San Francisco Film Society Oral History Project Interview with ...

MARGARITA LANDAZURI: Did you face any opposition from any of the board members about
moving?
CLAUDE JARMAN: We didn’t have any choice. There wasn’t a board. It was a board with just Ray
Syufy. In fact, they were all Alioto’s guys. These were people who had signed the note. So there really
wasn’t a board.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: Oh, OK, because there was some sort of press thing that said that three
of the board members were opposed to the move.
CLAUDE JARMAN: Well, I don’t know who that was, but they obviously didn’t know what the story
was, because we had no choice.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: How did the audiences like the place?
CLAUDE JARMAN: I thought they liked it fine. It was comfortable. We only had 1000 seats, and we
had come from the big, huge Masonic. The tributes were still getting longer and longer and longer. We
had Paul Newman. We had a pretty outstanding group: David Lean, Rosalind Russell and Satyajit Ray.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: There were protesters at the David Lean tribute. What was that about?
CLAUDE JARMAN: I have no idea. I don’t remember. Why would anyone protest David Lean?
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: I know. Well, I think it was some of the younger people that thought he
was, I don’t know, passé or something. I’m not sure—just something in the press about protesters.
CLAUDE JARMAN: Hmmm. There were a lot of people who were passé. That was the whole idea.
(LAUGHS) They weren’t new directors.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: One of the most riveting of all the tributes was Cassavetes that year. He
was just so intense, wasn’t he?
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