Richard Beymer began one of the most surprising careers in the history of cinema as a child actor in De Sica’s Terminal Station in 1953, appearing alongside Montgomery Clift and Jennifer Jones. He is of course best known for his unforgettable roles in West Side Story and Twin Peaks. But what did he do between these two milestones? He largely dropped out of Hollywood and became an independent filmmaker. What’s even more unexpected is that the films are revelations. He began with an acclaimed 16mm civil rights documentary called A Regular Bouquet (1964) and then dropped entirely off the grid. His greatest achievement remains The Innerview, a feature-length experimental film that he ostensibly completed in 1973 and has been revising ever since.
A kaleidoscopic tour de force through the process of filmmaking, it’s also a journey through an inner landscape that resonates with the best of 1960s psychedelia. Featuring a stunning performance by lead actress Joanna Bochco, as well as the ever-charismatic Beymer himself, The Innerview offers a parallel vision to the classic American underground of the era. In one of its few public screenings it caught the attention of the “Los Angeles Times”’ Kevin Thomas, who wrote, “Moving beyond the mystery of love to the mystery of life itself, The Innerview’s flood of sometimes frightening, sometimes reassuring and always sensual images evokes a gamut of emotions – overpowering feelings of terror, despair and death mingling with a wondrous sense of oneness with nature and the universe.”
The original 1973 version is lost beyond recovery, as Richard re-cut not just his original negative but all existing prints, in his ongoing quest for perfection. He’s currently nearing completion of a new cut that integrates substantially different sound and picture. This new project by Lightbox Film Center in collaboration with Northeast Historic Film and the National Film Preservation Foundation restores the 1975 version of the film – the last he completed on film, and in many ways the culmination of his early vision of the work.
As Beymer said, “I never left the movies. I just made other kinds of movies.”

Ross Lipman