From Bart Prince

Written by: Bart Prince

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Photo of Bart Prince (left), Palmer Boggs and Bruce Goff (right).

In an age during which architecture has become defined essentially as 'that which falls off a building in an earthquake' as depicted by look-alike internet images and in the 'profession of architecture' by a series of meaningless awards and continuing 'education' courses which have more to do with money than design, filmmaker Britni Harris has chosen to focus the past four years researching and making a film about the life and work of architect Bruce Goff.   Goff, my friend of many years, dedicated his life to creativity and the search for beauty in all things.  At the age of 16, he corresponded with both Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, both of whose work he greatly admired, to ask their opinions about 'architectural education' and what they would suggest for a young man who wants to become an architect   Sullivan replied in a letter that he had spent the better part of his life trying to live down the 'education' he had received and wouldn't recommend making the same mistake he had.  Wright sent a short telegram which stated simply, "Go to school and lose Bruce Goff".  Goff realized at an early age that as Victor Hugo had written, "ART can no restatement" and as the French composer Claude Debussy once said, "When imitation comes, beauty goes".   Thus, tempting as it was to copy the beautiful work of others he admired, he began his search for himself in defining his life and work as it came from within and he created individual works of art unlike anyone before him.  Harris' beautiful film reminds us of what the true ART of architecture can and should be when it grows from the imagination of one who dedicated his life to it as a true artist. 

Bart Prince, Architect

The Japanese Pavilion of Art in LA designed by Bruce Goff and completed by Bart Prince

A house is a house is a house

Written by editor Claire Edwards

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In college, my poetry professor Dr. Grant Jenkins told me about palimpsests. Essentially, back in the day, they were pieces of writing that were written on pieces of parchment on which earlier pieces of writing had been erased—though traces, ghosts of the earlier writing remained. And so the past and present lived together, though separated by years.
 

In telling the story of Bruce Goff and his architecture, I found it best to view his story and his buildings through this lens. Goff had an ideal of architecture he called “the continuous present.” It’s this idea that we never truly start our work when we start it, but that, rather, we sort of tune into some frequency and become a part of a narrative that has no beginning and no end.

So how do you tell the story of a house?

A film—especially a documentary—is like a house. It’s never truly finished. It grows and evolves as it’s passed down through generations. It takes on new shapes and forms as it’s exposed to new light. Is this the plan of the director? Who can say. As much as we can control the narrative as we shape it, we can never follow our creation around, explaining it, apologizing for it, or imposing our view of it on others.

So too with houses. An architect can shape and design his buildings, and he can even control, to an extent, the way that people live or work in it. But even as the architect passes on into that great mystery, his work still stands, and people pass through it, and they change it as they need to. For the architect, then, they provide a sense of eternity—a physical manifestation of their time on earth. It’s some tangible thing that shows we were here and we are, in our own way, still here.

How do you tell the story of a person?

When Britni first approached me to edit this documentary, I was excited, but a little reticent. I’ve never been a fan of bio-documentaries, and in the early stages, I was worried we were all a little too enamored with our subject. Bruce Goff’s story had a sort of underdog allure to it that any filmmaker—especially in Oklahoma—would find irresistible. He was an outsider in his time, and history has all but forgotten him, as he doesn’t conform neatly with the architectural movements of the mid-century.

And so he was reduced to a blip, a man out of step with time and space. In Oklahoma, we find this erasure of our heroes especially egregious. We own our iconoclasts, our visionaries, our boundary breakers, because if we don’t, no one else will, and if WE can’t provide a sense of eternity for them, then who the hell will preserve our memory? Are we all just doomed to become traces on some future generation’s palimpsests?

But Bruce Goff was not a hero. He was an iconoclast, sure, a visionary, definitely, but he wasn’t a hero, and I don’t think he would have wanted to be seen that way. To quote Goff himself, “each individual soul is a dark forest where we must walk with the utmost precaution.” He was a warm, funny, weird, wonderful human, but he was still human. And to be human is to be tragically, beautifully flawed.

This is a film that seeks to carry on the story of one flawed human being, and, in so doing, to hopefully reveal there are stories within all of us, mere mortals though we are, that deserve to be told.

The Journey

Written by director Britni Harris.

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Exactly four years ago this month I found a single spiral in north east Oklahoma that would lead me and many people on quite a journey. That expedition took us all over the country as we tried to stitch together a patchwork of various stories about Bruce Goff’s life.

Bruce Goff and one of the many cats he admired. 

The other day I was having a discussion with Bart Prince, and he told me the parable about the blind men and the elephant. He said, “The blind men approach an elephant and each comes in contact at a different part of the animal. One finds the trunk and decides that an elephant is like a snake.  He is certain he has the right idea about an elephant.  Another reaches out to grab the tail and ‘knows’ the elephant is like a rope, and on an on.  One finds the side of the elephant to be a wall, another determines that the leg is a column or a tree; the ear is like a fan.  I'm sure you have heard various versions of this tale.” So we began to discuss how the story of the blind men and the elephant was very much like the nature of this documentary.  Since Goff died in ’82 his current story can only be told by those who interacted with him at various times in his life. Many of you were a part of helping weave this story together, but we had to find you all first.

Interview with director Britni Harris, featuring producer Meg Hickey and Assistant Director Christa Whetstone. (photo by Eli Hull)

We have spent so much time meeting so many and documenting meaningful and invaluable moments. One of our first interviews was with Jerri Bonebrake, Bruce Goff’s personal secretary while he was teaching at the University of Oklahoma. At that point in the production we had barely scratched the surface of who Goff was, but she was one of the first to truly give us insight into the man himself. Everyone’s voice has guided us forward and connected us to another source.  As we’ve gone on, we’ve realized there is an unnamable bond that links all Goff’s students, followers, and clients together.

As time passes we lose those that knew Goff best. As Goff’s remaining followers we have a great responsibility but also a great opportunity to preserve his life’s work. I ask you all to consider making this a community effort to keep Goff’s story alive and help in our efforts to finish this documentary. Without your support and financial backing this film would not be a reality. Our goal is to paint an honest portrait of this man and the mark he left on our landscape.