For those of you who enjoyed our recent conversation with David Thomson in the Los Angeles Review of Books and found yourself saying, “Gee, if only there was more”—well, there is! We’re very happy with the studio version of our discussion, but there was a ton of footage left on the cutting room floor. What follows are some deleted scenes, with Thomson emphasizing how the new Golden Age of Television was influential in reshaping his attitude about directors, as well as discussions of Howard Hawks, Elaine May, Carl Franklin, Wim Wenders, Nicholas Ray . . . and another disagreement about Alfred Hitchcock.
Jonathan Kirshner: [You were talking about how our relationships with directors had changed . . .]
David Thomson: Yes. What triggered me into seeing this was that I would watch movies, and I felt that American movies, particularly, were declining. But I would watch stuff on what I call my TV screen, and a heresy emerged, which was that that stuff seemed superior. Breaking Bad is a great American movie, if very long – much longer than movies normally are – but extraordinary, not just as a crime narrative, but as a story about how family values and individual values are breaking down—subjects that most movies do not take on in the same way. I didn’t know who directed it, because that was in the nature of watching TV series, and it still is. You don’t read the credits or esteem the directors in the same way. There are directors on those shows and some people have done a lot of work for a lot of different shows and they’re effectively anonymous. So that made me think that there was a reason to reassess what a director is.
JK: I agree that we appear to be in a Golden Age of Television, and we are not in a golden age of American film. But regarding television, let me argue this: it is not a director’s medium, because the constraints are established by norms of episodic television production. Such shows tend not to have the same director over and over again—they’re more commonly for hire. And when they come on for hire, they are bound by the structure that’s already been provided by the institution of the show: the characters, the setting and even the visual style. So if you’re going to go shopping for a directorial stamp on a product, the Golden Age of Television might not be the place to look.
DT: I understand what you’re saying. But then I think you’re getting back to a definition of movie shows – movie entertainment – that existed for quite a long time. Because there was a long period in which your description of the director on TV would fit [any number of] directors on the big screen—Michael Curtiz would be one of the most obvious ones. He directed a ton of films. It’s not enough to say he was versatile, it’s true that he was a director for hire. It’s hard to find that many of the films he did were films where he said, “I want to do that. I insist on doing that. I’ve been here long enough. I’ve proven myself. Let me do that.” He really didn’t take that kind of vocal vested interest in his own work . . . I don’t think Casablanca at Warner Bros is as great a film as what came a year or so later, To Have and Have Not. And there you are knocking up against the fact that [Howard] Hawks had a character that insisted he did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do something. Whereas I don’t think Curtiz wanted more than a job—and I don’t put him down for that. I think the idea of doing a job and doing it well is a perfectly respectable part of this business. And there are a lot of directors who are very respectable figures. William Wyler made a lot of good films . . .
As you say, episodic television does not seem to be a director’s medium. It seems to be a medium that belongs to the writers or the show runners who are sort of strange producer figures, although they write a lot—and sometimes direct episodes. And if you say that what we used to call television is in a great period, it has to do with the way in which the various talents, who combine on a film, have found a way of working. So I find the example of episodic television in itself fascinating. In big movies there is a kind of archaic vanity in movie directing that I find weird these days, whereas a lot of the people working in episodic television, they know they’re collaborating and they’re happy with it. I know, you can say that the Sopranos is David Chase, and I think he kept a very firm line on it all. But look at all the people who were able to flower in that format. It’s like a studio system and I like that model. I think it’s been very productive. What we’re talking about here is an endless area of dispute . . .
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JK: Regarding Hitchcock – again, my own loyalties are bubbling to the surface here – in the book you describe Lifeboat as “a foolish show off picture.” Are you sticking with that story?
DT: Yeah, I think it’s silly. It’s a sort of idea that he might have thought of, and thought after an hour of not actually doing it. But, he did it. And I find it a very labored film, a very hackneyed film on the subject of war involvement. In that sense, I think that The Lady Vanishes is much more intriguing film because there’s a lot of commentary in The Lady Vanishes about a British attitude before the war that is torn between appeasement and doing the tough thing and I think compared with The Lady Vanishes, Lifeboat is—
JK: I think you’re exactly right about Lady Vanishes. I watched it recently and had never before noticed the startling extent to which it, and therefore Hitch, injects himself into the appeasement debate. This movie was released I think just weeks after Munich and it is just an indictment, at a time when appeasement was extraordinarily popular, still.
DT: Yes. And also, that ties in to this, which is very interesting about Hitch—the way he left Britain at that time. I don’t think he was unpatriotic, but it was a very deliberate move towards safety for him and his family and I think he probably had a good deal of guilt over it later on.
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JK: Any discussion of the history of directing must confront the fact that it’s essentially been a boy’s club. Especially in the period on which we’ve been focusing. There were very few female directors – Elaine May comes quickly to mind, and we could name others, especially in Europe, nevertheless—
DT: Yes, of course, you’re correct. The Golden Age was the time when women really were not allowed to make films, and mercifully we’re in a time of great change. But there’s a question that arises out of this. A great deal of what we think of as the golden age of film depended upon a male point of view. Now, there were always huge drawbacks to that, and great damage, great social damage that came from it. And it’s going to be extremely interesting to see whether a female gaze can sustain the cinema as a mass medium, or whether it may become a more niche oriented medium rather like the publication of the novel, let’s say. But I just don’t quite know whether female cinema – and there is some great female cinema now – is capable of keeping the medium a mass medium, and it’s an awkward question to talk about because you get into political correctness all too soon. But, culturally, we are still nowhere near coming to terms with the destructiveness of the male gaze and you only have to look out to our larger political world at the moment to see how dangerous it is.
JK: I think your point about female directors touches on two distinct issues. One has to do with film as a mass media as it once was. And I think it’s the case that that will never come back. I mean, I don’t know, they have these superhero movies, which I’m not well versed in, so I can’t really speak to that . . . But the other question you raised is more fraught, which I guess a political philosopher would say touches on questions of essentialism, and to whether there is something different about a female director. My guess is, if most people saw May’s Mikey and Nicky, they would think it was directed by a man. And in fact, some might write angry essays about the misogyny and toxic masculinity they found in the film. But despite the obvious influence of a certain Cassavetes-style of filmmaking, this is an Elaine May film from its origins, written a full decade before she even knew Cassavetes, long before he and Falk were attached to the project. So I really do think that even though there was certainly the brilliant performances by those two men, and it’s a story about their friendship, nevertheless it’s her film—and I don’t want to over-genderize the necessary outcome of having a woman in the director’s chair.
DT: I understand that. But let me ask you this, because you clearly have enormous admiration for her as a director—what do you think happened to her career?
JK: Well, I think that’s where the deeply gendered question comes in—are women who are given the opportunity to direct or produce or whatever and then have a flop—are they less likely to be given that second chance than a male director, because obviously her directing career was derailed. On the other hand, in this particular instance, she did go wildly over schedule and then make off with a million feet of film, and swiped a few cans from the studio, and, legend holds, hid them in her therapist’s office. So there was possibly more going on in that particular case, regarding studio wariness about signing her up for the next film . . .
DT: The thing that intrigues me about her a lot is that I feel her directorial career – and I probably admire her a little less than you do – but I feel it’s absolutely unresolved. Whereas the things she did with Mike Nichols are some of the greatest examples of that kind of thing that we have. And, I think that a lot of their sketches, or whatever you want to call them, are just endlessly fascinating and funny and appealing and really difficult and searching, and I don’t feel that her movies that she directed got into that world. I mean, in three minutes, within one of those sketches. I feel she can get at the nerve system of her time and I feel in those things, although he’s very good, she’s the driving force actually. But about her movies I feel so much more uncertain. It’s as if that it’s the idea of doing what was essentially a radio sketch, really, in many ways, she understood instinctively so well. Whereas, I’m not sure that I feel she understands movies in the same way. What would you say to that?
JK: I think that’s a sustainable argument. Unfortunately, I’m going to come across the broken record here in making the case for Mikey and Nicky. I think anyone who can walk away having made that movie has to be recognized as someone who can make a great movie. I do think that it is distinct across the scope of her accomplishments, but I also I think it’s one of the great films of the 1970s—and that’s saying a lot.
DT: Yes, absolutely, and a great subject for further discussion.
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JK: Carl Franklin burst on the scene with what for me was an astonishingly brilliant film, One False Move. I understand there’s a lot of respect for Devil in a Blue Dress and other films he’s made, but I think, almost like Elaine May, One False Move is just a towering achievement that stands above his work – it would stand above most anybody’s work – yet he hasn’t had the a type of prolific career that followed, film after film, though I am not familiar with the specifics of his overall professional trajectory.
DT He’s been doing a lot of episodic television lately. I think One False Move is a great film. I’ve met him, but I don’t know him. I don’t know how he would want to explain what happened. I mean, I do think [some directors are] a lot better . . . at asserting [themselves]. Another part of being a director is how you handle yourself in business . . . Some people are brilliant visionaries as a filmmaker, but they’re not good at doing that other stuff. People close to Orson Welles always said “don’t let him meet the money people.” Because he will offend them straight away, because of how much he needs them and how much he resents that he won’t make the kind of compromise that you have to do to get $500,000 or whatever to make the film. He refuses, not just by decision, but by innate personality.
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JK There was a passage in the book in which you comment on Wim Wenders’ Lightning over Water—the movie he made with a dying, an obviously dying, Nick Ray. Am I right to sense that you thought that was indeed a picture to be disapproved of?
DT Well, I haven’t seen Lightning over Water for a very long time. That’s probably because I feel I don’t sort of want to see it. And I did feel when I saw it there was a kind of suspect tact or taste in it. I felt he had sort of exploited Nick, and it’s not that the film is not very striking, and it’s not that I think Nick didn’t go along with it—because nobody, nobody dramatized Nick Ray more than Nick Ray. But I found the film uneasy and it made me feel uneasy. And I don’t mean that to be an attack on Wenders. It’s just something I felt awkward about. I think Wenders has done great stuff and he’s actually a much more consistent director than Nick Ray was.
JK Speaking of Wenders, let me give a quick shout out to Alice in the Cities which is probably my favorite of his films, and very special.
DT Yes. He’s very good and very adventurous, exploring ways you would not have thought of. And it’s a career that’s changed a lot over the years. I mean, he’s an example of a man who has gone on a long time and has not lost his energy and his edge and his interest and, I think, much the same is true of Werner Herzog. Herzog’s made some bad films now and then, but you never know when he’s going to make something that’s just amazing, you know, and I think he and Wenders are a little alike in that way and I admire them very much. I mean I don’t want to dwell on this, but Ray at the end, was so wasted and so tragic that it was very easy to turn him into a melodrama, and I felt that Lightning over Water did that a bit. But, you know, you’re also there getting into all the problems attached to sort of cinema verite documentary and its relationship with what has happened. And that’s a huge issue. Which, fortunately, we don’t have time for.