Tour Without End: A Conversation with Laura Parnes
Introduction by Pioneer Works curator-at-large David Everitt Howe.
Laura Parnes’s Tour Without End (2014-2019) is an epic, complex, and moving feature-length film that captures a who’s who of the New York underground reflecting on survival and death in a gentrifying New York City; race, politics, and the Trump era’s ascendant Far Right; and themselves as performing artists. Starring mostly real-life musicians and singers from Gang Gang Dance, Le Tigre, The Julie Ruin, Eartheater, and more, the film is ostensibly a narrative about a fictional band, Munchausen, and its trials and tribulations on tour, but in many ways its semi-scripted, largely improvised scenes are really about the performers themselves—and performance writ large. In that way then, Tour Without End functions as a portrait of the fringe creative class keeping New York’s radical culture alive in the face of an increasingly corporate and homogenous cityscape.
To coincide with Parnes’s eponymous exhibition and video installation at Pioneer Works, on view through November 28th, Broadcast is publishing an edited transcript of a discussion between her and noted writer Chris Kraus that touches on many themes in the work, which the two conducted at Human Resources in Los Angeles, in 2019.
—David Everitt Howe
You made this film over four years—between 2014 and 2018—and so, intentionally or not, it became a historical record, depicting a time when the extreme polarization that always existed in the US crystallized into the mainstream. Can you talk about how your vision of the film changed during those years? What did you originally intend to do, and when did you arrive at the vision of the film as it is now?
I never used improvisation before. My work's always been very tightly scripted. So I wanted to challenge myself with something that pushed outside my usual range. There are so many brilliant people in New York City who I know, and wanted to capture, so I started thinking about experimental narrative as portraiture. I also wanted to ask, “How do we keep going? How do we maintain our vitality, whether we are artists or creative people, who dedicate our lives to making work on the margins, in a youth-obsessed culture?” And so I started, maybe six years ago, by shooting one scene with Kate Valk and Jim Fletcher. Kate and Jim are really royalty of experimental theater, but they're also, like most artists in this culture, marginalized. So it's an interesting combination of being venerable, but at the same time having to endure constant touring in order to maintain a practice. Like musicians, live performance is the only way to survive.
The first scene was shot at Hotel 17, a legendary downtown low-budget hotel that closed in 2017. It explored the kind of jealousies that arise when you're working with other people, and the difficulty of maintaining relationships as a performer. Kate and Jim were dressed in these Fleetwood Mac outfits, which were really campy. I loved the scene but wanted something more raw and immediate, so I decided to approach the subject again in a more documentary style, and put the characters in real-life situations. And then I spent about a year interviewing different artists, often couples who collaborate. The interviews helped to shape the project and inform the casting. I wanted the film to be diverse, intergenerational, and to bring writers, artists, and musicians together. You know, that's something that people think no longer exists—that it only happened in the 70s. But actually, this kind of cross-pollination happens a lot, and it happens in this film. The entire process became a means of exploring community, bringing artists of different generations together.
Once we were well into production I realized the questions the performers were asking, the things they talked about, were pretty timeless. It could be 1968, it could be 2008. Nothing in it, so far, referred to the larger cultural context and the rise of rightwing extremism. I knew then that the subplot of Tour Without End was really about how we’re all living in a bubble. And as much as I love this bubble, there’s something really dangerous about ignoring the rest of the world. Inspired by Haskell Wexler’s 1968 film Medium Cool that was shot in Chicago during the Democratic convention, I decided to bring some of the characters to Cleveland for the Republican convention. I wanted to make this connection, because no one can live outside of history. We’re in the era we’re in, we can’t pretend to be back in Warhol’s Factory.
So the trip to Cleveland was one of your interventions? It’s not as if Joan (Lizzi Bougatsos) and Tommy (Matthew Asti) were going there, anyway.
Yes, I thought that would be a perfect way to show the conflict of polarization. I brought some of the cast and crew to shoot around the protests at the convention. We were stunned by how the city seemed to have been taken over by right wing extremists. The band of internet terrorists you’d occasionally read about were there in person, behind banners that said things like Hillary For Prison. People like Alex Jones are all just one stop away from the worlds the New York City performers visit while they’re on tour.
A feeling of danger hangs over the whole film. It’s not just at the end, at the convention. Those scenes just bring the contradictions to the surface, by viscerally placing the performers in the most alien environment. But, in fact, most of the venues where you shot their performances have since closed. You made a list of the venues, and most of them are now out of business.
Yes. Because we shot at so many DIY spaces over the course of the production, the film becomes a sort of time capsule, an archive of spaces that are now shuttered. I think over half of the twenty or so spaces we shot in are now closed. Tour captures a fragility that’s due partly to gentrification, but also partly to the whole nature of DIY.
Kate Valk and Jim Fletcher are, as you say, venerable actors. They’re not really musicians. One of the artifices you create is their band Munchausen. But a lot of the other performers really are musicians from different established bands. One of the great things about Tour is how all of the performers act as a kind of ensemble. How well do they all really know each other? Some of the exchanges between them are so vivid. Did you invent situations, or did you just push things that were already there?
There were a lot of existing relationships and crossovers from real life. But some people had never met before. One of my goals was to connect a compelling group of people that clearly would have a lot to talk about. So I created situations that could bring things out. That balance between playing with real relationships and creating new ones gives the film an intimacy I couldn’t have reached if I used actors only.
The scene that ended with a threesome between Kate, Jim, and Christen Clifford was so tender. Dealing that explicitly with sickness and disease, it felt like something was unveiled, almost like the heart of the film.
That scene was essential to the questions we were dealing with. How do you continue to survive? I’ve lost so many friends during the four years we were shooting. It’s something that is very connected to reality.
At the time we shot that scene, Christen had been diagnosed with cancer. She was interested in collaborating. She’d already been in Cookie’s [Kate Valk’s] birthday scene, and I thought it would be great for her to do another scene for Tour. We talked about it, and ended up with this idea that really touches on the vulnerability of the body and the importance of connection. It was a powerful moment, even behind the camera. There were so many moments when I was just weeping behind the camera. But for the most part, it was pure pleasure and empowering to film.
Jim and Kate are really the bedrock of the movie.
Yes, they are. It was incredible to have them in the film. They just knew how to bring the non-actors into a scene. I could set up a scene with minimal direction, and they’d steer it where it needed to go.
It’s interesting to watch them in scenes with the non-actors. There’s an intentionality to everything they do—their body language, the way they sit in their chairs—that mirrors and slightly amplifies what’s going on more unconsciously with the others. It’s brave and it’s very subtle.
I was incredibly fortunate to work with people who were such great improvisers, who were willing to remain open and vulnerable. I wanted to create a comfortable space for the performers, and I’m grateful for their trust. There were so many people who really extended themselves into it. Brontez Purnell is really the chorus of the film. He takes on all of punk rock’s most problematic issues—its racist tendencies and clueless use of loaded language—with outrageous humor. And Neon Music, with the rock and roll reparations line—is so brilliant. And Lizzi Bougatsos brings a real light and humor that’s such a contrast to the horror of the election.
Once you got people together, did you establish the topic in a general way? To what extent were you directing and controlling the content of the scenes?
It varies between scenes. I wanted everybody to perform at Shea Stadium, which is not really Shea Stadium. It was a very funky DIY recording studio in Brooklyn. For that scene, I kept things pretty open and explained that Kate Valk’s character, Cookie, is having a birthday and everybody’s going to perform for it. I mic’d the room and had cameras everywhere. You could hear people saying, over and over, “I have no idea what we’re supposed to do.” That was like, half the audio. But then the performances were so great. Cookie’s birthday was pretty early on. Some of it was improvised, and then scripted.Usually we’d agree on a basic situation, and then I’d give each character specific direction. If you have a bunch of really interesting people together, you know they’re going to say interesting things, but you can’t watch that for two hours. A lot of the writing happens in the editing room.
I can imagine. The pilgrim theme in Cleveland…where did that come from?
We were brainstorming about what we could do as interventions at the Republican convention. And our idea was that those characters. Joan and Tommy and the Manager (Tom McGrath) would have misguided, ironic protest imagery that would likely be misunderstood. So, we thought: let’s have Lizzi walking down the street in stockings, wearing the Scarlet Letter dress, with a sign that says Make America Great Again. But when we got to the convention we realized we could never do that. Alex Jones had destroyed irony. And this was Alex Jones’s land and all these skinheads and such were carrying high-powered weapons—it was way too scary for that. Ohio is an open carry state. We saved the costumes for the music video.
The film has this undertone of claustrophobia and exhaustion—it’s like watching a group of people who've stayed too long at a party, but they can’t leave because they don’t know what else to do.
Then again I guess that describes everyone. It’s an outcome of aging. But the film does take a very clear view. So I’m curious, how happy or unhappy have the participants been with the film?
Yeah, it's a tricky situation when you're dealing with people who are playing characters, but their characters are close to who they actually are. Sometimes they may forget that they're on camera. So I was very cautious. Sometimes people would tell me right after a scene, “You can’t use that.” That might lead to a conversation or negotiation. Occasionally they would reveal something too personal, things that hit too close to home. I would be careful not to include material like that. At the rough-cut stage, I screened it for many of the actors and they were given an opportunity to give feedback. If they wanted something cut, they could. So, the idea was to really have them all on board.
So then everybody did end up happy.
Yeah, it seems. I mean, nobody asked me to change anything, so…
That’s amazing.
I know it felt very risky to open it up like that, but I'm happy I did. For me it was very important to have a really diverse cast, and to give them the space and flexibility to speak about what they want. That’s why collaboration and improvisation was so elemental to the film. ♦
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