VIK YOU SPOKE OF THIS PREVIOUSLY. WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF TRADITIONAL CULTURE, FOR WHICH RHYTHM IS INFERIOR TO MELODY AND HARMONY?
BYRNE Actually, it's harder to note rhythm, harder to put it on paper, than it is with melody or harmony. And, sometimes, if you can't get a good drummer, you can't just use a drum-machine. For classical musicians, things only exist if they can be written down. But one can't simply write down the rhythm and play it.
VIK WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE FACT THAT MUSIC BY CAETANO VELOSO, GILBERTO GIL, MILTON NASCIMENTO AND JOÃO GILBERTO ARE LABELED AS "WORLD MUSIC" BY THE GRAMMY?
BYRNE Of course it's ridiculous, but understandable. They don't know how to classify it.
VIK WHAT GOT TO YOU THE MOST IN YOUR VISITS TO RIO DE JANEIRO AND SÃO PAULO?
BYRNE [Thinking] The first time I went to Rio, I didn't like it. It was fun, but I didn't really enjoy it. It took a little time, two years, perhaps, for me to really like it. As for São Paulo, I think I still can't get a general notion of what's going on there. I've been to so many different places! I went to forró clubs, whose patrons are northeastern Brazilians... Places that are very different from one another. São Paulo is so huge, and doesn't have a clear center.
VIK IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT WOULD IT TAKE TO IMPROVE BRAZIL?
BYRNE I don't know.... I remember reading, a few years ago, that Curitiba was a well-run city, where things worked properly. But I don't know whether this model would work elsewhere, as Curitiba is in southern Brazil. It's formulae may not work in northern cities.
VIK WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS?
BYRNE The greatest influences on me were those who weren't really photographers, like Ed Ruscha and William Eggleston, conceptual artists who use photography to document reality.

VIK WHAT DO YOU THINK OF SEBASTIÃO SALGADO AND CARTIER-BRESSON?
BYRNE I haven't been very influenced by them, but I like their work very much. Really. Salgado's photography is more emotional, warmer.
VIK WHAT ABOUT CINEMA? DO YOU IDENTIFY WITH ANYONE?
BYRNE [Thinking] I don't know.
VIK MENTION SOME FILMS THAT CHANGED YOU OUTLOOK ON THINGS.
BYRNE When I watched European and Brazilian art films in the early 1970's, I was impressed. [Jean-Luc] Godard, Glauber [Rocha], things like that. It was like listening to Rock'n'Roll for the first time. Suddenly, I realized that cinema could be anything. After that, I think I felt the same with authors from subsequent generations, like Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee, from New York, and European and Japanese filmmakers. Another generation that made very cheap, very good films.
VIK DID YOU EVER THINK: "IF THEY CAN DO A FILM WITH LITTLE MONEY, SO CAN I?"
BYRNE Yes. It's not a major corporation doing it, it's people like you.
VIK WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO MAKE THE ÎLE AIYE DOCUMENTARY, ABOUT BAHIA'S CANDOMBLE, IN 1989?
BYRNE I'd already been there. I was always passionate about the African influence on the New World. For me, this is one of the century's most important histories: African music and dance being brought into the New World and spreading to the rest of the globe. There are other African rituals, like Voodoo, but Candomble seems to me to be better centered and preserved. The others were more occult and, as a result of the repression, became distorted. In this sense, Candomble is the most beautiful of all.
VIK AND WHAT WAS THE FILMING LIKE?
BYRNE The cameraman was Brazilian, a great filmmaker, and heard some scary stories about people who were shooting film on Candomble, Umbanda or something like it and pissed somebody off. Then this somebody cast a curse on them and they became blind! He was getting nervous and it was weird for me to have to keep saying "calm down, it's going to be all right."
VIK DO YOU BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS IN CANDOMBLE?
BYRNE Oh, yes. In a way, it serves to reaffirm my belief in the fact that there are powers and influences and ideas, whatever they may be, floating around, for which we can find no rational explanation.

VIK YOUR 1986 TRUE STORIES FILM ALSO HAS A LITTLE OF THIS. HOW DID YOU FIRST THINK OF MAKING IT?
BYRNE It started with me collecting trues stories. I gathered images and visual ideas that I'd draw or cut out from a magazine and paste to the wall. I was also collecting tabloid stories, things that might be true, but might also not be, like the guy that put a billboard in front of his house asking for a wife. This one was on the Weekly World Times. And they always include something that goes beyond simples smut, something with dramatic appeal, like the woman that was bedridden from twenty or thirty years.
VIK WHAT WAS YOUR INVOLVEMENT WITH FILM BEFORE TRUES STORIES?
BYRNE Prior to that all I had done were video-clips. But I had directed and edited them myself, so I knew the process. Then there was the video of our show, Stop Making Sense, directed by Jonathan Demme. And Jonathan was always open, letting me stand by near the editing station, things like that. I lost the fear of 35 mm. Before that, those big cameras intimidated me. After I thought "maybe I can do something." But I started working with images, not stories. Only after having images, people and situations did I work on the story with scriptwriters. It worked out fine.
VIK DO YOU HAVE ANY SCRIPTS READY IN A DRAWER?
BYRNE A few. Some are not very good, and that's why they weren't shot. Others are too expensive.
VIK DO YOU INTEND TO CONTINUE FILMING?
BYRNE I'll keep trying. But maybe I lack the patience and will some people have. Some try to make a movie for ten years. I'll never do this. I don't have to suffer for ten years.
VIK WHAT MESSAGE DID YOU HAVE IN MIND WHEN YOU RELEASED, IN 1995, YOUR FIRST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK, STRANGE RITUAL?
BYRNE I wanted to mix banal, ordinary things with more exotic ones and show that the banal, ordinary things could be more exotic than the exotic ones.
VIK WHAT ABOUT YOUR BOOK YOUR ACTION WORLD [1992]?
BYRNE I wanted to make a book that looked like those corporations make. They promote conventions and publish books to show how great things will be in the next half-year and how much money they'll make.