Candy Clark and her Polaroid vision of New Hollywood: ‘Back then people would just pose, they weren’t so fussy about their photos like they are today’

Candy Clark and her Polaroid vision of New Hollywood: ‘Back then people would just pose, they weren’t so fussy about their photos like they are today’ In the 1970s, the Oscar-nominated actress brought her camera everywhere. Five decades later, she is dusting off the shots for her book ‘Tight Heads’ In the 1970s, the actress Candy Clark was a twenty-something new arrival to Los Angeles who, after getting a few gigs as a model in New York, had landed the roles of Faye in Fat City (1972) and Debbie in American Graffiti (1973), the latter of which earned her an Oscar nomination . Without realizing it, she had landed in the middle of an era that would become known — and mythologized — as New Hollywood.

It was the moment of the debut of directors and performers who would wind up becoming cinema legends — Steven Spielberg, Robin Williams and Anjelica Huston — contemporary artists like Edward Ruscha and writers who would soon become household names, like Terry Southern and Ray Bradbury. And wherever she went, Clark brought her Polaroid SX-70, with which she took some 87 photographs of the era’s protagonists. She saved the shots in a box in her home.



Fifty-five years later, she’s brought her Polaroids and New Hollywood nostalgia out for her book Tight Heads. In the fall of 2022, Clark, now 77, dug out her photographs to show them to archivist Sam Sweet, who was interviewing Angelenos for his project All Night Menu , the publishing house that has now put out Tight Heads . To him, the images were living memory.

For her, “I just had them as souvenirs,” she says in a conversation with EL PAÍS that took place over a videocall, speaking from her L.A. home.

It didn’t take Sweet long to convince Clark to turn her collection into a book in which each portrait is accompanied by the photographer’s impressions and memories of her models, adding up to the impression of a one-on-one chat with the reader. “I’m glad I showed them to Sam, he is the one that saw value in the pictures and the headshots. If it wasn’t for him, they would still be sitting in a drawer,” she says.

“ Hollywood is a history of men looking at women through cameras,” writes Sweet in the introduction to Tight Heads , which was published on March 15. “Never has the lens been turned on them by the ingénue.” The close-ups of Clark’s Polaroids, shot with natural lighting and without artifice, present a different take: her subjects become innocent and familiar, because they’re being shot “on equal footing,” says the author.

Sweet, who is also the book’s editor, puts it like this: “Rather than giving the illusion of impossibility, Candy’s photos place mythical figures on a tangible landscape. Her scenes suggest that the real dreamworks of Hollywood are not locked behind the gates of Paramount.” As one navigates through Tight Heads , Clark’s anecdotes are paired with photographs of the stories’ subjects.

Actor Jeff Bridges was her boyfriend, as well as the person who taught her to drive. She writes that Bridges liked marijuana — and her. And Kahlua, which makes her happy that they both still have their teeth.

You never knew what George Lucas was thinking, she writes, and Spielberg was Clark’s crush who never had any interest in her — they didn’t even get to first base, as she shares in the book. Director John Milius, she says, was always the center of attention and Harry Dean Stanton was beloved by all the great directors. One of the few women who appear in the book’s pages is Anjelica Huston, who to Clark was always intimidating, even when Huston was being friendly.

At a party, Clark met the artist Edward Ruscha and they dated for a time. Clark also spent time with writers like Terry Southern — who she calls loud, fun, and a heavy drinker — and Ray Bradbury, who she’d see at Beverly Hills’ The Daisy. Among Clark’s visual memories there is also Robin Williams, with whom she had a relationship and stayed friends afterwards.

In the book, she writes of his cocaine problem, and recalls that he called the drug “marching powder” before getting clean after she stopped drinking. Some of the people Clark captured on camera were friends, others she met in passing and a few others she’d see out at parties. But they all had a few things in common: they were young and trying to build careers.

“You couldn’t see the future and you couldn’t tell who was going to be a bank robber or a drug addict or a billionaire . Everyone was starting out at similar ages and going forward,” she reflects on the video call. Eddie Dodson, who also appears in Tight Heads, fell into that bank robber category.

“He had a nice vintage furniture store and I’ve always liked antiques and collectibles, and so I would go to his store all the time in Hollywood and hang out,” she tells EL PAÍS. In her book, she shares that Dodson had drug problems and later started carrying out bank heists — but that he was a pacifist and never resorted to violence. Nonetheless, in nine months, in her telling, he robbed 64 banks before going to jail for 10 years, getting out, and robbing nine more.

The reason why Clark always brought her camera with her was Andy Warhol . “He was my inspiration because he used to take [out] his Polaroid camera, though my photographs are totally different from Andy Warhol’s stuff, he used a lot of flash and I like the softness of no flash,” she says during the interview. She liked genuineness, and as a result, all her photographs are portraits.

“The most interesting part of a person is their face. Not necessarily their body or their hands or their clothes. I like to see their faces.

” Clark was able to achieve that naturalness in her photos because, in her words, “A pack of film was five or six or maybe seven dollars and you got 12 pictures, so you can’t really keep firing off. You tell everyone you capture how to pose so that they will look their best. Back then, people would just pose, they weren’t so fussy about their photos like they are today,” she says.

In Clark’s eyes, her Polaroid was capable of bringing people together. “It was kind of a magical camera, because it was instantaneous. It was like magic.

It took a few minutes to develop. The world had never really seen anything like the Polaroid camera until it came along,” she says. During her five-decade on-screen career, Clark has racked up more than 80 credits, among them The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) alongside David Bowie.

When the New Hollywood era came to a close, there were fewer opportunities for the actress, but she continued to work in television and played a role in the movie Zodiac (2007) and the new version of Twin Peaks (2017). Before the interview draws to a close, she recalls a moment from that long-ago time that does not appear in Tight Heads , but which was “one of the highlights of my life”: the 1974 Oscars. On that gala night, she was nominated for best supporting actress for her role in American Graffiti and attended on the arm of Jeff Bridges.

“You’re the center of attention and it was fantastic,” she recalls. Clark lost to Tatum O’Neal who, at 10 years old, became the youngest performer to win a statuette for her performance in Paper Moon . Tight Heads ’ 87 Polaroids are the testimony of a New Hollywood community of artists, actors, directors, screenwriters and producers with ambition, but who had not yet achieved global fame.

“It was a very creative time. We were young, we were hanging out and we were all starting on pretty much the same level,” sums up its author. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition Tu suscripción se está usando en otro dispositivo ¿Quieres añadir otro usuario a tu suscripción? Si continúas leyendo en este dispositivo, no se podrá leer en el otro.

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