Gately, the wraith, and the figurants — "says he personally spent the vast…"
says he personally spent the vast bulk of his own former animate life as pretty much a figurant, furniture at the periphery of the very eyes closest to him, it turned out, and that it’s one heck of a crummy way to try to live.
Context
The pivot from film theory to autobiography: the auteur applies his own technical term to his marriage and family — a figurant "at the periphery of the very eyes closest to him," in frame but below the audibility triage. The camera-eye analogy is now running in reverse: instead of the camera being like an eye, the eyes of his intimates behaved like a camera with him in the background.