-Sam Peckinpah
-Orson Welles
Very interesting men… I love reading or watching any of their interviews. I might like a movie or two, but that’s about it.
Robert Towne, who wrote the screenplay for Chinatown, among others, also directed several not very memorable movies. But his DVD commentary on Ask the Dust, describing the early history of Los Angeles, is a work of art in itself.
I certainly don’t like him better for his interviews than for his film work, but Billy Wilder was as good a conversationalist as a director. I had known and liked some of his films, but I got really aware of him by reading the bookHellmuth Karasek, a well-respected German journalist and arts critic, wrote about him that was based on interviews. It showed that Wilder was one of the funniest and wittiest persons of the 20th century, and that showed in his movies.
What a great writer…
He was Mort Sahl’s first guest - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3YlYRkR6I4
Jim Jarmusch is an interesting dude, as are David Lynch and Quentin Tarintino. I’d say their interviews are very interesting, though maybe not better than their movies. I’d love to see (or moderate!) a round table discussion with the three.
Kevin Smith is kind of the poster boy for this question, imho.
Werner Herzog makes good movies, but he’s more interesting than any of them.
Who else would agree to befilmed eating a shoe?
There are a couple of hour-long videos of him talking about movies. I think you’d like it.
John Waters.
Werner Herzog.
Spike Jonze
Barbet Schroeder
Not the hugest Brian DePalma fan (Sisters, Carrie, Scarface, Dressed to Kill all get about a 6.7 - 7.1 from me)* but I found him quite engaging in this Dick Cavett i-view.
How about the inverse?
John Ford made a lot of great films, but an absolute fucking goof to interview.
While some of Bogdonavitch’s questions might not have been what I would have asked, that in no way excuses JF’s willful asshole-ry, there.
*yeah yeah I realise that’s just a 7-year sample out of a +50-year career…
Well thank you for the tip, I have to check out youtube for that the next days, like almost all of us I have some time on my hands at the moment. I’ve already seen footage of Billy Wilder interviewed by the aforementioned Hellmuth Karasak, and also by others, and it was always a hoot.
How fitting for this thread: Arte TV will show “Kubrick On Kubrick” in about half an hour! I just stumbled on that, and given his usual aloofness, this could be a revelation!
You are lucky this is available in your country. You might want to record it! It seems very rare. So rare, it isn’t technically out until April 15th, but I don’t see any signs of it in the US.
It WAS revealing and very good. It was based on interviews the french film critic Michel Ciment did with Kubrick. Some of it had been published in print, but this was the first time the audio recordings were revealed. Those interview snippets were accompanied, of course, by clips from his movies, and current and vintage interviews with his collaborators and actors. You got a sense of his, well I don’t want to call it shyness, but reserve from these interviews (he spoke very softly for a man of his appearance), but also a warmth and most of all, his dedication for preciseness and care he took in his work.
I didn’t have the opportunity to record it, but it will be available on arte.tv for the next weeks (at least in Germany and France), and also will be rebroadcast from time to time in the next years on their regular program.
One thing I have to share from the documentary: there was no gossip at all in the interviews, that was never an angle, it was strictly about the work and intentions for it, and Kubrick never talked about his actors, with one exception: he was asked by Ciment why he cast Ryan O’Neal for the lead role in “Barry Lyndon” (with the subliminal subtext that it was a bad choice). He answered (from memory) “Well, I needed a good-looking actor for the role who could play a young man as well as a middle aged. Actors like Al Pacino or Jack Nicholson wouldn’t have worked.” So he kind of admitted that he didn’t cast him for his chops, and I think O’Neal’s performance is the only bad spot in an otherwise almost perfect film.
Thanks for sharing that… I’ll keep my eye out on the net.