Playgirl Interview 2
When they split, Gould’s star began to rise when he appeared in the film The Night They Raided Minsky’s in 1968. The next year he was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and the year after that he made M*A*S*H and Getting Straight, was on the cover of Time and appeared smoking dope in an interview in Playboy.
Gould’s popularity happened because he personified the unconventional iconoclast in a perpetual state of neurotic confusion. He symbolized the times and one director commented that he was to the Americans what Mastroianni was to the Italians and Belmondo to the French.
In 16 years he appeared in 30 films, including Ingmar Bergman’s The Touch, Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye and California Split, A Bridge Too Far, The Silent Partner, Harry and Walter Go To New York, Capricorn One, The Lady Vanishes, The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark, The Devil and Max Devlin and Dirty Tricks. In May he starred in his first television movie, The Rules of Marriage, with Elizabeth Montgomery.
At the height of his popularity, Gould had been named by exhibitors as one of Hollywood’s top box-office attractions. Then, in 1971, Gould was signed to make a picture with English director Anthony Harvey. But Gould clashed with Harvey, who he insisted was the wrong man for the quintessentially American story, “a Woodstock with a plot.” The production was cancelled, and Gould’s career seemed to dissipate. He was considered an insurance risk and the major studios balked at hiring him. After years of analysis and making mediocre pictures, Gould began to pick up the pieces of his life, and is still recovering from his fall from Hollywood’s graces.
Personally, Gould is a warm, friendly, concerned individual. His conversation is often in a stream-of-consciousness style, which leaves many people who listen to him bewildered. Yet he is patient, philosophical, funny. He genuinely cares about the world. He and his wife, Jenny, his two kids, Molly, 11, and Sam, 9, and their dog Humphrey live in a small, comfortable house in Brentwood, California, away from the tour buses and off the map of the stars’ homes. Jason joins them more and more often.
When writer Alex Michaels went to interview him, it turned into an adventure:
“Talking with Elliott is like entering into Lewis Caroll’s Through The Looking Glass, or reading Joyce. You never know what to expect, where you might go, what you might discover. But if you stick with him, you won’t be bored.”
Playgirl : What interests you in doing one now?
Gould : To talk, and see if there is anything to communicate. What will be published will be an illusion. The value of living a conscious life and being able to communicate is an incredible opportunity that seems to be suppressed and subverted by business interests, by material things that are really dissipating natural resources.
Playgirl : Does doing an interview help give you some perspective or insight into yourself ?
Gould : I almost never get any perspective as to who I am.
Playgirl : Does the film industry have a perspective on you ?
Gould : In the industry, whatever that may be, my identity is history. In the present, very few people know who I am.
Playgirl : You sound negative.
Gould : I don’t want to be negative. We’ve got to continue projecting the dream. I just cannot lie, I refuse to lie. I would prefer to live with degeneration of cancer physically than have to live with a lie.
Playgirl : Many people have that feeling about you. There are a lot of people who relate to you differently than they do to other actors. Do you sense that ?
Gould : I am a common denominator; there are many people who identify with me, who recognize a part of themselves in me. They see the same thing in me that I see in myself, which is: I’m a human being. A regular, everyday person. I’m no different than anybody else. I’ve got the same questions, the same doubts, the same fears, the same anxieties, the same frustrations and the same desire to do better. I am a warm individual and incredibly open, compared to most of your Hollywood stars or most of the corporate entities that are being projected.
Playgirl : You’ve had some incredible opportunities which do set you somewhat apart from your regular, everyday person.
Gould : I’ve had a lot of opportunity to develop, to learn, to make an expert of myself in relation to behaviour. But you don’t have to pay me — you don’t have to pay me to make a movie if you have the resources. I feel that the basic value system here in society on earth is very deeply fucked up, and it’s not only affecting us now, but we’re finally beginning to get an idea of the deviation and distortion.
Playgirl : Can you distinguish between values or are you generalizing here ?
Gould : To get to the fundamental value there’s still no answer, there’s still no agreement. What are we doing here? What is our purpose? For me, it’s to live, to learn, to communicate.
Playgirl : But the values in Hollywood seem something else: to accumulate, to possess, to get more….
Gould : Greed. Yeah, that’s what causes distortion and deviation. The forests are disappearing and life is being eliminated. I see all these science-fiction pictures coming true, with robots governing the finite. I think we’re pretty magnificent…and also very corrupt. We’re greedy. We kill things. We don’t know what to do with ourselves. Yet our potential is so flexible, we can be anything. It took all of this time to get where we are and in the last 20 to 50 years look what has happened. What we’re going to have here on earth is going to be very much like what Hitler was devising, in terms of an aspect of humanity that will have nothing to do with humanity other than as a socio-political farce of conformity. At that time we will no longer be conscious, we will just be robots, that will be our end. Then we will be the aliens that we all are looking for in the sky. We will become all the things that we’re afraid of.
Playgirl : What a way to begin an interview.
Gould : We appear and disappear. I guess when it’s time to disappear, it’s time to disappear. I do believe, though, that we are more capable of better things and to get to those plateaus there are certain things we have to give up.
Playgirl : Which are ?
Gould : Identity, ego, vanity, and the idea of holding onto anything, the idea of staying, nobody stays.
Playgirl : And once we give them up ?
Gould : There’s so much of our potential that’s not being tapped. It’s not being developed. It’s being projected and invested in areas that are hopeless.
Playgirl : Do you have much bitterness and resentment, personally ?
Gould : I’m working on not being bitter and not being resentful. But I’m not really different than anybody else. People are afraid. Many people are caught, are products of the time and of society, are afraid to face themselves. Now when someone like me projects himself as I do, people say there’s something wrong. You’re a little extreme. You’re not supposed to talk like that. You’re not supposed to have these things on your mind. You’re supposed to conform. To what ?
“I AM A COMMON DENOMINATOR ; THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE WHO IDENTIFY WITH ME. THEY SEE THE SAME THING IN ME THAT I SEE IN MYSELF, WHICH IS: AN EVERYDAY, REGULAR PERSON, COMPARED TO MOST OF YOUR HOLLYWOOD STARS OR MOST OF THE CORPORATE ENTITIES BEING PROJECTED.”
Gould : Right. It should be amazing to watch ourselves evolve into another form, but with everybody having their heads up their assholes in terms of dollars, what we are producing is very brittle, with no character and something that doesn’t really last.
Playgirl : In everything ? Or just the film world ?
Gould : In everything. Some of us are aware of this. We understand what the limits of life really are.
Playgirl : Sounds like you’ve been through your own brand of reality therapy.
Gould : Reality has become a religion. There are agnostics who will not even accept that you are alive. But there has to be a common reality. Where does reality begin ? And where is the limit ?
Gould : I’m going to take my shirt off.
Playgirl : Pick a letter. Dirty words allowed.
Gould : A
Playgirl : G. You go first.
Gould : (points to pink-star square in center of board) What does this mean?
Playgirl : You have to use that square. It’s a double-word score.
Gould : Oh, a benefit to go first. (Takes seven letters) You haven’t ever seen this opening before. (spells rajah, using two blanks).
Playgirl : That’s the first time I’ve ever seen two blanks used in the first move of the game. (The game continues, Gould spells rep, but I call it an abbreviation and won’t allow it. It turns out I’m wrong, rep is a word, it’s a fabric of silk or wool having a ribbed surface. Gould doesn’t argue the point.)
Playgirl : Robert Altman said you were a genius of a performer, but that you are misunderstood and would probably be destroyed for it.
Gould : I misunderstand myself, so how could anybody else understand me ?
Playgirl : How close did the industry come to destroying you ?
Gould : Me ? (Very long pause) Very close. I allowed myself to be motivated and pushed where I didn’t want to go. There were a lot of things I didn’t want to deal with.
Playgirl : You’ve sometimes referred to yourself as the original rubber man, always bouncing back.
Gould : I really meant plastic. Stretching and reaching.
Playgirl : What do you think of fame ?
Gould : To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I haven’t seen it all. I think it’s immoral to sell star maps and have guided tours through Beverly Hills. It’s really despicable. Where we live there are no guided tours. Sometimes buses stop near my car and they see me; so I wave to them. I’m not hiding from anybody, but if anybody’s gonna pay to point me out, I want a piece of it. I’m more interested in being interested and keeping interested than in being famous.
Playgirl : Do you remember talking in the past, saying that if you ever wrote a book about your life you’d like it to be like a fist? That it would have to be a strong book ?
Gould : Did I really say that ?
Playgirl : Yeah. It came out of a conversation concerning the difficulties you would have in writing your autobiography because there might be a lot of things you wouldn’t want to talk about.
Gould : I’d want to talk about everything.
Playgirl : Can you see your life story within the classic definition of tragedy; that is, reaching a high place and then falling from that place, returning up, going back and forth ?
Gould : I can’t accept tragedy in my life because tragedy is, among other definitions, a dramatic conclusion. There’s no conclusion, so we go up and down. It’s comical.
Playgirl : You see it as comical ?
Gould : Sometimes. But the story will be written. I’ve got a great story to tell. I would like it to be like me writing about the person I am in relation to the places I’ve been. It’s really as simple as that. Like A Stone for Danny Fisher. A book that you write as fiction, but it’s all living fact. But it should be something where not only could my kids read it, but anybody’s kids.
Playgirl : Would you have any problems writing about either of your marriages ?
Gould : I shouldn’t. It would take a lot of work to paint a balanced picture. I know everyone in my life; even the ones I don’t know I can see and feel. For me to be the subject of my book it would be like Ragtime, only it’s our time. You know what Barbra would say to me? “I’ll trust you that it would be the truth. You be the judge but if you have any doubt, I’m never going to let you do it, no matter what.”
Playgirl : How much of the book would be about her ?
Gould : A very little part.
Playgirl : What would the bulk of the book be about ?
Gould : Trash.
Playgirl : A lot of celebrity books are trash.
Gould : I saw Britt Ekland on Tom Synder and I’m sorry about that. I took her to dinner in London. I took her home but I wouldn’t even attempt to come on with her as far as sex was concerned, or as far as the insecurity that we are programmed with in terms of the business and the politics between us. I don’t want any more of it.
Playgirl : Are you in her book ?
Gould : I’m sure not. I didn’t fuck her.
(The scrabble game continues until it’s time to take Gould’s son, Sam, for his tennis lesson. Gould is ahead, 204-157. He suggests the interview be continued at the Dodgers-Giants night game. He picks up the interviewer early and talks for a few hours before leaving for Dodger Stadium.)
Gould : Yeah, until I was 11 is right. Then I moved upstairs and I had my own room.
Playgirl : Was that weird ?
Gould : No.
Playgirl : Strange ?
Gould : Not really. What was weird was we were being like savage fuckin’ animals, trying to act like something that we weren’t. I was caught in the insecurity of thinking that maybe there was something wrong with me. I didn’t know enough to be what I was supposed to be. There was no harmony.
Playgirl : Were you close to your parents ?
Gould : There was mother and me, and my father and me. I hardly ever knew us together.
Playgirl : Whom did you relate to more ?
Gould : I saw more of my mother.
Playgirl : Did you know how to manipulate them ?
Gould : Not until much later and even then I couldn’t. No, that’s a taboo. I don’t think like that. But I remember when I was eight I just couldn’t handle the fact that we weren’t going to have a Christmas, so I pleaded with my parents for some presents. Later on, after they went out to get me some presents I felt really bad. I felt like shit.
Playgirl : But why such a big deal over Christmas when you had Hannukah ?
Gould : Oh, fuck you and Hannukah ! Give me a good fight and a flame. It’s just like Easter bunnies and shit like that. Like Molly says, don’t you tell me what’s real, I’ll believe what I choose to believe.
Playgirl : You take what your kids say seriously, don’t you ?
Gould : There’s nothing more dear to me than my kids. I don’t ever want to disappoint them. I’m into not building up their expectations or playing a role with them.
Playgirl : You once told columnist Earl Wilson that children complicate things.
Gould : No, not really ; If anything, children simplify things.
Playgirl : How old were you when your parents split up ?
Gould : I don’t know, they weren’t ever together except when I was conceived. They were always splitting up.
Playgirl : Weren’t you doing some chocolate syrup commercial as a kid ?
Gould : Yeah, Fox’s U-Bet. I was unconscious of doing that, it was just memorizing stuff.
Playgirl : Is that when you began acting ?
Gould : No, I wasn’t an actor then. I was dancing then. Where I was at was : Am I going to continue taking dancing lessons? All the fuckin’ money and time that people put into me. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I didn’t know what I could do.
Playgirl : Was your decision to keep dancing one of guilt? That you didn’t want to disappoint your parents ?
Gould : No. Guilt is a poor excuse. I know what you mean. It’s pressure. Pressure, man. No guilt. I was a pretty damn good tap dancer. I studied ballet, jazz.
Playgirl : After you graduated from the Professional Children’s School, did you consider going to college ?
Gould : I got accepted to Columbia, but didn’t go. I really didn’t want to go, but it was also the cost. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
Playgirl : That was when you began dancing professionally ?
Gould : I danced in the Broadway chorus when I was 18.
Playgirl : Was that a major achievement for you ?
Gould : Oh man, are you kidding ? You get maybe eight boys and eight girls in a show where there are 8,000 boys and girls who would die to have the job. The first show I got into was a tent production of Annie Got Your Gun; there were two boys and two girls and the lead dancer. I was one of the two boys. The tent blew away before I got up there so I never even got to play in that. But you get in one play and it closes, doesn’t mean you’re going to automatically get in another one. It’s not like the government. It’s tough.
Playgirl : Didn’t you used to act as your own agent to get auditions ?
Gould : I used to call and say I was Lester Sure, recommending this new kid.
Playgirl : How many rejections did you have before an acceptance came ?
Gould : Every one. Not even a rejection – no chance. Rejection, rejection, no chance, no job, no possibility, no chance, no chance, no job, no possibility.
Playgirl : What kept you going ?
Gould : Without really understanding it, I knew that I could find out more about myself by getting through these situations, that the “no” was only temporary. It was up to me to develop myself and stay tuned to the opportunities that could arise.
Playgirl : What you’re saying is, you were getting smarter each time out ?
Gould : You don’t want to let yourself get too discouraged. You don’t want to be too passive. You say, hey, I may have to go to the same kind of audition a million times before I get into a situation where I may have a chance to be an individual.
Playgirl : What made you go from dancing to acting ?
Gould : I knew I wasn’t that kind of athlete. If I was going to perform, I wanted to be more expressionistic in order to communicate.
Playgirl : When did you finally get out of Brooklyn ?
Gould : When I met Barbra.
Playgirl : That was when you had the lead in I Can Get It For You Wholesale on Broadway ?
Gould : Yeah. My first principal part.
Playgirl : How did you feel when it ended ?
Gould : I sort of knew that I would never see Barbra again.
Playgirl : Were you very insecure ?
Gould : I still am. I still feel insecure in front of most people.
Playgirl : How much of that comes from doubts ?
Gould : All of it. All of it. Insecurity, like frustration, is from ego. It’s a delicate balance not to think you’re too important, but to know that you matter.
Playgirl : Would you say that you’ve been taken advantage over the years ?
Gould : I let myself be taken advantage of. That’s my problem. Part of me has always got to be a lie, and that part has to be vulnerable up to a point.
Gould : It’s taken my whole life to respect myself. I didn’t know what I was and I didn’t want to know. I was afraid that I couldn’t be what I thought I had to be. I didn’t have anyone to listen to, I didn’t have anybody to follow.
Playgirl : Who do you feel you can trust ?
Gould : The uninhibited child. My son Jason.
Playgirl : What about other actors ?
Gould : Within their limits. Very few I know will really take a chance and join me to take a step into the unknown, knowing that whether we like it or not, we always come back.
Playgirl : It almost sounds like you’re describing an acid trip. When was the first time you took acid ?
Gould : David Carradine gave me acid for the first time.
Playgirl : Was it good ?
Gould : I think I prefer frozen twists.
Playgirl : Did you have any fear of it ?
Gould : The stories I had heard about it from some psychiatrists were that they didn’t understand it. People would go through deaths or reach heights and then months later they’s go back to the same places. But psychiatrists didn’t know what they were talking about, so I felt that it was something I wanted to know about.
Playgirl : And ?
Gould : I know that I saw more than I could deal with and I was always trying to deal with it.
Playgirl : You’ve said that you no longer need to anesthetize your brain because you are able to control it.
Gould : Oy, when did I say this ?
Playgirl : Recently, I think.
Gould : It sounds more like four years ago. It’s full of shit, a little self-serving. I don’t think I really ever want to be in complete control.
Playgirl : What is your public position on drugs now ?
Gould : I don’t approve of drugs unless prescribed. That’s my position. Haven’t said it before.
Playgirl : Do you consider marijuana a drug ?
Gould : I don’t like smoke of any kind.
Playgirl : However… ?
Gould : I do indulge. I don’t buy it and I don’t keep it and you won’t find any at my house. Okay ?
Playgirl : What kind of shape are you in ?
Gould : I’m really working out and feeling better. I’ve been fighting weight most of my life. I realized the other day that I had to get right on the mental brink of life and death and feel sick before I became aware of mental conditioning that have direct influences on my body. My conditioning isn’t up to my mental demands. My mental demand knows no fatigue, doesn’t know from living, just knows from thinking and balancing and seeing.
Playgirl : You’ve said that the secret of being a formidable actor is that you seldom act – you’re always you.
Gould : Well, now I may have to accept a little more craft in the areas where I’ve exposed so much of myself.
Playgirl : How does humor fit in ?
Gould : As relief. Humor’s significance is being able to laugh at yourself, being able to overcome how serious many of us take ourselves. I look at comedy as a breath of fresh air in a world where we seem to be procreating more violence than love.
Playgirl : You and Groucho Marx were very close towards the end of his life.
Gould : David Steinberg introduced us and then I got to know him out here. I’d go for dinner at his house. Sometimes in the morning I used to go and see him when he’d be watching Jack Benny on TV. I’d shave him with his electric razor. One time the light above his bed needed a new bulb so I got into his bed in my overalls and put one in. He said, “That’s the best bit of acting I’ve ever seen you do.” I felt real close to Groucho.
Playgirl : During the years when you were somewhat of an outcast in Hollywood, were you ever blamed for having a bad influence on other actors ?
Gould : Right after George Segal and I made California Split, he made The Black Bird. One day he took me outside of Columbia and pissed on the wall. I said, “George, I’m gonna get fuckin’ blamed for it.”
Playgirl : How did he respond ?
Gould : He tore up to (then-studio head) David Begelman’s office, had a big fight, and they blamed me. They said it was because he had worked with me.
Playgirl : Have you ever influenced actors by the image you project ?
Gould : Or perhaps the stand that I maintain in life. I can’t impose where I’m not understood, unless I’m asked to come in. I have to live the rest of my life like this. It’s a privilege and it’s also painful.
Playgirl : Is it true that Elvis Presley once stood in front of you and told you you were crazy ?
Gould : He said, “Hey, man, you’re crazy,” and he had this gold-gilded .45 in his hand. I said “Hey, Elvis, I ain’t crazy ; I just have to act that way sometimes and what’s that gun all about ?”
Playgirl : Was this in Las Vegas ?
Gould : Yeah, it was pretty funny. We went up to his big apartment, a giant penthouse. He must have had 50 or 80 girls that all looked like Miss Debutante there, wax dummies. Barbra once told me that he said to her that we were two of his most favorite people. He didn’t understand how we couldn’t make it together.
Playgirl : Didn’t Barbra consider making A Star Is Born with Elvis?
Gould : I would have paid to see that.
(As it turns out, the lights at Dodger Stadium attract millions of bugs, so after one inning, we’re on our way out of the stadium.)
Gould : Only if a bunch of Amazons would be fucking me all the time. Otherwise I couldn’t deal with it.
Playgirl : What magazines do you get ?
Gould : The New Yorker, Life, Time.
Playgirl : What do you read in The New Yorker ?
Gould : The cartoons.
Playgirl : Is chocolate your favorite ice cream ?
Gould : No, nutty coconut.
Playgirl : What do you think of Ronald Reagan ?
Gould : He was handsome. Handsome and tall.
Playgirl : Could he act ?
Gould : I couldn’t act like him. He was pretty unique.
Playgirl : Rules of Marriage, your first made-for-TV movie, was aired in May over two nights. Do you feel that some actors can’t work well on TV because they need the big screen ?
Gould : It’s an illusion. Look at I Love Lucy. Nothing in show business has ever been more successful than that. You can have Gone With The Wind and I’ll take I Love Lucy.
Television is more a part of life than movies. Movies now are pretty well governed by conglomerates. What everybody is trying to do is find something that is going to work, that’s sensational. So there are things projected that are really garbage. The corporation,the big computer, has no conscience, does not care and nothing matters. All that matters is that the ledger is in the black. That’s all. They don’t care how they balance the books. Are we killing people this season ? Are we maiming people ? Or are we creating diseases ?
Playgirl : Sounds dismal.
Gould : But I’m beginning to see a little ray of sunshine – we’re looking for positive stories now. We’re looking for things that give hope and faith.
Playgirl : How enthusiastic are you about the future ?
Gould : Very enthusiastic. It’s the present that concerns me.
Playgirl : For nine years now you’ve been trying to direct a film of Bernard Malamud’s A New Life, haven’t you ?
Gould : Twelve. I’m just waiting for it to be bar mitzvahed.
Playgirl : With all you must have faced trying to get people interested in this project, you must have gone through a lot of frustration. How do you get rid of anger ?
Gould : I burn my wife’s hats and lingerie.
Playgirl : You must have experienced a lot of emotional conflict over the years. Are you still undrgoing analysis ?
Gould : No.
Playgirl : Didn’t you once say that Freud got us into as much trouble as Christ did ?
Gould : Yeah. Probably. That’s a little pretentious, but, I mean, I think it’s almost true. I’ll take Jesus, you can have Siggy.
(It’s past midnight now. It’s been a long day. So dark, only Gould’s silhouette can be seen.)
Playgirl : El, how much do you want to accomplish ?
Gould : As much as anybody has ever accomplished, as much as there is to accomplish. For myself, I’ve just about accomplished everything that I have to accomplish, although there are things that I haven’t experienced yet. Tempering the ego, tempering the identity. It will be done. I want to work to continue integrating my consciousness into my children’s family life. I want to play more. I always want to go where I have a calling. I don’t even care what I do next, so long as it’s fun and I like it.
Playgirl : Escape into a new life ?
Gould : I like escape pictures, but there’s no place to escape to. It’s like no exit. I like Sartre.
Playgirl : That’s a final exit.
Gould : My old Irish teacher said that his father is now 152. I really subscribe to that. Anybody who has an effect on you is living. Anybody who has a place in your mind is alive. I believe we’re one person, one mind ; it’s one soul and one heart.
Playgirl : And in the end, what’s left to know ?
Gould : To leave this planet knowing what all this is about and that there is no meaning.
Playgirl : Thanks, Elliott, it’s been an interesting day.
Gould : Thank you for letting me be myself.
ould : I haven’t done an interview recently.
Playgirl : What interests you in doing one now?
Gould : To talk, and see if there is anything to communicate. What will be published will be an illusion. The value of living a conscious life and being able to communicate is an incredible opportunity that seems to be suppressed and subverted by business interests, by material things that are really dissipating natural resources.
Playgirl : Does doing an interview help give you some perspective or insight into yourself ?
Gould : I almost never get any perspective as to who I am.
Playgirl : Does the film industry have a perspective on you ?
Gould : In the industry, whatever that may be, my identity is history. In the present, very few people know who I am.
Playgirl : You sound negative.
Gould : I don’t want to be negative. We’ve got to continue projecting the dream. I just cannot lie, I refuse to lie. I would prefer to live with degeneration of cancer physically than have to live with a lie.
Playgirl : Many people have that feeling about you. There are a lot of people who relate to you differently than they do to other actors. Do you sense that ?
Gould : I am a common denominator; there are many people who identify with me, who recognize a part of themselves in me. They see the same thing in me that I see in myself, which is: I’m a human being. A regular, everyday person. I’m no different than anybody else. I’ve got the same questions, the same doubts, the same fears, the same anxieties, the same frustrations and the same desire to do better. I am a warm individual and incredibly open, compared to most of your Hollywood stars or most of the corporate entities that are being projected.
Playgirl : You’ve had some incredible opportunities which do set you somewhat apart from your regular, everyday person.
Gould : I’ve had a lot of opportunity to develop, to learn, to make an expert of myself in relation to behaviour. But you don’t have to pay me — you don’t have to pay me to make a movie if you have the resources. I feel that the basic value system here in society on earth is very deeply fucked up, and it’s not only affecting us now, but we’re finally beginning to get an idea of the deviation and distortion.
Playgirl : Can you distinguish between values or are you generalizing here ?
Gould : To get to the fundamental value there’s still no answer, there’s still no agreement. What are we doing here? What is our purpose? For me, it’s to live, to learn, to communicate.
Playgirl : But the values in Hollywood seem something else: to accumulate, to possess, to get more….
Gould : Greed. Yeah, that’s what causes distortion and deviation. The forests are disappearing and life is being eliminated. I see all these science-fiction pictures coming true, with robots governing the finite. I think we’re pretty magnificent…and also very corrupt. We’re greedy. We kill things. We don’t know what to do with ourselves. Yet our potential is so flexible, we can be anything. It took all of this time to get where we are and in the last 20 to 50 years look what has happened. What we’re going to have here on earth is going to be very much like what Hitler was devising, in terms of an aspect of humanity that will have nothing to do with humanity other than as a socio-political farce of conformity. At that time we will no longer be conscious, we will just be robots, that will be our end. Then we will be the aliens that we all are looking for in the sky. We will become all the things that we’re afraid of.
Playgirl : What a way to begin an interview.
Gould : We appear and disappear. I guess when it’s time to disappear, it’s time to disappear. I do believe, though, that we are more capable of better things and to get to those plateaus there are certain things we have to give up.
Playgirl : Which are ?
Gould : Identity, ego, vanity, and the idea of holding onto anything, the idea of staying, nobody stays.
Playgirl : And once we give them up ?
Gould : There’s so much of our potential that’s not being tapped. It’s not being developed. It’s being projected and invested in areas that are hopeless.
Playgirl : Do you have much bitterness and resentment, personally ?
Gould : I’m working on not being bitter and not being resentful. But I’m not really different than anybody else. People are afraid. Many people are caught, are products of the time and of society, are afraid to face themselves. Now when someone like me projects himself as I do, people say there’s something wrong. You’re a little extreme. You’re not supposed to talk like that. You’re not supposed to have these things on your mind. You’re supposed to conform. To what ?