32 Sounds is an immersive feature documentary and sensory film experience that explores the elemental phenomenon of sound and its power to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us.
Synopsis
From Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green (The Weather Underground, A Thousand Thoughts) featuring original music by JD Samson (Le Tigre, MEN), 32 Sounds explore the elemental phenomenon of sound by weaving together 32 specific sound explorations into a cinematic meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us.
The audience is invited by Green, and his composer Samson, to go on a journey through time and space exploring everything from forgotten childhood memories to the soundtrack of resistance, to subaquatic symphonies and experiencing in new ways the astonishing sounds of our everyday lives. 32 Sounds investigate the mysterious nature of perception and the subtle yet radical politics that arise from sensation and being present in one’s body.
Cinema Scholars’ Glen Dower recently got to chat with the director and narrator of 32 Sounds, Scott Walker, about 32 Sounds, interacting with the audience, working with composer JD Samson, and the Sundance experience, among other topics.
Interview
Glen Dower:
Mr. Green, how are you, Sir?
Sam Green:
I’m doing good. How about you?
Glen Dower:
I am well. Thank you very much for talking to Cinema Scholars, and your new documentary is about one of my favorite aspects of cinema – sound. 32 Sounds. Was there a point, while you were filming, where you met so many amazing individuals, who we’ll talk about in a moment, but when did you know that you were done? You had enough material, so you could say ‘Let’s start putting this together’?
Sam Green:
That’s a really good question. Well, what was it? I mean there was, well, it’s funny because this, it premiered at Sundance ‘22, so a year and a half ago. And it was a race against the clock to finish. And so in some ways, it was just like, okay, three weeks before the festival, it’s got to be done. But very late October, I was doing rough cut screenings that people were saying things like, I don’t understand what kind of movie it is. Just the kind of comment where you are, you’re like, oh man, something’s not working. If that’s the kind of feedback I’m getting, there’s something not working.
And so I did one of those in October with eight weeks to go and got that, and was just down in the dumps. And my girlfriend, it was a Friday night, and we went to sleep. She woke up and when I woke up in the morning, she was still awake. She said ‘I went through and I reordered your movie and you’re going to hate this, but why don’t we just sit and reorder it in your studio and you can look at it, you don’t have to do it, but just think about it’. And I looked at her reordering and I thought, oh man, no way. Because you’re going to have to, if you make a bunch of changes, you’ve got to see how they work and it changes everything. I was like, why didn’t you stay this six months ago? I got really upset, but then the next day we went in and reordered it around and that was it. It totally worked. That’s the film. So I think it was that moment when I thought, okay, this is done. And she saved my ass.
Glen Dower:
As partners tend to do. Was it always going to be ‘32’ sounds?
Sam Green:
Yeah, I mean, early on I sort of realized there needed to be a container. It can’t just be like a bunch of sounds. And in a way the number is random, but I really love the movie Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. It’s one of my favorite movies. And I like the approach. It’s a biopic. Normally biopics are so formulaic and boring, and this is a creative one. It…it’s all these little vignettes and some of them are animation documentaries. There are actors, you know, you never know quite where it’s going, it’s not authoritative. It’s a kind of collage piece about Glenn Gould. So I thought that’s a great illusion and a nice nod to this inspiring film. So 32.
Sam Green in a scene from “32 Sounds.” Photo courtesy of Abramorama.
Glen Dower:
Great. And how was the Sundance Festival experience?
Sam Green:
Well, it was great. The only wrinkle was that we were supposed to be the opening night film in Park City at the Egyptian Theater, and it was just going to be great. I’d made this whole live cinema piece, and then three weeks before the festival happened, they canceled the in-person. So it was like, oh fuck, we have to make something that can be virtual now. So that was a challenge, but it worked. And I mean, I was surprised that you could take what has been a live cinema piece and make it a movie theater or headphones, you know, would at home watching and it could work in a similar way, which does so.
Glen Dower:
And you’ve viewed it with an audience in the theater, I hope?
Sam Green:
I’ve done many screenings that are kind of live, where I narrate and JD plays music. We’ve probably done 50 of those, but last week for the first time and people wear headphones, we travel around with headphones. But last week for the first time I saw it in a movie theater with speakers, people saw it and it worked. I was really relieved and pleasantly surprised. Cause a lot of the sounds before this movie, I never really thought that much about sound. As a filmmaker it’s like, oh, it sounds good, hopefully, it’ll sound good. That kind of thing. And now I’m much pickier. And so if you have a good sound system in a theater, it’s so different than, oh, we got some shitty old system. So the one I showed it at last week did have a new 7.1 round sound system. So it was great.
Glen Dower:
And how interactive does the audience get because you have given certain instructions during the film, like close your eyes, get up and dance…
Sam Green:
People do that. I mean, in the live version people get up and there’s a dance moment. People get up and walk around and dance. And that was a little bit more, if I’m there, I can will people to do things. And without that who knows? But I hope one weirdo will get up at every screening and dance.
Glen Dower:
You are the narrator of the piece. We have the introduction with you and JD and then you’re off-camera for the rest. I assumed you’d be onscreen interviewing. Was that always your decision?
Sam Green:
We had different thoughts. At some point, we were going to just film the live version and sort of make that. JD and I would be very present and sort of cut between that and the film, but it didn’t feel necessary, in a way. If you can establish somebody’s face early on if we got rid of our video now, I would be able to remember you and I could probably concentrate on your voice a lot more. I’ve seen you, I know what you look like. So in a way, it’s that if we’re at the beginning talking to you, then you can hear us and it’s fine. And you can probably focus on the words a lot more just hearing us. So at a certain point that seemed like the right approach.
Glen Dower:
That makes a lot of sense. We mentioned you have an opening with JD Samson, your composer. How did that creative partnership begin and develop?
Sam Green:
I had made a live cinema piece for the Whitney Biennial in 2019, and it was a portrait of a guy, a kind of New York legendary character, and Jim Parrot and somebody, the person who commissioned this work, I said, I need to find a musician to work with. And he said, oh, how about JD Samson? I’m friends with JD Samson. I said, wow, I love JD Samson’s music. And we met, and it’s funny because I sort of expected JD to be a kind of intimidating rockstar and JD is super nice and just a very wonderful person. So we worked together on that, had a great time, and had a great experience. And so I said, JD, would you do this film about sound with me? And JD said, yeah, but I wonder, I sort of wonder if JD might regret it because five years later we’re still going. But JD, it would not have been the same movie in any way. It wouldn’t have, and the movie would not be what it is without JD because JD not only did music but is a great muse. And I filmed JD. I like JD as a kind of inspirational figure. A muse is important to the film.
Glen Dower:
Back to your career, so we learn you have been a creator for 25 years. Have you found that people have become very self-aware and self-conscious the moment they are on camera?
Sam Green:
Yeah. Although it’s funny because I think in some ways I always work hard to get people to not be self-conscious. There’s a certain way also in which people perform for the camera now there are so many models, the reality show, and social media, we sort of all have absorbed how to act in front of a camera. I’m always trying to not get that because there’s somebody…I have a friend named Mary Herron who’s a fiction film director, and she once said to me, there’s nothing more powerful than somebody being honest on camera. It’s really true. And by honest, I don’t mean necessarily just telling the truth, but more like being authentic. So it’s hard, hard to elicit that in many ways, especially these days.
Glen Dower:
I think one of the key parts for when we’re talking about that is when you are discussing getting the Room Tone, that little section we see people just be still. Do nothing. Just trying to get that. So you just see what people are like and then you go into the interviews. Let’s talk about some of the individuals you spoke to. We’ll start with Annea Lockwood.
Sam Green:
Yes, in some ways she’s the main character. In the pandemic, I’d say this in the voiceover, I read a reference to her in a book, which said Annea Lockwood, the composer, has recorded the sound of rivers for 50 years. And I just love that. I love the sound of rivers, first of all, such a great sound. And I was very intrigued, who is this person who’s recorded the sound of rivers for 50 years? I Googled her and just started listening. She’s got a lot of music online on YouTube. And I started listening, there’s a song called Tiger Bomb, which I think she made in 1970. It’s a long kind of collage of sounds. It’s a cat purring, a person having an orgasm. This was very early in the pandemic. And I was working in a little house behind our house and my son, who was four at that time would come out and bug me and I’d be trying to work, and I put on Tiger Mom and he would just sit there really transfixed. And I was to make a four-year-old sort of pay attention to something that’s long, it’s not easy. There’s a kind of magic in that piece. So, at a certain point, I just emailed Annea when I found her website, I sent her an email, and said, ‘Hey, I’m interested in sound, could I talk to you sometime?’ And she wrote back and said, ‘Yeah, how about this afternoon?’ So we just started, we talked on Skype. I still like Skype. And we started talking on Skype and had this conversation via email and Skype. And I was really taken with her work and her ideas and her energy, her personality, her thoughtfulness about sound. So the movie really came out of that.
Glen Dower:
We learned so many personal stories, Harold Gilliam, for example, needs that foghorn sound to help him sleep. And Annea’s idea of we are not listening to nature, but we are listening to nature. Really wonderful moments.
Sam Green:
That idea completely changed the way I think about sound and the way I think about my relationship with the world. It’s a powerful idea. I’m glad you noticed that.
Glen Dower:
Then another highlight would be Mr. Edgar Choueiri. His life story is about listening to his 11-year-old self. And then he did fulfill his dream of working in technology, with equipment. So again, how did you come across these individuals and then incorporate their stories into the film?
Sam Green:
I thought I could get him to be an expert on sound. But then in reading about him, there was some tiny article that mentioned the fact that he had recorded a tape when he was 11 to his older self and he’d found it years later and that was like, oh man, that is great. And in a way, it could have been anything. What the kid says is in some ways isn’t that important. But this 11-year-old was amazing. He sort of bosses around his grown-up self. He says I hope you achieved my dreams or you made my dreams come through as if the 11-year-old is the, it’s his life and you’re just helping me. It was great. It was really wonderful. And also, I mean as you make a movie, you start to sense what it’s about and it’s a movie about sound, but it’s also a movie about time and time passing and recording, holding onto time and the things we shed over time and the things we try to hold onto. And that tape and in many ways is about a lot of all that is that 11-year-old in 1970, the same person as the 63-year-old listening to it today. It’s an odd conundrum.
Glen Dower:
It’s a time machine. We also get a nice little comic relief with the ‘In the Air Tonight Guy’. This guy rides around New York at 2:00 am at night blasting this one song from his car.
Sam Green:
Well, it’s funny because I mentioned I have a six-year-old, when I had a two-year-old we’d put him to bed. Then, this motherfucker would come by blasting In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins and would wake my kid up. And I was really angry about it, who is this guy? Then I saw on Instagram, there’s a kind of neighborhood account in Green Point, Brooklyn and somebody posted a video of this guy driving by and thousands of people commented, it’s In the Air Tonight Guy. And people from all over New York were weighing in and I realized like, oh this is not just some random jerk, he’s like a guy who people know and yeah, it’s an institution. And if I wasn’t somebody with a two-year-old trying to sleep, I was a bit more cheerful about it.
It was right around the time when I’d read a book, an academic book, and I say this in a movie about sound and it was a book about how if you have power or if you don’t have power, it shapes what you hear and what you don’t hear. Like luxury cars are sold on the fact that they’re silent. Your experience will be silent if you have enough power you can have silence. And if you don’t have power in this world, you often are subjected to a lot of noise. And it mentioned people who drive around with loud stereos as scrambling that dynamic and saying, you have to listen to my noise. You can be up in your apartment with your quiet world, but I’m going to inflict my noise on you. And that’s an interesting dynamic in a way. So it made me think of him who’s actually kind of just funny. But that idea is sort of serious too.
Glen Dower:
You also discuss Charles Babbage and his theory that all sounds remain as vibrations that are still going on around us. That the air around us is a library. You have many of these profound moments throughout the film.
Sam Green:
I always like films that have a wide range of silly, humorous, serious, and poignant moments There’s like the wider your range is in some ways, the fuller the experience. And so I hope to make a movie that will, this is the dumbest thing in the world, but make you laugh and make you cry. Or just laugh with joy and pleasure and also beauty and sadness and just a wide range because that’s what the experience of life is.
Glen Dower:
And an area I noted in fact was that you have my two favorite sounds, which I hope to bookend my own existence. The number one sound is a recording of the womb. If you had played that for an hour and a half, I would’ve been very satisfied. And then, the waves on a beach.
Sam Green:
Yes.
Glen Dower:
The bookend of my life. People ask what heaven looks like. I say I don’t know but I know what it sounds like – waves – I hope I can engineer it so it’s the last thing I hear.
Sam Green:
I was going to say they’ll have to wheel your hospital bed out to the beach or they’ll probably just have a computer with one of those 10 hours of wave sounds!
Glen Dower:
I’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, Mr. Green, thank you so much for your time today. I really enjoyed the experience.
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