NET Festival; The World of Henry Miller

National Educational Television and Radio Center · November 23, 1970

A portrait of the well-known and often controversial American author Henry Miller, filmed mainly at his home in suburban Los Angeles. Reflective in mood, Miller reminisces at length in the program about his life and work, about the old days as an expatriate in Paris, and about his long and prolific career as a writer. The program shows Miller, surrounded by an entourage of friends, going about his daily activities swimming, cycling, playing ping-pong, taking a Japanese lesson from his Japanese wife, and painting. He is visited at his home by the British author Lawrence Durrell, with whom he conducted an extensive, subsequently published, correspondence. He is also visited by American novelist Anais Nin. The program visits the Lawrence Clark Powell Library at the University of California at Los Angeles, which houses a special collection of Henry Miller material journals, manuscripts, notes, etc. Miller himself reads extracts from his own works such as "Tropic of Capricorn," his travel book on Greece "The Colossus of Maroussi," the collection of stories and sketches "Black Spring," and the essay "The Staff of Life." In Paris, he is seen arriving for the opening of an exhibition of his paintings. He is also seen as he appeared on an interview on French television. "'Tropic of Cancer' is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word," Miller says. "It is libel, slander, defamation of character. It is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, man, destiny, time, love, beauty what you will." Miller believes his insight into human nature comes from his humble beginnings. "I was born in the street and raised in the street.... In the street you learn what human beings really are. Otherwise, you invent them. What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature." Reflecting on his "ten years of misery" as an aspiring writer in New York, Miller tells how he cribbed stories from magazines, changed the beginnings and ends and the names, and sold them back to the same magazines. Miller was disheartened with this country upon returning and has remained so since. "The country is really going to hell, and going rapidly," he says. "This country has the wrong slant towards life -- materialism, the scientific trend, the importance of the business world and the domination of that world over everything, the lack of aesthetics. "An artist who is non-commercial," Miller states, "has about as much chance for survival as a sewer rat." The World of Henry Miller is a production for NET by Robert Snyder. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche) A one hour piece produced by NET, it was originally shot on film in color. This aired as NET Festival episode 74 on June 17, 1969, as Realities episode 7 on November 23, 1970, and as Realities episode 17 on March 1, 1971. Realities consists of 40 episodes produced in 1970 by various producers.