There was a time when people became bored and they took up bridge or golf; ladies had an affair or had their hair rinsed and joined a book club. Now they want to act. And there are fools with no standards who allow them into classes and theatre groups and tell them to live their dream. I don't care about dreams. I care about work and responsibility and truth and commitment. You can see how old-fashioned I am.
When you are bored or depressed, you might be advised to visit a museum, to look at the art. You are not, typically, advised to pick up a brush and become a painter. It is understood that this is a rare gift, and foolish to presume it might be yours. If your soul is crushed, it might be suggested that you listen to classical music or submit to opera. It is not suggested that you audition for the Metropolitan Opera, or even your local, provincial opera company. You haven't had the training. But acting? All you need, it seems, is the dream, and there are doors--doors that once meant something and once housed some standards behind them--that fly open and embrace you. And it enrages me.
If there is some small society that calls itself amateur or community or whatever, and they want to get up and do plays, that is fine. I'll contribute money and I'll support you in the joys of understanding plays, but do not call yourself an actor. Do not think that your dream is similar in weight or meaning to the years of training and commitment that I and all the many actors whose work I love and respect and envy have invested in this art. Respect what is an art. It is not a pastime, and it is not something to get you through a bad time, and it is not something that should be taught to everyone with a dream. The term seriousness of purpose comes to mind. Apparently, only mine.
Uta Hagen, Interview with James Grissom (1996)
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We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience - even of silence - by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and rop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.
from Teaching A Stone To Talk
Only one relationship truly satisfied: his liaison with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Last week, Galella, who is seventy-nine, sat in what he calls his great room, dressed in black, and reminisced. Above him was a framed “Windblown Jackie,” his favorite shot of Onassis, snapped from the back of a taxi. “I was a bachelor until I met my wife at the ‘Superman’ première at the Kennedy Center with Christopher Reeve, in 1978,” he explained. “So for a long time Jackie was my girlfriend—I lived in the Bronx, and it was a big adventure to go into the city to stake her out. She was soft-voiced and mysterious and a great subject, because she didn’t stop and pose; she kept on moving, jogging away, ducking into restaurants.”
He continued, “The only time Jackie touched me, she was at the 21 Club, and she came out and grabbed my wrist and said”—his foghorn voice whispered—“‘You’ve been hunting me for three months now.’ She loved being pursued.” Some of her other endearments included, “You stay away from me!” and “I thought you were in jail!” Galella mused, “I think I brought out her beauty from within, an emotion revealed, usually surprise. I really put her on a pedestal. The only way she disappointed me was with the court battles.” First, Onassis won a verdict that required Galella to maintain a distance of fifty yards, and later, in a settlement after he had repeatedly violated that order, he agreed to stop photographing her altogether.
In a documentary about Galella, “Smash His Camera,” which premières on HBO next month, several observers say that he had no distinctive style. But, as Galella sifted through his trophy shots, he pointed out the aesthetic hallmarks: “When there’s two people, you focus on one. Like, with a bride and groom, the bride should be looking at the camera, the groom at the bride.” By way of example, he held up a “Love Story”-era photo of Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw, who wore a startled smile and, most noticeably, no bra. “Also her titties are showing, so that’s a good composition,” he added.
He pulled out a 1974 shot of Robert Redford striding away from his car. “Then there’s the bull’s-eye picture—a profile shot where you feature the better eye, the strong eye that holds your gaze, at the center. His is the right eye.” Redford was wearing mirrored shades, and his left eye was the centered one, but, still.
“My other technique is to shoot fast without permission,” he went on. “That way, I get the startled look. When I shot Farrah Fawcett’s baby, Edmond, or whatever the name was”—Redmond—“the baby was coöperative, the baby was into it, but Farrah got angry, so I honored her wishes and stopped. But I already had the shot.
