This weekend in Telluride, I recorded an audio interview with experimental filmmaker George Kuchar. We talked about YouTube, the trickle down economics of DIY filmmaking, and Telluride’s history as a haven for criminals and whores. Somehow, someway, the audio file got corrupted and the interview is unusable. Which is really depressing, because this interview was kind of a big deal to me. When I was 20 years old, I moved from Chicago to San Francisco, and I did it for George Kuchar.

(That’s not entirely true, but it might as well be. Years later the other factors that led to the move–petty relationship problems, an intolerance for Midwest winters, a foolish youthful faith in the power of geographical change to correct deep-seated emotional issues–seem far less significant.)

I was already skipping classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to watch George Kuchar’s movies at the Video Data Bank. Shot first on Super 8mm, then 16mm, then prosumer video, sometimes aided by his brother Mike, the Kuchar films were cheap and intentionally schlocky, but the best of them were somehow funny, poignant, and even beautiful. They were exactly the kind of movies I wanted to make! The idea of finishing my final three semesters of art school in a sunny clime, where I would take classes with Kuchar and surely in no time convince him to take me under his wing–it was like an actionable fantasy.

Of course, the reality of it was nothing like I fantasized. Partially, because I was a 20 year old girl, which means that my grasp on the disconnect between the real world and the universe swirling around in my brain was tenuous at best. Also, I was so flighty that by the time I had applied to the San Francisco Art Institute, gotten accepted, moved all my stuff 2,000 miles, registered for classes and actually found myself in the same room with George Kuchar, I had pretty moved on to a new fantasy life plan. Also, I wanted my movies to be good-bad, like George’s, but they were mostly just bad.

Still, I don’t regret that totally impetuous, costly moving decision. So much of the art school critique experience is about stroking and smashing egos. Critiques with George Kuchar weren’t at all like that.

You’d show up at your appointed tutorial time, and usually pass George in the hallway. “Hold on a sec,” he’d say. “I gotta go ta da can.” A few minutes later, he’d show up in the cavernous class room (SFAI is a minor architectural marvel–if you ever find yourself in San Francisco, walking around that campus is a much better use of your time than getting stuck in the tourist crush at Fisherman’s Wharf), sit across from you at the table (always with some kind of greasy vending machined snack in hand), and say, “What kindofa pik-cha we watchin’ today?”

So you’d put on your tape, and watch George as he watched it. Sometimes he’d laugh, a violent “Haw!” that sent little bits of chip crumbs flying; that was good. And then you’d just sit around and talk for an hour–about your film, about his films, about acting (despite the seemingly arbitrary nature of Kuchar’s casting process, he loves to talk about “staaaahs”), about bargain-basement special effects, about the weather. In some vague way, the single semester I spent as a student of George Kuchar paid dividends: it helped nudge me towards the realization that I’m much better at talking about films than I am at making them.

George was in town because curator Edith Kramer (formerly of Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive) had put together two Kuchar tributes at Telluride. The first focused on his early film works, including his collaborations with Mike Kuchar and the film school staple Hold Me While I’m Naked (which you can watch in two parts on YouTube); the second examined his video works of the past 20 years, including the half-dozen Weather Diary tapes and the many shorts shot in collaboration with students at the San Francisco Art Institute. In lieu of the aural evidence of my encounter with George Kuchar, here’s a round-up of links you should check out as a primer to his work:

• The Video Data Bank has many short clips from Kuchar’s films on their website. I highly recommend Weather Diary 5, Route 666, and ID Came From Outer Space.
• A 10-minute behind-the-scenes look at one of Kuchar’s SFAI productions (as he puts it, “a big pik-cha about the jungle. And space! Outer space!”), courtesy of the Experimental Channel.
• Kuchar films on YouTube: Hold Me While I’m Naked, A Reason to Live, Wild Night in El Reno, I, An Actress
• An excellent Bright Lights review of George’s 140-minute epic, Secrets of the Shadow World.