Meeting Jim (2018) Movie Script
When I saw his name on the door,
it was a question for me.
"Oh, perhaps he is an American man."
She said,
"You should speak to Jim Haynes!"
I went, "Who?"
She went, "You don't know Jim?!"
Well, I'd heard of Jim
before I met him.
A mad American came
rushing up to me...
...and he said, "You have to meet
this American guy
"called Jim Haynes."
Who's that big, handsome
American guy?
This guy Jim Haynes came in...
...and introduced himself to me
and said, "I'm Jim Haynes."
And when he saw him, he said,
"NOW it's a festival!"
We would not be having a Crouchley
dinner without Jim Haynes.
I met Jim in Edinburgh...
...in 1966.
It was called Corruption
In The Palace Of Justice.
I met him when I went up
as a student.
And he said, "It's this guy
called Jim Haynes,"
and I said, "You knew Jim Haynes?"
And he said,
"Did you know Jim Haynes?"
I never followed any man nowhere.
Voila!
Avoided him...
...for as long as I could.
A short version or a long version?
It wasn't long before
we bumped into Jim.
I knew about Jim
through other people.
She says, "Well, you have to meet...
Jim. Jim Haynes."
Jim asked me to do a shop sign.
So I suddenly found myself
working for him.
We met first in a bar.
Paris about a year-and-a-half ago.
I couldn't tell you when it started.
Seems to have gone on forever.
- We met in... - I met Jim...
- Well, I met Jim...
I met Jim... I met Jim...
Good morning, sunshine
Let's call it a day.
Jim is a happy chappy.
You know they call the baguette
the dentist's best friend
because it breaks teeth!
Butter from the cow.
Bonne Maman.
Bonne Maman jam.
Agh!
Strawberries.
Fields Forever.
Dear John Lennon.
Delicious.
The nurse said...
...my blood sugar level
was perfect this morning.
Same old murders, rapes and pillage.
Zika cases in Florida rises.
Mosquito attacks again.
Very silly game.
But I don't think it causes...
...any major...
...problems in the world.
At least I hope not.
I don't think so.
That was a mistake.
How did that get there?
Agh!
Enough of this madness.
Oh... Aye-aye-aye.
Something refreshing,
you know, after curry.
Oh, I've got chocolate mousse!
All right.
I think it was in 2000.
I met him just in the street.
It was an open vernissage. A lot
of galleries have a sort of...
They all have drinks
and eat something, and he just...
We were looking at this
really weird modern sculpture
and he was like, "Hmm..."
And I was like, "Yeah..."
so we started talking
and then he said,
"How about dinner?"
So I said OK, and that was it.
That's how it started.
He walked me back to my place,
which wasn't here,
I was living down the road,
and singing songs all the way.
That was the beginning.
Anna Lord coming tonight?
Let's just go with Anna.
91? Minus...
...one... two.
And that's before people
are just going to show up?
Oh, aye-aye.
Aye-aye-aye
Aye-aye-aye aye...
Well, I started living here
because when
I didn't have an apartment any more
in Paris,
because I started traveling
around the world,
and I kind of needed a place
for several weeks, not even months.
I asked Jim if I could pay rent here
and he said, "No, but you can stay."
Life in this house is very dynamic,
because there are days where
you have eight people,
you have Airbnb guests,
you have old friends of Jim's
and people you don't know.
Even when I was here
for the Guardian -
I was the Paris correspondent
for a while -
I stayed at Jim's place
because it was always
one of the most exciting
places to be.
Well, I'm Jim's neighbor.
I've been here now for 13 years,
and I was lucky enough to buy
the studio next door to him.
If somebody asked me in Paris,
some English-speaking person
with the native language English,
asks me, "Where is your studio?"
I say, "Next to Jim Haynes,"
because not many people know
the street but they know Jim Haynes.
So it's very easy to tell them
where I am.
Every single Sunday...
...for the last 40 years,
you can come to this atelier,
this workshop
and have an open dinner
with up to anywhere
between 60 and 120 strangers
from all over the world.
I'm off to the supermarket.
Back in a minute... or 20 minutes.
One of the things I'm most famous
for today is the Sunday dinners
that I started in 1978.
Young dancer, Cathy Monnet...
Cathy Srouf was her name.
Ca va? Ca va, merci.
Knew no-one in Paris,
didn't speak French
and was staying in
a rather expensive hotel.
I invited her over for tea.
She came over.
I said, "Move out of your hotel,
take the guest bedroom
"and make yourself at home here."
And it was upstairs in
this bedroom right up there.
And the fact that there were,
like, six or seven other people
staying here at the same time
didn't seem to matter!
Jim had so many friends and so many
guests that the more I cooked -
and I was a very good cook -
the more people came,
and we organized dinners
twice a week,
Wednesdays and Saturday nights.
Twice a week was getting
a little bit too much, maybe,
for the neighbors,
so we moved it to Sunday,
and then one Sunday
she couldn't cook,
so we had a guest chef,
and that's how it evolved.
Home from another
successful shopping trip.
How many are we, Jim?
"Oh, well, cook for 60."
Then I come on the weekend.
"No, we're 80 now."
"Jim!"
"It's creeping up, Cathy.
We're getting up into the 100..."
"Jim! You can't do this, Jim!
"I can't just, you know,
make the food come out."
What a born actor.
This guy's amazing.
Hello! I love you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow!
Yeah. Sure.
This Sunday evening?
Yeah. Corrine's cooking.
OK.
OK.
You're bringing six friends?
Oh, shit. OK.
We expect about 40 people tonight
from all corners of the globe,
and dear Thomas and Michelle
are busy chopping and cutting
and pruning and preparing
in the background,
so you'll hear
the occasional thump-thump.
A bar outside and a bar inside.
Everyone's introduced.
I'll do my best,
but I can't get everything.
I have a duty, which
I elected to perform,
and that is to introduce everyone
around me to each other,
and that I've done all my life,
and I've tried to perform
this duty as often as possible
because the more people who meet
each other, the better the world is.
I find that everyone has
an interesting story to tell,
which is their life,
and if you have the patience
and are prepared to listen,
everyone is interesting.
I love people,
and I think people are
the most fun thing of all.
Au revoir.
Howdy!
Wow.
What a world, what a life.
I'm in love...
Good!
Actually,
it wasn't in the right key, but...
What a world
What a life
I'm in love
I've got the world
On a string
Sitting on a rainbow...
That's not the right key.
..I've got this string
around my finger
What a world
What a life
I'm in love...
Life is a beautiful thing.
Happiness is first and foremost,
as far as I'm concerned,
an intellectual decision.
It's up to you to be happy.
It's your decision.
If you want to be sad,
that's also your decision.
And I've decided that life is short,
and we have an obligation
to enjoy ourselves.
Oh, my God.
Wow.
Here we go.
Adventure number...
...3,438!
Edinburgh, here we come.
London, here we come.
The upcoming Edinburgh Festival
will be my 60th time in Edinburgh.
But I come every year.
I love the festival.
I want to come to one of your
dinners, but... - Oh, please.
But I promise...
All of us human beings
are like ants. Ants...
You see, if you look at an ant
colony, if you observe ants
on the ground, they come together.
They put their
little antennas out.
They kind of acknowledge each
other's presence and they move on.
We do the same thing
daily in metros, buses, streets.
I moved to Edinburgh during
my American military service.
It's a long, complicated story
but I tracked down
the unknown corporal
who writes the orders out
and said I wanted
to go to Western Europe,
smallest possible military base,
preferably only me there,
but if there were others, OK,
but small, and near a major city,
near a major university.
He said, "Come back in three days."
"How does Edinburgh sound?"
I said, "Perfect." That's how
I got to Edinburgh, US Air Force.
I had a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde life
in Edinburgh.
I listened to the Russians from five
to midnight, slept in a tiny room
in the middle of Edinburgh
from midnight to eight,
and attended the University
of Edinburgh from nine to five.
I really went to the university
for two reasons -
to escape the military
and I suddenly had a great desire
to pursue knowledge.
Woo-woo-woo!
Very pleased to meet you. Thank you.
Nice to meet you.
Whoo! Whoo!
Ahh! I can do it.
Say goodbye.
Very good.
I'm coming to your thing,
your event. Whoo!
When is it? I can't remember.
It's in my diary. Sunday. Yeah.
Lovely to see you.
I'm going to my hotel to crash
and have an early night.
Night, everyone. Night-night.
Goodnight, beautiful.
Lovely to see you.
Happy festival. Mwah!
Thank you for coming!
Every time you say,
"thanks for coming",
you're advertising my autobiography.
He had a bookshop called...
The Paperback.
...the Paperback.
Somehow...
...he found a stuffed head
of a rhinoceros.
Do you remember that? Yeah.
And he hung the head of
the rhinoceros on the outside
of the Paperback bookshop.
Well, when I got out of the military
I was released
and I asked for permission
from the British government
and the American government
to stay in Edinburgh to continue
studying at the university.
I was granted permission,
but suddenly I had no income,
and the only thing I could do
was start a business.
I couldn't get a job
and I didn't want a job.
And I walked around
Edinburgh University
and I found a junk shop.
I walked in the shop and asked
the woman if she would sell me
her shop, and she said,
"My boy, my boy,
it's about time I retired.
"Yes. How does 300 sound?"
I said, "Madam, you've got a deal."
And in Edinburgh at that time,
the most unlikely experience
would be for you as a student
to go into a shop
selling books, paperbacks.
Paperbacks, only paperbacks.
And Jim would say...
"Would you like
a cup of coffee?
"Free coffee in an Edinburgh
bookshop? This is ridiculous!"
It's a place where people
come to get a free coffee
and steal the books.
In a sense, that was
sort of almost accurate,
and what is great about it
is that Jim thinks
that's a good thing to do,
you know? He's the Good Samaritan.
"Come and steal my books!"
He was one of the first
people in Britain to sell
Lady Chatterley's Lover
as a paperback,
when it was still illegal in Britain
to sell it.
But he imported American copies
and some Edinburgh lady
bought a copy
and stood outside the shop
and set fire to it.
And she asked if I had the book.
I said, "Why, yes, I do.
Would you like a copy?"
She said, "Yes, I would.
How much is it?"
I said, "Three shillings
and sixpence," or whatever it was.
She paid and she said,
"I won't take it now. I'm coming
back in 30 minutes to get it."
I went...
Signals went off in my head.
"This is trouble."
You know?
She's going to make trouble,
cause she looked
like a troublemaker.
So I picked up the phone and called
a photographer friend, Alan Daiches,
and I said, "Alan, get your camera
"and come up to
the Paperback immediately,
"because I expect
fireworks to happen."
And true enough,
she came back at 30 minutes.
She came in and
she wouldn't touch the book.
She picked it up with... coal tongs,
I think they're called...
...kind of metal things that
you put coal onto fire, you know?
She took the book,
carried it outside the bookshop,
put it on a little platform
outside the bookshop,
poured kerosene on it, lit it -
up it went in flames,
and she ranted and raved
for about 15 minutes or so,
and the pictures
went around the world!
And below it, there was a space,
a very small space for reading,
poets reading their work,
and also for plays, tiny plays.
Two people perhaps,
and maybe there was room
for 15, 20 people to watch.
I thought,
"What a wonderful theatre!
"The actors are there. We are here.
"It's not like a stupid theatre."
And he was quite consciously
a medium for bringing in
new material both from the US,
because then you already had...
in the late '50s and early 60s,
you had the Beat movement, but also
from the continent of Europe,
which most people didn't know about,
some of which had not been
translated,
the new work, the new theatre,
the new poetry
came in through the medium of Jim
and through the Paperback bookshop.
So the Paperback really became
the initial headquarters
for the Fringe Society and became
a kind of stop for people to go
and find out what was on
and what they could go and see.
Fringe has very much become,
I think, the major part
of what happens in Edinburgh.
So, you know, if you're looking back
over history as to what
kicked it all off, his influence
was probably pretty key
in terms of how it all started.
So I think that what he brought
to it was a degree of enthusiasm
and interest that brought in
a fantastic range of people
to take part in the festival.
Gliding through the countryside
Merrily we roll along
Roll along
Catching at dreams...
I've already lost the moustache...
Un Poete
by Alain Barriere
Hi, darling. The guest of honour!
Aw! Oh! You look great!
Oh... You look ten years younger!
Oh! Your hair!
Oh, I don't like it.
I think it's too short, but it's OK.
Jim is a cultural icon.
You know, he's the man
who knows everyone, knows anyone.
And the impact on the arts and
cultural scene in Edinburgh -
and beyond, is immense.
So the opportunity to
have this and host this
was something I could not turn down.
So I'm very proud to be able
to announce publicly, then,
Edinburgh Napier is now the home
to the Jim Haynes Living Archive.
- OK. You can go and get
refreshments first.
After being purchased by two major
New York publishers who backed out,
I published Hello, I Love You!
on a duplicating machine,
and now it's... There are about
40,000 copies circulating out there.
I found a lot of writers and poets
who were having great difficulty
in being published, and I discovered
that it's really very easy
to publish a book
and to make a book,
and so I started a little publishing
house called Handshake Editions.
I guess I've published about
20 or 30 writers -
or 20 or 30 books, I should say,
because some writers have published
two or three books with me -
and my idea is simply
to give the book a birth,
to launch the book.
And after that, several of these
writers have gone on to be published
by major British
and American publishers.
Good evening, everyone, and a very,
very warm welcome to this event
here in the Corner Theatre
at the Edinburgh International
Book Festival.
My name's Peggy Hughes.
And while it's always a pleasure
to chair here at the Edinburgh
International Book Festival, it's
a very, very special treat tonight
to get to share a stage
with the man, the legend
that is Jim Haynes...
...and it's lovely
that you could all come.
- Oh, my God!
- And in the midst of all this, Jim,
what's your... I guess,
self-perception, if you like?
I mean, you're writing,
you're programming, you're producing
and inciting great things.
Is there any label that
you think...?
I don't know. I wish I knew. I wish...
I wish I could identify what I am
- or what I do...
- Artist? Writer? Er...
Happy anarchist, I don't know.
I hope a troublemaker.
Countercultural freedom fighter,
is what the program...?
Yeah, something like that.
Something like that.
His love of life,
his love of people
all kinds of people.
Young, old.
And he epitomized,
he personified the spirit of...
...the early 60s, of revolution.
He's never imposed himself
upon current events or history
in a way that others have.
He's just acted
as he wished to live...
...and drawn people...
...from everywhere, every
kind of person, into his circle.
And that, therefore he's become
an example of living
rather than
an example of a great man.
I mean, cos you've been called, Jim,
the godfather of social networking.
- That's what the Guardian said.
- That's the Guardian.
- How do you feel about that? Is that...?
- I think it's fair.
It's fair, yeah.
Yeah, it's fair.
Jim is really one of
the first networkers,
before networking was a concept
that people bothered about -
because Jim has got enormous
photographic memory of people,
their faces, and he has
total recall of people's names.
He only has to meet someone once
in a foreign country somewhere,
and if he bumps into them
in another location,
he will remember their name
and their face.
And it's a marvellous gift.
He's a good friend.
He's such a good friend.
And...
And sometimes, like right now,
I'm thinking,
"God, I must be one of 10,000."
But he doesn't
make you feel like that.
He makes me feel
a really special friend.
And he must have hundreds
of really special friends,
but I feel very special.
He was into social networking
before Mark Zuckerberg was
and he did it without
the digital help.
And Jim was the only person
I ever met who had an address book
for every city in the world,
or almost every city.
And that was pretty amazing,
if you think about it.
Ah, my address books.
That's Louisiana.
My old hometown, my old...
...friends.
Actually... he died.
And Norma...
I just learned that my dear friend
Norma has died in Australia.
Where is she?
Yeah.
"Died 2016."
Yep.
People are busy being born
and people are busy being dying.
The life cycle.
Oh, get in there!
Australia!
Australia doesn't want to behave.
And that's England.
There's a fourth England.
It should be there.
I don't know where it is.
Shitski.
That's America.
I did five guidebooks to
ten Eastern European countries,
and they contain only one thing -
and that's people you can meet.
And each person in the book
has had...
...lists their address,
their telephone number,
their profession and their passions.
So if their passion
was ballet or butterflies,
and you were in that country and
your passion was a similar passion,
you could meet them and
you could become friends with them.
And it was a way of
creating friendships.
We did a separate book
on each country.
And each country came forward
with so many names,
wanting contact with the West.
La Marseillaise
Frederik Steenbrink!
Michael said, "I knew a man
and he knows everybody in Edinburgh
"and probably he can, you know,
come and see the show."
And so Jim came
and see the show and...
...that's the first time we met.
And then we took this show to Paris,
to la Peniche-Opera,
and Jim came with groups of people.
And he filled the barge
a few times, like... Yeah.
...a lot of times, actually.
I'm so happy...
You didn't tell me!
It was great. It was fabulous
tonight. Really, really good.
One of the best ever, I think.
I met Jim in 1957...
...six years before
the Traverse opened.
So the Traverse began, for me...
...in 1957.
OK?
And this is Jim...
...because...
It's so important that he's here,
because it was the biggest tragedy
in the history of
the Edinburgh Festival that Jim...
Flew the coop. Yes, he flew away
like a bird from the nest.
Hello, handsome. How are you?
It's wonderful to see you, Jim.
We're not getting any younger,
my dear. No, I'm 86!
86?! Yeah. Come on, you're 16!
Come on!
But if you could sit down, Jim,
cos I think it's important that...
The questions that are being asked
are so important.
It was Jane Alexander
who taught you that your life
could not be real without theatre.
I've always said that...
...that the two unsung heroes
of Edinburgh are Jane Alexander
and Tamara Alferoff!
Absolutely!
These two women...
These two women inspired
the whole thing!
It wasn't created by some
stupid Arts Council, government
"Oh, we must help Edinburgh develop
because the festival is not enough.
"We need 49 weeks
of the same spirit."
And... Oh, no, it wasn't.
It was about love!
OK?
Tom Mitchell's love for Tamara,
and your love...
- Love for Jane.
I was 19 and he was, what,
all of 23, 24, or...
I don't know.
He seemed like an older man.
So, at first, I didn't
pay him much attention.
But then he was so charming,
and he had that
slight Louisiana accent.
And that was very seductive.
So, I found myself gravitating
more and more to wherever he was
in a room, and that's when
I fell in love with him.
And when the Traverse Theatre
started up,
it was a kind of beacon
in a very bleak landscape.
Edinburgh... The church bells
started ringing on Sunday mornings.
Everybody went to church.
Everybody was a bit formal.
It was a very, very comfortable,
smug, middle-class city.
And for a theatre, an experimental
theatre like the Traverse
to start up here,
it was quite an innovation,
and everybody gossiped
and talked about it,
because everybody knows everybody,
because the thing is,
Edinburgh is a very small city.
Well, let me speak of it
from the point of view
of being a Londoner.
It was, to my student...
You know, I was at
drama college at the time...
It was the most exciting
thing happening in Britain.
It's why I came up.
And there was nothing like it
in London.
You had to find it. It didn't make
itself conspicuous on the street,
which is quite a good thing, because
often they were serving drinks
long after they should have closed.
But we would know how to get in.
That was the entrance
to the theatre.
And the theatre was here.
Inside there.
And the dressing rooms
were downstairs.
The middle floor was the theatre...
...the next floor was
a gallery and box office,
and the next floor
was the restaurant and bar.
And it went all the way
to the front, to the high street.
It went all the way to
the Lawnmarket.
Big, big space upstairs.
And we paid a shilling -
one shilling a year rent.
In the 49 weeks when
there's no festival...
The festival exists
only for three weeks.
Oh, dear me! We cannot live
without the festival.
You have to go somewhere
in Edinburgh
where you can feel
the international...
...culture of the world.
So, that's how it began.
The only room in
the whole of Edinburgh
which is a memorial to the Traverse,
cos the rest of Edinburgh
doesn't know anything.
The Traverse was a club.
It was not a theatre.
It was a way of life.
You could feel you were in Paris.
A real city.
Bars closed at 10 o'clock.
If you wanted to drink on Sunday,
you couldn't.
You know, unless
you worked around it.
So, as a club,
we could have a restaurant,
we could have a bar,
we could drink any time.
It's important to say that there was
censorship in the 60s and '70s.
Censorship of what
you could show on the stage.
You were not allowed to show
the monarchy, for example.
You could not do
the figure of Christ.
The language you used
had to be submitted to a censor.
A good example was Ubu Roi,
the, um...
Is it in French?
Yeah, I think it is. Ubu Roi.
And he talks about...
There's a word for shit
that he uses,
something like schmetzil,
or something.
That had never, ever
been performed in Britain
because of the Lord Chamberlain.
At the Traverse, it was performed.
But also a lot of new stuff
was performed and, I must say,
at the encouragement of Jim.
Jim found people that
most of us had never heard of.
It's lost a bit of that whizzy feel
that it had when it was simply
young people racketing around
doing creative things,
but it does now have
the most prestigious reputation,
and all the works it does is
reviewed in the national papers.
It's got a huge reputation.
So, it's developed
from this early form,
but it's the early form
that I'm fond of.
Look at that. Look at that.
That's...
I hand-painted that sign...
...because we had no money
to pay anybody.
OK? There's Jim Haynes.
John Calder and Jim Haynes
had the idea of
a writers' conference.
That was really
the beginning of the...
...the concept.
And that dominated
the Edinburgh Festival
official program.
And unlike the writers' conferences
today in Edinburgh
and other cities, today
they come for one day or two days
and leave, and they give
a talk for one hour.
Just one person, usually, or two,
and leave.
We had 70 writers
on the stage every afternoon
for one week, all together,
and every night a party.
And so it was a wild, anarchistic
explosion of fun, joy, madness.
It was wonderful.
You have evidence of
avant-gardism.
This is the writers' conference.
And to get to the conference,
you have to cross,
if you are wanting to go,
this difficult...
...pavement full of tires.
Motorcar tires. You have to...
Can you imagine the difficulty
walking across these?
Jim came in one day and said...
Gave me a little tiny scrap of
paper and said,
"Do you think you could find
those things for me?"
I remember a couple of the items.
One was something like
30 yards of rope.
And another was a nude model.
And I confess I didn't do it.
I passed the note to another guy.
Nudity in British theatre was fine
from the '40s onward. You could be
nude on the stage in Britain,
but you couldn't move, as a girl.
You had to be totally
like a statue.
This girl was not moved...
She didn't move, but she was
wheeled across the gallery.
And if you looked up,
you saw something, very quickly.
If you didn't look up,
you didn't even see it at all,
it happened so quickly.
Two seconds, she appeared.
That was enough.
Afterwards, photographers from
all the newspapers went around
behind the stage and took pictures
of her, very close to her,
and it became front-page news
in all the papers,
and it became a big scandal.
And the following year, we were
going to have poetry,
and the mayor, the Lord Mayor of
Edinburgh, said no.
Ooh, lighting
with the midnight oil
Oooh ooh-ooh
Lightning with the devil...
I was reading the program and
saw that you were on this week.
- Yeah. - We're both here again. - Yeah.
- We made another year.
These people on my right are making
a documentary film about being me.
He's the man.
Let me introduce you to me
Midnight magic...
Oooh ooh-ooh
Lightning with the devil
What a sharp fellow
Trying to get to heaven
But the petrol was lost
Trying to get to heaven
But the petrol was lost
The petrol was lost...
Cheers!
He's the man!
Meet a friend from LA here.
- Bobby. - Antonio.
- Antonio. Nice to meet you.
- Great, great musician.
There were a number of world
passports that his friends bought
that were issued to them
that they actually used,
and were accepted
through immigration.
Of course, you know, that'd be
impossible to do now, since 9/11.
In the midst of all this, of course,
there's the world passport,
which I wanted to ask you about
very specifically, I think,
in light of the world we're in
just now, you know, Brexit,
not passage of people.
Could you explain the world passport
and then maybe say something...?
At some point in my book-seller
days, I think, at some point,
I realised there was a man called
Gary Davis.
I don't know how many people
have heard of Gary Davis.
Gary Davis is a kind of unsung hero.
He was a bombardier
over Germany. American...
American bombers dropping bombs
on Germany in the Second World War.
And after the Second World War,
he simplistically decided
that countries caused war,
and if we do away with countries
and we have world passports,
we'll have no more wars.
He went to Paris.
He gave up his American passport
and he printed his first passport,
which was in English and Esperanto.
And he travelled on it for years.
And he'd proselytize.
And I had great admiration for this.
And so I decided to track him down.
So, in the late 60s, early '70s,
I found out that he was alive,
living in a small town on
the French-Swiss border.
And I said, "Gary, we have to get
into the passport business again.
"We have to make world passports."
So, we printed a passport
which was extremely sophisticated.
It was in eight languages.
And we sent it to every
member of the United Nations.
We sent them a passport,
asking them to recognize it.
Five recognized it de jure,
and 60-something, 65 or 70,
recognized it de facto.
I traveled on the first one -
it came out in the early '70s -
and I went from Geneva to Milano.
And I showed my own passport
that I made myself,
and I gave it to the customs man.
He said, "What's this?" It was
a young guy, the customs official.
I said, "It's a world passport.
We're all brothers and sisters!"
He said, "Oh, that's great.
Welcome, brother."
I thought, "We're going to do it!
We're going to win!"
They were valid for a period,
and I don't really quite know why
they were valid, or equally,
if they were, why they were stopped,
because, you know...
I think people just suddenly
thought, "Hang on. What is this?"
And I issued hundreds
if not thousands of them.
And I was the only embassy in Paris
that was open 24 hours a day,
seven days a week.
They would knock on the door,
three in the morning, saying,
"Can I have a world passport
from you?"
I said, "Where are you from
and why do you want it?"
"I'm from..."
God knows where in the world -
Brazil or Iraq.
"I need a passport.
I don't have papers." Anyway...
And this this worked extremely well
until one day about 10 to 15
French police came to my house
and closed the embassy down.
Really, in my heart,
I'm a world citizen.
So, why change anything? Why become
French when I'm a world citizen?
- You have what you were born with...
- Yeah.
And as a world citizen I say that...
...all human history is mine,
and my roots extend everywhere.
I think it's been
a really interesting adventure
to be Jim's son, because...
...I think early on
he influenced me a lot, and...
...shaped my world view,
I would say, a lot, you know?
And his approach to see the whole...
...to be a sort of citizen of
the world was ingrained in me
very early on.
It even started with...
I had his famous passports
that he made, a world citizen
passport. I had one of those.
I am Christine Bovill, and this is
Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.
Non
Rien de rien...
You know, he created it,
and wanted to move on as well.
You know, that's what somebody does
who's going to do a lot in life.
They move on.
And he moved on to London
and created the Arts Lab
and various other things.
And I think that...
...people like him have to move on
to create the many things they do.
He'd made his mark here.
He'd got a reputation.
And he left a legacy.
...Oublie
Je me fous du passe
And the memories I have.
We're in London because
there's an exhibition
at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Four or five years in the late 60s
which the directors
of the exhibition believe
were extremely important
in changing the world.
Morning. Good morning.
It's an exhibition that
looks at 1966 to 1970,
and extraordinary social, cultural
and political upheaval of the time.
The Victoria and Albert Museum
is Britain's National Museum
of Art, Design and Performance.
So, we tried to bring all those
things together into this exhibition,
and I suppose one of
the most extraordinary things
is we've decided to
have some living exhibits.
Very kindly, Jim Haynes
has agreed to be an exhibit.
And so this isn't just about seeing
the objects and designs and films
from the past, but I think
uniquely you can come and argue
with a 60s radical as well.
Am I a survivor of the 60s?
Question mark?
I continue to be an active...
...libertarian.
I feel everyone has the right to do
with their life what they want.
Personally, I don't smoke, use drugs
or drink very much alcohol any more.
Just a little bit.
But my favorite...
...drug continues to be
people and ideas.
In the exhibition, we really do want
people to think of the power
of groups of people, the power
of movements, and the power
that individuals have
if they share information,
share anything that they can do -
share knowledge, share power,
and then what can be achieved
once the sharing has taken place.
And Jim really is
the epitome of that.
When he came down to London,
he had this...
He was a darling of the
Swinging London and the underground.
Very handsome, bear-like man
who hugged people, was genial,
and we all loved him, Jim.
Oh, London was jumping. London was
the capital of the world.
The music was changing everything,
and then there was experiments
in sexuality, experiments in
drug taking, and experiments
in this and experiments in that.
It was a lively time.
Now, essential to this exhibition
is music and fashion
and politics and culture.
Do you think one revolution could
have happened without the other?
Do you think there's a happy
marriage between them all?
I think there was and is.
You forgot about sexuality.
That was a very important element...
Must be my Catholic upbringing.
I started a newspaper
with two or three friends -
Miles, Hoppy, Jack Moore,
and Michael Henshaw,
and it became the paper,
the newspaper that everyone read
at the time.
IT became the newspaper.
Everyone read it.
It was not limited to London. It went
all over Britain and all over Europe,
and even copies went to America.
Our first printing was 10,000
copies, and we sold out.
After that, every printing went up
until we had a circulation
of about 40,000 or 50,000
every two weeks.
It was one of those magazines
that you bought because,
you know, you knew
your mother never would.
And it was another means of
bringing together and linking
a segment of society,
and bringing it cohesion,
and making everybody feel
that they were members in
the same kind of tribe.
In fact, it was the only one we
really believed in, the only one
that we thought was really
our newspaper, what we thought
was telling the truth
and being very factual.
And there's one column which
was wonderful,
which is the...
Censorship...
"Censorshit", it was called. And it
was all about censorship.
It was completely unlike
any other newspaper.
It was not about news.
It was essentially concerned
with what was then thought of
as being liberation, mental
liberation, physical liberation,
musical liberation.
This is scans from
International Times.
This is my play, with my actors.
And this was taken on the roof
garden of the Arts Lab.
I started, again,
a place like the Traverse,
but it was called
the Arts Laboratory.
And it had to contain the cinema
and a theatre and a gallery
and a restaurant and a tea room.
And I lived there with about
ten people, I'm sure illegally.
We weren't even supposed to
live there.
There were figures of the London
model world, music world,
film world, theatre world,
book world.
It was just a place that
people would go to.
Sometimes maybe
they would only go once,
but everybody felt compelled
to find out what was going on.
I remember the Arts Lab.
So, I went in and I asked...
He was there,
I think, behind the desk.
So, I said, "Hi. You remember me
from Edinburgh?
"I've got a one-act play
I want to try out
called In The Penal Colony,
by Kafka."
He kind of liked that idea.
He said, "Sure,
when you want to do it?"
This was my very first play.
"When?" I didn't know...
...when or how or if I could.
This was about March.
He said, "What about May?"
I said, "OK."
And I was a bit concerned,
so I thought maybe
I'll pop in the Arts Lab
and say, "Look, maybe
I can put it off to the autumn."
As I walked in, he was still
there. He's behind the desk.
And he said, "Oh, we have a poster
on the wall, opening May 7th."
And I looked at the poster.
And I thought, "Somebody's painted
quite a nice poster by hand,
"so I'd better do the play."
Because that's how I used to think.
I wouldn't do it, but because
somebody had made a poster...
...this inspired me and
provoked me to do it.
And the Arts Lab was an
extraordinary achievement, really.
I guess you could call it
the first arts center in London
apart from the ICA.
And I think Jim's philosophy was
pretty much to let people get on
and do what they wanted to do.
David Bowie played there,
practiced there.
It's where
Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls
was shown for the first time,
and I think it set a passion
for art centers,
which eventually opened up
all over Britain.
David Bowie was then called
David Jones.
And one day I was there
and he was practicing
in the back of the theatre.
It was amazing to hear it because
he changed his name afterwards
to David Bowie, but he was
there playing,
and Jim let him practice there.
My policy was try to
never say the word no.
For example, two women came to me
and wanted to do a ballet in our theatre,
and I said, "Well, the only time
that the theatre's available
"is at midnight." And they said,
"Will people come at midnight?"
And I said, "The theatre's
available. Let's do it.
"Let's try." It became a big hit.
Taxis were pulling up in front of the
theatre at midnight to see this ballet!
It's like a bird laying an egg.
We all look for a nest.
And this was a nest.
Jim Haynes created the Arts Lab
so every eccentric, every maverick,
every individualist, every artist,
every kind of fantasist,
even every lunatic
would say, "Here's a place
where I can lay my eggs.
"Here's a place I can give myself."
I'm sure Jim passes by.
I bet he goes to Drury Lane
and looks.
And maybe, if you put your ear
to the wall,
you can hear the sounds.
He had Happenings.
I mean, who knew what a Happening
was? At that time, a Happening
had a capital H
as well as a small one.
They held events and
then talked about them.
So, this created this endless
flow of what was going on.
14 Hour Technicolor Dream
was probably the greatest event
in London.
The organizers
of this country's first
major psychedelic event
chose May Day eve
for their all-night ritual,
and Alexandra Palace as
their temple.
They offered the Queen and
the Prime Minister free admission,
and charged
7,000 other people a pound a head.
What would you describe as
the purpose of this evening?
The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream?
Oh, well.
I think there's a new period.
We're starting a new era,
sweeping around
as a kind of reaction to various
things that have been happening
in the world. And it makes itself..
Manifests itself in love
and sweetness and kindness
and flowers. And so we're just...
We're just... We're not initiating
anything so much as
portraying what is happening.
I think people are concerned
with beauty and colors and flowers
and nature, and I think there is
a kind of aesthetic sense
about the whole movement.
What, for instance,
is beautiful about you?
What's beautiful about me?
Oh, um...
Oh, well, I don't know.
I'm very loving
and very giving, and...
I don't know.
I think that's beautiful.
I'm not jealous or possessive or...
I'm very tolerant of people
and time. I don't know.
I think that's a beautiful trait.
Do you think more and more people
will come to feel the way
that you do?
Oh, I hope so, yes.
There was an exhibition for John
and Yoko, a sculpture exhibition,
and they came to talk to me one
afternoon about the exhibition.
I think it was in the process
of setting it up.
And at the same time,
German television
came in to interview me
about the Arts Lab, and John
and Yoko gave him a brief interview
and that went out
on German television,
and the following week,
thousands of backpackers
arrived from Germany,
and in a way, I always said
that was the end of the Arts Lab.
They killed the Arts Lab.
I suppose at the end, in '69,
when the Arts Lab closed,
as John Lennon said,
"The acid dream is over."
Everything changed.
The '70s came along.
But I think what's
interesting about Jim is
that he's picked a slightly
different journey, his journey
is the fact that you can still visit
him every Sunday night in his house
in Paris because he believes
that everybody should talk
to each other,
which is a very 60s idea,
and it's very interesting
and he not only talks the talk,
but he walks the walk.
And I think he told me that,
since he started
doing those dinners,
I think 130,000 people
have been to dinner.
Oh, they've got you back, Jim,
you're tired, you should rest.
You're keeping me from my siesta.
Yes. But all in the name of...
- Friendship... - friendship and
posterity and all that crap.
And past remembrance,
remembrance of things past.
- Remembrance of things past.
- Yeah. Exactly.
I liked the 60s the best
because I was in my 20s, you know?
When you're in your 20s,
in your 30s,
your creative juices are flowing,
your ideas are flowing.
You can do anything.
I could do anything in the 20s.
When you get a little bit older,
you're slowing down a little bit
and you want to rest more.
I don't know.
I liked the 60s best of all.
Look after my friend.
Oof! Don't get old!
It's a pain in the ass.
- I've a knee problem.
- You've got a knee problem?
- Oh, yes.
- Oh, my God.
Oh, God.
Oof, oof, oof, oof, oof...
Here we go.
Paris, here we come.
One of the things that
I observed during the 60s
was the, um...
From the amount of anxiety
and frustration
that sexuality and sexual hang-ups
caused people
and towards the end of the 60s,
I wanted to...
...start a newspaper that would deal
both seriously and humorously
with all aspects of sexuality.
And one afternoon, I had tea
with a friend of mine from
Baltimore.
Just the two of us were having tea,
and I said, "I think we should start
a sexual freedom newspaper."
What?
- He said, "What?"
- That's what he said, "What?"
With a friend called Bill Levi
and Heathcote Williams,
Germaine Greer,
and others,
we started a newspaper called Suck.
After the first issue,
the paper became the talking...
...point of half of Europe
and half of America.
Everybody loved the paper.
But we knew that Scotland Yard
would close the London office
within weeks of
the first issue coming out,
which is what happened.
And the newspaper ran for the next
two or three years out of Amsterdam.
Coupled with the newspaper,
we started a film festival
in Amsterdam
in 1970 and 1971,
which was entitled
The Wet Dream Film Festival.
And this was the world's
first erotic...
...film festival.
We wanted to demystify...
...so-called pornography.
And encourage more and more
filmmakers to move away
from making violent,
movies of violence,
moving towards movies of tenderness,
erotica, etc.
Images,
written or visual images...
...of explicit sexuality is, in most
parts of the world, a crime.
Why? Why should it be a crime?
I mean, it's... We're all interested
in it, we all perform it.
We all do it.
What's wrong with...?
And then I said, I said,
"But showing a picture of violence,
a murder...
"..showing those same images
is not a crime."
If anything, that should be
and not the other way.
That's what I'm saying.
Thank you. That'll be all.
Welcome.
Where are you from?
- San Francisco.
- San Francisco?
- Are you going to Paris?
- Actually...
So how long are you staying
in Paris for?
I've been living there 45 years.
No kidding?
I went back to London on Tuesday,
but I'm living in Paris.
- Where are you from?
- New Orleans.
Oh, you're American?
- Yeah.
- No kidding.
It's very interesting.
People often ask me if
I will go back to America
or I will go back to Scotland
or I'll go back to London.
And I always reply that
you can never go back anywhere,
that life is a trip
through time and space
and you can only go forward.
So if I go to Scotland or London
or New York or New Orleans
or anywhere,
I'll be going forward to it.
We're all going forward
all the time.
I live in Paris for many reasons.
I never expected to live here.
I never thought I would live here.
I got invited to be
a professor at the university.
The first time they invited me
I said, "No, thank you."
I don't speak French and
I couldn't teach a university class.
And they invited me a second time
and said,
"You could teach
your classes in English."
And I said, "What?
I can teach my classes in English?"
They said, "Yes."
I was teaching sexual politics
at the University of Paris
for 30 years.
And I fell more and more in love
with Paris and this neighborhood.
Ay, ay, ay!
100 people coming tonight?
Time for people to start rolling in.
Perfect.
Come in, come in, come in.
The bar here, and a bar out.
So help yourself.
- Good evening.
- Good evening. What do I serve you?
OK. Yeah.
There's dessert!
There's dessert.
Come to the table
and get your just desserts.
- Jim wants no fruit.
- No fruit.
It's everything
you ever wanted in a bowl
that 100,000 people ate from.
- Thank you, Jim.
- You're welcome.
What's this? Oh!
You put your name on it?
Yeah.
Oh, and there's a point
in direction, obviously...
Le dimanche soir
chez Jim Haynes
Le dimanche soir
chez Jim Haynes...
37, no, 38 years later...
150,000 people have been to dinner.
Out of the dinners,
many people have become friends,
lovers, marriages,
babies, jobs, trips,
everything that human beings...
And this film, by the way.
All the people who are involved
in making this film
met on a Sunday night dinner.
Chez Jim Haynes, n'est-ce pas?
Chez Jim Haynes
De la Tombe Issoire!
A letter to my granddaughter.
Mimi Haynes, Brooklyn, New York,
24th of June, 2016.
Mimi, your grandfather
was born in Louisiana, USA,
almost 100 years ago.
Yourself started life
in New York, USA.
Your father and mother
met in Bangkok, Thailand.
We're all world citizens.
All human history is ours.
Our roots cover the Earth.
Welcome to the new world.
I only hope I live long
enough to see you flower.
We can take action.
We can change the world.
We can create.
We can do.
We, each and every one of us
has the power to take action to be.
Be brave,
be open to everyone and everything.
My father once gave me some advice
which I now pass on to you.
When you do
something nice for someone,
forget it immediately.
When someone does something
nice for you, never forget it.
it was a question for me.
"Oh, perhaps he is an American man."
She said,
"You should speak to Jim Haynes!"
I went, "Who?"
She went, "You don't know Jim?!"
Well, I'd heard of Jim
before I met him.
A mad American came
rushing up to me...
...and he said, "You have to meet
this American guy
"called Jim Haynes."
Who's that big, handsome
American guy?
This guy Jim Haynes came in...
...and introduced himself to me
and said, "I'm Jim Haynes."
And when he saw him, he said,
"NOW it's a festival!"
We would not be having a Crouchley
dinner without Jim Haynes.
I met Jim in Edinburgh...
...in 1966.
It was called Corruption
In The Palace Of Justice.
I met him when I went up
as a student.
And he said, "It's this guy
called Jim Haynes,"
and I said, "You knew Jim Haynes?"
And he said,
"Did you know Jim Haynes?"
I never followed any man nowhere.
Voila!
Avoided him...
...for as long as I could.
A short version or a long version?
It wasn't long before
we bumped into Jim.
I knew about Jim
through other people.
She says, "Well, you have to meet...
Jim. Jim Haynes."
Jim asked me to do a shop sign.
So I suddenly found myself
working for him.
We met first in a bar.
Paris about a year-and-a-half ago.
I couldn't tell you when it started.
Seems to have gone on forever.
- We met in... - I met Jim...
- Well, I met Jim...
I met Jim... I met Jim...
Good morning, sunshine
Let's call it a day.
Jim is a happy chappy.
You know they call the baguette
the dentist's best friend
because it breaks teeth!
Butter from the cow.
Bonne Maman.
Bonne Maman jam.
Agh!
Strawberries.
Fields Forever.
Dear John Lennon.
Delicious.
The nurse said...
...my blood sugar level
was perfect this morning.
Same old murders, rapes and pillage.
Zika cases in Florida rises.
Mosquito attacks again.
Very silly game.
But I don't think it causes...
...any major...
...problems in the world.
At least I hope not.
I don't think so.
That was a mistake.
How did that get there?
Agh!
Enough of this madness.
Oh... Aye-aye-aye.
Something refreshing,
you know, after curry.
Oh, I've got chocolate mousse!
All right.
I think it was in 2000.
I met him just in the street.
It was an open vernissage. A lot
of galleries have a sort of...
They all have drinks
and eat something, and he just...
We were looking at this
really weird modern sculpture
and he was like, "Hmm..."
And I was like, "Yeah..."
so we started talking
and then he said,
"How about dinner?"
So I said OK, and that was it.
That's how it started.
He walked me back to my place,
which wasn't here,
I was living down the road,
and singing songs all the way.
That was the beginning.
Anna Lord coming tonight?
Let's just go with Anna.
91? Minus...
...one... two.
And that's before people
are just going to show up?
Oh, aye-aye.
Aye-aye-aye
Aye-aye-aye aye...
Well, I started living here
because when
I didn't have an apartment any more
in Paris,
because I started traveling
around the world,
and I kind of needed a place
for several weeks, not even months.
I asked Jim if I could pay rent here
and he said, "No, but you can stay."
Life in this house is very dynamic,
because there are days where
you have eight people,
you have Airbnb guests,
you have old friends of Jim's
and people you don't know.
Even when I was here
for the Guardian -
I was the Paris correspondent
for a while -
I stayed at Jim's place
because it was always
one of the most exciting
places to be.
Well, I'm Jim's neighbor.
I've been here now for 13 years,
and I was lucky enough to buy
the studio next door to him.
If somebody asked me in Paris,
some English-speaking person
with the native language English,
asks me, "Where is your studio?"
I say, "Next to Jim Haynes,"
because not many people know
the street but they know Jim Haynes.
So it's very easy to tell them
where I am.
Every single Sunday...
...for the last 40 years,
you can come to this atelier,
this workshop
and have an open dinner
with up to anywhere
between 60 and 120 strangers
from all over the world.
I'm off to the supermarket.
Back in a minute... or 20 minutes.
One of the things I'm most famous
for today is the Sunday dinners
that I started in 1978.
Young dancer, Cathy Monnet...
Cathy Srouf was her name.
Ca va? Ca va, merci.
Knew no-one in Paris,
didn't speak French
and was staying in
a rather expensive hotel.
I invited her over for tea.
She came over.
I said, "Move out of your hotel,
take the guest bedroom
"and make yourself at home here."
And it was upstairs in
this bedroom right up there.
And the fact that there were,
like, six or seven other people
staying here at the same time
didn't seem to matter!
Jim had so many friends and so many
guests that the more I cooked -
and I was a very good cook -
the more people came,
and we organized dinners
twice a week,
Wednesdays and Saturday nights.
Twice a week was getting
a little bit too much, maybe,
for the neighbors,
so we moved it to Sunday,
and then one Sunday
she couldn't cook,
so we had a guest chef,
and that's how it evolved.
Home from another
successful shopping trip.
How many are we, Jim?
"Oh, well, cook for 60."
Then I come on the weekend.
"No, we're 80 now."
"Jim!"
"It's creeping up, Cathy.
We're getting up into the 100..."
"Jim! You can't do this, Jim!
"I can't just, you know,
make the food come out."
What a born actor.
This guy's amazing.
Hello! I love you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow!
Yeah. Sure.
This Sunday evening?
Yeah. Corrine's cooking.
OK.
OK.
You're bringing six friends?
Oh, shit. OK.
We expect about 40 people tonight
from all corners of the globe,
and dear Thomas and Michelle
are busy chopping and cutting
and pruning and preparing
in the background,
so you'll hear
the occasional thump-thump.
A bar outside and a bar inside.
Everyone's introduced.
I'll do my best,
but I can't get everything.
I have a duty, which
I elected to perform,
and that is to introduce everyone
around me to each other,
and that I've done all my life,
and I've tried to perform
this duty as often as possible
because the more people who meet
each other, the better the world is.
I find that everyone has
an interesting story to tell,
which is their life,
and if you have the patience
and are prepared to listen,
everyone is interesting.
I love people,
and I think people are
the most fun thing of all.
Au revoir.
Howdy!
Wow.
What a world, what a life.
I'm in love...
Good!
Actually,
it wasn't in the right key, but...
What a world
What a life
I'm in love
I've got the world
On a string
Sitting on a rainbow...
That's not the right key.
..I've got this string
around my finger
What a world
What a life
I'm in love...
Life is a beautiful thing.
Happiness is first and foremost,
as far as I'm concerned,
an intellectual decision.
It's up to you to be happy.
It's your decision.
If you want to be sad,
that's also your decision.
And I've decided that life is short,
and we have an obligation
to enjoy ourselves.
Oh, my God.
Wow.
Here we go.
Adventure number...
...3,438!
Edinburgh, here we come.
London, here we come.
The upcoming Edinburgh Festival
will be my 60th time in Edinburgh.
But I come every year.
I love the festival.
I want to come to one of your
dinners, but... - Oh, please.
But I promise...
All of us human beings
are like ants. Ants...
You see, if you look at an ant
colony, if you observe ants
on the ground, they come together.
They put their
little antennas out.
They kind of acknowledge each
other's presence and they move on.
We do the same thing
daily in metros, buses, streets.
I moved to Edinburgh during
my American military service.
It's a long, complicated story
but I tracked down
the unknown corporal
who writes the orders out
and said I wanted
to go to Western Europe,
smallest possible military base,
preferably only me there,
but if there were others, OK,
but small, and near a major city,
near a major university.
He said, "Come back in three days."
"How does Edinburgh sound?"
I said, "Perfect." That's how
I got to Edinburgh, US Air Force.
I had a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde life
in Edinburgh.
I listened to the Russians from five
to midnight, slept in a tiny room
in the middle of Edinburgh
from midnight to eight,
and attended the University
of Edinburgh from nine to five.
I really went to the university
for two reasons -
to escape the military
and I suddenly had a great desire
to pursue knowledge.
Woo-woo-woo!
Very pleased to meet you. Thank you.
Nice to meet you.
Whoo! Whoo!
Ahh! I can do it.
Say goodbye.
Very good.
I'm coming to your thing,
your event. Whoo!
When is it? I can't remember.
It's in my diary. Sunday. Yeah.
Lovely to see you.
I'm going to my hotel to crash
and have an early night.
Night, everyone. Night-night.
Goodnight, beautiful.
Lovely to see you.
Happy festival. Mwah!
Thank you for coming!
Every time you say,
"thanks for coming",
you're advertising my autobiography.
He had a bookshop called...
The Paperback.
...the Paperback.
Somehow...
...he found a stuffed head
of a rhinoceros.
Do you remember that? Yeah.
And he hung the head of
the rhinoceros on the outside
of the Paperback bookshop.
Well, when I got out of the military
I was released
and I asked for permission
from the British government
and the American government
to stay in Edinburgh to continue
studying at the university.
I was granted permission,
but suddenly I had no income,
and the only thing I could do
was start a business.
I couldn't get a job
and I didn't want a job.
And I walked around
Edinburgh University
and I found a junk shop.
I walked in the shop and asked
the woman if she would sell me
her shop, and she said,
"My boy, my boy,
it's about time I retired.
"Yes. How does 300 sound?"
I said, "Madam, you've got a deal."
And in Edinburgh at that time,
the most unlikely experience
would be for you as a student
to go into a shop
selling books, paperbacks.
Paperbacks, only paperbacks.
And Jim would say...
"Would you like
a cup of coffee?
"Free coffee in an Edinburgh
bookshop? This is ridiculous!"
It's a place where people
come to get a free coffee
and steal the books.
In a sense, that was
sort of almost accurate,
and what is great about it
is that Jim thinks
that's a good thing to do,
you know? He's the Good Samaritan.
"Come and steal my books!"
He was one of the first
people in Britain to sell
Lady Chatterley's Lover
as a paperback,
when it was still illegal in Britain
to sell it.
But he imported American copies
and some Edinburgh lady
bought a copy
and stood outside the shop
and set fire to it.
And she asked if I had the book.
I said, "Why, yes, I do.
Would you like a copy?"
She said, "Yes, I would.
How much is it?"
I said, "Three shillings
and sixpence," or whatever it was.
She paid and she said,
"I won't take it now. I'm coming
back in 30 minutes to get it."
I went...
Signals went off in my head.
"This is trouble."
You know?
She's going to make trouble,
cause she looked
like a troublemaker.
So I picked up the phone and called
a photographer friend, Alan Daiches,
and I said, "Alan, get your camera
"and come up to
the Paperback immediately,
"because I expect
fireworks to happen."
And true enough,
she came back at 30 minutes.
She came in and
she wouldn't touch the book.
She picked it up with... coal tongs,
I think they're called...
...kind of metal things that
you put coal onto fire, you know?
She took the book,
carried it outside the bookshop,
put it on a little platform
outside the bookshop,
poured kerosene on it, lit it -
up it went in flames,
and she ranted and raved
for about 15 minutes or so,
and the pictures
went around the world!
And below it, there was a space,
a very small space for reading,
poets reading their work,
and also for plays, tiny plays.
Two people perhaps,
and maybe there was room
for 15, 20 people to watch.
I thought,
"What a wonderful theatre!
"The actors are there. We are here.
"It's not like a stupid theatre."
And he was quite consciously
a medium for bringing in
new material both from the US,
because then you already had...
in the late '50s and early 60s,
you had the Beat movement, but also
from the continent of Europe,
which most people didn't know about,
some of which had not been
translated,
the new work, the new theatre,
the new poetry
came in through the medium of Jim
and through the Paperback bookshop.
So the Paperback really became
the initial headquarters
for the Fringe Society and became
a kind of stop for people to go
and find out what was on
and what they could go and see.
Fringe has very much become,
I think, the major part
of what happens in Edinburgh.
So, you know, if you're looking back
over history as to what
kicked it all off, his influence
was probably pretty key
in terms of how it all started.
So I think that what he brought
to it was a degree of enthusiasm
and interest that brought in
a fantastic range of people
to take part in the festival.
Gliding through the countryside
Merrily we roll along
Roll along
Catching at dreams...
I've already lost the moustache...
Un Poete
by Alain Barriere
Hi, darling. The guest of honour!
Aw! Oh! You look great!
Oh... You look ten years younger!
Oh! Your hair!
Oh, I don't like it.
I think it's too short, but it's OK.
Jim is a cultural icon.
You know, he's the man
who knows everyone, knows anyone.
And the impact on the arts and
cultural scene in Edinburgh -
and beyond, is immense.
So the opportunity to
have this and host this
was something I could not turn down.
So I'm very proud to be able
to announce publicly, then,
Edinburgh Napier is now the home
to the Jim Haynes Living Archive.
- OK. You can go and get
refreshments first.
After being purchased by two major
New York publishers who backed out,
I published Hello, I Love You!
on a duplicating machine,
and now it's... There are about
40,000 copies circulating out there.
I found a lot of writers and poets
who were having great difficulty
in being published, and I discovered
that it's really very easy
to publish a book
and to make a book,
and so I started a little publishing
house called Handshake Editions.
I guess I've published about
20 or 30 writers -
or 20 or 30 books, I should say,
because some writers have published
two or three books with me -
and my idea is simply
to give the book a birth,
to launch the book.
And after that, several of these
writers have gone on to be published
by major British
and American publishers.
Good evening, everyone, and a very,
very warm welcome to this event
here in the Corner Theatre
at the Edinburgh International
Book Festival.
My name's Peggy Hughes.
And while it's always a pleasure
to chair here at the Edinburgh
International Book Festival, it's
a very, very special treat tonight
to get to share a stage
with the man, the legend
that is Jim Haynes...
...and it's lovely
that you could all come.
- Oh, my God!
- And in the midst of all this, Jim,
what's your... I guess,
self-perception, if you like?
I mean, you're writing,
you're programming, you're producing
and inciting great things.
Is there any label that
you think...?
I don't know. I wish I knew. I wish...
I wish I could identify what I am
- or what I do...
- Artist? Writer? Er...
Happy anarchist, I don't know.
I hope a troublemaker.
Countercultural freedom fighter,
is what the program...?
Yeah, something like that.
Something like that.
His love of life,
his love of people
all kinds of people.
Young, old.
And he epitomized,
he personified the spirit of...
...the early 60s, of revolution.
He's never imposed himself
upon current events or history
in a way that others have.
He's just acted
as he wished to live...
...and drawn people...
...from everywhere, every
kind of person, into his circle.
And that, therefore he's become
an example of living
rather than
an example of a great man.
I mean, cos you've been called, Jim,
the godfather of social networking.
- That's what the Guardian said.
- That's the Guardian.
- How do you feel about that? Is that...?
- I think it's fair.
It's fair, yeah.
Yeah, it's fair.
Jim is really one of
the first networkers,
before networking was a concept
that people bothered about -
because Jim has got enormous
photographic memory of people,
their faces, and he has
total recall of people's names.
He only has to meet someone once
in a foreign country somewhere,
and if he bumps into them
in another location,
he will remember their name
and their face.
And it's a marvellous gift.
He's a good friend.
He's such a good friend.
And...
And sometimes, like right now,
I'm thinking,
"God, I must be one of 10,000."
But he doesn't
make you feel like that.
He makes me feel
a really special friend.
And he must have hundreds
of really special friends,
but I feel very special.
He was into social networking
before Mark Zuckerberg was
and he did it without
the digital help.
And Jim was the only person
I ever met who had an address book
for every city in the world,
or almost every city.
And that was pretty amazing,
if you think about it.
Ah, my address books.
That's Louisiana.
My old hometown, my old...
...friends.
Actually... he died.
And Norma...
I just learned that my dear friend
Norma has died in Australia.
Where is she?
Yeah.
"Died 2016."
Yep.
People are busy being born
and people are busy being dying.
The life cycle.
Oh, get in there!
Australia!
Australia doesn't want to behave.
And that's England.
There's a fourth England.
It should be there.
I don't know where it is.
Shitski.
That's America.
I did five guidebooks to
ten Eastern European countries,
and they contain only one thing -
and that's people you can meet.
And each person in the book
has had...
...lists their address,
their telephone number,
their profession and their passions.
So if their passion
was ballet or butterflies,
and you were in that country and
your passion was a similar passion,
you could meet them and
you could become friends with them.
And it was a way of
creating friendships.
We did a separate book
on each country.
And each country came forward
with so many names,
wanting contact with the West.
La Marseillaise
Frederik Steenbrink!
Michael said, "I knew a man
and he knows everybody in Edinburgh
"and probably he can, you know,
come and see the show."
And so Jim came
and see the show and...
...that's the first time we met.
And then we took this show to Paris,
to la Peniche-Opera,
and Jim came with groups of people.
And he filled the barge
a few times, like... Yeah.
...a lot of times, actually.
I'm so happy...
You didn't tell me!
It was great. It was fabulous
tonight. Really, really good.
One of the best ever, I think.
I met Jim in 1957...
...six years before
the Traverse opened.
So the Traverse began, for me...
...in 1957.
OK?
And this is Jim...
...because...
It's so important that he's here,
because it was the biggest tragedy
in the history of
the Edinburgh Festival that Jim...
Flew the coop. Yes, he flew away
like a bird from the nest.
Hello, handsome. How are you?
It's wonderful to see you, Jim.
We're not getting any younger,
my dear. No, I'm 86!
86?! Yeah. Come on, you're 16!
Come on!
But if you could sit down, Jim,
cos I think it's important that...
The questions that are being asked
are so important.
It was Jane Alexander
who taught you that your life
could not be real without theatre.
I've always said that...
...that the two unsung heroes
of Edinburgh are Jane Alexander
and Tamara Alferoff!
Absolutely!
These two women...
These two women inspired
the whole thing!
It wasn't created by some
stupid Arts Council, government
"Oh, we must help Edinburgh develop
because the festival is not enough.
"We need 49 weeks
of the same spirit."
And... Oh, no, it wasn't.
It was about love!
OK?
Tom Mitchell's love for Tamara,
and your love...
- Love for Jane.
I was 19 and he was, what,
all of 23, 24, or...
I don't know.
He seemed like an older man.
So, at first, I didn't
pay him much attention.
But then he was so charming,
and he had that
slight Louisiana accent.
And that was very seductive.
So, I found myself gravitating
more and more to wherever he was
in a room, and that's when
I fell in love with him.
And when the Traverse Theatre
started up,
it was a kind of beacon
in a very bleak landscape.
Edinburgh... The church bells
started ringing on Sunday mornings.
Everybody went to church.
Everybody was a bit formal.
It was a very, very comfortable,
smug, middle-class city.
And for a theatre, an experimental
theatre like the Traverse
to start up here,
it was quite an innovation,
and everybody gossiped
and talked about it,
because everybody knows everybody,
because the thing is,
Edinburgh is a very small city.
Well, let me speak of it
from the point of view
of being a Londoner.
It was, to my student...
You know, I was at
drama college at the time...
It was the most exciting
thing happening in Britain.
It's why I came up.
And there was nothing like it
in London.
You had to find it. It didn't make
itself conspicuous on the street,
which is quite a good thing, because
often they were serving drinks
long after they should have closed.
But we would know how to get in.
That was the entrance
to the theatre.
And the theatre was here.
Inside there.
And the dressing rooms
were downstairs.
The middle floor was the theatre...
...the next floor was
a gallery and box office,
and the next floor
was the restaurant and bar.
And it went all the way
to the front, to the high street.
It went all the way to
the Lawnmarket.
Big, big space upstairs.
And we paid a shilling -
one shilling a year rent.
In the 49 weeks when
there's no festival...
The festival exists
only for three weeks.
Oh, dear me! We cannot live
without the festival.
You have to go somewhere
in Edinburgh
where you can feel
the international...
...culture of the world.
So, that's how it began.
The only room in
the whole of Edinburgh
which is a memorial to the Traverse,
cos the rest of Edinburgh
doesn't know anything.
The Traverse was a club.
It was not a theatre.
It was a way of life.
You could feel you were in Paris.
A real city.
Bars closed at 10 o'clock.
If you wanted to drink on Sunday,
you couldn't.
You know, unless
you worked around it.
So, as a club,
we could have a restaurant,
we could have a bar,
we could drink any time.
It's important to say that there was
censorship in the 60s and '70s.
Censorship of what
you could show on the stage.
You were not allowed to show
the monarchy, for example.
You could not do
the figure of Christ.
The language you used
had to be submitted to a censor.
A good example was Ubu Roi,
the, um...
Is it in French?
Yeah, I think it is. Ubu Roi.
And he talks about...
There's a word for shit
that he uses,
something like schmetzil,
or something.
That had never, ever
been performed in Britain
because of the Lord Chamberlain.
At the Traverse, it was performed.
But also a lot of new stuff
was performed and, I must say,
at the encouragement of Jim.
Jim found people that
most of us had never heard of.
It's lost a bit of that whizzy feel
that it had when it was simply
young people racketing around
doing creative things,
but it does now have
the most prestigious reputation,
and all the works it does is
reviewed in the national papers.
It's got a huge reputation.
So, it's developed
from this early form,
but it's the early form
that I'm fond of.
Look at that. Look at that.
That's...
I hand-painted that sign...
...because we had no money
to pay anybody.
OK? There's Jim Haynes.
John Calder and Jim Haynes
had the idea of
a writers' conference.
That was really
the beginning of the...
...the concept.
And that dominated
the Edinburgh Festival
official program.
And unlike the writers' conferences
today in Edinburgh
and other cities, today
they come for one day or two days
and leave, and they give
a talk for one hour.
Just one person, usually, or two,
and leave.
We had 70 writers
on the stage every afternoon
for one week, all together,
and every night a party.
And so it was a wild, anarchistic
explosion of fun, joy, madness.
It was wonderful.
You have evidence of
avant-gardism.
This is the writers' conference.
And to get to the conference,
you have to cross,
if you are wanting to go,
this difficult...
...pavement full of tires.
Motorcar tires. You have to...
Can you imagine the difficulty
walking across these?
Jim came in one day and said...
Gave me a little tiny scrap of
paper and said,
"Do you think you could find
those things for me?"
I remember a couple of the items.
One was something like
30 yards of rope.
And another was a nude model.
And I confess I didn't do it.
I passed the note to another guy.
Nudity in British theatre was fine
from the '40s onward. You could be
nude on the stage in Britain,
but you couldn't move, as a girl.
You had to be totally
like a statue.
This girl was not moved...
She didn't move, but she was
wheeled across the gallery.
And if you looked up,
you saw something, very quickly.
If you didn't look up,
you didn't even see it at all,
it happened so quickly.
Two seconds, she appeared.
That was enough.
Afterwards, photographers from
all the newspapers went around
behind the stage and took pictures
of her, very close to her,
and it became front-page news
in all the papers,
and it became a big scandal.
And the following year, we were
going to have poetry,
and the mayor, the Lord Mayor of
Edinburgh, said no.
Ooh, lighting
with the midnight oil
Oooh ooh-ooh
Lightning with the devil...
I was reading the program and
saw that you were on this week.
- Yeah. - We're both here again. - Yeah.
- We made another year.
These people on my right are making
a documentary film about being me.
He's the man.
Let me introduce you to me
Midnight magic...
Oooh ooh-ooh
Lightning with the devil
What a sharp fellow
Trying to get to heaven
But the petrol was lost
Trying to get to heaven
But the petrol was lost
The petrol was lost...
Cheers!
He's the man!
Meet a friend from LA here.
- Bobby. - Antonio.
- Antonio. Nice to meet you.
- Great, great musician.
There were a number of world
passports that his friends bought
that were issued to them
that they actually used,
and were accepted
through immigration.
Of course, you know, that'd be
impossible to do now, since 9/11.
In the midst of all this, of course,
there's the world passport,
which I wanted to ask you about
very specifically, I think,
in light of the world we're in
just now, you know, Brexit,
not passage of people.
Could you explain the world passport
and then maybe say something...?
At some point in my book-seller
days, I think, at some point,
I realised there was a man called
Gary Davis.
I don't know how many people
have heard of Gary Davis.
Gary Davis is a kind of unsung hero.
He was a bombardier
over Germany. American...
American bombers dropping bombs
on Germany in the Second World War.
And after the Second World War,
he simplistically decided
that countries caused war,
and if we do away with countries
and we have world passports,
we'll have no more wars.
He went to Paris.
He gave up his American passport
and he printed his first passport,
which was in English and Esperanto.
And he travelled on it for years.
And he'd proselytize.
And I had great admiration for this.
And so I decided to track him down.
So, in the late 60s, early '70s,
I found out that he was alive,
living in a small town on
the French-Swiss border.
And I said, "Gary, we have to get
into the passport business again.
"We have to make world passports."
So, we printed a passport
which was extremely sophisticated.
It was in eight languages.
And we sent it to every
member of the United Nations.
We sent them a passport,
asking them to recognize it.
Five recognized it de jure,
and 60-something, 65 or 70,
recognized it de facto.
I traveled on the first one -
it came out in the early '70s -
and I went from Geneva to Milano.
And I showed my own passport
that I made myself,
and I gave it to the customs man.
He said, "What's this?" It was
a young guy, the customs official.
I said, "It's a world passport.
We're all brothers and sisters!"
He said, "Oh, that's great.
Welcome, brother."
I thought, "We're going to do it!
We're going to win!"
They were valid for a period,
and I don't really quite know why
they were valid, or equally,
if they were, why they were stopped,
because, you know...
I think people just suddenly
thought, "Hang on. What is this?"
And I issued hundreds
if not thousands of them.
And I was the only embassy in Paris
that was open 24 hours a day,
seven days a week.
They would knock on the door,
three in the morning, saying,
"Can I have a world passport
from you?"
I said, "Where are you from
and why do you want it?"
"I'm from..."
God knows where in the world -
Brazil or Iraq.
"I need a passport.
I don't have papers." Anyway...
And this this worked extremely well
until one day about 10 to 15
French police came to my house
and closed the embassy down.
Really, in my heart,
I'm a world citizen.
So, why change anything? Why become
French when I'm a world citizen?
- You have what you were born with...
- Yeah.
And as a world citizen I say that...
...all human history is mine,
and my roots extend everywhere.
I think it's been
a really interesting adventure
to be Jim's son, because...
...I think early on
he influenced me a lot, and...
...shaped my world view,
I would say, a lot, you know?
And his approach to see the whole...
...to be a sort of citizen of
the world was ingrained in me
very early on.
It even started with...
I had his famous passports
that he made, a world citizen
passport. I had one of those.
I am Christine Bovill, and this is
Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.
Non
Rien de rien...
You know, he created it,
and wanted to move on as well.
You know, that's what somebody does
who's going to do a lot in life.
They move on.
And he moved on to London
and created the Arts Lab
and various other things.
And I think that...
...people like him have to move on
to create the many things they do.
He'd made his mark here.
He'd got a reputation.
And he left a legacy.
...Oublie
Je me fous du passe
And the memories I have.
We're in London because
there's an exhibition
at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Four or five years in the late 60s
which the directors
of the exhibition believe
were extremely important
in changing the world.
Morning. Good morning.
It's an exhibition that
looks at 1966 to 1970,
and extraordinary social, cultural
and political upheaval of the time.
The Victoria and Albert Museum
is Britain's National Museum
of Art, Design and Performance.
So, we tried to bring all those
things together into this exhibition,
and I suppose one of
the most extraordinary things
is we've decided to
have some living exhibits.
Very kindly, Jim Haynes
has agreed to be an exhibit.
And so this isn't just about seeing
the objects and designs and films
from the past, but I think
uniquely you can come and argue
with a 60s radical as well.
Am I a survivor of the 60s?
Question mark?
I continue to be an active...
...libertarian.
I feel everyone has the right to do
with their life what they want.
Personally, I don't smoke, use drugs
or drink very much alcohol any more.
Just a little bit.
But my favorite...
...drug continues to be
people and ideas.
In the exhibition, we really do want
people to think of the power
of groups of people, the power
of movements, and the power
that individuals have
if they share information,
share anything that they can do -
share knowledge, share power,
and then what can be achieved
once the sharing has taken place.
And Jim really is
the epitome of that.
When he came down to London,
he had this...
He was a darling of the
Swinging London and the underground.
Very handsome, bear-like man
who hugged people, was genial,
and we all loved him, Jim.
Oh, London was jumping. London was
the capital of the world.
The music was changing everything,
and then there was experiments
in sexuality, experiments in
drug taking, and experiments
in this and experiments in that.
It was a lively time.
Now, essential to this exhibition
is music and fashion
and politics and culture.
Do you think one revolution could
have happened without the other?
Do you think there's a happy
marriage between them all?
I think there was and is.
You forgot about sexuality.
That was a very important element...
Must be my Catholic upbringing.
I started a newspaper
with two or three friends -
Miles, Hoppy, Jack Moore,
and Michael Henshaw,
and it became the paper,
the newspaper that everyone read
at the time.
IT became the newspaper.
Everyone read it.
It was not limited to London. It went
all over Britain and all over Europe,
and even copies went to America.
Our first printing was 10,000
copies, and we sold out.
After that, every printing went up
until we had a circulation
of about 40,000 or 50,000
every two weeks.
It was one of those magazines
that you bought because,
you know, you knew
your mother never would.
And it was another means of
bringing together and linking
a segment of society,
and bringing it cohesion,
and making everybody feel
that they were members in
the same kind of tribe.
In fact, it was the only one we
really believed in, the only one
that we thought was really
our newspaper, what we thought
was telling the truth
and being very factual.
And there's one column which
was wonderful,
which is the...
Censorship...
"Censorshit", it was called. And it
was all about censorship.
It was completely unlike
any other newspaper.
It was not about news.
It was essentially concerned
with what was then thought of
as being liberation, mental
liberation, physical liberation,
musical liberation.
This is scans from
International Times.
This is my play, with my actors.
And this was taken on the roof
garden of the Arts Lab.
I started, again,
a place like the Traverse,
but it was called
the Arts Laboratory.
And it had to contain the cinema
and a theatre and a gallery
and a restaurant and a tea room.
And I lived there with about
ten people, I'm sure illegally.
We weren't even supposed to
live there.
There were figures of the London
model world, music world,
film world, theatre world,
book world.
It was just a place that
people would go to.
Sometimes maybe
they would only go once,
but everybody felt compelled
to find out what was going on.
I remember the Arts Lab.
So, I went in and I asked...
He was there,
I think, behind the desk.
So, I said, "Hi. You remember me
from Edinburgh?
"I've got a one-act play
I want to try out
called In The Penal Colony,
by Kafka."
He kind of liked that idea.
He said, "Sure,
when you want to do it?"
This was my very first play.
"When?" I didn't know...
...when or how or if I could.
This was about March.
He said, "What about May?"
I said, "OK."
And I was a bit concerned,
so I thought maybe
I'll pop in the Arts Lab
and say, "Look, maybe
I can put it off to the autumn."
As I walked in, he was still
there. He's behind the desk.
And he said, "Oh, we have a poster
on the wall, opening May 7th."
And I looked at the poster.
And I thought, "Somebody's painted
quite a nice poster by hand,
"so I'd better do the play."
Because that's how I used to think.
I wouldn't do it, but because
somebody had made a poster...
...this inspired me and
provoked me to do it.
And the Arts Lab was an
extraordinary achievement, really.
I guess you could call it
the first arts center in London
apart from the ICA.
And I think Jim's philosophy was
pretty much to let people get on
and do what they wanted to do.
David Bowie played there,
practiced there.
It's where
Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls
was shown for the first time,
and I think it set a passion
for art centers,
which eventually opened up
all over Britain.
David Bowie was then called
David Jones.
And one day I was there
and he was practicing
in the back of the theatre.
It was amazing to hear it because
he changed his name afterwards
to David Bowie, but he was
there playing,
and Jim let him practice there.
My policy was try to
never say the word no.
For example, two women came to me
and wanted to do a ballet in our theatre,
and I said, "Well, the only time
that the theatre's available
"is at midnight." And they said,
"Will people come at midnight?"
And I said, "The theatre's
available. Let's do it.
"Let's try." It became a big hit.
Taxis were pulling up in front of the
theatre at midnight to see this ballet!
It's like a bird laying an egg.
We all look for a nest.
And this was a nest.
Jim Haynes created the Arts Lab
so every eccentric, every maverick,
every individualist, every artist,
every kind of fantasist,
even every lunatic
would say, "Here's a place
where I can lay my eggs.
"Here's a place I can give myself."
I'm sure Jim passes by.
I bet he goes to Drury Lane
and looks.
And maybe, if you put your ear
to the wall,
you can hear the sounds.
He had Happenings.
I mean, who knew what a Happening
was? At that time, a Happening
had a capital H
as well as a small one.
They held events and
then talked about them.
So, this created this endless
flow of what was going on.
14 Hour Technicolor Dream
was probably the greatest event
in London.
The organizers
of this country's first
major psychedelic event
chose May Day eve
for their all-night ritual,
and Alexandra Palace as
their temple.
They offered the Queen and
the Prime Minister free admission,
and charged
7,000 other people a pound a head.
What would you describe as
the purpose of this evening?
The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream?
Oh, well.
I think there's a new period.
We're starting a new era,
sweeping around
as a kind of reaction to various
things that have been happening
in the world. And it makes itself..
Manifests itself in love
and sweetness and kindness
and flowers. And so we're just...
We're just... We're not initiating
anything so much as
portraying what is happening.
I think people are concerned
with beauty and colors and flowers
and nature, and I think there is
a kind of aesthetic sense
about the whole movement.
What, for instance,
is beautiful about you?
What's beautiful about me?
Oh, um...
Oh, well, I don't know.
I'm very loving
and very giving, and...
I don't know.
I think that's beautiful.
I'm not jealous or possessive or...
I'm very tolerant of people
and time. I don't know.
I think that's a beautiful trait.
Do you think more and more people
will come to feel the way
that you do?
Oh, I hope so, yes.
There was an exhibition for John
and Yoko, a sculpture exhibition,
and they came to talk to me one
afternoon about the exhibition.
I think it was in the process
of setting it up.
And at the same time,
German television
came in to interview me
about the Arts Lab, and John
and Yoko gave him a brief interview
and that went out
on German television,
and the following week,
thousands of backpackers
arrived from Germany,
and in a way, I always said
that was the end of the Arts Lab.
They killed the Arts Lab.
I suppose at the end, in '69,
when the Arts Lab closed,
as John Lennon said,
"The acid dream is over."
Everything changed.
The '70s came along.
But I think what's
interesting about Jim is
that he's picked a slightly
different journey, his journey
is the fact that you can still visit
him every Sunday night in his house
in Paris because he believes
that everybody should talk
to each other,
which is a very 60s idea,
and it's very interesting
and he not only talks the talk,
but he walks the walk.
And I think he told me that,
since he started
doing those dinners,
I think 130,000 people
have been to dinner.
Oh, they've got you back, Jim,
you're tired, you should rest.
You're keeping me from my siesta.
Yes. But all in the name of...
- Friendship... - friendship and
posterity and all that crap.
And past remembrance,
remembrance of things past.
- Remembrance of things past.
- Yeah. Exactly.
I liked the 60s the best
because I was in my 20s, you know?
When you're in your 20s,
in your 30s,
your creative juices are flowing,
your ideas are flowing.
You can do anything.
I could do anything in the 20s.
When you get a little bit older,
you're slowing down a little bit
and you want to rest more.
I don't know.
I liked the 60s best of all.
Look after my friend.
Oof! Don't get old!
It's a pain in the ass.
- I've a knee problem.
- You've got a knee problem?
- Oh, yes.
- Oh, my God.
Oh, God.
Oof, oof, oof, oof, oof...
Here we go.
Paris, here we come.
One of the things that
I observed during the 60s
was the, um...
From the amount of anxiety
and frustration
that sexuality and sexual hang-ups
caused people
and towards the end of the 60s,
I wanted to...
...start a newspaper that would deal
both seriously and humorously
with all aspects of sexuality.
And one afternoon, I had tea
with a friend of mine from
Baltimore.
Just the two of us were having tea,
and I said, "I think we should start
a sexual freedom newspaper."
What?
- He said, "What?"
- That's what he said, "What?"
With a friend called Bill Levi
and Heathcote Williams,
Germaine Greer,
and others,
we started a newspaper called Suck.
After the first issue,
the paper became the talking...
...point of half of Europe
and half of America.
Everybody loved the paper.
But we knew that Scotland Yard
would close the London office
within weeks of
the first issue coming out,
which is what happened.
And the newspaper ran for the next
two or three years out of Amsterdam.
Coupled with the newspaper,
we started a film festival
in Amsterdam
in 1970 and 1971,
which was entitled
The Wet Dream Film Festival.
And this was the world's
first erotic...
...film festival.
We wanted to demystify...
...so-called pornography.
And encourage more and more
filmmakers to move away
from making violent,
movies of violence,
moving towards movies of tenderness,
erotica, etc.
Images,
written or visual images...
...of explicit sexuality is, in most
parts of the world, a crime.
Why? Why should it be a crime?
I mean, it's... We're all interested
in it, we all perform it.
We all do it.
What's wrong with...?
And then I said, I said,
"But showing a picture of violence,
a murder...
"..showing those same images
is not a crime."
If anything, that should be
and not the other way.
That's what I'm saying.
Thank you. That'll be all.
Welcome.
Where are you from?
- San Francisco.
- San Francisco?
- Are you going to Paris?
- Actually...
So how long are you staying
in Paris for?
I've been living there 45 years.
No kidding?
I went back to London on Tuesday,
but I'm living in Paris.
- Where are you from?
- New Orleans.
Oh, you're American?
- Yeah.
- No kidding.
It's very interesting.
People often ask me if
I will go back to America
or I will go back to Scotland
or I'll go back to London.
And I always reply that
you can never go back anywhere,
that life is a trip
through time and space
and you can only go forward.
So if I go to Scotland or London
or New York or New Orleans
or anywhere,
I'll be going forward to it.
We're all going forward
all the time.
I live in Paris for many reasons.
I never expected to live here.
I never thought I would live here.
I got invited to be
a professor at the university.
The first time they invited me
I said, "No, thank you."
I don't speak French and
I couldn't teach a university class.
And they invited me a second time
and said,
"You could teach
your classes in English."
And I said, "What?
I can teach my classes in English?"
They said, "Yes."
I was teaching sexual politics
at the University of Paris
for 30 years.
And I fell more and more in love
with Paris and this neighborhood.
Ay, ay, ay!
100 people coming tonight?
Time for people to start rolling in.
Perfect.
Come in, come in, come in.
The bar here, and a bar out.
So help yourself.
- Good evening.
- Good evening. What do I serve you?
OK. Yeah.
There's dessert!
There's dessert.
Come to the table
and get your just desserts.
- Jim wants no fruit.
- No fruit.
It's everything
you ever wanted in a bowl
that 100,000 people ate from.
- Thank you, Jim.
- You're welcome.
What's this? Oh!
You put your name on it?
Yeah.
Oh, and there's a point
in direction, obviously...
Le dimanche soir
chez Jim Haynes
Le dimanche soir
chez Jim Haynes...
37, no, 38 years later...
150,000 people have been to dinner.
Out of the dinners,
many people have become friends,
lovers, marriages,
babies, jobs, trips,
everything that human beings...
And this film, by the way.
All the people who are involved
in making this film
met on a Sunday night dinner.
Chez Jim Haynes, n'est-ce pas?
Chez Jim Haynes
De la Tombe Issoire!
A letter to my granddaughter.
Mimi Haynes, Brooklyn, New York,
24th of June, 2016.
Mimi, your grandfather
was born in Louisiana, USA,
almost 100 years ago.
Yourself started life
in New York, USA.
Your father and mother
met in Bangkok, Thailand.
We're all world citizens.
All human history is ours.
Our roots cover the Earth.
Welcome to the new world.
I only hope I live long
enough to see you flower.
We can take action.
We can change the world.
We can create.
We can do.
We, each and every one of us
has the power to take action to be.
Be brave,
be open to everyone and everything.
My father once gave me some advice
which I now pass on to you.
When you do
something nice for someone,
forget it immediately.
When someone does something
nice for you, never forget it.