Henry Pillsbury was director of the American Center from 1969 to 1972 and from 1979 to 1994. He is widely recognized as a visionary in the Paris arts community for his role in staging numerous experimental musical, theater, dance and literary events at the famous Montparnasse sanctuary dedicated to art and artists since World War I. Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, Jean-Paul Sartre, Allen Ginsberg, John Cage and Merce Cunningham all performed at the American Center. Pillsbury explains the circumstances involved in the sale of the building on boulevard Raspail, the move to Bercy, and, finally, the sale of the American Center to the city of Paris' Maison du Cinéma. Pillsbury is currently playing Clov in Samuel Beckett's play, "Endgame" at the Lucenaire Theater, 53, rue Notre-Dame des Champs, 6e, through April 16. Q: The life of Henry Pillsbury is on the one hand that of an actor, writer, producer, and on the other, the director of the American Center. A lot of people thought that the American Center on Raspail was just fine. So people are confused. What happened? HP: The American Center was founded as one of a number of institutions started by the American community, a powerful group from the late 1890s until the mid-'60s. They built a library, a chamber of commerce, a university complex, an American hospital and a cathedral with the American Center, created by the Dean and Mrs. Beekman, as an adjunct for educational, artistic and social purposes. In the mid-'60s, the American community started to dissolve. Instinctively, people started opening their doors more and more to a Parisian clientele. We should recognize that the American Center is a profoundly Parisian phenomenon with the huge input of that national minority that set it up. In 1969-70, it was the only place in town where you could see American experimental music and theater and pick up a class. We had an average budget of 10-12 million francs a year and 85% of it was earned at the gate. Our biggest success were the language programs and the dance, theater and music classes. They generated tremendous sums of money. However, clearly there was a big change that was starting to take place in the late '60s to '70s. Not having any funding of its own, the American Center found itself in a competitive circumstance with other cultural institutions which, as we know, are all subsidized. Then, "Les Grands Travaux" began the Pompidou Center, Beaubourg, the Louvre, etc.. [... ] and the thrill of a rather scruffy building on the boulevard Raspail started to wane. The neighborhood changed: Montparnasse became high-rise apartments with people working elsewhere. From 1972 to 1986, the foot traffic on the boulevard Raspail went way down. By 1985, they estimated there were 1,300 places to get an American language class. There were alternative spaces for every kind of activity. Furthermore, it wasn't fire-safe. Finally, it wasn't suited for what it was doing: drum classes were in the bowling alley, the dance classes were in the floored-over swimming pool, the video classes were in a big closet. Once again, this was no longer competitive. Suddenly all the ways that the American Center had for making a living were dwindling. Judith Pisar, the chairman, and I refurbished it in '78-'79 but within three or four years, it became clear that the situation was one of not really being able to keep our nose above water. A lot of people can say there must have been a way to keep that place going. Well, it didn't come up. I am not the kind of person who keeps solutions out the door. There was no long-term serious addressing of all the problems with Raspail that had a snowball's chance in hell of really holding it against the competitive Paris of today. At the beginning the idea was to rebuild the facility at Raspail but it would have taken so much money to re-do it... Finally we made the decision and it was the city's enthusiasm for the idea of a cultural center at Bercy which pointed us in that direction. Q: The most common criticism seems to be that too much was spent on the building and the vanity of that, without allowing enough for the running of the center. Why was that? HP: Gehry came in, miraculously, at 1.08% of budget. The amount targeted was substantial and I'm sure there was vanity involved but the basic thing was that the site that the city gave us had a certain volume that had to be filled and it had to be exactly the volume of the building right across from the interway. It might have been wise at that point to say we can't do it but we certainly had no choice other than setting up a foundation than taking the money from the sale. Professionals studied the cost of the operation carefully for two years. The actual running cost matched the projection exactly. Where there was a miscalculation was in keeping the momentum going in the fundraising process when there was an investor scare in '91-'92. There was a break in the development campaign. The money came from individuals who perceived Paris as a glamorous place that might be the culture capital of Europe. Then funding in America was cut, and people were not looking to put money in Europe, particularly in a country which subsidized its own arts so much. Q: Then at that point why did you put so much money into the building? Why didn't you split it with the administrative cost ? HP: There was a volume that needed to be built and a program that had to be agreed upon. The building cost 150 million francs. It plays out and if we had put in 90 to 100 million francs, there would have been a prevailing endowment that would have been enough to make it run with little fundraising. But then you couldn't have built that volume. So you could say, 'then why did you accept to go there?' Maybe our biggest mistake was to think that we needed a place. I'm pretty cheerful about it because you say the old place doesn't work, you sell the old place and get the cash. Then you say, 'are we going to have a foundation or a place?' No, you've got to have a place and real estate where the community is sensitive. The planning that went into the choice of that spot from the city's point of view dwarfs the imagination. They planned exactly where that could be, why it could be there, what it could do and so on. We got eight to ten million dollars. With the International Herald Tribune today pointing out that the stock market is six times what it was in 1987, it's perfectly clear that if we had been able to stay the route, probably right now, it would be thriving. Q: The closing of the Center at Montparnasse coincided with the commercialization of the entire neighborhood. The feeling was that maybe the rationalization for the move was commercial and grandiose to fit in with the big guns of the art world. HP: The arts right now are about big guns whether we like it or not. Big theater, the revival of Broadway... the most exploratory, exciting work is on Broadway. Big bucks. Exciting artists who might not necessarily hang around the old American Center. Q: For the last 40 years, the Center reflected major cultural trends in America from film to poetry to theater. It was also a beacon for life in France. A kind of two-sided mirror one that looked outward to America and one that looked inward to France. With the sale, who will perform that function? HP: Your idea that the Center was a "Janus head" is absolutely right, a reflector back to the US and a reflector coming in from the States is very important. The American Center is going to be a foundation. The stock market will grow with it and then it will have the chance to intervene on all sorts of projects. In a time of Internet, in a time of non-locus art to a great extent, in a time of fluidity of artists traveling around the world, maybe this is the American Center. Q: How would you answer the people who say 'who would go to Bercy for a vernissage?' Why wasn't the priority access for patrons, the location, and availability to artists? HP: The worry about the location is just ridiculous. The library is right across the river. It's closer to the historical center of Paris, to Notre-Dame, than the Arc de Triomphe so it's just a question of habit. What was original and exciting about the American Center was being an untutored, open, free-spirited place. I always said that the only thing that's American about the American Center is the spirit. There was a freedom to explore and experiment... Q: You said that the Gehry building would be admirably suited to big American culture events and asked what the American presence should be. However, these forces may have less to do with the actual creation of art than a center which gives a cup of coffee to a budding playwright, or the use of a piano to a musician or a hot meal to an starving artist. The pastoral role in the work of producing art seems to have gotten lost. HP: That's certainly central. But people tend to exaggerate the encouragement of creative activity at the beginning. It was a clubhouse. True, it was not overly structured. It was a place where people could project their dreams. Paris has always been one of the great meeting places on earth. To the extent that art has collaborative tendencies, Paris is important. Is Paris the cultural capital of Europe? Endless discussion. It's definitely one of the most densely populated cities so anything that happens in French civilization is a local phone call. This notion of meeting is really central to whether or not there ever will be ever again an institution like the American Center. Young people and I'm old now; I'm 62 tell me they're meeting on the Internet... Q: So now you're back to one of your first loves. HP: Isn't it interesting that I'm playing Clov in 'Endgame' which I first played in 1981, also with Pierre Chabert in the American Center's Autumn Festival? Here we are in an open-ended run. It parallels the American Center story. This amazingly resurgent power. Q: The memory of the Center lives on in people's imagination both spiritually and materially. In Beckett's play, in deep moral and physical destitution, the memory of love, kindness and beauty seems to keep the characters going. Is this a metaphor for you? HP: Beckett said 'Don't look for symbols. Just play it.' There are huge philosophic questions. For me, Beckett is essentially optimistic. It doesn't mean that the world is going to turn out well but that as long as somebody is talking I think he would decree that the organ of life or death is the mouth there is hope. From the use of daily language to profound philosophical effect, with the speed we play it, jumps a tremendous notion of the freedom of the human spirit. The bilingualism of Samuel Beckett and my own circumstance are so close as to be scary to enjoy and suffer from trying to give utterance in two languages. He puts two banal questions side by side 'Quelle heure est-il? La même que d'habitude?' and it becomes cosmic. Honed it down to prosaic utterances and almost groin-level buffoonery and it suddenly jumps the tracks and becomes after-the-fact cosmic. 'Do you believe in future life?' The reply is 'mine's always been that.' Q: Hamm says at the end, 'Old endgame lost of old, play and lose and have done with losing.' Is this the end for you or the beginning? HP: Let's look at the American Center always as a beginning. The best way to look at what looks to be absolute determined fact is to question what seems the most evident. I hadn't thought of it this way but it's very good: to lose and by losing to stop losing. Beckett's famous line is 'when you're up to your neck in shit, the best thing you can do is sing.' Or the only thing. That's the way I feel. It's dangerous to say Beckett's an optimist because he's a poet of despair, end of the world, etc. But he says it goes on. That's why your question is legitimate, is this the beginning or the end. One thing is for sure with Beckett, it's always going on. |
