And yeah, very proud of it.