David Thomson - 'A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of the Movies'

30:19And they said, come and talk to us. And they had a film class advertised in their prospectors but no one to teach it, so I was hired. And I mean, in a way, that was probably the most significant turning point in my life because I started teaching part-time there. And after a few years, they said, would you think of coming to the American campus to teach? And I did. And it was while I was there that I discovered Dartmouth, which was about 50 miles away from the campus of this college, which is called New England College. And that led to a job at Dartmouth, which was at that time a sort of heaven-sent opportunity.

31:23Scott Feinberg:I just want to mention for listeners a few of the things that I have gathered happened during the four years you were at Dartmouth because it's pretty interesting. You were talking about early film books before there were many of them. I imagine one of them that you might have read was by Arthur Mayer, right? Co-written by Arthur Mayer. I think that was, what was it, literally called the movies, I think? I think so, yeah. Well, Arthur Mayer was a very old man by the time I got there, And he taught a sort of general introduction, Film 101. And I co-taught it with what was the last time he taught the class at Dartmouth.

32:07And he was, I think he was in his early 90s, and he was a fabulous storyteller. and he would give the class lectures where he gave wonderful stories from his time in film distribution and then I would organize the class which was well over 100 students into discussion groups and I would lead some of those And it was a very exciting time, and he was a wonderfully friendly, lovable guy, and did not live much longer, obviously. But we had a great, great time there, and I remember he knew everyone. And at one lecture, he got Pauline Kael to come on from Massachusetts where she lived. And she gave a lecture.

33:11That was the first time I met her.

33:13Scott Feinberg:And another old-timer who I think you worked closely with there, who I think even maybe ran the film program before you became the chair, was Maurice Ruff, right? Absolutely. And he gave me the job, which was pretty remarkable because I had no degrees, but I had published the biographical dictionary by that time. And that's really what got me the job, I think. Plus, the way Mori Rapp took to me, liked me, welcomed me was tremendous. friend. And eventually, after a year or two, I took his position. He retired, and I became director of the film studies program there. The last of the people I've got to ask you about from the Dartmouth years is, it's really, you played kind of a pivotal role in the revival of interest in Michael Powell.

34:21Scott Feinberg:And I think it was, in fact, you brought him there. He wrote his memoirs there. and in fact it sounds like he was also the reason you did not remain there. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, quite an extraordinary thing. I got a letter one day, a handwritten letter from him, which had been redirected by my publisher, saying thank you for what I had said about him in the biographical dictionary. and we got into correspondence and I took the plunge and I asked him, would he be interested in visiting Dartmouth and giving a lecture, that kind of thing, you know, for a weekend, let's say. And he wrote straight back, when?

35:14We raised enough money for him to be a visiting professor and he came to Dartmouth and he actually made, with a group of students, a film of about 20 minutes, derived from Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy, which he was hoping he might be able to make as a full film at that time. Anyway, he and I became very close, and he was an example to me, And he sort of asked me once, he said, David, how long are you going to stay here at Dartmouth? And I said, well, I don't really know, but I need to make a living. And he said, well, I think you should think about leaving. And in due course, I did. and we long after, I mean not long after, but subsequently we became people who lived for a time in the Bay Area in San Francisco.

36:25But the great story I have about him is that he came to see me one Friday and he said, David, how do you get down to New York City from here quickly? And I said, well, there's an aircraft, there's a plane. There's a service that flies out of a small local airport here and takes you to La Guardia. So he went and he said, I'm going down to see Marty. He had met Scorsese a couple of years earlier, I think at the Telluride Film Festival, and they'd become friendly. And he went down, and he went down to see Marty editing Raging Bull. And there he was in the editing room with Marty and his editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, the great Thelma Schoonmaker, who is still with us.

37:27Yes. And, of course, he ended up marrying her. That's fantastic.

37:31Scott Feinberg:Fantastic. Well, the thing that I'm sure some listeners are screaming to themselves, how have I glossed over the biographical dictionary? And as you mentioned, that was in between the two academic positions that you held, or the two different. I wanted to just stick with the theme of academia for a minute, but I have to, of course, ask you a bit about what was originally a biographical dictionary of film when it was published in 75, but obviously later became the and the new and, you know, changed over the years. But how did this, this was initially written when you were still living and teaching in England.

38:14Whose idea was it and what was the original vision and just how did it become very different from that? Well, the idea was initially to have an encyclopedia, and there would be entries on technical terms, on national cinemas, and some on leading figures. and it was reckoned to be a big book in terms of length and I went away and started writing it and I found that I was sort of carried away by writing the biographical entries on people and I wasn't doing the other parts of the book and I showed what I had to the publisher and said, you know, I don't know whether you'll approve of what I've been doing.

39:25And they looked at it and they said, yes, we do approve. Go on like that. So that it became a book of biographical sketches of directors, actors, actresses, producers, writers, and a few other people. And I don't know. I mean, it was a book in which I discovered how to do the book, but discovered a lot about what really interested me most about film.

40:00And when it was first published in 75, it was greeted with virtual silence. And I think that people just weren't ready for the book, and it took a little time. And about nine months or so after it was published, there was really the first big review it had had in an English magazine by Gavin Lambert. I'd never met him, but I admired him and what he'd done as a writer. And later I met him and we became friendly. But it was a very positive review. And it sort of woke the film world up to the book. And it began to make its way. although a lot of the opinions in the book, and it was a very opinionated book, anyone who knows the book knows that very well, a lot of those opinions were startling and shocking to people.

41:13I mean, one of the things that got talked about most was where I said that Cary Grant was the most important actor of the films that I've ever had, which I think today is more generally acceptable. In 75, it was sort of outlandish. Anyway, over the years and six editions, which is what the book has had now, it became recognized as a provocative but useful and stimulating book. And it's certainly the best-selling book I've ever had. And it's a book that everyone, I think, thinks so, first of all.

42:02Scott Feinberg:Well, and I love how you've described it as somewhere between a memoir and a novel disguised as a reference book, a huge, untidy autobiography, and even a novel about a man trying to write a book. it's and and I there are two people who it sounds like were kind of key to the evolution of the book and the success of the book initially the or the original editor who's the one that told you to keep going with that new direction I guess was Tom Rosenthal and then you've said that the the first three editions of the books 1975 1980 1996 didn't really sell well but it was after you began working with Robert Gottlieb on the fourth, which came out in 2002, that it really took off.

42:45Scott Feinberg:So just if there's anything you want to say about those two gentlemen, I'd be curious to hear it. Well, Bob Gottlieb, I had written a sort of novel called Suspects, which Cannopf had taken on. I mean, they saw a promise in it. it was never a big seller, but they had taken it on. And I had met and got involved with Bob. And he was a really extraordinary person and obsessive. Whenever he found something that interested him, he wanted to know all about it. So the dictionary was sort of made for him. And he became the editor on the book. And for, I think I'm right, the third and the fourth editions particularly, we had bicoastal phone calls, endless phone calls, where he went through the text very closely, suggested other people that might be added to the book.

43:58And he did a lot to augment it and build it and make it into really what the book is today. And it was the most fruitful writer-editor relationship I've ever had.

44:14Scott Feinberg:And we should just note for listeners, I mean, it's kind of amazing when you look at the list of people who he had that kind of effect on. Everyone from, you know, kind of people who wrote about film like yourself and Janine Basinger through Robert Caro through... Oh, yeah. On and on. One last question specifically about the biographical dictionary, if I can. Are you always making notes and tinkers and things for a future edition, between editions, you know, so that it's not just a workload when somebody says, let's go? Or, you know, like, for instance, right now, it's been, I think, 12 years since the sixth edition.

45:00Scott Feinberg:Have you been working towards doing anything that might appear in a future edition? No. I'll tell you what's happened. The book, in its latest form, might be twice as long as the first edition. It had grown enormously. I'd taken in many more people to deal with in the book. and it's over a thousand pages now and I think to keep going at that rate, it would have been a book that would be hard to bind and hold in the hand. In other words, there would have to have been two volumes and I think that alarmed publishers and for good reason because we're talking now about the age of the internet where the reference part of the book, the list of films, are so easily found on the net that the book got sort of outdated technologically as a form.

46:15And Knopf, the publisher of the book over here, reached a point where they said, well, we're not sure it's economically viable to go on making this book bigger and bigger and bigger when already most of the people who would be potential buyers for the book have one edition or maybe two or even three editions because they've been keeping up. So they came to the decision, which was sort of pained me at the time, that no, they would not do a seventh edition. That meant that I was able to stop making notes in the way I had been. and I now see, which maybe they saw and didn't really want to tell me, that I was getting to be a little too old for the labor, which was fairly intense.

47:25So I was sort of freed from it in a way and there will not be another edition. But that has given me time to do other things.

47:37Scott Feinberg:I was going to say, you've been so prolific in the years since then. It's unbelievable. And I will just note that another previous guest of this podcast, a very different film historian who writes very differently, approaches it very differently, but might, there was a similar situation for Leonard Maltin, where they just said it doesn't make sense anymore to keep updating things. But if it's all right with you, I would love to spend our remaining time. I've just sort of grouped your other books into kind of thematic groupings or just somewhere. They seem to make sense to me. If I could ask you a question or two about these different groups, I'd love.

48:22Scott Feinberg:Thank you. You mentioned San Francisco. I know you moved there, I believe, in 1981. And you have said that, quote, upon arriving in San Francisco, I started to write a different kind of book, close quote. And I think that was a reference to Suspects, which you also mentioned. That came out in 85. And that others and you have sort of described as part of a trilogy of novels inspired by movie genres. There's Suspects in 85, Silverlight in 1990, and Connecticut in 2023. Can you just, you know, you've also said, I think the trilogy is the best stuff I will ever do. So how did it come about this sort of unusual style of writing of where it's really blending real characters and film references with novelistic style?

49:13Well, I had the feeling that film worked at a level of fantasy that very few people had found a way to describe properly. So a lot of film reviews and a lot of film writing wrote about the films as if they were novels. And they didn't get at the extraordinary visceral connection between sight and sound and meaning. And I had been thinking about that more and more. That's background to what I'm now going to tell you. A publisher came to me after the dictionary appeared and said they loved the format of biographical sketches. and thought that I was well-suited to it, which was absolutely correct.

50:19And they said, what about a dictionary of characters from films? And I was immediately turned on by it. It was not my idea, but I loved the idea. And I said, I thought about it, and I said, well, yeah, I think that could be terrific. But I don't think you can mix genres. So I think it has to be, the whole book would be characters from one genre or another. And film noir was the obvious one to start with. So I proposed a book that would be, let's say, 100. characters from film noir, pretty well famous characters from film noir. And I would write a biographical sketch that included what we know about the character from the films they're in, but it would be ready to go back beforehand and then afterwards, so that you would tell the story of a character as if the movie, the famous movie, was just one part of that life.

51:40And that turned into Suspects, which is, I mean, it's now called a metafiction. But as I was doing it, it seemed to me that it was fiction, but it was a kind of film commentary that got at what the films were most about. And that was written in the early 80s, and that was the turning point for me because I discovered by doing it a genre that was me, the absolute confusion of fact and fiction. and over the years I've done two more books Still the Light which is the Western and Connecticut which is screwball comedy and you know I as you just said I do feel that those are the the trilogy of books that I would sort of offer for the best I've done and probably will ever do.

52:59Amazing. Not everyone agrees with that, but that's fair enough. But, I mean, that's how those books came into being. And I do think, in ways I can't really articulate thoroughly, but I do think that the freedom and the daring in those books had a lot to do with California. I have never been happier than I am out in California. I just love being here. And my wife and I came to San Francisco when we thought, inevitably, we will actually end up in Los Angeles because it's the natural place.

53:43Scott Feinberg:That's what I always wondered. Why is San Francisco instead of L.A.? It was the sheer charms of San Francisco. And also, the realization that a few people told me is it's great to be obsessed with the film business and Los Angeles, but don't get too close. And I do think that if I had gone to live in Los Angeles, I would have ended up a screenwriter. And, you know, to be a screenwriter in Los Angeles is, it's a life of great frustration. Sure. Because you write a lot and only a little gets done and not necessarily done in the way you would most admire. and I write a lot. I write every day and I emotionally, I need to get the stuff out there and have people see it and I think that the life I have carved out for myself is determined by that really and I think I would have become, as many writers in Los Angeles do, I would have become embittered by the process.

55:04Scott Feinberg:Well, here's the next pairing of your books that seem to make sense to me. Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes and Nicole Kidman. So that's 1987 and 2006. There's a long gap between them, but both sort of a combination of the historical record again and then imagination. I mean, Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes, I think the chapters literally alternate. They do. They do. And then Nicole Kidman, which I think is under a pretty—you took flack for it because of—I mean, people did it. They're not—I guess it's almost its own genre of writing. So you spoke with Nicole, but not with Warren. And yet, it's just—let me leave it to you to describe what those books mean to you.

55:53Well, I mean, they're very much related to the impulse behind Suspects and the other novels. It's the interaction of the real and the dream. And I got the assignment to write a book about Warren Beatty. And it was to be a straightforward biography. And I discovered, as anyone who's written that kind of book has discovered, that the big figures and the sort of starry figures, and Beatty's a good example of people who, you can describe the facts about Warren Beatty's career, which are pretty impressive. But then there is a sort of a halo or a cloud floating above him, which is the atmosphere, which is the legend of Warren Beatty.

56:57And as I researched and got into it, and as it became clear that he would not talk to me, but I knew people who knew him very well. And I discovered, I felt, that this sort of vagueness, this uncertainty about what you knew about him and what you were imagining about him, it was crucial to him. And I wrote a book which, as you say, alternates between fact and fiction. and the publisher was, I think, dumbfounded is a fair way of describing it. And they were very worried legally about the book. And in the end, a quite extraordinary thing happened. And this was AD 7, I think, yeah. And they did not know whether they could approve the book legally.

58:01And I said, well, let me suggest this. I had got to know Warren's cousin very well, and he had helped me. And I knew very well that he was reporting back to Warren about the whole process. And so there was a kind of uncertain link of reference. And I said, I'm going to show the cousin the book, and I'm going to suggest that he shows it to Warren. And if Warren would just say yes or no, whether he's going to take action against the book or whether he's going to sit back and watch what effect it has. Now, this is unthinkable today, but in fact, the word came down, Warren's okay with the book. It didn't mean he approved of the book.

59:04Right. But he was not going to do anything to impede it or block it.

59:10Scott Feinberg:Oh, my God. Imagine if he'd said that he was. I don't know what would have happened. I don't know. Anyway, the book got published, and up to that point, I had never met him. I talked to him on the phone, but I never met him. Subsequently, I have met him, and we've had a couple of meetings, one of which where we talked for a long time. And, you know, I would say that we have a sort of a wary and distant friendship, but a real friendship. And anyway, the book on Nicole came quite a bit later, but it was in the same vein. It was trying to get at what she is and what she had done, but also about what she meant as an iconic figure.

1:00:06And this book was done a while ago when she was still... A young woman, if you know what I mean. I mean, she's gone on to a middle-aged career, and obviously she's going to become an old lady. And she's interesting enough and smart enough to make those periods as interesting as when she was a very young, very hot, sexy woman. I'm not saying she isn't sexy still. But I did get a lot of flack for it and teasing, which was based upon the idea that I had a great crush on her. I liked her very much. I don't think I had a crush on her. Not that I don't have crushes on people, but I don't think.

1:01:06Scott Feinberg:Angie Dickinson, right? Well, yeah, there you are. There you are. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, the second to last group that I've got to, I've sort of put together are, I guess, more, more traditional, traditionally formatted biographies, right? So there's Showman, The Life of David O. Selznick, 1993, Rosebud, The Story of Orson Wells, 1996, and Marlon Brando, 2003. These are very interesting and the backstories are interesting. I know with Showman, you got to know the Selznicks with Rosebud. Very interesting to get into, you know, Wells and Citizen Kane, which I know you have kind of, it seems like, complicated feelings about.

1:01:51Scott Feinberg:I'll just quote that about Wells, you said, I fear I'm like him. And, you know, it seems like you said Citizen Kane you first saw in 1955. I've seen it many times since. You said, I'm not the only person in the world of film who will tell you about the way their life was changed the first time they saw that film. But it seems complicated because you've seen it dozens of times. You've taught it. You've written about it in many of your books. You acknowledge its greatness. And yet you were advocating ahead of that 2012 sight and sound poll that it not continue to be chosen as the greatest of all time.

1:02:28Scott Feinberg:So anyway, I could go on and on, but I just wonder, the more kind of traditionally styled biographies, do you or did you enjoy writing those as much as the more kind of surrealistic almost ones that we just talked about? Well, for one way, the biggest of the other books, the biggest project was The Life of David Selznick, which was, I was asked to do it by his two sons, Jeffrey and Daniel, and they gave me access to this incredible Selznick archive, which is down in Austin, Texas at the Ransom Center and it was clear that it was the project that was going to take years it took five years and it involved work in the archive but it also involved interviews with so many people who had known Selznick and that was a very conventional biography that begins at the beginning and goes to the end.

1:03:40It's very thoroughly researched, backed up with source notes. It's a conventional book about a man who had enormous success early in his life and then really increasing failure. and what made the book personally so compelling was that I got to know the Selznick family. Irene Selznick, David's first wife, when I first met her, said to me, you know, if you're going to do this, you're going to have to become part of the family. and I sort of said well sure yeah but I didn't think about it and I didn't understand how complicated that would be because I did become very very close to the three of them and I mean you know I lived with them in the sense that I would talk to them daily almost and spent a lot of time with them and And Irene Selznick, who died just before the book came out, she was a major figure in my life.

1:05:07I mean, just in a personal sense. She was a sort of maternal, even grand maternal-like figure, and a very complicated person, and quite sad and lonely at the end of her life. but enormously entertaining, and we got on very well. So anyway, you know, in doing that book, I think I showed, well, yes, I do understand what a conventional biography is like, and I think I know how to do it. And the Wells biography is not quite as intense or thorough as the Selznick one, But doing the Selznick book, I was never a resident of Los Angeles, but I spent a lot of time there. And it was the period in which I got to know people in the film business well.

1:06:09and I had friendships with Bogdanovich and Rafelson, Robert Towne particularly, and Phil Kaufman. My understanding of what it was like to be a filmmaker in Los Angeles, I think owes a lot to that time and to meeting so many people.

1:06:33Scott Feinberg:Interesting. And the final grouping, I have to just say personally, I think these are the books actually more than even the biographical dictionary through which I kind of discovered and really got hooked on your work. And I guess we could say these are maybe more in the essay format, in a sense, very long essays that, you know, are sometimes literally essays, sometimes chapters of larger book. But like, for instance, Beneath Mulholland was 1998. I really liked that. It might have been the first one that I came upon. Then The Whole Equation, which I also thought was terrific. That's 2004. Have You Seen a Personal Introduction to a Thousand Films?

1:07:20Scott Feinberg:2008. The Big Screen, the story of the movies and what they did to us. 2012. How to Watch a Movie. 2015. And then now this most recent book, which by my count, I believe is number 43. I'll have to double check again. 43, 44. A Sudden Flicker of Light. So I wonder, it seems like these are more about the role of movies and Hollywood in the world. You once said, quote, broadly speaking, the way film has changed us is my subject, close quote, certainly more than ever, maybe in the most recent book that's about to come out. I think it seems like you've even taken it as a personal reflection on you've said whether you feel you've spent your life well, close quote, being so immersed in movies and how they might have changed us as people, our values, our society.

1:08:20Scott Feinberg:And so I just wonder if you, it's not that you weren't thinking in any of these terms with the earlier things, but it seems like that's increasingly been a focus of yours in the last few decades. So is that overanalyzing it or has something happened that made you think more about that? No, I think that's a very acute account of what's happened. And I don't know how to put this. There is a way in which film buffs watch old movies over the years, over the decades, as a habit. and I know several people who proudly watch The Godfather like once a year. And I thought I detected, and this may be unfair, but it prompted me, I thought I detected a way in which they were sitting down and watching the film, but they were not really experiencing it.

1:09:37They had stopped living in it and with it. They were just renewing an old pleasure. And it seemed to me that they were therefore missing the way in which there is something dreadful about The Godfather. It's, let us say, one of the best made films ever. It did hugely well at the box office. It won prizes, deservedly so. But it is about a shaming fantasy, which is, I think, the guys who watch it, and it's really a guy's film, the guys who watch it want to be in that gang. They find the security and the companionship so attractive and so appealing that they dream of being Corleones. And I think that is a terribly dangerous situation.

1:10:47And I've been prompted particularly in this line of thought by the realization that we have a president who clearly, in my view, is acting as if he's in a movie. And it's like a version of The Godfather. I mean, it is the emperor as a gangster. And I don't think that process is one that film buffs can simply write off. I think it's in the nature of the medium, where so much pressure is there to fantasize.

1:11:30Scott Feinberg:Well, it's also the anti-hero thread that's always been there in our entertainment going back to Charles Foster Kane and before that. But, I mean, it's interesting you mentioned or you refer to Trump. Trump says claims, although I don't know if I totally believe that he's even watched it, that Citizen Kane is his favorite movie. You could see why he would, on certain levels, relate to Charles Foster Kane, but not be self-aware enough to understand why that's not necessarily a good thing. But let's just say there's Charles Foster Kane through the Corleones, through the platinum era of TV that we're essentially in the midst of right now.

1:12:11Scott Feinberg:And Tony Soprano, Walter White, Don Draper, Marty Byrd. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's something that I think has to be noted also talking to you that you've been treating TV with increasing seriousness for decades. I just got to mention a few things because people should – this is not just blowing smoke. But I mean we're – when you were at Dartmouth, so that's back in the late 70s, I think you proposed the TV course. That was crazy at the time, right? That was a radical idea. You had an entry for Johnny Carson, I think, added to the third edition of the Biographical Dictionary. Then quite a few more people known for TV in the most recent edition, 2014.

1:12:54Scott Feinberg:You wrote in the whole equation that HBO is the best old-style film studio in operation and that the great modern movie is The Sopranos. You wrote the books Breaking Bad, the official book in 2015, television, a biography 2016, and remotely travels in the binge of TV in 2024. Your 2022 Sight and Sound Top Ten list included the TV limited series, The Underground Railroad, and the documentary series, The Vietnam War. in 2020, you told the LA Times that you were amazed at, quote, how close Ozark has come to being the great American novel of this moment, close quote. And you really write admiringly about TV in a sudden flicker of light.

1:13:40Scott Feinberg:So I guess that's a long way of getting to the point of asking, is David Thompson now more of a fan and or believer in the future of TV than movies? Well, I mean, we're kidding ourselves if we don't understand that Ozark, say, or Babylon Berlin, or, you know, name any of those long-form series. They're movies. They're like old-fashioned serials. And you follow them for 40, 50, 60 hours. and we found a way of making films that virtually go on forever and the audience loves them, loved them. Now, I don't think that richness of those years is quite sustained now. I think that something about long-form television rose and now it's subsided a bit.

1:14:40But, I mean, it seems to me that you can't think of making a list of the great American movies of the last 30 years without including Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Ozark, several others. They are the great works. They're beautifully made in the way in which they're shot and acted and written. Very high-quality work. But they're about the real country in a way that the movies simply don't match these days. And, you know, a time came, as you say, where for me it became increasingly clear that what was being shown on my television screen was actually more compelling than what was being shown on movie screens.

1:15:38And it was silly not to take account of that and recognize it. So I have spent more and more time watching those things and writing about them. And I think they're central to the modern experience.

1:15:59Scott Feinberg:With the last minute, if I may, we like to close with just sort of what we call rapid fire. Just a sentence or two that comes to mind in response to just a potpourri of random things, if that's okay. So you are so unbelievably prolific. What's the secret to that? I mean, do you treat writing like a nine-to-five job every day? Or how are you able to be so prolific? I don't sleep very much, which is a problem. But it gives me more time. And also, for decades now, I have had issues of depression, manic depression, that nothing treats them better than writing. And composing, for me, is not just composing a sentence or a book.

1:16:52It's composing myself, my inner self. So I do it to stay well. and to stay alive, really. I mean, there's something profoundly organic about it for me. I have to write. And really, if I don't write two days in a row, I get very edgy and I'm likely to get very depressed and so on and so forth.

1:17:23Scott Feinberg:Fascinating. Okay. Where do you like to write? Oh, I will do it anywhere. I mean, obviously, I spend most of the time sitting at the desk where I'm sitting talking to you today in my office, which is very untidy, but it's an expression of me, and it's arranged the way that suits me best. But I can write anywhere. And, you know, I mean, sometimes an idea will occur to me and I just, I have a notebook or I get a scrap of paper and just write something down. So it goes all the time. That sort of anticipates. But the next question, which is on what do you write? I guess you make notes on whatever's around, but do you handwrite?

1:18:14Scott Feinberg:Do you sit at a computer? or where are these coming together? Well, for years, I believed in nothing less than handwriting all the time. And I still believe in handwriting. I think there is a way in which the movement of the hand and the arm does something to simulate ideas. Just practically and professionally, now I write much more with a keyboard than I used to. I'm a very bad typist. I'm a one-finger typist. And I make a lot of mistakes. But that leads me to this, which I think I'm more a rewriter than a writer. I write a first draft passionately, headlong sort of thing. And there's an awful lot wrong with it beyond the mistyping.

1:19:18But I get to be me, I think, in the rewriting of going over what I put down and saying, no, that's no good, that's awful. Drop that, change that. And it's in the rewriting that I think I deliver, if I do deliver something that is personal and sometimes effective.

1:19:44Scott Feinberg:Is the writing and rewriting the result of outlining however strictly, or is it just pouring out and then organizing it?

1:19:58I would say that I spend a lot of time thinking about what a book is going to be, and I have a sort of framework in my head. I don't often have it done on paper. And yes, I start to pour it out. And I then look at it again and I say, no, that's not good. But I can see what the guy is trying to get at. And so then I go back to it and I start to refine it. And that rewriting is a constant process. And usually at the end of the process, I just have to surrender the book because the publisher says, look, if we don't have it now, we're not going to publish it. And so I deliver it and turn my back on it in the sense that I stop thinking about it in that way.

1:20:59but I could easily keep rewriting a book forever, I think.

1:21:05Scott Feinberg:Do you like or avoid distractions? Is it some people like to have it kind of broken up or they need things going on that take them away from it? Do you, you know, if somebody walks in the room when you're working and wants to ask you something, is that a good thing or a bad thing? That's okay. I find that I can't really work writing for more than about four hours at a time. So, you know, anything else that comes along. I mean, for instance, tomorrow morning I will watch the soccer and I like to go walking in the hills around here And I have a very, I mean, this may sound absurd, but I have a very lazy streak which I protect and believe in.

1:22:02I like to sit and do nothing at all sometimes, and I think I'm quite good at it.

1:22:11Scott Feinberg:Now, what do you do? This is one that all the rest of us who wish we could be as talented and prolific as you would need an answer to. What do you do if you get writer's block? I haven't had writer's block for about 50 years. Well, I need to know the secret to that. My only answer to that would be doing it every day. Yes. I mean, for me, it's like having breakfast, taking a shower. It's something I do without thinking about it. I know I'm going to do it in advance. I know I have to do it. It's like, you know, every now and then I have to go to the bathroom. Every now and then I have to write. And maybe one product is not that different from the other.

1:23:03Scott Feinberg:Almost at the end here, but I have to ask, as far as the dictionary, who is the most challenging person to write an entry about? Oh, gosh, that's a good question.

1:23:16well I would say Bresson I'm a huge lover of Bresson but I've always found it very I found it hard to write about him and to say what I feel about him and I think he's been the most challenging yes I mean two people Bresson and Bunuel and I adore both of them but I find them hard to write about.

1:23:44Scott Feinberg:Who's come along since the last edition of the book in 2014 who you would be most excited to write about if there were to be another edition of the dictionary? Oh, well, Paul Thomas Anderson, obviously. I did not like the most recent film nearly as much as some of the older ones. One battle after another. Yeah, but I think he had a period. and I hope it will return, where he did just incredibly interesting pictures. So, I mean, he's someone I would really like to write about. I've not written about him at any length, and I would love to do that. And a lot of actors who've come along, you know, I mean, I think Brad Pitt is in the book, But what has happened to Brad Pitt as both an actor and a producer and an enabler, quite fascinating and a really great career.

1:24:47Scott Feinberg:Who's the best living writer on film not named David Thompson? Oh, there's so many of them. I mean, I would say immediately jumps to my mind, I would say Jeff Dyer. Now, Jeff writes about a lot of things, which is why he writes so well about one thing and another. But his book on Tarkovsky is a great book. And, you know, we're friends, but I'm just in awe and admiration of what he does. there's another person who is sort of I think the David Thompson of music and I wonder, I believe you two may know each other and I wonder if you've influenced each other and that's Greal Marcus we know each other very well we're sort of family friends, Greal and Jenny and Lucy and I we see each other a lot and I think we're very close to them and Greal has been a huge influence and I revere him, but I love him as a person.

1:26:01And yes, I think we're trying to do the same kind of thing. And I feel very close to him, yes.

1:26:15Scott Feinberg:Last three rapid fire. Are you writing a book now? Yes. Can you give us any tease about what it might be pertaining to? Mickey Mouse. Really? Yes. Okay. I hope the answer to this next one is no, but is retirement something that has any appeal to you? Absolutely impossible. I'm prepared to die, but I absolutely refuse the possibility of retirement. And finally, many years from now when we are all gone, how would you like to be remembered? I don't want to be remembered I mean, you know

1:27:01I mean, the answer to that would be through children and grandchildren

1:27:08Scott Feinberg:And people can, hopefully if they if they still know how to read they can go and check out the books, right? Yeah, sure One of the concerns I know in a sudden flicker of light this most recent book is that it seems like people's curiosity and proficiency with reading is not increasing. I'm afraid so. Thank you for giving me so much great material to read over the years, and thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. Well, I thank you. It was a wonderful conversation.

1:27:47Scott Feinberg:Thanks for listening to Awards Chatter. We really appreciate it and would really appreciate you taking just a minute more to subscribe to the podcast and to leave us a rating and review on your podcast app. And to follow us on Twitter and Instagram, where our handle is at Awards Chatter. On those platforms, we announce upcoming guests and provide details about special live recordings of the podcast that you can attend. Until next time, thanks again for tuning in.

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