TV Reviews : Sellars Shapes Own Verbal Reality in Moyers Interview

“For most people, the only reality is a verbal reality,” director/impresario Peter Sellars says early in a two-part “World of Ideas” interview with Bill Moyers, beginning tonight at 7:35 on KCET Channel 28. (Part 2 is scheduled for March 30 at the same time.)

Sellars is attacking our society’s exaggerated trust in words over other forms of expression. However, his own verbal manipulation of reality throughout the hour amounts to a highly revealing virtuoso performance.

For instance, Sellars attacks painter Norman Rockwell for distortions of detail that, he says, result in falsification. Yet in a lengthy art-versus-racism parable about the 1988 Festival of Pacific Arts in Townsville, Australia, Sellars manages to falsify nearly all the evidence he cites.

He describes the event as being staged in a wild and desolate place, with no money, as an aboriginal protest against the Australian Bicentennial.

In fact, Townsville is a popular tourist center near the Great Barrier Reef, the event is a pan-Pacific festival held every four years in a different country--and it involved performers from many cultures, not just aboriginals. Finally, the 1988 funding included private contributions, heavy subsidy by the 24 guest nations, plus a grant from the Australian government of $4.8 million Australian.

Moyers accepts Sellars’ Aussie bull (guff) without question--though, elsewhere, he does comment on Sellars’ rhetoric and even ventures a memorable career analysis of his subject: “You’ve been fired from more jobs than George Bush has held and you just keep going. . . .”

Southern California viewers will be especially intrigued by Sellars’ opinions of Los Angeles and his plans for the 1990 L.A. Festival. (He is the artistic director of the September event.) He sees the city as “either the ultimate Tower of Babel that will completely collapse in on itself or it’s the start of a new society.

“More different types of people are living here now than have ever lived in any city in the history of the world,” he says. However, he also finds Los Angeles “the most segregated city I’ve ever lived in . . . neighboring city-states with hostile border regions.”

His festival will reflect the diversity of Los Angeles, he says, and maybe help integrate it.

“If I had my druthers,” he says with a laugh, “I would send out all the tickets to the festival and send everyone the wrong tickets . . . and have people showing up at things they never wanted to see.” Who said talk is cheap?