Eisenstein in Guanajuato

all on its very own.

So like bug-eyed cultural tourists,

we went through Europe,

looking, seeing, shaking hands.

Although it was more like

shaking hands and looking.

I had eyes in my hands,

and they never stopped shaking.

We met George Grosz and Man Ray

and Dos Passes.

Oh, Kthe Kollwitz.

She had at least half a way

for social conscience,

though her droopy face and sagging breasts

were overplayed as a sort of trademark.

And Le Corbusier,

who said I reminded him of Donatello.

All architects love cinema.

We met Lger and Cocteau

and Marinetti, who was a fool.

Terrible poetry, worse painting.

Oh, we met James Joyce,

who sat through Battleship Potemkin

in his dark blind glasses.

I imagine he did not see a thing.

We met Abel Gance and Buuel.

And Al Jolson, the blacked-up

singing son of a Russian rabbi.

- This one.

- (GRUNTS)

We saw Dal's Le Chien Andalou

and Dreyer's Joan of Arc.

I went to Holland, where a crowd of reporters

met me at Rotterdam airport.

They were all very excited.

They had come expecting to meet Einstein.

(BOTH LAUGHING)

We had von Sternberg in Babelsberg.

And he was shooting The Blue Angel

with Marlene Dietrich.

(SPEAKING GERMAN)

We were all the time

being watched and followed

by two Russian agents.

One looked like Fatty Arbuckle

and the other one looked like Buster Keaton.

One was rosy and laughing

and always fingering his backside,

the other solemn and sad,

as though he had wet his trousers.

(CHUCKLES)

Dorothy Gish and her sister

wanted me to make a film,

but sentimental melodrama is not my hat.

Too much gushing and gishing, no irony.

I sent them to Pudovkin.

He is good at tears and whey.

He said, "If I was no good

at treating American ladies well,

"I was nothing. What are you?" he said.

I replied, "I am a scientific dilettante

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