TALKING
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A culmination of more than ten years of work, Talking Movies is a collection of interviews with some of the most audacious and respected contemporary filmmakers of the present generation. Several of these in-depth discussions have already featured in publications such as Vertigo and Enthusiasm, and there are over fifteen interiews exclusive to this new book. The names included here are those at the cutting edge of cinematic style the world over- those whose work has defined how images are processed and appreciated by modern audiences. Directors frankly discussing their craft and the social, political and technological forces that inform it including Claire Denis and Bertrand Tavernier (France), Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Carlos Reygadas (Mexico) Hal Hartley and Richard Linklater (USA), Stephen Frears and Andrew Kötting (UK), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey), Atom Egoyan (Canada), Lucrecia Martel (Argentina) and John Hillcoat and Nick Cave (Australia). Jason Wood is a film programmer,
documentary filmmaker and writer. December 2006 chapter samples reviews 'Fascinating insights into the pre-occupations of an eclectic bunch from A (for Alejandro Gonzaléz Iñárritu) to W (for Weber, Bruce).' Quentin Falk, Academy, August 2007 'Film journalist Jason Wood has bundled some thirty-odd interviews with many of the world’s most famous or interesting art-house or international directors, many of which have gained international fame thanks to the Cannes Film Festival.The selection is very wide-ranging, from semi-mainstream directors like Stephen Frears and Guillermo del Toro, to very political filmmakers like France’s Robert Guédiguian and Turkey’s Nuri Bilge Ceylan, passing people like Bertrand Tavernier, Atom Egoyan and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu along the way. Wood is an excellent interviewer with a clear passion for his subject, and it’s no wonder that the interviews are in-depth and enlightening. The interviews date from the last ten years, and often focus on the then-current film of the director. This brings a historical perspective to the book...[It] provides a huge amount of information about both the filmmakers themselves and their creative processes, making it an essential read for all serious students of cinema. If there is one criticism I have, it’s that a few of the interviews are rather short. Which really is the highest compliment one can give.' movieScope Magazine, July/August 2007'Perhaps the most futile sin of all is envy, and to this I must plead guilty, as I am jealous of the career of journalist Jason Wood, author of Talking Movies: Contemporary World Filmmakers in Interview. Although I’ve had the privilege of interviewing many directors, my list doesn’t compare with the roster of moviemakers in this new book. A compilation of 31 interviews (some of them previously published in magazines such as Sight & Sound) with some of international cinema’s most significant directors, the book is most impressive and enlightening when it focuses on moviemakers seldom interviewed in English-language media like Laurent Cantet (Human Resources), Trnh Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya) and Carlos Reygadas (Battle in Heaven). The interviews with more established directors like Claire Denis (Beau travail) and Nicolas Roeg (Don’t Look Now) are excellent, too, but these figures have been heavily queried elsewhere. Moviemaker Magazine, July 2007 'In Talking Movies (****) Jason Wood interviews more than 30 contemporary filmmakers including Carlos Reygadas, Richard Linklater, Atom Egoyan, Lucrecia Martel, Elia Suleiman and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Wood’s project is wonderfully international in scope, and there are numerous good observations from his interviewees.' Tony McKibbin, The List, June 2007 'British Writer, programmer and filmmaker Jason Wood’s collection of 31 interviews with an international cast of writers and directors is a discerning look into the minds and motivations of some of cinema’s brightest talents. Wood’s Q&As, many reprinted from various outlets, provide interesting anecdotes about the creative process. For example, Richard Linklater reveals how he, along with the actors/co-collaborators Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, revisited their characters of Jesse and Celine from Before Sunrise in Before Sunset (as well as Waking Life). The director describes how they created ‘spontaneity’ by making the film almost like a documentary, one that ‘draws no attention to itself’. They ultimately created a film ’so tight…[it] was loose.’ Talking Movies also provides filmmakers the opportunity to discuss their influences. Clare Denis gushes about how working with Wim Wenders on Paris, Texas affected how she worked landscapes in her films. Atom Egoyan confesses that Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation had such a profound effect on him, he asked Coppola to sign his videocassette of the film when they were on the Cannes Film Festival jury together. And David Gordon Greene, when he describes how he pared away the traditional romantic movie clichés, leaving only the ‘scraps’ to create All the Real Girls, admits that, while American films of the 1970s were inspirational, so too was the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard. Wood is especially attuned to filmmakers’ use of music – such as the theremin which haunts the soundtrack of Lucrecia Martel’s The Holy Girl – and he pays specific attention to the relationship a filmmaker has with a particular composer. He pinpoints John Sayles’ long-term collaboration with (Philadelphia native) Mason Daring, and gets to the origins of Hal Hartley composing scores for his own films under the name Ned Rifle. Wood particularly needles Hartley about the pseudonym before the filmmaker explains that he was studying westerns and flooded with western sounding names. Such moments show Wood’s strength as an interviewer and his conversation with Guillermo del Toro is possibly the best in the collection. Discussing del Toro’s insomnia, and his interest in nosebleeds, the Spanish Civil War, and his connection to the film The Spirit of the Beehive, readers can understand many of the factors that eventually shaped Pan’s Labyrinth. The interview in this book took place three years prior to the making of that film. ...Readers and cinephiles should be grateful that Wood takes pains to showcase international masters along with several filmmakers who are still waiting to be discovered – Asif Kapadia, Samira Makhmalbaf, and Elia Sulieman for example... With luck, another collection, updated for a new crop of filmmakers, will be published soon.' Gary M. Kramer, Ritz Filmbill, May 2007 ' "I believe that the consumer society is the final stage of civilisation. This society can continue for another hundred years or so but I completely believe that this utilitarian, devouring way of life signals that civilisation is ending." These are the words of the great Jan Svankmajer during a 2003 interview with Jason Wood (the David Frost of world cinema?), which begins as an appraisal of his influences and working methods during the making of his 2000 film Little Otik, but rapidly evolves into a scathing critique of society at large. It’s an example of the trust that Wood is able to elicit from his subjects via his painstakingly detailed approach to questioning. This book accumulates interviews Wood has conducted over the past ten years (for publications such as Vertigo and the Projections series) with many of the leading lights of contemporary world cinema. Whether it’s the gift of hindsight or just plain luck, Wood seems to catch these directors at the apex of their careers, with, for example, Laurent Cantet discussing L’Emploi du Temps, Claire Denis discussing Beau Travail and Samira Makhmalbaf discussing Blackboards. Wood is certainly canny in his approach to interviewing, confronting each director on their own terms and with broad knowledge of both their oeuvre and personal history. This aids him in revealing not just the minutiae of cinematic craft, but the personalities of his subjects. You get the impression that a close personal bond developed between Wood and Atom Egoyan. By the same token, you feel that Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is somewhat, well, distant. Talking Movies is an indispensable volume that should be considered a set text for arts journalists (both
budding and professional) trying to master the methodology behind achieving the most revealing and David Jenkins, Time Out Magazine, January 2007 books of related interest |
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