Well, I was finally able to see Tango. I agree with you that it was well worth while visually. The other thing that was really striking for me was the strong Fellini overtones. When I looked up the reviews, the Chronicle was the only one that referred to Fellini at all, saying that Tango was roughly modeled on 8 1/2. Very roughly, I'd say. Same basic idea, done very differently.

The visuals were a lot like Fellini, of course, but then the same is true of lots of other movies. But what I was really struck by was the dialogue. My Spanish and my Italian are about equally bad, and when Miguel Angel Sola was speaking, it was very easy for me to imagine that I was seeing and hearing Marcello Mastroianni speaking Italian. There was very much the same rhythm to the dialogue. And in some sense, there was a very Fellini rhythm to the whole movie. I didn't think so much in terms of 8 1/2 (a movie which I have never learned to appreciate), but maybe La Dolce Vita.

I started noticing how both the plot and dialogue were done in bold, blunt strokes. Nothing subtle, nothing the listener has to infer. And it occurred to me that this is also the way Shakespeare works. I don't mean that there's nothing subtle in Shakespeare, but the subtlety is on a higher level; in the action and dialogue, everything is very bluntly spelled out. ``Yon lass has a very comely face. She dances well. I must have her.''

In Tango, the reason for the simplicity of the dialogue and plot seems to be clearly because the plot and dialogue are of no great importance. They're just there to provide a little bit of continuity between the dance scenes. Somebody who likes to watch the dancers and likes Sauros's imagery will like the film. And to a large extent, the same sort of thing is true in Shakespeare. Not that the plots in Shakespeare are irrelevant, but to a large extent I see Shakespeare's plays as operas without music. The main point is to get to the memorable speeches, and especially the soliloquies, which are like arias without music.

Anyway, I was thinking of the fact that imagery and music, and creating a mood with imagery and music, are your own strong points. And while I wouldn't recommend that you use a plot as bare as the plot in Tango, still it might be useful to use images and music as the starting point for organizing the film; to use them as the basis for creating a story.

After I saw Tango, a saw a very minor film called Walking on the Moon which made me think of the same things. It's set in the Catskills region of New York state in the late Sixties, which immediately made me think of Dirty Dancing. Like Dirty Dancing, it's a fairly low budget film with a simplistic soap-opera plot, where the main point of the movie is in the music. (In the second half of the film, there's much less music and much more emphasis on resolving the plot, and the movie becomes a lot less satisfying.)

The music was all extremely familiar music from the Sixties (Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendricks), but for me it was very powerful. Maybe for someone who hadn't lived through the Sixties, and especially for someone who didn't know that music that well, it wouldn't have had so much of an impact. I don't know. But as I was watching the film, I was thinking that I don't think I've ever seen another film, not even American Graffitti or Mean Streets or Good Morning Vietnam, where the music played such an essential role in the film.

The thing is, those songs from the Sixties all have meaning, to an extent that I think is greater than the meaning of much of any other music. Maybe it's not true for somebody that didn't go through the Sixties, I don't know. But it's not just a matter of nostalgia; it's a matter of the way we listened to music in the Sixties.

By contrast, as you watch Casablanca, the song ``As Times Goes By'' becomes a very meaningful part of the film. It's not just background, but it's one of the things, just like the cinematography and the acting, that makes the film say what it says. And ever afterwards, that song has a special meaning for anyone who's been moved by the film.

Or when a film uses music by Chuck Berry or Little Richard, that music is a powerful reminder of a particular time in our lives. (Well, not your life, because you're not old enough, but mine.)

But the music of the Jefferson Airplane or Janis Joplin or the Beatles, for me, goes beyond this. It has a meaning that, for us in the Sixties, went beyond merely expressing emotions. Even for those of us who weren't stoned, it seemed to be telling us something really important. And we listened to it, in large part, in order to get the message.

Well, maybe I'm all wet on this and it's merely a matter of my own nostaglia. Certainly since that time we've all become a lot more cynical about the whole thing. And certainly there are other isolated pieces of music from other eras that function in the same way. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for instance.

Anyway, the impression I got was that the first half of Walking on the Moon had actually been organized around the music. It really seemed like the sequence of songs had been chosen first of all, and then the writer asked, ``What what story development, what scenes, what images will say the same thing that the music is saying?''

I may be totally wrong about all this, but the main thing I wanted to say is that it's really important for an artist to emphasize those things which he is especially good at. Of course a feature film has to have a plot to succeed. And a lot of people who see the film will think of it afterwards in terms of plot. But plot is not what actually makes a film memorable. If you go back and watch films like The Sting or Diabolique or Psycho or Red Rock West which people remember for their plots, you notice that there's a whole lot more besides plot that makes the film memorable.

And since you have such a good sense of images and music, and such a powerful imagination, I think it might be a mistake to start planning the film by looking for a really clever plot. I'm not suggesting making a moody, delicate art film, but think about the emotional energy you want to create, and the sorts of images and music that would create that energy, and then think of what sort of plot would logically work in order to tie that kind of images and music together.

Anway, I'll see you in June. I still haven't made my reservations, but I'm still thinking of coming around June 10 and being in San Francisco for three or four weeks.