Roscoe Collins: You ever seen a man’s brains? I’ve seen them. I’ve picked them up, scooped them up. Put them in, do them up like brains. You buying brains?
What prompted him to say that? That’s what I think whenever I see someone in Morris’s films “ramble” on. Of course, Morris edits the film to make it seem like they’re rambling. He seems to purposefully cut out his part of the dialogue in the interview he is conducting. But the rambling isn’t rambling when you really listen to what they’re saying. Morris enjoys playiing with the audience’s assumptions and by doing so, seems to teach us a lesson. The audience realizes that people say things for a reason. We may not understand what that is, but it is important enough to that person that they’ll knowingly say it to a camera. Are these people trying to teach us something? They are sharing their life experiences with us and just brushing it off as craziness would be immature.
Dr. Campbell told us that Morris loves to just shoot and shoot. I wonder if he shoots his films knowing how he will construct them later. Morris has the ability to listen to people and really get inside their heads. He might even know what they’re talking about more than they do. Not only that, but he is able to relate other people’s stories. His ability to edit seemingly random footage into a thought-provoking film requires unimaginable patience.