David Thomson is one of the most accomplished and influential writers on cinema over the last half-century. Wedding an impossibly encyclopedic knowledge of film history with a singularly recognizable, assuredly graceful and daringly personal prose style, Thomson was prominent among the grand cohort of critical voices that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s—a golden age, not just of the movies, but of talking about the movies. Steeped in the glory days of the Hollywood studio system, the European Art House, and the American New Wave, from various prominent platforms these professional connoisseurs stimulated exciting conversations among cinephiles and argued implicitly (and occasionally explicitly) amongst themselves. Thomson is also, and this is a welcome trait, plain spoken in his assessments. (After reading a quite lovely essay of mine he suggested that I “underline the adverbs and ask yourself how many of them you could omit.” See the second sentence above for my recidivism.)
Thomson is also legendarily prolific, turning out fine books one after the other (accelerating to the remarkable pace of one per year), as well as a steady stream of welcome, informative essays, including, most recently, this one about Cary Grant. (As Randy Newman once said fondly of Elton John, “he would release three albums while I was brushing my teeth.”) It would be easy to recommend with enthusiasm more than a dozen of his books, but three in particular are must-reads, and must-owns, for any movie lover: The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, “Have You Seen…?”: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films, and The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies.
Introduced by a mutual friend, David and I have been corresponding for almost ten years, mostly about the movies, often about more than that (I suspect he would reject the notion that there was a difference between the two subjects). He also wrote a most excellent chapter on The Parallax View for my co-edited volume When the Movies Mattered: the New Hollywood Revisited (a book whose title was inspired by a Thomson essay). As our exchanges continued, as we agreed and disagreed, and poked and probed at various notions, we thought it might be interesting to develop a more formal conversation about the movies, life, and everything—which, after an initial stumble, we have now produced to our mutual satisfaction.
A central theme that weaves it way throughout our discussion is the enigma of trying reconcile, as Thomson puts it, “the intense, often overwhelming sense of another reality up there on the screen with the gradual understanding that it is not a reality.” Along the way we touch on, among many other topics, Orson Welles, a child’s eye view of Red River, Nicole Kidman (inevitably), James Dean, The King of Marvin Gardens, Mr. James Mason, and the legitimacy of certain acts of criticism.
The conversation can be accessed here. But if you’re reluctant to read it in its entirety (yes, I have someone in mind), consider this pearl of wisdom, singled out by my traveling companion, courtesy of Mr. Thomson: “It’s the notion that life itself exists as a series of shots that someone needs to identify, and that passing time is a matter of how you cut.”
