LEM DOBBS

Interviewed By

Dan Schneider


























First Posted 1/25/2010

http://www.cosmoetica.com/DSI21.htm




1

Lem Dobbs Interview by Dan Schneider

DS: This DSI is with a screenwriter who has participated in some of the
best films to be released in the last couple of decades, Lem Dobbs. Thanks
for agreeing to discuss your work, career, opinions, and views on life and
especially film. For those readers to whom the name Lem Dobbs draws a
blank stare, could you please provide a prcis on who you are: what you
do, what your aims in your career are, major achievements, and your
general philosophy, etc.?

LD: No one has ever equaled My name is John Ford, I make Westerns. I
wish I could say the same -- which gives you some idea of my aims and general
philosophy -- and how minor my major achievements have been.
I suppose I became a screenwriter thinking I would write the kinds of movies
that had always been made and join the great Hollywood machine that
produced them, only to find my career coincident with the creative and
economic decline of what we used to call the film industry.
Now that the counter-whiners are on alert, primed to point out that there are
exciting things happening in South Korea, and that the latest if not the last
Manoel de Oliveira film is sublime, and any year that produces UP cant be all
bad ... we may proceed. Although interviews by their nature are backward-
looking.
Roger Ebert once interviewed an aging Tony Curtis, who said when he first
came out to Hollywood he stayed at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset
Boulevard -- a tradition I followed. Young Tony Curtis -- or Bernie Schwartz as
he must still then have felt -- went down to the pool his first morning in the
sun, jumped in, swam its length, climbed out the other side -- and sat down to
do the interview.
Life and money both behave like loose quicksilver in a nest of cracks. When
theyre gone you cant tell where, or what the devil you did with em. (Name
the film!)

DS: Before we get to the biographical stuff, lets get basic. How do you
define your job, as a screenwriter? Do you see your words as eminently
more malleable than a poets or novelists, since film is a group artistic
effort, and last minute edits will inevitably affect your words?

LD: Ive always thought of it as describing a movie on paper, thats all. There
are scripts Ive read, or once did, by favorite writers, that have never been made
into movies, but I feel like Ive seen them. You should be able to see the
movie when you read a script, even though there arent actors, theres no
music but somehow its washed over you as if there were. But this also
presupposes the right sort of reader, a dying breed, someone who might
actually know what a movie is and be able to visualize it. The lack of
2

knowledge and experience -- of taste -- of people in the film business has
become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The generally accepted page count has
decreased significantly from what it used to be. As costs have increased. So
scripts judged a fast read now -- a man, his wife, his vampire mistress -- on a
plane -- are often mistaken for good. NORTH BY NORTHWEST or 2001 A
SPACE ODYSSEY require a little more cognitive effort, from everybody.
Edits, last minute or otherwise, presumably affect the work of real writers,
as well -- Raymond Carver, to name but one famous example -- but in other
disciplines, at least, their words are supposed to be the final product. Because
of the collective nature of filmmaking, a screenplay is naturally more malleable
in one way or another -- and often should be, but neednt always be. Fealty to
a good script doesnt necessarily mean limiting a directors or an actors
expressiveness. You can have a literary movie, heavy with voiceover
narration, where you feel the actors have been instructed to speak rich and
allusive dialogue precisely as written. But were also thrilled by great films
made in a seemingly more casual or improvisatory manner. The trouble from
the screenwriters perspective is that a film can be sometimes faithful to the
script as far as whats written, but tonally all wrong, hopelessly miscast, with
inappropriate music, clueless production design, crippled and compromised in
countless ways large and small. You might go to great lengths, for instance, to
evoke the light and landscape of the Hudson Valley -- only to see them film it
on the cheap in Romania with eastern-European extras as Native Americans.
Which was par for the course in the former German Democratic Republic, but
by no means the only place walls are forever being put up in the world of
moviemaking.

DS: Despite the group nature of film work, are there times when you have
put your foot down and insisted your words be performed as written? And,
even if spoken verbatim, a good (or bad) actor can twist a words meaning
to mean almost the exact opposite, no?

LD: Screenwriters cant insist on lunch, let alone adherence to their precious
script, and if they put their foot down will be sent to their room pretty swiftly.
Speeches imagined in the writers head as being delivered breathlessly at
breakneck speed (and, God forbid, even so indicated) might be slurred by an
actor at a snails pace, and pregnant pauses where none were intended can
render a scene lifeless.
(I may have dreamt it, but Im pretty sure Michelle Pfeiffer once said
intellectu Al in a movie -- and her co-star wasnt Pacino.)
In KAFKA, the marvelous actor Ian Holm -- if hes to blame -- changed one
word which, in a climactic summing-up speech, changed the meaning of the
entire movie, if you ask me. His character declares himself in favor of a mob
because a mob is easy to control. Its the purpose of the individual he finds, as
3

written, questionable. But in the film what he says is that the purpose of the
individual is always -- pregnant pause -- in question.
Since hes playing a mad scientist, the original phrasing is more in keeping
with his project -- the revelation of the films mystery, such as it is -- which is
to lobotomize individualism. Hes saying, in effect, I know perfectly well what
the individual human mind is all about, and I dont like it, I find it suspicious,
so Im working to change the equation. But by saying in question instead, he
neutralizes his own argument and legitimizes his quest for knowledge. He
becomes an ordinary, inquisitive man of science trying to find out what makes
the human brain tick. Whats lost is, of all things, the Kafkaesque
(questionable also carrying a hint of the interrogation room).
Now, this may very well be nitpicking -- the director certainly thinks so -- it
may even be a better choice for the character, if you want to look at it that way.
But it wasnt my choice and heres the thing -- I bet you it was no ones choice.
It was probably just the way Ian Holm happened to say it while the camera was
rolling on that day in that take at that moment -- and no one cared or even
noticed. I could be wrong. I wasnt there. It certainly wasnt malicious; no one
says, Lets fuck up the script. Maybe there was discussion or debate about it,
maybe Ian Holm said, Would you mind if I said it this way, it feels more
comfortable to me But Id be surprised. The point is, it doesnt cross
anybodys individual mind for a second that the writer might actually have
selected the words he put down on paper with any thought or deliberation
whatever -- with the luxury of time and contemplation to do so -- rather than in
the midst of film set pressure and chaos. It goes to show you, its not only the
massive or truly destructive changes routinely wrought on scripts. These
relatively tiny details can drive you -- well, me -- crazy. Let go.
In Steven (Soderbergh)s interview book with Richard Lester, theres a story
about working on a script with Pinter and how desperately at the last minute
he needed to add a comma.

DS: I think thats an excellent example, and I see what you mean, as the
changed term does fundamentally alter the meaning of the moment, if not
the prior film (one Ive yet to see, however). In cinema there are noxious
terms and ideas called film theory and auteur theory. The former is
pretentious and the latter rather manifest, therefore redundant. What are
your thoughts on the two terms, as applied to the actual task of
filmmaking, and in their historical context?

LD: Film theory has been a pretty dry well from the outset and since the days
of Eisenstein/Pudovkin, etc. would seem to have had little overlap with actual
filmmaking practice. Find a studio executive or a contemporary director whos
heard of Noel Burch or Laura Mulvey and you will have found the Missing Link.
Well, you might find that at a movie studio, regardless. (An anthropologist did
once write a book about Hollywood.)
4

Im not altogether disdainful -- though Noel Burch himself ultimately realized
how irrelevant he was. There are pleasures of a kind to be had from reading
about the Male Gaze, or YOUNG MR. LINCOLN through a Marxist prism, or a
Jungian analysis of VERTIGO, or Orientalism and the Other in THE
ADVENTURES OF HAJI BABA -- but then what? Whats the next fad in film
studies? Whereas auteurism lasts forever. Theories dont make movies, men
do (oh, all right, men and women). They also make theories. Only individuals
matter, and a critical response is only as interesting as the responder. In the
hands of a Robin Wood, auteurism, Marxism, feminism, sexual politics -- are
less important as critical apparatus than as personal autobiography. He
doesnt just dish up cold theory; its all filtered through his voice. PERSONAL
VIEWS, the title of one of his books, could serve for all of them. The view is
what moves us, whether its the filmmakers or the critics, whatever theories
may have informed it. And you do want an informed view, one born of deep
knowledge and experience: a complete view. Thats what an auteur -- and
auteurism -- provide.
Its true of all theories of art, isnt it? Theories of acting Plenty of
anonymous people have studied the Method. So what? Where did it get
them? Marlon Brando would still be sui generis. Steve McQueen may have
trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse -- you can see how much more
mannered he is in early TV performances -- but later learned not to worry
about what his character would do, only what Steve McQueen would do.
Robin Wood could be writing about RED RIVER from a gay perspective or a
Freudian perspective -- we only care that its Robin Woods perspective,
committed as he always was to the Leavisian tradition, a criticism of
evaluation, of personal taste and judgment, not establishment pieties or party
dogmas -- all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our
souls.
You do have to keep an open mind and look at individual movies in their
totality -- but try telling Howard Hawks his films are homoerotic, or that
theyre products of the studio system, try writing about his Westerns from the
saddle of genre studies, or separating out the contributions of Faulkner and
Furthman and Leigh Breckett and Raymond Chandler to a shooting script
Hawks then didnt shoot. Who cares? Theyre Hawks films! Of course he
deserves the possessive credit, you Writers Guild buffoons!
The Auteur Theory is clearly the most practical and, as you say, self-evident
way of looking at or reading movies, and its mind-boggling after all these
years to still have to listen to screenwriters rail against it without the least
notion of what theyre talking about. Its so funny/sad their undying belief that
only an Ingmar Bergman can possibly be an auteur because he writes and
directs his own scripts. No one ever made a good movie from a bad script is
their other favorite clich -- now and forever blind to the power and the glory of
Sam Fuller, Edgar Ulmer, Douglas Sirk, and countless sows ears made into
silk purses by distinctive, individualistic directors, including many movies that
5

have no script at all except -- in Writers Guild parlance -- as represented on
the screen.
My favorite movie, THE GREAT ESCAPE, good luck finding a physical copy of
a screenplay that resembles the finished film, cobbled together as it was with
spit and chewing gum -- by the director, working with various writers -- day by
day, moment to moment in the tumultuous making.
It never occurs to the anti-auteur knuckleheads that theres a reason Alfred
Hitchcocks THE 39 STEPS is far better, richer and stranger, and more
timelessly entertaining, than the multiple remakes directed by people youve
never heard of, and that this has rather more to do with who Alfred Hitchcock
was than whoever the respective and often numerous scriptwriters were,
however intelligent or skillful or helpful they may have been -- or even the
author of the original source novel.
One of the famously early outraged in this line was Gore Vidal, scandalized
upon seeing Un Film De Franklin Schaffner emblazoned all over a work that
he, Vidal, had originated. But the fact is, the filmography of Franklin Schaffner
has a thematic and stylistic consistency -- and more good movies in it -- than
Vidals typically haphazard grab-bag of a screenwriting career. If Paris was
burning, which biopic would you snatch from the vaults of the Cinemateque --
PATTON or CALIGULA? Which planet would even the French be obliged to save
for posterity -- the one with the APES or Jerry Lewis? Im quite fond of Michael
Ciminos -- yes, you heard that right -- THE SICILIAN (the Directors Cut,
naturally) and its too bad the Writers Guild denied Vidal screenplay credit. Id
also like to see John Colliers THE WAR LORD -- before that fantastic and
interesting writers script -- which was perhaps fantastic and interesting -- was
supposedly eviscerated to become a not uninteresting Franklin Schaffner film.
But this is the real world of moviemaking, and thats the way it goes.
I have elsewhere made the case for Charlton Heston -- i.e., the Movie Star --
as occasional or quasi-auteur. Its a question of who has the power to shape
the movie to his will. And the camera. Because the visual, the image, will
always predominate. The writer may indicate or suggest ways of seeing, but he
is not the final arbiter, even of his own credits. German Expressionism, Soviet
montage -- these theories may have helped make Alfred Hitchcock, but its
Alfred Hitchcock who makes his movies.
Auteurism, finally, is of value because it recognizes the primacy of artists and
personal expression over academic formulas and dogmas. If screenwriting is
imagining movies, its helpful and inspiring to imagine what a particular story,
subject, film, might be if it were Robert Aldrichs or John Hustons or Sam
Peckinpahs or Frank Borzages, Fritz Langs, Blake Edwardss, Anthony
Manns, Wyler or Wilders. Or a touch of one or another, mixed from a palette
of influences. These names conjure up cinematic worlds -- distinctive styles,
attitudes, avenues, and approaches. Screenwriters simply do not have
comparably extensive or cohesive bodies of work. Having said that, wait till
you get me going on the subject of my favorite writers.
6


DS: I agree about Edgar Ulmer, although even his B films have good
screenplays. They may not be Bergmanian, but I think there is a basis for
the quality in the screenplay. Ulmers Bluebeard, as example, has some
well scripted scenes of a puppet theater that presages, as example, a
similar scene in Bergmans Hour Of The Wolf. And re: Heston, I agree, as
well. He is maybe not a great actor, technically, but he is a powerhouse
onscreen presence. You HAVE to watch the screen when hes on. Anyway,
Ive interviewed philosophers, like Mark Rowlands and Daniel Dennett,
before, and have found that oftentimes thinkers and artists are
ideologically bound to an idea (religious, political, ethical, philosophic)
above the art- i.e.- they are more concerned with what is said than
how; the noun rather than the verb of art. Which sort of writer are
you? Do you use your art to declaim from on high or to craft even a silly
premise or scene into the best that it can be? In short, are you an artisan
or a visionary?

LD: Oh, completely artisanal, emphasis on the art, and I dont mean with a
capital A -- I mean the medium. I have absolutely nothing to say when I
write a screenplay. Thats the difference between the two terms you italicized
in your previous question, isnt it? And why the auteurists have always come
down so hard on poor Stanley Kramer -- content in the absence of form.
Ideological art is a contradiction in terms. The agony and the ecstasy. My first
allegiance is always to the movie, or The Movies. Politics, religion, philosophy,
these are just layers of interest to be applied, you might even say exploited, as
desired, to color or add depth to the material. I love the left-wing spaghetti
westerns written by communist Franco Solinas and I love the screenplays of
right-wing John Milius. I see no contradiction in this. Theyre movies. And
they can explore all areas of life, thought, and behavior. How could I ever turn
my back on Ken Loachs beautiful film KES, so important in my childhood, so
influential to so many of us -- no matter how much I despise the mans
loathsome brand of English leftism? I can even make use of his film POOR
COW, to suit my own artistic purposes in THE LIMEY. Is this crass or cynical?
Or is it interesting -- if it enriches character and narrative and meaning and
subtext in a given film? Ken Loach films are famous for their form as well as
their content. I put someone in a Ch T-shirt in THE LIMEY because I thought
it said something about his character (and tied into a larger political thread,
which was largely excised). I dont like Ch, but I like Steven Soderberghs film
CH. I also own a copy of Richard Fleischers film CHE! Because cinephilia
knows no bounds. And no matter what you think, movies are basically all the
same -- unless youd rather watch a 24-hour static shot of the Empire State
Building.
Movies are pretend, as far as Im concerned. An extension of childhood play.
Writing is a way of not having a job and enjoying a life of total freedom.
7

Hollywood/American filmmaking, in any case, does not support any real
ideological freight beyond a generalized, shallow liberalism. Genuinely
political, spiritual, philosophical, intellectual cinema -- thats what people
mean by foreign. Solinas was smart enough to realize that movies are so
capitalistic by definition as to make a mockery of any attempts at Marxist
messaging, directly or by stealth. As Billy Wilder said of the Hollywood --
originally the Unfriendly -- Ten, Only one of them was talented, the rest were
just unfriendly.

DS: I agree on Stanley Kramer. Its A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World still makes
me piss my pants. Heaven has a spot for him just for the couple hours of
joy that film contains. On a tangent, since I mentioned philosophers, you
have stated that Walter Benjamin was a big influence on you. Who was he,
what was the influence, and was it personal or professional?

LD: I dont think Ive ever said he was a big influence. I spoke about him on
the DARK CITY Directors Cut DVD in connection with that film. He was a big
influence on my father, who was a big influence on me, so theres that.
In contrast to those theories and dictums which tend to fade as soon as
theyre formulated, Benjamins seem to grow in force and insight. He was one
of those early 20
th
Century thinkers, like Kafka and later Orwell, who somehow
saw what was coming, particularly, with Benjamin, in relation to what had
gone before -- the reverberations, the detritus of the recent past. His most
famous essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, cited
ad nauseum since the great wave of fashionable Benjamenta broke in the
1960s, is particularly apropos where the rise and fall of cinema is concerned.
We do appear to have reached the logical end of late capitalism -- television
repeats, video and LaserDisc and DV D, downloading and file-sharing -- this is
technological reproduction with a vengeance compared with what Benjamin
saw in his lifetime -- film prints in limited numbers prepared for brief theatrical
release, after which most of them disintegrated, if they werent deliberately
destroyed. Whats perhaps more alarming in our own era of, irony of irony,
content-providers, is not the ever-faster technological reproduction (now
instantaneous or on demand), but the reproduction of content itself. The
endless recycling, rip-offs, remakes. The movie business has always been
prone to this, naturally, but it used to be more generic, not psychotic. It was
never the case that within five minutes of watching every movie you could
name the prior movie its slavishly modeled on.
If you saw Stanley Donens CHARADE, you might think, Aha -- Hitchcock.
Then if you saw Stanley Donens ARABESQUE, you might think, Aha -- in the
style of CHARADE. But now you see a movie and you say, Wow -- these
numbskulls watched CHARADE. And got it all wrong.
If popular commercial movies designed for mass consumption were always
pretty similar, with their accepted clichs and conventions, still there was room
8

for greater nuance and variation and originality, in different genres, than seems
the case now. The paradox is that reproduction kills -- genre most of all. Too
many B-Westerns, TV Westerns, Spaghetti Westerns -- and suddenly there are
no Westerns.

DS: I think that art is generally superior to philosophy, for a number of
reasons, but, to keep things simple, the major reason is that philosophy is
merely ideas. Good or bad, they are simply nothing if not put into service.
Art puts ideas into motion, into service for something. To what degree do
you think the failure of cinema (especially from Hollywood) to live up to a
higher purpose falls on the audience, the producers, directors, and,
indeed, critics? Im not suggesting there be no place for light crap, but I
object when its 100% light crap.

LD: Where do you begin? The world, society, culture, education,
globalization? Check all of the above. People are just dumber than they used
to be. Books are
published now with glowing review quotes all over them that would have been
rejected outright by every professional editor or literary agent when I was
growing up. At the most immediate level, I think its mostly a talent problem.
People look back at the glorious 70s and say, oh, you couldnt make FIVE
EASY PIECES now or THE LAST PICTURE SHOW or McCABE AND MRS.
MILLER, or whatever. Why the hell not? What are they really saying? -- that
they dont, in fact, think that much of the Coen Brothers or Danny Boyle or
Atom Egoyan or Lars von Trier or Richard Linklater or Todd Haynes and Todd
Solondz? That Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach might fall just a wee bit
short in the talent/wit/maturity department in comparison to Woody Allen or
Mike Nichols in their prime? That Jim Jarmusch is not quite Robert Altman?
There still seem to be people who are allowed to make their movies. If
anything, these contemporary names suggest Art and singular Vision more
readily than Alan J. Pakula, Sidney Lumet, William Friedkin, and Hal Ashby
ever did -- so why does the work of these newer filmmakers seem less
substantial by comparison? Or is this going to seem like a Golden Age twenty
years from now? You can understand why financiers might have grown
disenchanted with, say, Arthur Penn, given his last five or six at-bats, even
though with the right script I would have liked to see someone like that given
one more shot -- but are great movies really being shut out of the system while
moronic executives greenlight the next Lasse Hallstrm or Ed Zwick project? If
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is no longer possible because of cost, whats stopping
them from making ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST? Im surprised
they havent re-made it -- yet. Because thats their current economic ideal -- a
single recognizable actor in one location. But who would it be now? John
Cusack? Lets say someone -- clerking in a 7-Eleven store, you might dream --
was talented enough to write CHINATOWN now. Who would star in it, direct it,
9

compose that great score, design the poster? If it could even get through the
present studio system which, agreed, it wouldnt. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
could not be made now not only because of budgetary considerations, but
because theres nobody in any department competent, skilled, or talented
enough to make it -- and furthermore, no longer the possibility of a wide
audience intelligent enough to be receptive to it.
So its a talent problem and an everything else problem.

DS: Do screenwriters have writing styles? Do you? Outside of a Woody
Allen, Ingmar Bergman, Tonino Guerra, or Joseph Mankiewicz, there are
few screenwriters whose words instantly are recognizable as having come
only from them. Agree or not? Why?

LD: Sure, screenwriters can have writing styles, but those screenwriters are
few and far between and have little hope of equaling the power of others,
mainly the director, over the final product. Most screenwriters throughout
Hollywood history have been faceless hacks and untalented almost by
definition, now more than ever, but despite my stated auteurist leanings, of
course there are writers I revere, who mean the world to me. Theyre mostly
grouped in that era, the Seventies, to which we eternally return, when I
happened to be coming of age. And screenwriters, too, came into their own as
authors in their own right, never to such an extent before or since -- with
distinctive and personal voices, signatures, themes. They wrote original
screenplays, like novelists, which some of them were. They changed my life
and made me what I am and Im under their influence to this day -- Alan Sharp
and John Milius and Walter Hill and Goldman, Towne, Schrader, Rudy
Wurlitzer, Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais in England. It was a time of
interesting artistic tension: is it Robert Aldrichs ULZANAS RAID -- by Alan
Sharp -- or the other way round? Yes, John Huston fucked up John Miliuss
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN -- but in a very Hustonian way.
And there are still flashes of Walter Hill to be discerned -- I think -- in Hustons
THE MACKINTOSH MAN. THE THIEF WHO CAME TO DINNER, made by a
director of little consequence, seems very much a Walter Hill script -- a
particular way he had of advancing a story through terse dialogue scenes
between two characters at a time, the cat-and-mouse pursuit -- repeated later
with the same actor in THE DRIVER. THE GETAWAY would seem a more
harmonious meeting of individualistic minds -- Hill/McQueen/Peckinpah --
despite the usual artistic battles and power plays. And when Hill explains
whats left of his contribution to THE DROWNING POOL, its pretty much what
a Hill fan might have guessed. I even still like these screenwriting credits of
his, maybe because I saw them in my formative years, more than many of the
movies Hill himself has directed over the years. Which is why, although I can
never fully embrace any of my own movies as wholly mine, I can understand
why some people revere this one or that one, just as I revere JEREMIAH
10

JOHNSON and APOCALYPSE NOW, even though Miliuss scripts were -- does
this sound familiar? -- raked over the coals, rewritten, or bowlderized by their
directors and stars and other hands.
It was really the one time, the 70s, when the auteur theory was seriously
challenged. Paddy Chayevsky, never a great favorite of mine, was in his heyday
-- probably the most well-known exception to the rule that people usually come
up with -- along with Neil Simon. I could watch Neil Simons THE ODD
COUPLE -- the movie -- a thousand times and never tire of it -- but what would
it be like if a great filmmaker had made it? Is such a thing even imaginable?
Would Billy Wilders THE ODD COUPLE be very different or better or worse?
These are games.
I also love Bruce Jay Friedman/Neil Simon/Elaine Mays THE HEARTBREAK
KID -- one of the great authorship mash-ups in film history -- and how much of
it was Charles Grodins? -- and like and enjoy very much Herbert Rosss THE
SUNSHINE BOYS and THE GOODBYE GIRL. So go figure. There is no
screenplay greater than Robert Bolts LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, written in
close consultation/collaboration with one of the greatest directors of all time,
and despite the competing claims of Hollywood screenwriter Michael Wilson
and his advocates, Bolts style is readily identifiable and comparable to his
two other famous movies, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS and DR. ZHIVAGO.
Whereas if theres anything Wilsonian in LAWRENCE, I couldnt tell you what
that might be or detect anything similar in his most terrific other movies, A
PLACE IN THE SUN, FRIENDLY PERSUASION, PLANET OF THE APES -- except
that those films were made by the Hollywood directors most like and liked by
David Lean. Id be hard-pressed to know who Michael Wilson is from his films
-- a generalized interest in outsiders? -- what his lusts or demons might be,
what his style is at all. He represents, perhaps, the craft of screenwriting as
its more usually characterized, something that may have had as much to do
with the genius of the system in Hollywoods Golden Age and a generally more
refined culture than the more individualistic world-cinema sensibility that
came about in the 1960s -- then petered out by the 1980s.
They also wrote screenplays deliberately, the New Hollywood writers. They
werent drafted, they enlisted. Didnt look on screenwriting as a lesser art
form, as earlier screenwriters tended to. And they werent like the gold rush
claim-jumpers and hustlers who came after.
Other professional or occasional scriptwriters in my pantheon to one degree
or another include Robert Ardrey, W.R. Burnett, William Rose, Rod Serling, Ray
Galton & Alan Simpson. Keith Waterhouse just died. I never met him. BILLY
LIAR! Why did I never write him a letter to tell him how much he meant to me!
But beyond these personal favorites, just think how much higher the standards
once were on a film by film basis. COOL HAND LUKE and DOG DAY
AFTERNOON on Frank Piersons resum. JULIA and PAPER MOON on Alvin
Sargents. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and THE GREAT ESCAPE not on Walter
Newmans, though his draft of SEVEN is virtually the film and Ive had it beside
11

my desk since I was a kid. Buck Henry, David Rayfiel, Wendell Mayes, Waldo
Salt, Richard Matheson, Benton & Newman, Lorenzo Semple, Jr., Reginald
Rose, Horton Foote, James Poe, James Salter, James Goldman, Bo Goldman,
Franco Solinas, Gavin Lambert, Bruce Jay Friedman, Jules Feiffer, James
Toback, Terry Nation, Troy Kennedy Martin, Stirling Silliphant, Irving Ravetch
& Harriet Frank, Jr., Jay Presson Allen (it was almost, but not quite, an all-
boys club), Peter Stone -- and the young Oliver Stone. There just arent people
of that caliber, that intelligence, or sophistication today. No basis for
comparison whatsoever. Different universe.
There was that legendary telegram sent in the early days from Herman
Mankiewicz in Hollywood to Ben Hecht in New York saying, cmon out here,
theres millions to be made and your only competition is idiots. Well, if they
only knew. You read the average screenplay in Hollywood today -- thats been
bought, mind you, that they might even be making into a movie -- and you
wonder what transformation the world has undergone that someone this dumb
would even get the idea to want to be a writer.
When I looked around as a teenager, the most successful screenwriters in
Hollywood were the best screenwriters in Hollywood. Now the most successful
screenwriters are simply the most successful screenwriters. Anti-
screenwriters, really. They dont seem to have any sense of cinema at all. No
more great dialogue or memorable lines. No great stories or characters or
sequences -- or movies, in the end, that will mean much to film history. You
can read all the interviews with all of them and almost never come across any
references to films or writers of the past. Except maybe STAR WARS. Its
really virtually a dead profession. And even mindless Hollywood seems to know
it. There are ten Oscar nominations for screenwriting each year -- ten! -- and
for the past decade or so nary a one for a screenwriter. I mean, a pure,
professional, career screenwriter like the names Ive just been mentioning.
Playwrights, some novelists, lots of people whove directed the film they also
wrote -- its more or less become an extension of the directing category -- and
that ubiquitous figure of the modern movie business, the first-time scribe,
which seems more often than not to mean only-time, rather than the next
Jules Furthman.
Having thus enumerated so many influences, its difficult to say if I have a
style of my own. One fears not. Or it still remains to be seen. As Walter
Newman liked to say -- Anything from a one-line joke to OEDIPUS REX.

DS: So, how do you go about writing a screenplay? Or is yours more a
collaborative effort? Do you more often start a screenplay or come in later
as a script doctor?

LD: I much more often start a screenplay -- its finishing them thats the
problem. Writing my own original screenplays is what I prefer to do, what I
12

started off doing by nature and necessity, what I always want to be doing and
always intend to do.
But in the meantime -- decades of meantime go by before you know it -- there
are mouths to feed and mortgages and school fees to pay and the financial and
other temptations of work for hire, writing what others want written. This is
usually a dead end, seldom resulting in a movie, and more often than not
involves writing -- and endlessly rewriting -- hopeless crap for imbeciles. Its
the Michael Caine theory of employment, yknow -- when you feel the bank
account needs topping up, you take whatevers available that week.
Theres also undeniable laziness involved in taking jobs as long as theyre
being offered. It takes discipline to go your own way, though the rewards, it
goes without saying, can be greater. No one hired J.K. Rowling to write about a
boy wizard.
Ive really only done the classic script doctoring once, early on, and that was
ROMANCING THE STONE. And while I had an enjoyable time and it was
exciting and I made good friends and all that, I didnt much like not getting
credit for it, especially on a big, influential success still referenced in every
stupid screenwriting book that comes out. Once was enough and sort of fun, I
suppose, in a putting-out-fires, cavalry-to-the-rescue kind of way, but a career
doing behind-the-scenes surgery would be tiresome and frustrating. Better to
do more extensive rewrites on something as hopelessly bad as the script of THE
SCORE, for example, so theres a reasonable chance of getting credit for ones
work if the film is made. And how do you say no to the possibility of your
name ending up on the same movie poster as the name Marlon Brando? But
even that game is hardly worth the candle, so its a shame not to go your own
way if you possibly can, which I feel I should have been doing all along.
Because Ive never really liked being in the movie business. Its been a rather
drawn-out process of getting back to where I started. When someone says,
Theyd never make that movie now -- thats exactly the movie I immediately
want to sit down and write. Or try to. Let the cards fall

DS: Re: the actual writing, youve expressed being bored with grammatical
rules. So did I, as a student. But, to be a good writer, I think you must
learn all the rules until youve inculcated. Once thats done, you have to
seriously unlearn them to be truly creative. Creativity is one of those
things that you either have or do not have. Theres no teaching it.
Thoughts?

LD: Well, I have tried teaching it and in exactly those terms. Somerset
Maugham said if you can write a play, its as easy as falling off a log, and if you
cant, no one can teach you. I tell students right away that Picasso didnt just
reinvent the human form right off the bat. First he learned to draw better than
anyone else alive. Buuel could be surreal because he could also be real.
Sometimes both in the same movie. My father was among the last generation
13

who went to art school when going to art school meant learning how to draw.
From life. Day in, day out, sitting looking at a model. Then the Sixties came
along and Do Your Own Thing became the norm. Let the students express
themselves, thats what being creative is. If they want to hang a toilet seat
around their neck and chant while splashing paint on a wall, let them. Whos
to say what Art is? And that was the beginning of the end. Thats how we
came to this pass -- one mans heaven, anothers personal hell -- where
quirky now equals quality and we have SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK and
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and JUNO instead of STAGECOACH and OUT OF
THE PAST and SERPICO. There was always an insufferable subgenre of the
kooky -- movies purporting to show that nonconformists lead more authentic
lives -- A THOUSAND CLOWNS and A FINE MADNESS and anything with Liza
Minnelli -- but it wasnt the defining barometer of critical taste.
Its why every jackass in the world now writes screenplays -- that and the
money they started hearing about. Everyone thinks movies are accessible to
them, you see, everyone has spent their life going to movies, watching movies
on television, renting movies They didnt grow up performing
appendectomies. No one seems to realize that the people at the very top, the
ones everyone else would like to be -- Spielberg, Scorsese, Tarantino -- they
know more about movies than you do, theyve seen more. Thousands more.
Movies are in their blood. Its incredible when you read the bad screenplays of
amateurs and aspirants, not only do they not resemble real life or human
behavior, they dont resemble movies. Creativity is promoted now like its a
civil right. But to mention the sordid subject of talent is unseemly and elitist
and muddies the playing field. After all, Americas got talent.
The fools who write those unreadable HOW TO WRITE A SCREENPLAY books
dont seem to have any knowledge of movies beyond a superficial
understanding of the same handful of classics or modern hits that everyone
knows. Some director recently announced his attachment to some project and
said, I seem to be attracted to reluctant hero stories. Does he really not
realize those are the only stories Hollywood has ever made? You have to
inculcate movies, not screenwriting. There are shapes and patterns and a
certain commercial contract made with the audience at the dawn of time. Then
if you want to break that contract and go off and make Cassavetes or Antonioni
films, fine -- or fine. Cassavetes, at any rate, had to do one to subsidize the
other.

DS: Great point about inculcating movies, not screenwriting. Let me ask
you of something I see as deleterious to both the appreciation of film, and
the purveying of good criticism about it, and thats what I call critical
cribbing. It happens especially online, but started long before that, in
print. This is when claims- pro or con- about something, or serious errors,
are propounded again and again. If a Kenneth Turan or Roger Ebert said
A, B, or C about Film X, then the same ideas, with the slightest
14

variations, are propounded on hundreds of blogs and newspapers. I think
about the misinformation in films, such as when I watched Michelangelo
Antonionis Blowup; and the same nonsense about the characters having
names cropped up, but there were none in the film. A similar thing re: the
characters being called by letters occurred in Last Year In Marienbad; but
that, too, was false. A similar thing occurs in reviews of The Limey, where
claims are made that Wilsons first name is Dave, because thats the
characters name in Poor Cow, the film used in the flashback sequences.
This tells me the review is a phone-in, and Ive seen similar things occur
in reviews of television, books, and poets. I posit that most critics, in
whatever field, truly do not engage the art they review. They watch or
read part of it, justify presuppositions and biases, and, once an artist or
film gets a reputation, they never waver from it. If you troll about online,
you will find very little variance in the meme that gets attached to any
art form, film, or director. The point of view- negative or positive, may be
differing, but the take, often flawed, is always the same for each critic. Do
you agree that this lack of attention to their own craft is formed by biases
and the critical cribbing of others ideas (conscious or not)? If so, why are
so many people in film so hooked into getting a good review or not (aside
from any effect at the box office)? And, you seem to have fallen into that
trap, if one listens to the commentaries on DVDs of Dark City and The
Limey. Have you changed since those commentaries were recorded?

LD: Yeah, obviously the Internet has made everything a lot sloppier. And the
near-complete intellectual/financial collapse of the publishing business --
apparently no such thing anymore as editors, proofreaders, fact-checkers.
(And just as mailbags were traditionally made by convicts, indexes are now
seemingly prepared by people in mental institutions.) Combine this with the
lynch mob mentality of most critics. Sometimes you really cant understand
why they gang up on a particular film -- is it really any worse than the rest of
the garbage out there? Or why they decide to collectively anoint some other
piece of crap. I mean, look at the historical dump on Stanley Kramer -- the
terrific movies he produced and directed. Not everyone needs to be an artist.
Better a solid entertainer, skilled craftsman, whatever, than a bad artist. Id
take JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG and INHERIT THE WIND and ON THE
BEACH over the shit Hollywood makes now, are you kidding? -- the indie shit
most of all -- and I bet Andrew Sarris would, too. If they were stagy or overly
didactic message movies -- yknow what? -- maybe the message got across to
a vast public and made some of them better people.
But youre right that whether its a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down theres very
little understanding or analysis of the form beyond the mere mundane content,
which is why a Stanley Kramer was lauded in his day. Critics -- or reviewers
-- like most viewers now take each film as it comes, like newborns, as if its the
first movie theyve ever seen, bringing little or no context to bear on it. No more
15

history or tradition, no ability to compare or contrast or recognize clichs. So
movies that would have been quite ordinary in 1974, even quite good ones that
might have gone generally unnoticed then, are now wildly overrated. Maybe
this is a natural mirroring of the people making the movies -- more of whom
are neophytes themselves rather than professionals at different stages of long
careers.
What was thrilling about the 1970s, here we go again, was that you could go
see a new movie by an old master -- Huston, Wilder, Cukor, Aldrich -- and also
be excited by DUEL / THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS and what next? You
didnt see MEAN STREETS and immediately think, oh, well, another
autobiographical, independently-financed one-off, well probably never hear
from that guy again. It was a smaller, tighter business, not quite such a free-
for-all. And there was inter-generational byplay. Walter Hill didnt write THE
GETAWAY in a vacuum, he sent the script to Raoul Walsh for his approval.
Steve McQueen in the film had his hair cut like Bogart in Walshs HIGH
SIERRA, which was written by Huston -- who played a part in Miliuss THE
WIND AND THE LION despite their differences on JUDGE ROY BEAN. And
Friedkin made THE FRENCH CONNECTION after Howard Hawks told him to
make a car chase. And Scorsese and Coppola rescued Michael Powell from
obscurity. And Bogdanovich talked to everybody who ever lived.
THE LIMEY is linked to the guy in POOR COW because they are both named
Dave. But hes not named Dave Wilson in POOR COW, which is the mistake
thats been perpetuated in LIMEY reviews all over the place. You can also go
online and find numerous references to THE LIMEY 2, supposedly to team
Terence Stamp with Michael Keaton. I dont know if the worlds eagerly waiting
for that, but it was Michael Caine that Mrs. Soderbergh let slip in an interview
as potential co-star.
If Im bothered by miniscule word changes by actors, think of the alternative.
Lets say youre talented or lucky enough to come up with dialogue so
memorable that it enters the lexicon. For the rest of recorded time it will be
misquoted! Like Im mad as hell and Im not going to take it anymore (which
is not what Peter Finch says in NETWORK). (Another irony of the screenwriting
life: so many famous lines are supposedly discovered in the moment -- by
actors! -- and are not necessarily in the script at all. Im walkin here! You
talkin to me? Ill have what shes having.
One of the most famous and controversial lines of all, still passionately argued
about by cinephiles, is Gene Hackmans line in NIGHT MOVES about Eric
Rohmer movies being like watching paint dry. Well, in the script by Alan
Sharp it was Claude Chabrol movies, which makes perfect sense to me, if not
to Arthur Penn!)
So its precisely those reviews that are in error that are upsetting. I would
always accept a bad review if that was the writers honest opinion; I would
probably tend to agree with it. But when that motherfucker from Variety (not
Todd McCarthy, Varietys chief and excellent, but not only, reviewer -- another
16

mistaken leap to the wrong conclusion Ive seen online) writes not that the
script is thin but that my script is thin and lacks supporting characters --
when supporting characters and detail in the script were removed by the
director -- thats when that critic goes on my shit list. Youd think a staffer on
Variety above all would have some insight into how movies are made and might
even be interested in movies enough to occasionally scan Varietys famous
production charts in which Steven Soderberghs new film THE LIMEY was
listed for weeks and weeks with an interesting cast, including Ann-Margret --
whos not in the final movie. But, of course, its even more embarrassing to
have personal deficiencies pointed out when theyre true.

DS: Do you read any serious film journals, ala Cahiers Du Cinema or Sight
And Sound. What do you think of Cahiers, especially of its New Wave
heyday? I think Godard is way overrated and Truffaut a bore. Malle is
probably the best of the French New Wavers Ive seen.

LD: I pretty much agree with you, although I like Malle even less. Rohmer
would be my favorite of the group. And certainly Melville, though he stands
apart. The Truffaut work I cherish above all others is his interview book with
Alfred Hitchcock. Thats not to say I dont have all of their movies, I just
hesitate to rewatch them very often for pleasure. Its sickening, though, to
have just glanced at The Hollywood Reporter and read about a new Spike
Lee/Robert De Niro project about New Yorks Alphabet City neighborhood --
entitled ALPHAVILLE! I mean, where do they get the balls?
So Cahiers, too, has always seemed a bit dull, though its only been translated
into English briefly and selectively.
Im still in the habit of buying Sight and Sound and Film Comment, but you
can usually yawn and flip through them and file them away in a few minutes.
Primarily, I suppose, because the current scene is so desolate. The obsessive
coverage of film festivals bores me to tears, the change from career interviews
to a more narrow focus on whatever new release might be needing still more
publicity is excruciating. The superfluous reviews. How many is too many?
The absolute craven submission of film journalism to six months of awards
and Oscar overkill to the point where you never want to hear the titles of those
movies or see photos of them or their makers EVER AGAIN (and luckily, you
probably wont) has become simply unbearable.

DS: In a 2002 interview film critic Ray Carney really ripped into film
journals: I don't submit to film journals anymore. Because either (a) you're
outright rejected, or (b) to my shock and dismay, I was told by several film
journals, "could you please insert some footnotes; could you please refer to
Derrida or Deleuze and Lacan?" In fact, I had written one essay more or less out
of my heart and mind and soul, just what I thought, and the fellow read it, and
he said, "this is so deep, it must be indebted to Lacanian theory and
17

Althusserian cultural studies. Please put that in, because this is the most brilliant
restatement of their theory." Well, those are my thoughts. Academic film criticism
is in trouble. They are in a life raft rowing, and they want to push me overboard
because I don't write like them. In academic criticism what has happened is that
sociology and sociological ways of thinking have taken over and replaced
aesthetic or truth-telling modes. Whether it's feminist or political thought, or
sociological analysis in that multicult[ural] way, or whether it's some other form
of ideological dissection of the work, that is the only mode of discourse that's
approved. Pretentiousness is the sin of film snobs- especially those
Cahiers types. But, Hollywood goes too far in the other direction, with
absolutely no attempt made at even daring to do more, nor probe deeper.
In book publishing a similar ill holds sway- wherein palpably bad writers
like a Dave Eggers or David Foster Wallace or PC covergirl of the month is
lauded even though they are generic products of the MFA writing mills.
Even if one does not like the films youve contributed to, not pushing to
do more is not a sin that can be tossed your way. Comments?

LD: Yes, ideology trumps truth. An iron curtain has descended on the
universities and theyve destroyed more than just film studies. The totalitarian
PC sewer has permeated all aspects of art and society. No one sets out to
make a bad movie is another beloved Hollywood homily -- when thats what
they do as a matter of course. Getting a movie made, any movie, is the only
goal, regardless of outcome, because career momentum, viability, visibility,
personal income, depends on it. Everything else -- box-office success, critical
acclaim -- is secondary and, they think -- misconstruing that fucking William
Goldman phrase again -- ultimately unknowable. I remember saying while
THE SCORE was being prepared, like John Belushi rallying the troops in
ANIMAL HOUSE and nobody following him, Jesus Christ, guys, weve got De
Niro and Brando -- why dont we try to make this great. And the response you
always get is, whoa, steady on there, boy. The things been in development for
years, the pieces are slowly coming together, the script has gotten just barely
competent and unchallenging enough to film -- dont rock the boat. Besides,
Brandos not gonna say the lines anybody writes, anyway -- not for Frank Oz
hes not. And they dont call him Robert Dinero for nothing. You go along to
get along, were not makin MEAN STREETS anymore. The nice thing about
Steven Soderbergh, whos a very generous spirit, is that I can push him to do
more and he does do more -- up to a point.

DS: What, to you, constitutes a good screenplay? And, I agree with John
Huston, who I believe is the original source for this paraphrase: that, all
good films start with the script.

LD: Well, if they dont start with the script, all good films at least end up with
something approximating one, as Ive suggested, even if its fascinating trash
18

like DETOUR or SHOCK CORRIDOR, or something. We have no idea what the
Academy Award winning M.A.S.H. script would have been without Robert
Altman. More likely than not a cheap, forgotten comedy that never spawned a
TV series. The debate will rage forever about who wrote CITIZEN KANE or
THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. All that matters in the end is that HUNTER is a
haunting masterpiece under the ultimate stewardship of its director, Charles
Laughton -- more poetic than the would-be poetic novel on which it is based.
Is its extraordinary cinematic beauty and power attributable in part to James
Agees sometime occupation as film critic -- or wholly the imaginative
expressive/Expressionist genius of Laughton? Did Agee really write THE
AFRICAN QUEEN, either? Or did John Huston just need a drinking buddy?
And did John Collier get screwed again? You just dont know with screenplays
and the tortured journey they take to the screen. My moneys still on Agees
two directors, one of whom was an actor who never directed another film (talk
about one-offs!). (Marlon Brandos sole directing credit is also lovely to look at.)
I think Peter Bogdanovich asked John Ford the same question and Ford said,
Peter, theres really no such thing as a good screenplay. I know what he
means. THE SEARCHERS directed by Ray Nazarro would be an obscurity. All
we know is that once in a while someone writes CHINATOWN and its just what
I said -- its a movie ready-made (though Ive never read whatever the first draft
may have been). There it is. And its literate and intelligent and fresh and
compelling and unusual and deeply-felt and personal and entertaining. The
dialogue sings and sparkles, there are memorable lines. Youre stimulated and
engaged and surprised and moved. And even if a great director makes it his
own and changes the ending and this and that, its still essentially what it was
meant to be from the mind and heart and soul and talent and experience --
both creative and autobiographical -- of its sole author, in the scripting sense,
Robert Towne. It cant hurt that one of the greatest and most exciting movie
stars of all time is in his prime and ready to play the part and that the writer is
a close friend of his and wrote the role to suit him, hearing his voice, his
inflections, knowing his mannerisms and personality. A similar happy
symbiosis occurred with Schrader/Scorsese/De Niro and TAXI DRIVER. But
its a very rare and delicate souffl.
Most of all, with those two scripts, and every good script, the writer starts
with himself, his own private obsessions and interests and agonies -- and
makes them public. I dont know if Huston originated that phrase -- seems
rather late for Hollywood to have figured that out -- but he did say something I
always think about -- which may be another way of stressing the importance of
theme in a script -- and the theme of his films is fairly consistent. He said
that every movie should have a central idea thats like a bell. And every scene
in the movie should ring that bell.

DS: I believe that all stories that succeed, are good, excellent, great, etc.,
start with character development. Get good characters, and the narrative
19

writes itself. Start with simply a plot, and no ability to construct
character, and you have a shallow mess. Also, character is built not on
melodramatic high points, but in the dales of the little moment- what a
character observes or is influenced by. Thoughts?

LD: Every great movie is a character study. In anything good, the situation
comes out of character, not the other way round. Which is why when someone
says a movie is sit-comy, theyre not being kind. When TV executives made
their poisonous inroads into the movie business at the end of the 1970s, they
brought their business model of the high concept with them. The TV Guide
one-sentence logline. Drama depends on a story being about the most
important thing that ever happened to this person. If it isnt, why are you
wasting our time? Why arent we watching some other movie? Otherwise its
television, where you know the characters going to have an equally exciting
adventure next week. Thats one reason television is hardly ever, if at all, art,
no matter how much they defensively pretend it sometimes is. And why
sequels suck. But the best television, the finest sit-coms, are the ones in
which character is central. The people are who you care about in THE MARY
TYLER MOORE SHOW or SEINFELD. Even M.A.S.H., which might have
seemed just an edgy situation into which cardboard cut-outs could be
dropped literally by helicopter, was made moving and memorable by those
people in both the movie and the series. Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John
and Hot Lips and Radar -- like Hamlet and Macbeth -- are bigger than the
actors who play them. Quite an achievement, that. Although as the series
wore on, they inevitably lost the distinctive character traits (and some of the
original characters) that made them memorable in the first place.
Sure, character is fate, destiny, all that -- YOUNG MR. LINCOLN. The eternal
question: What does the character want? I was just watching for the
umpteenth time Don Siegels version of Hemingways THE KILLERS, a perfect
illustration of what youre saying, much more so than the good, but milder and
more conventional Robert Siodmak version of the 1940s, though thats often
considered the more respectable of the two. The famous enigmatic story, of
course, is about a man who, though forewarned and with a chance to escape,
calmly accepts his own assassination. The movies, naturally, are forced to
explain this -- in a melodramatic plot involving robbery and betrayal and the
marked man left broken to such an extent by a cold-hearted femme fatale that
he is essentially dead before the fact, his killing a mere formality. In the
Siodmak version a comforting stand-in for the viewer is provided in the form of
a straight-arrow insurance investigator employed to solve the mystery. But in
Siegels version the protagonist becomes the killer played by Lee Marvin. The
little moment you speak of comes after the startling opening sequence
depicting the killing. The killers are now on a train, leaving the scene of their
crime, and the older of the two, Marvin, is quietly brooding. Before he even
speaks, we know what hes thinking. Why did the victim greet his murderers
20

like they were doing him a favor? And something more -- what became of the
loot from the robbery gone wrong? The ending of the movie, like all good
endings, is now inevitable, even though we are still at the beginning. Marvins
desire and obsession, as a man growing older, will lead to his own premature
demise. (Huston, who worked on the original version, always felt that fate
turns the corner before the characters do.) In identifying with his victim,
Marvin will both avenge and become his victim. He falls down dead at the end
after aiming an imaginary gun with his empty hand, while the stolen money he
has obtained at such a price spills out of its briefcase (see also THE ASPHALT
JUNGLE, THE KILLING, etc.). Lady, I dont have the time, are his last words.
The character is the story. From the beginning, it was written.

DS: As example, I once wrote a tale after seeing a news bit about a horse
stuck in a sinkhole. In my tale the horse eventually sinks to its death, but
the main tale is about this Indian Reservation cop trying to impress the
female owner of the horse. Yet, when I sent it around, not only did the
real story of the people get overlooked, but they didnt even care of the
sinking horse. The first question most agents and editors asked was why I
didnt give the coloration of the horse. As if that fuckin mattered! That
tale was in one of my manuscripts, and then I wrote a manuscript where
the same tales were told from a different characters perspective, and
described the horses color early on. But in neither tale did it matter. Yet,
this is why so much creative writing and screenwriting is bad- publishers
and studios dont look more deeply, and only care of surface things; and
good writing is thought of as being endless description, which is why so
much MFA writing has descriptions of places and people and things- all
exterior, and nothing interior; the very essence of character and good
story telling. Yet, shit that lacks these qualities is published and lauded in
the New Yorker, making the careers of even more bad writers. Ideas?

LD: Books are published now -- crime novels, for example, which is a field I
still follow -- that are so horrible, its mind-boggling. Covered in laudatory
review quotes and blurbs, listing all the awards theyve won -- you cant believe
it. Its quite often impossible to find a bad review of a book, thats how much of
a racket its become. You have to read customer reviews at Amazon to get a
true reading -- whereas there are always lots of rotten reviews to be looked up
of almost any movie. As theyve all gotten so much dumber, the gatekeepers, in
both film and, even more alarmingly, the more refined, one supposed, world of
publishing, have become less literate and more literal. So much for
Hemingways tip-of-the-iceberg theory of writing -- whats under the surface
unseen but nonetheless felt. In the movie business, they want to see it, all of
it. In case people dont understand.
Bresson: Displaying everything condemns CINEMA to clich, obliges it to
display things as everyone is in the habit of seeing them.
21

The artist/filmmaker is no longer respected or trusted (though this is hardly
new), least of all by his employers -- emboldened by a staff of lackeys whose
jobs never used to exist. This vast, poisonous network, like the NKVD or
STASI, of creative executives. And they demand endless meetings -- or
interrogation sessions -- which focus almost entirely on what happens. What
are the beats of the story. The twists, the turns. Discussion of character or
tone, ambience, atmosphere, matters of style or influence -- these are arcane
and arid notions that are beside the point. (The personal life is dead in
Russia -- DR. ZHIVAGO.)
Unless, of course, you write unsympathetic characters, then youll never
hear the end of it. I was dumb enough to agree to write a script about the
Guyana/Jonestown horror and tried to focus the first draft, for the sake of
budget as well as dramatic unity, on just that jungle story. The response,
predictably, was, But we want to see what made Jim Jones crazy and evil --
and could he please not be quite so evil. In other words, they wanted a biopic,
and whats more, a false one -- the good man turned bad. Which I dont believe
for a minute.
Not that mindless interference didnt regularly bedevil filmmakers in
Hollywoods rose-colored past -- its just so much more pervasive now. And
yknow what? In the past it was quite often after the fact. Orson Welles or von
Stroheim or Peckinpah or Nicholas Ray or whoever would make their film and
then the barbarians would move in and maul, mangle, and mutilate it. But by
now theyve learned how to ruthlessly destroy something before it even starts
filming.

DS: What of the subjective axis of like and dislike of something versus the
more objective good and bad? After all, one cannot objectively discuss
likes, but one can debate the differences between a bad film and good
film, tv show, or book. Thoughts?

LD: Well, lets just go back to THE KILLERS. Leonard Maltin gives the Siodmak
version four stars, while the Siegel version only rates two-and-a-half. And I
suppose I rather agree with him. With few exceptions, Maltin, I think, is pretty
fair and accurate in assessing the historical ranking of movies. Siodmaks THE
KILLERS is the more classical version. More faithful, though it only
comprises the films first act, to the Hemingway story. It has better
production values. Its a quintessential noir. It introduces a great star of the
screen, Burt Lancaster, and he and co-star Ava Gardner could hardly be more
beautiful. If an ordinary intelligent person whos not especially a dedicated
cinephile asked me which version of THE KILLERS to watch, in good
conscience I would recommend the Siodmak version. Siegels version is
cheaper, trashier, even campier -- with Ronald Reagan, in his last movie role,
as the villainous Mr. Big. But I like Siegels better. I would choose it over the
other as the one to take to my desert island. Is it just a film buffs choice --
22

because its cultier? No, I dont think so. I can watch it more times with
pleasure, and get more out of it. Its deeper, I think, more complex, and just
stranger. Maybe I find Lee Marvins white-haired ugliness more beautiful than
Burt Lancasters pretty boy youth, and Angie Dickinson even hotter than Ava
Gardner, and John Cassavetes a more compelling second lead than Edmond
OBrien -- or Johnny Williams jazzy score more exciting than the great Miklos
Rozsas more traditional Golden Age music. It may have a lot to do with my
age; the Siegel version is more modern. I was alive when it was made so it
seems more alive to me -- is this why most people prefer new films? I
recognize it and myself in it.

DS: Lets take a break from the existential, and get into the personal, for a
while. Did you have any heroes in screenwriting (or any other form of
writing) as you grew up? If so, who and why?

LD: My screenwriting heroes I think weve covered. The big three, really, were
John Milius, Walter Hill, Alan Sharp. I suppose as an adolescent boy, those
kinds of male, macho, tough-guy movies -- westerns and crime films and war
and adventure stories just appealed to me the most, and that they were so
informed by Hollywoods glorious past. And, as I said, you began to notice the
quality of the writing, the terse and memorable dialogue, great lines, the
existential nature of the characters.
Ive subsequently met them all, and it is a thrill. Milius said on the phone to
me before I went to visit him, Never meet your heroes. Theyll always
disappoint you. Walter Hill signed my poster of THE GETAWAY which I have
here in my office. And Alan, whom Ive gotten to know quite well, my NIGHT
MOVES poster. Its a big deal, I think, tradition, continuity, the passing of the
mantle -- along with the anxiety of influence.
As far as writer writers? Probably not heroes in quite the same way -- since
I have not yet written a book. But favorites, of course, probably too many to
think of. Maybe Donald E. Westlake, under his Richard Stark byline, had a
similar effect upon me as those screenwriters. The thought that I might,
however imperfectly, imitate or emulate this. Maybe William Goldman, whose
books I came to after taking an interest in screenwriting and, obviously, given
his preeminence.
George Orwell, not so much for the big two of his, which arent especial
favorites of mine, but for COMING UP FOR AIR, which is, and for his general
writings, the famous essays -- his voice, his persona. Kafka, when I discovered
him, as teenagers do. Somerset Maugham. Hammett, Chandler, Ross
MacDonald. Philip Jos Farmer, though Im not particularly into science
fiction otherwise. Simenon when, as an older teenager, I found him. Simenon
was, and remains, huge for me. You feel youve found yourself in a favorite
writer.

23

DS: Did you ever want to act or direct? Ive read you were a child actor
but information on that is not very widespread. Are you a failed film
student who abandoned the lens, or a writer from the get go?

LD: Really a writer, constitutionally. I think if you really want something, you
pursue it, and Ive never seriously pursued anything else. Idle thoughts or
daydreams are not the same thing. Directing was, and is, always vaguely in
the air, but Im obviously quite ambivalent about it. In fact, I loathe the very
thought of it -- even under the most ideal, fantasy circumstances of perfect
conditions and total control. Having to argue and deal with people, the
compromises and pressures and getting up before dawn for weeks on end, the
sheer boredom of the technical process and editing and promotion afterwards.
I cant stand the idea of relinquishing my daily personal freedom. So no, Ive
never looked back after walking out of high school, free as a bird. Rejected the
idea of going to film school. A writer can be himself by himself and just begin.
As for my career as a child actor -- or non-actor, to be more precise -- that
came about because my father had just befriended Michael Powell who was at
that time something of a forgotten man, but about to make a final film -- a little
childrens film called THE BOY WHO TURNED YELLOW. My father took me,
film-crazy as I was, to dinner with the great man, and Michael evidently
thought I had an oddball look and voice and personality that would do for the
part of the young heros science-nerd best friend. (The other half of the once-
glorious Powell & Pressburger team -- a stern Emeric Pressburger -- was not so
pleased, as I recall, meeting him once during the making. The screenwriter is
never happy!) God only knows what possessed me to go along with this.
Shortly after the film was finished, the same producing organization, the
anachronistic Childrens Film Foundation, had me do a days dubbing on
another of their fantasy films, THE SEA CHILDREN -- replacing the voice of the
King of the Sea Children, my kind of weird American/English accent or
whatever it was, thought to be more suitable or alien than that of the poor kid
who played the part -- who may have been surprised later on to see his lips
moving, but this bizarre vocal performance coming out. The next thing that
happened was I was summoned to the office of legendary London casting agent
Miriam Brickman, where I read for the role of a young Donald Sutherland in a
proposed Jan Troell film about a chess prodigy, from Nabokovs THE
DEFENSE. But the film, in that incarnation (a version was made decades later
starring John Turturro) never happened, and I happily fell off the map. Which
Im getting pretty adept at.

DS: When and where were you born? Are you an American citizen? What
were some of the major, or defining, issues during your youth, insofar as
they affected your career path? Were you politically, socially, or
artistically active when young? You are a Baby Boomer, so what films or
television shows had an effect on you?
24


LD: I was born in Oxford, England when the 50s became the 60s and grew up
mostly in London. I had a one-track mind. Movies were all I ever wanted.
There were no other issues that affected my career path.
I was neither particularly social nor political, even if friends in high school,
say, were. I was artistically active, despite art all around me, only when it
occurred to me as a teenager that I could start writing screenplays, which I
then did fervently.
The usual films and television shows affected me that affected everyone else --
with a significant difference and advantage, I think, compared to others. I grew
up completely bi-cultural, American-English in England, and English-American
in America -- or vice-versa -- absolutely fluent in two languages. Its not quite
the same, not as complete, no matter how long an American may have lived in
England or how American-culture-saturated an English person may be who
becomes an ex-pat in the States. My father was always an American in
London. Its really being both at once, a foot on both sides of the river, as it
were. Im an American citizen, but a dual-national. Im more outwardly
American, but Britain is the land of my birth. Im increasingly more loyal to
America, the more England has gone into terminal decline, the more the society
and culture there has shockingly deteriorated, the more vile and hateful the
English have become. London, which stood strong against Hitler, is now a
willing host to evil. The blitzing of London universities, at any rate, cant
resume soon enough, but this time for the sake of human decency and the
safety of civilization.
Brits dont know what a ground rule double is and Americans dont know who
Tony Hancock is.

DS: What did you want to be when you grew up? Who were your childhood
heroes (outside of film) and why? Where did you go to high school, and to
what college? Was youth in England a radical change from earlier times in
your life? Youve not retained an English accent, or did you ever develop
one? How did your time abroad affect your views on life and art, if at all?

LD: The earlier times in my life were in England. Abroad was everywhere else.
I guess before things started to come into clearer focus just making movies or
being part of the movie business was always somehow the vague idea.
Although I was never driven to make my own in any kind of amateur way
beyond a couple of idiotic Super-8 things with school friends and firecrackers
planted to go off like gunshots, you know, like all kids make. I was much more
interested in buying and collecting and reading movie books and magazines
and seeing movies, real movies.
So Im not sure I had any childhood heroes other than Steve McQueen. There
were these incredible emerging figures -- the Beatles, Muhammad Ali -- or
Cassius Clay, as he was first known to us. No one of that time and place can
25

ever forget the black and white images -- and Im speaking only of newsprint; I
dont remember, or wasnt aware of, any racial overtones at all -- of the very
white English champion Henry Cooper, a famous bleeder, with blood (black in
the papers) pouring down his face as this extraordinary black American fighter
danced around him, floating like a butterfly. My dad was a big boxing fan. No
one can forget Alis appearances with Englands top television talk show -- or
chat show -- host, Michael Parkinson (I once went to see Orson Welles do the
Parky show live). And when Ali came to London in the 70s to do a lecture
show/appearance in a big sold-out theatre, the excitement was electric. Later
still, in the 1980s, I encountered him at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and got
his autograph. To my generation he was a Caesar.
There are the received heroes you come to appreciate in greater depth when
you grow up, but as a kid you have Churchill chewing gum cards and the
Abraham Lincoln of Classics Illustrated and Disneyland and the movies. Davy
Crockett, Batman -- some things never change. Scott of the Antarctic was the
sort of official hero taught to English school children. I remember we were
encouraged to give three cheers and shout Hip Hip Hooray for Sir Francis
Chichester when he circumnavigated the globe in a small boat. This was the
kind of thing -- the old fogey patriarchal Establishment -- that our comedy
heroes like Peter Sellers and the goons, Peter Cook & Dudley Moore, and later
the Pythons openly mocked -- while we went around imitating all their silly
voices. Even the American kids at the American School in London where I
went from 7
th
Grade through high school. Typical American education, albeit
for quite affluent and privileged kids -- many of them oil and banking type
families (a large contingent always coming and going from the American School
in Teheran), with a smattering of show-biz types. Very Republican. All very
concerned with where they were going to go to college. Whereas I barely
considered it, such was my rush to get into the movie business.
After the year we lived in Hollywood, I never wanted to go back to the grimmer
and stricter English schools Id been to when I was younger, and the American
School years were much different and happier and I became, as I said, more
American, though still largely English on the inside. Id been a proper
English schoolboy when I was little, in school cap and blazer and sandals, at
Dulwich College Prep School in London and later Christ Church Cathedral
School in Oxford, which was founded by Cardinal Wolsey and where Lewis
Carroll, aka the Rev. Chares Dodgson was a math -- or maths -- teacher (but
not in my day). Both cultures made me. You do feel at home, yet a bit of an
outsider, slightly wary in each. To England and to other things says Peter
OToole as Lawrence (T.E., though D.H. felt much the same way).

DS: What were some of the cultural touchstones in your life, the things,
events, or people who graced your existence with those I remember exactly
where I was moments?

26

LD: I remember the death of Churchill. The black-and-white (again) funeral
procession on television, that went on all day, it seemed. Maybe that was the
day greatness died. (The people who would make the last great movies, in the
1970s, were already alive.) The day England died. Though it was certainly the
right time and place otherwise -- for a parallax view of Muhammad Ali and
American pop culture, or to buy the new A Hard Days Night disc at the
record store. It wasnt only in retrospect -- you knew something pretty exciting
was happening at the time there, in Swinging London. And then Berkeley, of
all places, in the annus horribilis of 67/68. My mother crying in front of the
TV when Bobby was shot. Hippies getting tear-gassed on Telegraph Avenue
(where I first started scouring used bookstores for paperbacks and comic books
and Mad magazine). Cops in their cruisers telling us to get off the front lawn
and back into the house at dusk when curfew began. Black kids at Emerson
School, where I attended 4
th
Grade, hunting a white kid who used the N word
on the day Martin Luther King was killed. And then Hollywood in 70/71, post-
Manson, just in time for the big quake, with so many Old Masters of the Silver
Screen still alive. (I saw GUNGA DIN -- and Gunga Din himself, Sam Jaffe, on
La Cienega Blvd.)
To be lucky enough to have come of age as a maturing movie buff in London
in the 1970s, when cinephilia was at its peak, when the greatest movies ever
were coming out weekly -- and you could also go to the National Film Theatre
every night and see every John Ford or Michael Powell film in existence.

DS: Are you married? What does your wife do? And how did you meet? Is
she a critic, writer, etc.?

LD: Its more than movies or money you can get from writing screenplays. I
had an agent named Dan Halsted. He had a big poster of THE GRADUATE in
his office. Naturally, that being such a favorite film, he was on friendly terms
with its producer, Lawrence Turman, who was still quite a prolific player in the
business in the late 80s. Dan sent Larry a new script of mine and Larry liked it
and wanted to meet the writer. This is the daily diary of Hollywood. It might
lead to a script being bought, or the writer being hired to write something else,
or more usually nothing. It doesnt often result in a wife and children. But
within ten minutes of the customary introductory chitchat -- where are you
from, whats your background, etc., Larry looked at me and said, Are you
married? All I could think of was the story of Bob Hope vetting a prospective
agent with the question, Are you Jewish? -- and I replied accordingly, Not
necessarily. Anyway, some kind of light bulb had gone off -- he had heard of
my father, which is quite rare, for anyone in the movie business to know
anything about the art world -- and he asked if I might want to meet this girl,
an art history major Best deal he ever made. Weve been married for twenty
years.
27

Her father, Larry Turmans best friend, was the publisher of Performing Arts
magazine which was the West Coast equivalent of Playbill -- the theatre
programme, for all the legit, as Variety would say, venues throughout
California and so on. When I met her, my wife was the editor. She became the
owner when he died, but sold the business, it no longer being much fun
without him, not to mention too burdensome when our own kids were
becoming more numerous and needy. She sold the company and signed the
papers literally a day or so before 9/11, which marked the beginning of the end
of the magazine publishing business, particularly high-end magazines reliant
on airline and hotel ads, and the like.
The real punchline, though, is that the screenplay of mine Larry Turman read
was a very violent, nihilistic script, obviously written by a disturbed loner
isolated in his room for too long with too much Peckinpah on his hands. The
producer of LETHAL WEAPON, Joel Silver, optioned it in the end. It was about
Arab terrorists attempting to bring down a Manhattan skyscraper and a New
York cop who catches and tortures one of them in order to prevent the
unthinkable event from occurring. I wrote it in 1989.

DS: What sort of child were you- a loner or center of attention? Did you
get good grades? Were you a mamas boy or a rebel?

LD: No, as a child I was not particularly a loner, always had the usual mix of
good school and neighborhood friends to run around with, no matter where we
lived or moved to over the years. Was no more of a mamas boy or rebel than
any other child and had no school issues, though I didnt especially enjoy it
most of the time. I was never happier than when I no longer had to go.
Walking away from the American School, to St. Johns Wood underground
station for the last time, standing on the platform, I felt like the guys waiting
for the train in THE GREAT ESCAPE.

DS: Any siblings? What paths in life have they followed?

LD: I grew up with a sister. She was the rebel, and left home as a teenager as
soon as she could to live a defiantly independent and bohemian existence. She
became a well-known Guardian Angel patrolling the London and New York
subways, before breaking with that, er, organization, and later joined the
United States Navy, serving a number of years as a Seabee, as in the John
Wayne movie, though thankfully without the direct experience of combat. She
is retired from the Navy and living on a hilltop somewhere.
My father had a second son with his second wife and that brother of mine,
who spent much of his growing up with my own kids, is also something of a
loner at present, graduated from UC Santa Barbara, and doing the
Hemingways adventures of a young man thing, as my father did before him.

28

DS: Ah, yes Curtis Sliwas Guardian Angels- what a phony crock of an
organization. Any children? What paths have they followed in life? What
are their interests?

LD: My three children at the moment have the interests of children at the
moment -- soccer, video games, and the occasional offerings from Hollywood.

DS: What of your parents? What were their professions? Did they
encourage your pursuits?

LD: My father was a painter (could paint a whole apartment in one afternoon
two coats!). My mother was his wife, though she had an interest in, and
throughout her life pursued, a degree in Russian studies and literature. They
did nothing but encourage and assist in my pursuits. I got taken to the movies
and to bookstores to buy more movie books.

DS: Your father was the famed painter R.B. Kitaj (a fact I did not know till
Googling biographical info on you). One of the things most notable in his
work was the fact that his paintings were figurative and idea-laden, not
just the mind-farts that dominated Abstract Expressionism and other
Modernist isms. Were you drawn to storytelling via or because of your
fathers work, or was it something inborn- a family trait?

LD: He was/is the greatest influence on me. I never had the slightest interest
in becoming an artist artist myself, was never very interested in art, the art
world, painting -- perhaps a reaction against being dragged as a kid to
museums and galleries. But my dad was a great movie buff and movies were
hugely important to him and his art. He frequently used images from movies
as the basis for his paintings, compositions, human figures. So I suppose it
was the most natural thing in the world, for a small child -- these movie books
or film magazines or torn-out images were lying open on the floor. One big
famous early movie book in particular -- THE MOVIES -- a big book of pictures
-- that was probably the start, along with just watching old movies on TV and
talking about them with him, learning the actors names, later the directors --
the usual process of gradual and soon all-consuming obsession.

DS: You were friendly with filmmaker Billy Wilder. Did you meet him via
your dads renown, or when you got into filmmaking? Any anecdotes of
note?

LD: Through my father initially. When we lived in Los Angeles in 1970/71, he,
my dad, conceived of a big project that involved going round sketching many of
the Old Masters of Hollywoods golden age. It may have been just an excuse to
meet them, and to have his movie-mad 6
th
-grader son meet them, because the
29

only painting that later resulted from this was one called John Ford on his
Deathbed -- and the visit with Ford was certainly the highpoint (though Renoir
wasnt bad, either). But we went to see Mamoulian and Milestone and Mervyn
LeRoy and Hathaway and Cukor -- they were all memorable. Sometimes one
would refer us to the next. Ive never forgotten Rouben Mamoulian getting on
the phone and dialing a number and saying in his still rich Hungarian accent,
Raoul! -- but we never got around to visiting Raoul Walsh because he lived
further away on some ranch or somewhere or my father couldnt arrange it or
be bothered. I dont know why we missed out on Hawks or Wellman. Anyway,
Wilder must have been easy because he was a great art collector. He was also
at that time the youngest of the bunch and still active -- we visited him not at
home but in his office at a studio.
At decades end I returned to Hollywood as a 19-year-old to seek my fortune
and didnt really know anybody except three extraordinary men who were close
friends of my dads, as close as family, and looked out for me in those early
days. One became the subject of my screenplay EDWARD FORD. The other
two were friends with Billy Wilder. The first, David Hockney, was also a pal of
Cukors, so I met him again, too; David took me to lunch and dinner with
them. Cukor I was very intimidated by, probably due to the homosexual panic
involved in going to dinner at his house as David Hockneys date, but also
because of the old world elegance and formalities -- the servants hovering
behind you to take away the soup bowl.
Billy was more fun, but of course I was shy in his presence too. After he first
read a script of mine, a comedy, he summoned me to his office and said, You
were so scared of me, I didnt know you had this in you! which of course was a
tremendous compliment. He kept an office in the wonderful old Writers and
Artists building on Little Santa Monica Boulevard, still there, and still with his
name on the directory at the entrance. Another long-time tenant was my
fathers other friend, the screenwriter, novelist, and serious art collector (a very
rare subspecies in Los Angeles) Michael Blankfort, who was like a grandfather
to me. It was Mike who first passed my comedy script to Billy, as I never would
have dared. It was also Mike who gave my early efforts to a young agent on the
same floor, Ken Sherman, who happily signed me up. So I subsequently got in
the habit of giving Billy my new scripts hot off the Xerox machine, and he got
in the habit of saying, Youre not making it easy on yourself!, thinking them
too arty or pretentious or something. I wish I had foisted myself upon him to a
greater extent, but I remained hesitant. I wish Id been bolder in encouraging
him to write great scripts in a more serious vein again. I feel he dug himself a
hole in a way and perhaps dated himself by becoming too much of a comedy
director in the latter part of his career. But he was far from out of touch in
person. I remember sitting with him in his office after wed both just seen
APOCALYPSE NOW. It was not universally embraced when it was new, and
still has its detractors, but we both loved it, thought it was a masterpiece --
Billy talked about it with an excitement equal to my own. Of course, he had
30

been shown it by Francis, while I had gone to see it at the Cinerama Dome as a
paying customer. So I would continue to run into Billy in those years, in that
building, and Im sorry I grew up and lost touch. Once we were talking about
my using a pseudonym and he said when he first came to Hollywood he was
advised to change his name because Willie Wyler was already a prominent
director. Billys response was, hey, its like painters: Monet, Manet -- who
gives a shit! Sometimes hed have priceless works of art in the trunk of his car
and youd worry about them being stolen, but hed say, oh, they dont care
about the signatures Picasso or Van Gogh, only Sony and Panasonic.

DS: Great Monet/Manet quote. Why did you choose a pseudonym in your
writerly life? And, are both Lem and Dobbs pseudonyms? Why did you
choose either or both? What was your name at birth? Is Lem short for
Lemuel?

LD: Lem is short for Lemuel, which is my middle name and the one I preferred
from early childhood. Just as my father hated the name Ronald and so used
initials, I didnt care for my given name Anton (and neither did aged relatives of
my dads upon hearing it, as it recalled Cossacks bearing down on them at full
gallop). Dobbs is my phony show-biz name. My thinking was that Kitaj is
difficult for people to read and pronounce -- a childhood of teachers pausing
when they came to it at roll-call, also the shadow of a famous father, I suppose
(the name often spelled out phonetically in parentheses in articles -- Kit-eye).
You want them to be able to say, Get me Dobbs! Something about the simple
Hemingwayesque/English-sounding terseness of it I liked. Of course, it comes
from a perennially favorite film -- actually one of my earliest film memories --
THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE. But its also very much the book by
the mysterious B. Traven -- the romance of a pseudonym. The idea of hiding
behind a secret identity was something I found terribly attractive. Its tied in
with, almost the point of, being a writer. It now seems to me in retrospect as if
every paperback I read as a teenager on the subway to school bore a
pseudonym -- George Orwell, Mark Twain, Richard Stark, John Lange, John Le
Carre, Lewis Carroll, Ed McBain, Ross MacDonald, Woody Allen John Ford,
Jean-Pierre Melville, Eric Rohmer! -- Stendhal, Corvo, Barbellion I mean,
look, if it was all right for Lenin and Stalin

DS: Your fathers surname was also not his name at birth. Is this
pseudonymizing a thing that runs in the family?

LD: My fathers blood father split from my fathers mother when he was born
or even before. She then married a chemist from Vienna, a Dr. Kitaj, who
became the official father and so that became our name.

DS: Was your father supportive of your literary and artistic pursuits?
31


LD: Probably upwards of 95% of the students at the American School in
London went on to college. I wanted to bypass college and go straight to the
movie business. My father barely blinked an eye at this, but I remember him
saying he discussed it with his great friend, the poet Robert Duncan -- along
the lines of Should I support him in this mad pursuit, what if its sheer
fantasy?-- and Duncan responded Yes, yes, always, always support someone
who wants to be an artist. You know -- who but a poet? I dont know if there
was a time limit placed on that obligation. But, yes, my father the ex-Merchant
Mariner was hardly an example of the opposite view, and he knew this was not
a whim or passing fancy on my part, but an ide fixe I had followed and
educated myself in with single-minded devotion from the earliest possible age.
So I was very lucky to have an artistic parent who so readily supported me and
set me up in my first little Hollywood apartment with an allowance. Seems
kind of crazy now, but youre not worried at the time -- at least I dont
remember being -- just stupidly confident for some reason that things will work
out. And maybe after the first year or two -- it didnt take much longer than
that -- just when he might have started mentioning that I might revisit the
idea of film school or college or get a job in a bookstore or something -- thats
when I first started to make my own money and succeed as a screenwriter and,
again, never looked back. I suppose if it had become clear I had no ability for
this, I would probably have drifted into some more modest fringe film buff
activity -- writing or selling film books/posters, memorabilia, film reviewing or
programming. Still might.

DS: What was your youth like, both at home and in terms of socializing
with other children?

LD: As I said, never without good and lasting friends, made easily. Infanthood
in Oxford. Then we moved to Dulwich Village, a suburb of London. The
exciting year in Berkeley, then back to Oxford for a couple of depressing years -
- parents marriage gone bad -- another exciting year in California, Los Angeles
-- London again, Chelsea, a great house to live in and return to for the next
couple of decades. Its sometimes hard to separate life lived at the time from a
later look back with more understanding, but it only really occurred to me
recently that the year my mother died -- the worst thing a child can imagine --
was one of the happiest years of my life. Lucky, again, in that my dad took my
sister and me away with him to Los Angeles for that fun time in the sun in the
aftermath of tragedy. Hooray for Hollywood.

DS: Your mother committed suicide in 1969, and your fathers 2007
death was likewise ruled a suicide. First, is there any doubt in your mind
that your father committed suicide? Was he ill? In 2009 (as I type these
words) my mother recently died, but was ill for a long time, bedridden for
32

the last month of her life, and had to starve herself the last 17 days
because of this nations insane ideas about sex, death, abortion, suicide,
euthanasia, etc. Was your father in that sort of state, or was he
psychologically depressed?

LD: My father without a doubt committed suicide, following the steps laid out
in the well-known self-help book. But he had Parkinsons disease, which
rather mitigates the verdict -- one can say more or less in truth that he died of
Parkinsons. I might quibble about the timing -- it had not progressed to such
an extreme degree, I would have thought -- but clearly it was the right time for
him. Depression, they say, is a component of Parkinsons disease, and he was
not known to be a ray of sunshine at the best of times, especially not in the
latter years following the lightning-strikes-twice death of his beloved second
wife. You think, well, there are still other loved ones and books to read and
movies to see and work -- but as we know, with artists, if the work is
threatened, even though his handwriting, his brushstrokes hadnt been
impaired yet, thats usually the bottom line.

DS: What were the circumstances of your mothers suicide? And does
suicide run in your family? Have you ever contemplated such? And, if so
or not, how have such ideas (from the self or your parents) affected your
characterizations onscreen, if at all?

LD: With my mother, on the other hand, it may be possible to surmise, if you
wish, that it might have been accidental -- pills and liquor self-administered,
though years before the guidebook became available. But on the whole I doubt
it. I think there you have depression pure and simple, with a dollop of
retribution. Does suicide run in my family beyond my immediate parentage?
Ive no idea, since I know almost nothing of family beyond them; no contact
with my mothers side after her death whatsoever. I have never been
particularly depressed or contemplated suicide other than in sheerest fantasy
when in the midst of a screenplay on assignment that I loathe and wish Id
never undertaken. Im not aware of this family history having affected my work
in any way. Someone once asked me (it was an actress, naturally) if Id ever
written a letter to my mother -- i.e., as I realized what was meant, after her
death -- in order to ask her why she did what she did, how she could have
deserted me, to exorcise my own anger, express my feelings about it, etc.
None of this would ever have crossed my mind and strikes me as nonsensical,
12-step, psychoanalytical, therapeutic gibberish, and has no bearing on my
feelings or interests or work in the slightest.

DS: In this obituary of your father, it claims he was part of a School of
London, in which he included Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach,
Leon Kossoff and himself as central figures. His work, indeed, reminds me of
33

Bacon and Freud, albeit more grounded in narrative. Do you identify
yourself with any school or ism of screenwriting? And, are there any
such schools in the art of screenwriting?

LD: Hockney once said, if only there was an artist named Eggs, then you could
have Freud Bacon and Eggs.
No, Im not part of any screenwriting school or ism, because there isnt.
Maybe you could make a case for the Algonquin Roundtable wits who ended up
soused in Babylon, or the somewhat close-knit Movie Brats of the
aforementioned 70s -- Schrader, Milius, Hill -- or all the great comedy writers
who came out of the Sid Caesar show -- but not really. Maybe because of the
dog-eat-dog nature of the movie business or the artisanal nature of the craft or,
more likely, the one-step remove from the final work of art which is the lot of
screenwriters.

DS: The same obituary states your father was pals with poets like Robert
Creeley, Charles Olson, and Allen Ginsberg. While Ginsberg is the most
noted outside of the poetry world, in retrospect, I can see where your
fathers work, and Freuds and Bacons, has connections to Olsons. Even
more so, in both Dark City and The Limey- to me, the two best films in your
c.v., I can see the layering upon effect that was so prevalent in Olsons
poetry. In Olsons verse, individual poems or stanzas were not particularly
deep nor beautiful, but, when reading, say, The Maximus Poems, and
reading them one after the other, it is like layers of tissue paper with a
single mark on it, that, when layered on top of each other, connect up to
form a single portrait. Especially in The Limey, this technique is used to
paint portraits of the main characters- Wilson, Valentine, and especially
Wilsons dead daughter Jenny, who is never seen in real time. How strong
an influence, personally or literarily, were any of these poets?

LD: Just as I took for granted all the art and artists around me, so I remained
pretty oblivious to poetry and poets -- except, as you say, personally, because
of the presence of these enormously engaging people who were recurring
characters in my world growing up. Duncan, and Creeley, and Jonathan
Williams, primarily. Earlier in my childhood, lovely Michael Hamburger. I
remember a visit to Hugh MacDiarmid in Scotland. We would see Christopher
Isherwood in Hollywood. Stephen Spender at the dining table in London.
Name-dropping like this, its a kind of cast list of the past. An all-star cast.
Taken for granted as a child. My Spanish teacher in high school once
beckoned me to her desk and slyly said shed watched an interview with David
Hockney on TV the night before. David had recounted the story of he and my
father going to visit W.H. Auden -- who at the end of his life had a very lined
and wrinkly face -- and my father said as they left, If thats what his face looks
like, imagine what his balls look like.
34

Ginsberg, Olson, Wieners were probably around in the Berkeley period, but
they were peripheral to my knowledge and memory. Of all my dads close
friends I think I had the most feeling for Creeley, which is perhaps not a
surprise. He seemed the most romantic outlaw figure -- though practically the
only, and defiantly so, hetero of the bunch. Lots of fucking going on in the
guest bedroom on the other side of the wall next to mine! Quite exciting for a
teen, as you can imagine. Creeley was a really wonderful kind of American
archetype. He had one eye, the other one a closed eyelid without a patch, from
some old accident or misfortune. My father called him Blind Pew.
Wonderful, soft-spoken -- a poet! When he stayed with us in London,
sometimes the police would deliver him back to our address. Alcoholics are
often unpleasant, but the few I knew growing up were such warm-hearted
people. The infamous restauranteur Peter Langan was another I loved and
miss.
So, again, no, I cant say they influenced my work in any quantifiable way.
They were just larger-than-life figures who were always around.

DS: My wife writes in Matisse like strokes that add up to a greater heft,
whereas my prose is more detailed, like a Frederic Edwin Church painting.
A film like The Limey uses both sorts of touches- that Olson/Matisse sort
of layering, but also intense details like Church. Was that a conscious
thing, or just something that organically developed as the screenplay and
shooting of the film developed?

LD: Probably more organic than conscious, Id say, and came about in the
making and in working with Steven Soderbergh.
My original LIMEY screenplay, written many years before, was a very
simplistic, adolescent shoot-em-up, heavily influenced by Walter Hill films and
Richard Stark novels, with a mix of Brit noir -- GET CARTER and the television
mini-series OUT starring Tom Bell. Steven was, for some reason, cant think
why, a great admirer of that script, but it became something more -- yes, much
more layered, when we came to make it. Still not quite layered enough,
though, if you ask me.

DS: I maintain that the creative arts are higher than the performing or
interpretive arts, because you are basically starting with less to work
with. In short, an actor interpreting Shakespeare or ONeill has it much
easier than the two playwrights did in conjuring the drama. Similarly, I
posit that writing and poetry are the two highest general and specific art
forms, for writing is wholly abstract- black squiggles on white that merely
represent and must be decoded, whereas the visual arts are inbred, and
one can instantly be moved by a great photo or painting, while even the
greatest haiku will take five or ten seconds to read and digest. Poetry is
the highest form of writing because, unlike fiction, it needs no narrative
35

spine to drape its art over- it can be a moment captured, and wholly
abstractly, unlike a photo. Do you agree with these views? If so, why do
you think this is so? I would bet that since language (at least written) is
only a six or so thousand year old phenomenon, while sight has been
around for 600 million years or more, thats a hell of a head start the
visual arts have over writing. Comments?

LD: Well, I think the art of the photo -- especially when it is art or something
more than a snapshot -- is precisely that it captures a moment in time thats
gone the moment the shutter clicks. Whereas cinema, as Stanley Kauffman
just wrote, glories in the delusion that it can really defeat mortality. If all that
remained of Humphrey Bogart was a photograph, hed truly be dead. But he
lives and breathes and walks and talks -- life eternal and immortal -- even if its
a mirage.
But I suppose youre right that poetry can also be abstract, as opposed to a
photographs concretization of a moment in time. I dont really care; Im happy
to wait the ten seconds or ten days, ten weeks, ten years, for a work of art in
whatever medium to be digested. Movies and books matter to me more than
paintings or plays or poems or operas or ballets. This is not true for everyone.
Where movies are concerned, Ive also never subscribed to the Writers Guild
shibboleth that In the Beginning Was the Word, that it all starts with a writer
facing a blank page -- because usually it starts with an idiot facing a blank
page. Two other Kitaj pals, Philip Roth and Lee Friedlander -- does one see
the world better or deeper? One uses a pen, the other a camera. Both publish
books -- you read one, you look at the other. To me, to the culture, theyre
equally great, theyre American masters.
James Agee may be credited as the screenwriter-adapter of famous works by
famous writers, but his finest hour, after all, may be having written the text for
another FAMOUS book -- of photographs.
Roth said recently that hardly anyone will be reading fiction in 25 years --
that 25 years may be an optimistic reckoning. Maybe more people than
currently read Latin poetry, but not that many more. The screens have won. I
remember Isherwood -- on the Dick Cavett Show, I think -- saying something
along the lines of: what if youre a great writer or poet, but your language is
Icelandic? Then the jokes on you. But the visual, as we know, is universal.
Not necessarily more meaningful -- now that film grammar has gone the way
of conventional literacy. So mere language can be restrictive and limiting.
Maybe someone should write a book about that. Oh, wait
Cinema is close to poetry because of the power of suggestion. You think you
see things. The shower scene in PSYCHO may be the most well-known
instance. Montage forces you to interpret fragments. In the alchemy of edited
images -- or words in a poem -- its whats left out thats as important. The
gaps you fill in yourself, in your minds eye, the in-betweens -- which is the
very essence of the invention of motion pictures, a trick of the eye (which digital
36

technology is determined to alter). Movies make you feel. Maybe more so when
they were always in the dark, without any guarantee youd ever be able to
repeat the experience. Its as if filmmakers in the pre-TV, pre-video era knew
they had to be more poetic and memorable. Had to have more painterly
compositions and better dialogue and music. Because they were so transient.
It was now or never. Can they ever be as dreamlike when we own them?
Theres even something more mysterious in the eternal magic of a Bogart or
John Wayne than in a fictional Rick Blaine or Ethan Edwards wed
otherwise have to imagine for ourselves.
Thats not true of Gatsby, though, or Jake Barnes -- which is why we call
Fitzgerald and Hemingway poetic in their prose. Theres an elusiveness to all
art worthy of the name.

DS: Why do so many political films suck? Is it the same reason as any
other political art, because they are so shallow, and use noxious ideas
like, all art is political, or art is truth. These nostra are as meaningful and
meaningless as stating that all art is about poodles, for anything can be
parallaxed against any other single thing. If the art does not explicitly
reference poodles, as example, this manifests the artists aversion to
talking about poodliness. No?

LD: Didacticism just isnt very dramatic, its boring. And as Solinas
discovered, politics, especially left-wing politics, is fundamentally at odds with
film as a popular, as opposed to populist, medium. Never forget the famous
admonition: If you want to send a message use Western Union. Movies cost
a lot of money. Even micro-budget films depend on a capital-intensive
distribution system. If a tree falls in a forest
Successful movies appeal to everyone, so how can they ever really be political?
As Robert Ray has pointed out, when PATTON with his pearl-handled revolver
walks out in front of that gigantic American flag, the counter-culture viewer
can read it as satirical while the Nixon voter at the same time can think hes
died and gone to heaven. Patton is an establishment figure, but hes portrayed
as a rebel. And Francis Coppola was well aware of this when he was writing
the screenplay. Cinema is an inherently bourgeois medium and everyone,
aristocrat or revolutionary, must adapt themselves to it. Like I said about
Loach, Godard asked how he could hate John Waynes politics and yet love him
tenderly when he sweeps Natalie Wood into his arms in the last reel of THE
SEARCHERS. And while were on the subject of John Ford again, look at
something like THE LAST HURRAH -- thats what politics in America means.
Elsewhere in the world the word tends to refer to ideas, here its more about
the machinations of vote-getting -- the corrupt and criminally wasteful
campaigning that never ends, that the rest of the world finds so unbelievable.
Theres something, well -- anti-intellectual about politics in America, so you get
political thrillers which are actually devoid of any real political content or
37

point of view -- and a film like JFK -- which I think is a great film -- is mistaken
for left-wing -- by right-wingers -- because its made by a typical Hollywood
liberal -- when its actually deeply traditional, even conservative, just a modern
Frank Capra movie, a Western in disguise, a detective story, a courtroom
drama, the usual Hollywood horseshit -- of the finest kind. But its not exactly
Pontecorvo or CHINA IS NEAR.
Why arent there niche political films in that case? Well, why isnt there
anything? Weve seen a diminishment of virtually all content -- no more rich
casts of familiar supporting players, or big epics, or varied locations, or music
you can hum, no more great stories, or vibrant genres, or beautiful movie
posters, barely even movie stars anymore. Forget about framing and
composition, mise en scene, expressive or poetic camerawork
Despite the whole indie movement, which was always a sham, and consists
almost entirely of immature drivel made by nonentities, there has never been
any real intellectual cinema in this country. An American MY NIGHT AT
MAUDS or THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE or BEFORE THE REVOLUTION is
nearly inconceivable. The American college grad keeps THE CATCHER IN
THE RYE by his bedside and makes movies about high school and trailer trash
and grunts in Iraq. Maybe they think thats political. Orwell famously believed
it was where he lacked a political purpose that he wrote lifeless books. But
thats him -- what he needed to be himself. It comes back to the individual
artist and their intelligence and talent.

DS: Art speaking a truth is fundamentally different from its being a truth.
Looking at the root of the word art, after all, shows it derives from the
same place as artifice. Therefore, art can NEVER be truth, only an
instrument that CAN get at a truth. But, it can also illumine aspects of
existence utterly disconnected to truth, like emotions, bad ideas, politics,
etc. Do you also find the art is truth equation laughable and silly?

LD: Laughable and silly, I dont know. Unhelpful, useless, meaningless -- yes.

DS: What are your views on religion- you are ethnically Jewish, correct?
Your father seemed to, later in life, almost obsess over his Semitism? Why
was this? How did it affect his work, if at all? Has your Judaism played a
similar role in your life and art?

LD: Im half -- on my fathers side -- which doesnt count, except to Nazis. He
did become somewhat obsessed, never in a religious sense, but with the social,
cultural, intellectual, historical aspects. I suppose in large measure its a fairly
common response to Nazism, and its constantly metastasizing forms in the
modern world. I remember Jonathan Miller on the Dick Cavett Show saying he
was a Jew only for the purpose of answering anti-Semites. And Kitaj now
seems sadly prescient getting out of England when he did.
38

I think in artistic terms he thought it was a great and rich subject that no one
had really explored or made their own in painting, that it would make for a
unique and distinctive and personal art, something old -- ancient -- made new
again. Naturally, this was not a project likely to be widely or warmly embraced.
Im afraid many people, friendly as well as hostile, thought that it reduced
rather than expanded his canvas, so to speak.
London memory: walking to lunch with my father and Philip Roth. Roth (to
me): What do you think of his (my dads) new Jewish obsession? Me (to
myself): If Philip Roth is questioning it, maybe theres a problem!
My Judaism, other than being an undeniable part of my cultural makeup, is
of minor interest or importance to me in and of itself. Like being English-
American, its a bit of a schizophrenic feeling.

DS: What of your views on politics? How, if in any way, do they affect
your screenplays? Are you politically active, and what are your thoughts
on the world today- the ongoing wars, the economic woes, etc. How often
do you include such references in screenplays- either concurrently, or
historically? Do you fear such things will put an expiration date on your
opinions?

LD: Same as religion. I have an aversion to parties of all stripes, to mob-
think. I only respect individuals who think for themselves. I like Orwells
formulation: a Tory anarchist. Democratic institutions and traditions are
good, but democracy is dumb -- the tyranny of the dumb. The world is a
shitpile due to human stupidity, and seems to be getting worse -- again.
Politicians have become dumber and more loathsome and fraudulent along
with everyone else. I dont want an imbecile, of either party, being the leader of
the free world. If just once any more a single brilliant person appeared on the
scene, I wouldnt care if they were a Democrat, Republican, or a genuine
socialist.
But thats what the end of education has given us. Its what the 1960s has
given us. I dread the poison of topicality infecting any script. In my
increasing solipsism, Ive come to think that its not politics or contemporary
society thats affected my screenplays, but the other way round. I mentioned
my 1980s Manhattan jihad script. Well, before Barack Obama rose to
prominence Id just recently written and deeply researched three hopeless
projects on assignment. One was the Jim Jones Peoples Temple story -- which
most people to this day dont realize was a Black Liberation Theology
movement. Another was about the thug Chicago Daley Machine, based on
Mike Roykos muckraking book BOSS. A third concerned the Weather
Underground radicals of the 1960/70s. From these three cesspools -- to name
but three -- emerged Americas candidate.

39

DS: Before we get on to more specific areas, have you any ideas on what is
the cause of the aforementioned lack of introspection in modern
American society- from Hollywood films, television shows, book
publishers, etc.? Is American or Western culture simply as shallow as
many of its detractors claim? In the arts, Political Correctness and
Postmodernism have certainly aided in the dumbing down of culture.
What are your thoughts on those two ills- PC and PoMo?

LD: As I said, as many have said, its the 60s, the radical Lefts corruption of
the universities, globalization
It goes without saying that Political Correctness has gone beyond a lunatic
farce and is now a mortal menace. Transitional periods are dangerous. Its as
if people have fallen into quicksand or a whirlpool; they cant get back where
they were, or climb out to the other side. There are fewer issues on which
reasonable people may disagree -- because there seem to be fewer reasonable
people. And such stunning ignorance. How do you deal with it, argue with it,
make yourself understood? This is something relatively new in what we
thought was the Modern or Postmodern World. That has come upon us with
shocking speed and suddenness. Whether its a president who grew up in
Hawaii referring to the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor -- which for me is a
dealbreaker right there -- or a book reviewer who thinks a piece of shit is great,
whether its an uninformed voter, a misinforming teacher, a misapprehending
script reader, the result is the same -- youre fucked.
Political Correctness -- Postmodernism -- Structuralism -- lies begin with
language. Isaiah Berlin says its a mistake to call Nazi Germany mad. That
lets the bastards off the hook. Far from being irrational, evil is carefully
thought through -- ordinary morons are taught to believe in monstrous
untruths, by their leaders, their orators, their professors. PC is propaganda of
the word which is the precursor to propaganda of the deed.
STORM OVER ASIA, THE CHILDHOOD OF MAXIM GORKI, and the Odessa
Steps notwithstanding, I think the great Soviet filmmakers on the whole would
have preferred fewer notes from the front office.

DS: From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, film directors had much
more sway over their art, and the decade of the 1970s was the true
Golden Age of Hollywood. But then the financial messes of Apocalypse Now
and, especially, Michael Ciminos Heavens Gate, basically killed that era
off- as did the ascendance of the Spielberg-Lucas summer blockbuster
formula. Do you agree? If not, can you sum up why American film has
gotten so bad since the last heyday of the 1970s? What will change this?

LD: Conventional wisdom blames JAWS and STAR WARS for the end of great
or personal cinema. But not only were those two movies personal, they were
masterpieces of pop culture made by filmmaking geniuses who were movie-mad
40

and influenced by Ford and Kurosawa, as well as by Flash Gordon and
Republic serials -- and by John Milius. How can you fault them? Although its
true, as former United Artists executive David Picker has said, that everything
changed when investors stopped asking How much can we lose? and instead
started asking How much can we make?
But that doesnt explain why anyone would finance thirty audience-repelling
losers about the Iraq conflict. Thats where sheer stupidity comes in. And
shopping malls, home video, corporatization, a decline in literacy, discrediting
of the Western Canon, changing demographics, games, the internet -- you
name it. Its easy to talk about how great American cinema was in the 70s. Its
not so easy -- or politically correct -- to mention that there were no D-Girls
then. Or that theres a far less homogenous Hollywood, and general population
now, of far less educated people. Even those who allegedly are. If you read a
review in Variety in the 60s, and it said: This movie will appeal to the college
crowd, you would automatically assume it was something arty or elevated or
foreign. Same exact words now and it means its moronic garbage for beer-
guzzling apes. Whats going to reverse this? Youre never going to turn back
the clock. The human brain is de-evolving. Where theres multi-culture,
theres no culture.
If only the Jews still controlled Hollywood. In the late 60s/early 70s you
could get a movie made starring Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand, James Caan,
Elliott Gould, George Segal, George Burns, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Walter
Matthau, Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, Richard Dreyfuss, Dustin Hoffman,
Mel Brooks, Barbara Hershey, Henry Winkler, Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas,
Michael Douglas, Robby Benson, Alan Arkin, Dyan Cannon, Barry Newman,
Jerry Lewis, Peter Falk, Harvey Keitel, Laurence Harvey, Charles Grodin, Gene
Wilder, Elaine May, Jill Clayburgh, Ali MacGraw, Joan Collins, Anthony
Newley, Goldie Hawn, Marty Feldman -- and Topol.
Today? Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Sasha Baron Cohen, Shia LaBeouf, Jake
Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Connelly, Sean Penn -- and at least three
of them are the progeny of older Hollywood. Notice the slight drop-off in
quantity and quality? Screenwriters and directors and composers and studio
executives -- same story.
On a one-week visit to New York in the early 70s when my father had an
exhibition there, I went to see THE EXORCIST (Friedkin), SERPICO (Lumet),
PAPILLON (Schaffner), with Dustin Hoffman, MEAN STREETS, with Harvey
Keitel, THE GETAWAY, a Foster-Brower production, WESTWORLD, with
Brynner and Benjamin, and Woody Allens SLEEPER.
Wanna see whats playing in New York this week? Yeah, its a head-scratcher
why movies arent as good as they always used to be.

DS: Film critic Ray Carney once stated, in an interview, I mean that the
root of the problem is that every film reviewer I know defines his job incorrectly.
Without realizing it, they have all internalized the Hollywood value system. They
41

define reviewing completely cynically as a form of advertising....But criticism is
not about recommending or not recommending something. Or that's only it's most
trivial, unimportant function. I agree. This includes the addition of the MPAA
ratings system. What are your thoughts on the film ratings system? What
objections have you? Mine are basically that its an attempt at censorship
used as a marketing tool, but one that is often wholly inapt to the product
at hand. And, do you agree with Carney that most criticism is merely
advertising?

LD: I dont think Ive ever given the U.S. film ratings system a moments
thought. Its something of a joke to anyone who grew up in England where
censorship and restrictions were far more stringent. It was horrible waiting to
grow taller to be able to sneak into X-rated movies -- like THE GODFATHER
and THE FRENCH CONNECTION. Didnt matter if you had a grownup with
you -- I was refused entry to a John Wayne movie! -- BIG JAKE -- which my
dad took me to. It was an AA film, which meant you had to be 14, and I
guess I wasnt quite. He was so furious with the officious little jobsworth (as in
Its more than my jobs worth) who kicked me out. Id already seen BONNIE
AND CLYDE in Berkeley, and THE WILD BUNCH in L.A.! So the vagaries of the
American ratings board by comparison have never much excited my
indignation.
It was bad enough that most movies opened in England way after theyd been
released in America. Often Id finally see A CLOCKWORK ORANGE or THE
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE or something when they were screened at the
National Film Theatre -- which was classified as a private club, so you could
get around the legalities. Other than making my escape from school, the great
life-changing turning point was finally succeeding in purchasing a ticket to an
X film, on my own, without being challenged -- wearing a hat and cowboy boots
for height. It was like making it past checkpoint Charlie, with false papers and
guard dogs at ones back. All this anxiety for a double bill of SHAFT and
SHAFTS BIG SCORE at my local theatre on the Kings Road, which was then to
host THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW for the remainder of the decade. From a sex
machine to all the chicks -- to Frank N. Furter and chicks with dicks.
The best and most useful criticism is retrospective. The one type of film book
Ive never bought or ever wanted to read is any collection of anybodys
contemporary reviews. There is nothing deader in the annals of literature.
Film reviewers, generally speaking, are worthless even in the immediate
present and, yes, are just tools in every sense. A critic, though, is someone
whose voice you respect, even if you dont always agree you want to know
what they have to say. And there are the odd, isolated, few-and-far-between
interesting critics still to be found squirreled away here and there. They are,
and can only be, serious and knowledgeable cinephiles. Because criticism is
context, a historical overview. Laymen, no matter how intelligent or literary
42

they might otherwise be, are hardly ever worth reading. Everyone thinks
theyre a film buff. Well, theyre not. You want experts in the field.
So many movies now are one-offs. Is there anybodys new or next film you
really look forward to seeing anymore? The critics, so-called, who provide the
hysterical blurbs for these films that exist only in the present moment,
destined to have no afterlife, are as bland and forgettable as their makers.
Its so hard for even the best critics to see whats in front of them. How many
reviewers had a clue what they were watching when confronted by the first
Sergio Leone westerns starring some TV actor named Clint? Or even by the
time of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST/AMERICA? The studios that
made those movies had even less idea. The critic is the person who must say,
hey, wait a minute, somethings going on here. Think a second time.
Im as saddened to read of the passing of a Tom Milne or a Robin Wood as the
filmmakers they wrote about. Buying their books, reading their reviews or
articles in Films and Filming or Film Comment or the Monthly Film Bulletin, or
wherever, were a part of the vibrant, exciting culture of cinephilia I grew up in -
- that they hugely helped to create.

DS: Art is communication, at its highest level, and poetry, as example, is
the highest art because it does the most with the least. I think film, not
prose, is the art form closest to poetry. Regardless, all art has to
enlighten. Entertainment does not, and I say this as a lover of some
schlock stuff- from bad poetry to Robot Monster to pro wrestling to soap
operas to The Three Stooges. But, the problem with art (including film), as
it is with eating, is not that there is junk food and its consumed, but that
so many people eat ONLY junk food, and ONLY watch fluff. Their minds
necessarily become as fat and ugly as their bodies because of this. There
are simply times I desire depth. Whether or not the film or book is good
or bad, I know that an Ozu or a Bergman film or a Twain book will give me
some depth, even if, in the case of Bergman, I do not like his films. I still
realize their nutritional value for my mind. Do you think this buying into
Hollywood ideals is unconscious, or are their artists in that town who
willfully accept their roles as shills- even if not in a blatant payola sort of
way?

LD: Ever hear of Elvis? Or Brando? Orson Welles? Do you think people who
were once handsome, even beautiful, consciously become obese grotesques?
Self-hatred would seem to be part of the equation, which suggests some sort of
consciousness kicking in at some point, but usually too late. Hollywood makes
conformists out of everyone. Its in the neutering business. You either bend
with the breeze or you break -- or both. Junk food inevitably follows.

DS: What annoys me is that the idea of elitism, in life, arts, criticism,
being somehow bad. Yes, elitism based upon birth or wealth is not
43

healthy, but based on meritocracy- hell, thats the whole theory, if one
will, that America, and the Jeffersonian ideal, were based on- no? When
someone calls me an elitist, I say, Of course. Dont you want great artists,
doctors, leaders, etc.? There is this whole notion, expounded by PoMo and
PC, that has led to the exaltation of mediocrities (at best) like a Steven
Spielberg or Oprah Winfrey, in pop culture, and the rise of idiotocracy in
politics that led to last years crowning of the incredibly dumb and
profoundly intellectually unqualified Alaskan governor Sarah Palin as the
Republican Vice Presidential nominee, not to mention the problems
elitism by birth caused with the selection of George Bush over Al Gore in
the 2000 Presidential race (and Im not a Gore fan, I voted for Nader!).
Thoughts?

LD: Call me an elitist. You bet. Whenever you see the phrase elite
crimefighting unit, does anybody ever say, Hold on, thats not fair. Lets be
more inclusive! Like I said, I dont want the proles deciding anything that Ill
have to live with the consequences of. Fuck Them.
Benevolent dictatorship would be the best form of government. Simn Bolivar
said, I am convinced to the marrow of my bones that only an able despotism
can rule in America. Abraham Lincoln was the closest we ever came. Once
the hoi-polloi have breached the walls and stormed the castle, the world can
change very quickly. You can suddenly find yourself sitting opposite a woman
dressed like Batman, wearing a Hamas armband, staring at you with animal
eyes through a slit in her chador -- at Finsbury Park tube station -- or some
girl whos never heard of CITIZEN KANE giving script notes at 20th Century
Fox You can wonder all you want how the fuck did this happen? But its
never going to go back to the way things used to be.
Thoughts? They would seem to be on the way out. A blip on the radar,
available to only a smattering of people in brief enlightened moments in human
crappy history.

DS: I earlier mentioned the different axes of like/dislike and good/bad. Can
you name three great films you simply dont like? Also, can you name
three bad ones that you love?

LD: Its much easier to think of bad ones that I love. Im not sure there could
be such a thing as a genuinely great film I dont like. Theres a whole
category of films -- most recent Oscar winners, say that ordinary people
think are good -- but most movie buffs find unwatchable. And many movies
cinephiles revere that reasonable people would find insufferable.
Youd never seriously suggest to someone that PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE
KID is Sam Peckinpahs masterpiece. Youd be steering them wrong. By any
reasonable yardstick its not as monumental or as perfect as THE WILD
BUNCH -- or RIDE THE WILD COUNTRY. PAT GARRETT must be counted in
44

many ways a failure, a catastrophe even. But Im not alone in loving it. It
may be my favorite Peckinpah, even though I know better. A masterpiece to
me and to other obsessives who refer to it as such in their critical essays, for
whatever reasons that may be hard to fathom or argue. I suppose this is
sometimes what we mean when we say cult film. Like GARRETTs separated-
at-birth companion piece, ONE-EYED JACKS. Certain films just haunt you,
and reward multiple viewings. Quite often it is because theyre (artistic)
failures. Curates eggs -- broken-backed, orphan films that reach for
something and fall short. Eliots shadow works. But shadows are haunting,
and full of secrets.
These movies can have a strange, hypnotic power. You sort of see through
them to the ambition and ideas that shaped them -- even though they may be
betrayed by insufficient or often ludicrous execution.
Hustons MALTESE FALCON/SIERRA MADRE/AFRICAN QUEEN are
canonical, and FAT CITY/MAN WHO WOULD BE KING/ASPHALT JUNGLE are
great, and RED BADGE OF COURAGE/MOBY DICK/MOULIN ROUGE/BEAT
THE DEVIL My God. Film history would be remiss not to pass all of these
movies on to future generations. I could happily watch any one of them for the
fiftieth time tomorrow. But yknow what Id kinda like to take another look at
right now, if I had nice DVDs of them? -- THE KREMLIN LETTER and SINFUL
DAVEY and A WALK WITH LOVE AND DEATH. Hustons bad period makes
any working director today look like a joke.
Arthur Penns THE CHASE is another one, an endlessly fascinating disaster.
Sometimes to the viewer it doesnt matter how many scenes are missing or
truncated or compromised. Its only the writer or director who cant look at the
thing without weeping -- and maybe the viewer too, but all for different
reasons.
Brandos MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY has the reputation of being a travesty,
but its a favorite of mine, and not for any kind of camp reasons (despite Mad
magazines Fletcher Limpwrist parody). I think its a really good tough and
exciting 60s epic movie. Like Siegels version of THE KILLERS, I prefer it to the
more famous classic version -- as great as that version is, with Laughtons
unforgettable Captain Bligh. Still, I buy the much-derided Brando more than I
do Clark Gable -- and the scope, the color, the South Seas, the grittier realism
of Richard Harris in the 60s version. If only Lean/Bolt could have made theirs!
When we talk about how great the 60s and 70s were, if you forced me to
discard or discount certain movies, it would probably be those ones that
anticipated the kind of shit we get now -- those films that were prematurely
quirky, that were then referred to as offbeat or oddball. I cant say Ive ever
really warmed to even the best or most highly-regarded of them -- like HAROLD
AND MAUDE (but I do like Altmans BREWSTER McCLOUD, which seems a
contradiction; Altman always jumped back and forth between the plus and
minus columns. THREE WOMEN, yes, BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS,
no). LITTLE MURDERS, WHERES POPPA?, LORD LOVE A DUCK, LEO THE
45

LAST, QUACKSER FORTUNE that whole category. THE KING OF MARVIN
GARDENS STAY HUNGRY Richard Lester and Clive Donner at their most
absurdist. Paul Mazursky movies. All Alan Rudolph movies. The celebration
of phony eccentricity. (You can guess how much I love theatre.)
NETWORK is now taken as the template, the Koran of screenwriting. Its hard
to write CHINATOWN -- with its seriously dysfunctional family -- but almost
anyone, as has been proven in recent years, can write about a wacky
dysfunctional family. If CHINATOWN was a novel now, theyd emphasize on
the cover that it was black-humored noir, and as darkly funny as Polanskis
PIRATES or FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS.
There are exceptions in the satirical/surreal/shaggy dog vein. Im very fond
of O LUCKY MAN! And SMILE (1975). SLITHER (1973) is an all-time favorite.
Ive just been re-watching Aldrichs LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE. Absolute
crap. And yet (The whole subgenre of neurotic female movies seems to
guarantee critical/commercial/camp calamity at the time of release, but then
devoted cinephile followings later on: LOLA MONTES, EVE, THE NAKED KISS,
LILITH, MARNIE, DUEL IN THE SUN, RUBY GENTRY, GONE TO EARTH --
Jennifer Jones is her own genre BONJOUR TRISTESSE, ELENA AND HER
MEN (But not CANDY, even with John Huston in the cast).
Its the auteur theory again. If you like the artist, individual works, even
lesser ones, speak to you, for whatever reason. And this is not to discount PAT
GARRETTs original scriptwriter, Rudy Wurlitzer, whose corpus I like, too, but
separately. I might yet, to paraphrase Peckinpah in his own film, bury all its
variant versions in a box and then leave the territory.

DS: Let me now get specific and turn to your filmography, with queries on
specific films of note. In looking online, I see that youve worked on
eleven screenplays to date. Is that correct? What is your most recent
project, and how is it progressing?

LD: No, of course thats not correct. Ive written dozens of scripts for hire,
nearly all a total waste of time, and dozens more on my own account. Almost
as soon as I started in this business I wanted to retire -- in order to write
screenplays. I hope I never take another screenwriting job. I hope never to
have a meeting again.
Meanwhile Ive already broken this promise and been roped in by Steven
Soderbergh for one last job, which is meant to round out our trilogy. But
well see how that goes. This is not another original script of mine hes taken
up, but an attempt at collaboration -- which has always been something of a
misnomer in moviemaking. Its a collective art, not really a collaborative one.

DS: Let me start at the beginning. A quarter century ago, you worked
(uncredited) on the Michael Douglas film Romancing The Stone. It was one
of those films made in the wake of Steven Spielbergs Indiana Jones films.
46

I saw it on a date, but forgot much of it (as I did the date), save that the
dialogue was wittier than in the Indiana Jones films. Was that your
contribution to that film? The lead screenwriter is listed as Diane
Thomas. Did you come in to punch up her script, or what?

LD: Yes, mostly dialogue. The banter, the jokes, the Danny De Vito role. As a
script doctor during the filming of a movie -- a movie on location with difficult
circumstances, weather, and sometimes contentious personalities -- youre just
sort of helping to solve logistical problems on a daily basis, making constant
adjustments. Before filming, nobodys happy with the existing script; they like
the idea of it enough to proceed, they like it in its essentials, but feel its just
not there yet -- and they still feel that way after filming, by the way,
necessitating reshoots, in the case of ROMANCING and many others. But
during filming, a lot of it is just grunt work. Youre always playing catch-up.
Changing things to accommodate the practical locations, or what the stunt
people have designed for the action scenes, working with the actors so theyre
more comfortable with their lines, their motivation -- going over scenes one
more time, one more time -- until theyre put on film forever. Just constantly
trying to make sense of convoluted plot points and how the characters
plausibly get from A to B and whos in a car, whos on foot, how much time
would this or that actually take. And in the end, no one really cares about a lot
of that detail. The Writers Guild credit arbitration committee doesnt, thats for
sure. Michael Douglas is in this new Soderbergh movie Im working on -- so
Ive come a long way!

DS: This was a typical, rather brainless action adventure film, but it was
your first. Were you just happy to make any money, or did you view
yourself as selling out? Would you have preferred to be working with a
visionary director like Terrence Malick or Stanley Kubrick, rather than a
studio director like Robert Zemeckis?

LD: I was under contract to Twentieth Century Fox. Producer Joe Wizan had
been made head of the studio and it was his idea to try and recreate the old
studio system, with a stable of talent under one roof. The outgoing president
Sherry Lansing had given the go-ahead to my script about a haunted castle,
which was my breakthrough, and luckily Joe liked it as well, and also liked and
retained the two executives who had discovered the script and me, and I was
signed to a two-year deal. I ended up outlasting all of them on the lot,
forgotten in my corner office, because every movie they made except
ROMANCING THE STONE turned into a disaster. My HAUNTED CASTLE was
cancelled just prior to production because of the money-hemorrhaging chaos
that quickly engulfed the studio. (I wandered into a soundstage one day, saw
Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton filming RHINESTONE, and had that
sinking feeling.) And ROMANCING was thought to be a turkey, as well. It was
47

the first thing they assigned me to under my deal -- after Michael Douglas and
Robert Zemeckis had read a couple of my scripts and met and approved me --
and I had a blast. It was a real baptism of fire. I was practically still a
teenager. There was no one my age doing this or making this kind of money on
a weekly basis. The Mexican crew called me joven. My friends were still in
college. My new friends were all ten years older than me. The Fox lot was what
it had been in Zanucks day. The HELLO DOLLY outdoor sets still standing.
My first office there was a lovely old bungalow with the Western street out the
window. I could put my feet up and rock back in my chair like Henry Fonda in
MY DARLING CLEMENTINE. There was no thought or question of selling out.
It was a dream come true.

DS: In our initial email exchange, you mentioned that, before this break
into films, you had written and peddled about a screenplay some regard as
one of the best unmade screenplays ever written (the sort of praise
usually heaped on Orson Welles scripts). Its title is Edward Ford- and here
is a link to the screenplay, but what was it, why has it never been made
into a film, and, all these decades later, would you still want it to be
produced, or is it one of those things you look at now and say, Jeez, this
needs a lot of work?

LD: EDWARD FORD is based on a dear family friend, a fellow who went to
high school with my dad. I met him when I was a kid and we have remained
close all my life. He was, from the first, perhaps the strangest and most
interesting person Ive ever met. For the longest time I thought, I must figure
out how to put this guy in a script. Stick him in some murder mystery or
something as a supporting character. Then it dawned on me, no, he is the
script. Ill just write down everything I know about him, all true, just change
the names. So thats what I did. The one time I ever followed to the letter the
classic injunction Write What You Know. Kind of pathetic, really -- the one
thing I didnt make up, and its taken on a life of its own. Something so
personal and particular. God knows how many Xerox copies there must be.
The imaginations just not equal to reality. It couldnt have done more for me if
it had been made, and I guess theres a lesson in that, too. Scripts get made or
languish for a million random reasons of fate and chance. Incredible to me
that any of them persist in peoples memories, given the deluge of new ones
piling up year after year. EDWARD FORD is very difficult to cast correctly.
And its been cannibalized over the years by others. Im not vigorously out
there pushing scripts; certainly not old ones. I always want to move on to the
next one. Frederic Raphael says screenplays dont age like wine, they age like
fruit.

DS: Great quote. In 1991, two films of yours came out. The first was a
Michael J. Fox and James Woods action comedy, The Hard Way. Never saw
48

it, but in Googling about, this seems almost a step down from Romancing
The Stone. Within the film, too, there seems to be a thread of a tv show
that is Indiana Jones-like. What was your contribution to this film, and
was it just a paycheck?

LD: Sometimes everything is rewritten except that which ought to be. THE
HARD WAY is, apparently, about a self-serious action-adventure movie star of
the Indiana Jones/DIE HARD type -- and yet the part is played by diminutive
comic pipsqueak Michael J. Fox. The viewers immediate experience is
completely at odds with what the script is describing. (Kevin Kline was
originally cast in the role.) It was my first job after my Fox contract finally
came to an end, and I was happy to get it. Theyre all just paychecks if theyre
not self-generated. It was old-time Hollywood scriptwriting with a marvelous
veteran writer-producer named William Sackheim. Just me and him -- pacing
-- in his office. No other jerks or intermediaries; Bill kept me totally protected
from whoever they might have been, just the way I like it. He had developed an
initial comedy called TECH ADVISOR, about a real cop on the set of a cop
movie -- I suppose in the hope of emulating prior Sackheim success THE IN-
LAWS. But he decided he wanted to take it in a different direction, so my
contribution was to re-tool this buddy pairing as more of an action movie --
the actor in the cops world. My version got terribly convoluted and Bill very
politely (usually they dont even call) moved on to another writer, Dan Pyne.
The movie was going to be made with Kline and Gene Hackman as the cop,
with Arthur IN-LAWS Hiller directing. Then the studio decided they wanted it
to be lighter, after all, and they thought they had two serious dramatic actors --
that Kevin Kline wasnt funny. So it fell apart and Kevin Kline promptly won an
Oscar for being funny in A FISH CALLED WANDA. Sackheim was
subsequently able to resurrect it with John Badham as director -- and a team
of comedy writers were brought on to improve it even more.

DS: The other film was Steven Soderberghs previously mentioned Kafka,
your first film with Soderbergh. Again, Ive not seen it, but in listening to
some offhanded remarks on the DVD commentary on The Limey, the later
Soderbergh film you worked on, you seemed to not have been pleased
with the results on Kafka. What were that films flaws, and since, on The
Limey, you often complained of Soderberghs editorial decisions- from the
way a shot was framed to its editing, were the problems in Kafka mostly
directorial decisions? Or were you simply not allowed as much elbow
room with the script as you would have wanted?

LD: Theyre always directorial decisions, if the director is left alone to do
whatever he wants. KAFKA is quite beautifully directed if you mistake
direction for mere photography or production design. Many films go off the
rails from day one; everything is just wrong. Theyre made for the wrong
49

reasons; nobody really cares about the script, just the perceived heat of the
director or cast, theres no command or control -- a multiplicity of producers,
none with any authority. There are crippling casting mistakes, dimwitted
actors who sense weakness and turn destructive. The script was no
masterpiece, but there was a script -- it just wasnt followed or respected. So
the main flaw of the movie is, to intents and purposes, the script. It doesnt
make any sense at all -- the story, the plot, so far as anyone can tell, or even
individual lines of dialogue, many of which are just awful if not laughable.
Conceptually the script was changed completely; it was originally a
supernatural horror film. Steven dropped the supernatural aspects, preferring
to make a more supposedly rational mystery in the manner of THE THIRD MAN
-- which makes the horror elements that remain seem even sillier. I went along
with this to a certain extent because I was still too young and eager and not
quite ready to retire from the movie business. Its what screenwriters do, they
go along, hope for the best. Youre so often in the hands of luck and fate.
What if Polanski or Cronenberg or Terry Gilliam on a good day and Steven
feels hes so much more capable now of making it what it might have been.
Timing. Just once Id love to be fired immediately, paid off handsomely, and
rewritten by Tom Stoppard. Yknow, the flip side is that there have always
been bad writers with their names on good movies, but somehow they never
complain about how their scripts were changed!

DS: Good point. Was Kafka more of a biopic, or something different? I ask
because most biopics fail because they try to cram too much into a film
rather than taking a key moment in someones life and expanding upon it.
Patton, as example, follows the man through a couple of years in World
War Two. Who really cares of Patton as a child? It seems such a logical
way to approach biopics, to find the key moment to core into, but so few
do it. Why do you think biopics are so formulaic? And, given that reality,
name a few biopics that you think transcend formula, and how and why
they succeed.

LD: KAFKA wasnt a biopic. The adolescent conceit was to make Kafka the
protagonist of a somewhat Kafkaesque horror tale -- mixing in elements of his
own stories, along with aspects of his life and personality. My initial impulse,
really, was to write a horror movie like the early classics everyone knows with
memorable monsters that have never been equaled -- Frankenstein, Dracula,
the Mummy, the Wolfman, the Invisible Man. I wondered, what could you
possibly come up with that would be that good or unusual and memorable --
and I settled on The Assistants (from Kafkas THE CASTLE). I told the actors
playing them that the movie was about them, which of course is the one thing
all actors long to hear. They were delighted, and I was delighted with both of
them -- their scenes, their casting and performances, are the most faithful to
my original script and vision -- so something of my interest and investment in
50

those characters was strong enough to survive. But not everything -- there
were crucial scenes involving them that were jettisoned at script stage, and the
script ended with them jumping on a boat to go to Amerika -- a scene which
WAS filmed, but then cut. Ironically, most of the biographical scenes were also
lost from the get-go, which contributes to the overall shallowness of the film
and its hero -- his famously difficult relationship with his father, problems with
women so its not just the mystery plot thats shortchanged.
The Assistants were never the leading roles in the original script, but they
were its raison detre, and lay at the heart of the mystery, which was essentially
the origin story of the two Assistants -- designed to propel them
hypothetically into a whole series of adventures which would never again need
to have anything to do with Kafka himself. You see, like THE LIMEY, these
were early, adolescent scripts of mine that were meant to be unpretentious
genre films. A Michael Caine, 60s/70s action movie. A scary horror movie.
Neither one functions on those levels or was even intended to when they were
finally made, ten (KAFKA) and twenty (THE LIMEY) years after I first wrote
them. The Assistants were meant to be supernatural beings, but as I said, like
virtually every idea Ive ever had in the movie business, its been identified as
such, circled, and ruthlessly struck through with a red pen.
What do I know? At the present moment, if you go on the Turner Classic
Movies website, the Most Requested movie in America not available on DVD, of
all the movies ever made in the history of the world, is KAFKA, with 13,500+
votes, each requiring a separate e-mail address.
Youre absolutely right about PATTON. Other than LAWRENCE OF ARABIA,
its the finest biographical screenplay, and movie, for precisely that reason.
You portray the character at the moment of greatest crisis or challenge. Why
this should be true of most movies, but ignored in the case of the average
biopic, is beyond me. Why would you care about the backstory of a character
in a biopic any more than you give a shit about the childhood or first forty
years of Will Kanes life in HIGH NOON or Captain Queegs in THE CAINE
MUTINY?
Drama and conflict arise in a period of transition -- the classical unities of
time and place are best respected. You could make an interesting movie about
young Patton serving under Pershing and chasing Pancho Villa, or about
Lawrence after Arabia -- and those stories have been dealt with, on television,
as it happens. But youve gotta pick your spots.
YOUNG MR. LINCOLN is an extraordinary example. Past, Present, and
Future coexist simultaneously. Youre following the character in the films
present, while at the same time looking back with Fordian nostalgia and
projecting ahead to the historical figure he will become. (ABE LINCON IN
ILLINOIS aint bad, either -- there are characters great enough to sustain more
than one defining moment.)
Having said that, Ive never quite understood so many peoples antagonism
towards GANDHI, which I think is a wonderful film. Not an artistic triumph,
51

necessarily, but grand, sweeping, popular entertainment in a serious vein, with
magnificent actors, and wholly engrossing. Attenboroughs YOUNG WINSTON
and CHAPLIN, on the other hand, really are stiffs, the latter especially
hopeless, a misguided, impossible subject to have attempted.
Robert Bolts other triumph -- A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS -- not really a
biopic, per se. There are people who were once real who pass into popular
myth -- BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID/VIVA
ZAPATA/SALVATORE GIULIANO/JUDGE ROY BEAN/JEREMIAH
JOHNSON/PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID. Wajdas DANTON, theres
another good one. And REDS.
I always find myself re-watching Schaffners other bio-epic NICHOLAS AND
ALEXANDRA, which also doesnt get much love. But I have warm feelings
towards all those great Hollywood classics that were childhood staples, no
matter how corny or formulaic or ahistorical they may have been -- JUAREZ,
LOUIS PASTEUR and EMILE ZOLA, REUTER and DR. EHRLICH, MADAME
CURIE, EDISON, MARK TWAIN, JACK LONDON, and so on. MOULIN ROUGE
(Huston) and LUST FOR LIFE are beautiful films about artists.
The trouble with writing them is the awful burden and straightjacket of the
truth hanging over you -- even if you ignore it and create something entirely
fanciful. It can have a crippling effect. Fiction, or genius, gives you greater
leeway, to say the least. No rules apply to the biographical dramas of OLIVER
TWIST or CITIZEN KANE or Don Vito Corleone.

DS: In the mid-1990s, it seems you were not active, in terms of
screenplays being produced. What were you doing in those years? Were
you in a writers slump, or just not getting offers? Were you working on a
novel, or were you involved in promoting your fathers career? If none of
the above, how did you sustain yourself financially, and how much does a
primary screenwriter get per screenplay?

LD: Im always in a writers slump, but have somehow remained in constant
employment for more than a quarter of a century, although I hate leaving my
room and generally do as little as possible to keep this act going. As I thought
everyone knew by now, screenwriters option, sell, and are hired to write
screenplays regardless of whether any of them ever get made into movies --
which is some kind of miracle each and every time it happens. If the movie
turns out to be any good or successful, its a miracle on top of a miracle on top
of a miracle. So theres bad luck involved -- people with every intention of
making this movie or that, which ultimately fall apart -- as well as bad choices
when the years mount up between films. Actually, theres nothing easier than
getting a movie made. The right script lands on the right desk at the right time
-- and someone makes the decision. The rest is a separate business -- entirely
and completely separate -- known as the script development business. And
this is a business of time-wasting, where money changes hands, large sums of
52

money, and the appointment books of people with nothing better to do -- and
no skill at doing it -- are filled, and wheels are spun.
Movies, to answer your basic question, would be far better if no one was ever
paid to write anything -- but only for having written. Writers should write what
they want to write, not what non-writers want them to. The scripts I like best
by others, and by me, are written laisser-aller. If this was the way the world
worked, youd see a true meritocracy, and survival of the fittest. 90% of all
screenwriters would vanish almost overnight, and only those capable of
generating their own material and providing shootable screenplays would be
left standing. (Alvin Sargent would still be allowed to adapt PAPER MOON and
Lillian Hellmans PENTIMENTO.)
For the past dozen years or more, as much as possible, I decided I was only
going to take a job if it involved collaboration with an interesting director -- as
opposed to writing to order for studio executives and development clowns. In
this way Ive largely managed to avoid the deadly studio notes you hear about
so often and which I had my fill of when I was younger and greener. But this is
a double-edged sword. Its much more satisfying and pleasant to work on an
interesting project one-on-one with a director who has the clout to keep the
wolves at bay, but hell almost never get around to making the fucking thing.
Instead hell fritter away your time and his, then suddenly drop it and go off
and make some crap thats fallen into his lap out of the sky thats ready to go
with millions of dollars and stars attached. We want you, is what movie
people -- egotists and narcissists -- really want to hear, not, We want what you
want. So thats the trade-off you make as a writer, if youre in the job-market
at all.
You might have to lower your (ever-fluctuating) quote in order to enjoy
greater freedom and a more artistic working environment. You might, with a
powerful director, even be getting studio money, without interference but also
without enthusiasm. Your director is usually well-known and in-demand.
Theyre indulged, up to a point. They have other irons in the fire, and its
human nature; people get bored with whats in front of them, or start to over-
think it. You get insecure if youre out of action too long. Something new
always seems better.
Im always amazed when I hear a writer saying they have no ideas. I have
nothing but five hundred different ideas Im constantly adding notes to, but not
actually doing the hard work of writing. Thats where the rubber hits the road.
Its absolutely amazing that you can go buy a five-dollar pen and a five-dollar
notebook (and those are kinda pricey), and a matter of months later someone
might give you hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions, for the
ink that was in that pen that you scratched into that notebook. No wonder so
many people have that dream. But that was never my dream. I swear, it never
even crossed my mind. My dream, taking a leaf from Walker Percys THE
MOVIEGOER, was Steve McQueen jumping a barbed-wire fence on a
53

motorcycle and William Holden swimming across the River Kwai with a knife
between his teeth.
So, yes, my father allowed my career to begin and now his legacy has given
me a freedom which is mine to squander. You should see me in January -- a
new year ahead! -- a script a month! Then by February Im reorganizing my
DVD collection -- and fantasizing about books, too, sure, while remaining too
lazy to get going on those, either -- before that business also goes down the
drain. (They now want you to have a website. Can you imagine?)

DS: 1998 and 1999 saw the back to back releases of, to me, your two best
screenplays and films- Alex Proyass Dark City and Steven Soderberghs
The Limey. Both films are impeccably written, both deal with memory,
both had directors of quality, yet both films were not well handled by
their studios, and financially flopped. Do you think their commonalities
were a reason both films were mostly ignored by theatergoers, or was it a
general lack of intelligence in filmgoers that doomed both films?

LD: Other than their being relatively low-budget B-movies without well-known
or current stars in them, as well as being vaguely thought of as art films, I
dont think of them as having that much in common. I dont think potential
ticket-buyers go, Oh, shit, not another movie about memory. And I dont buy
into the usual lamebrained movie business excuses that a film failed to find
an audience or was mis-marketed or even that theyre flops. What the hell
would anyone have expected of films in 1998 and 1999 starring Terence Stamp
and Peter Fonda and Rufus Sewell and William Hurt? Roger Ebert picking
DARK CITY as the Best Film of the year strikes me as exceeding expectations
by quite a wide margin. Winning a Bram Stoker award for Best Screenplay,
and other prizes here and there -- it may be pathetic by FORREST GUMP
standards, but what dyou want from a movie with Richard OBrien as an
alien?

DS: To stick with the commonalities of both films, did your experience
writing Dark City help you with any insights into The Limey, especially
Terence Stamps character, Wilson? Also, the two films share an actress
in common. Melissa George appears in both. In Dark City, shes a gorgeous
young prostitute that ends up murdered, and in The Limey shes a more
mousey character- the daughter of Wilson, who likewise ends up dead- be
it murder or not is left up to the viewer. Was this just a coincidence, or
did Soderbergh see Dark City, like her performance, and get her, or did you
recommend her to him?

LD: No, one had nothing to do with the other that I am aware of. Melissa
George in those two small roles, I believe, was nothing more than
happenstance. Certainly Steven had seen DARK CITY; whether that influenced
54

him, Ive no idea. I only realized later on that Melissa George was quite well
known in her native Australia, and she has since gone on to bigger things here.
If anything, POINT BLANK is probably the main link between the two films,
DARK CITY perhaps even more so in my mind than THE LIMEY. Soderbergh
was thinking primarily of POINT BLANK. When I first wrote THE LIMEY, it was
not POINT BLANK in particular, but its authorial source, Richard Stark, and
his whole series of Parker books of which POINT BLANK (originally THE
HUNTER) was only the first. But in Alex Proyass original DARK CITY script
the heros name was Walker, which I told him he had to change because of its
pretentious use, most notably in POINT BLANK, but also in other films (Jean-
Claude Van Damme in Peter Hyamss TIMECOP). I dont know if Alex was
thinking of the Boorman film. But I always felt that the urban fantasia of
DARK CITY was more POINT BLANKIAN than THE LIMEY.

DS: Ok, lets talk about Dark City, and I want to get into some points I
mentioned when I reviewed the DVD release of the Directors Cut of the
film. First, why do you think this film is always linked to Blade Runner?
Dark City is a far superior film, in terms of writing, acting, editing, and all
but the special effects. Do you think that this link, which basically casts
the latter film as a rehash of the earlier film, contributed to the critical
and financial neglect your film suffered theatrically? And, to what degree
do you think its DVD release contributed to its consideration, now, as one
of the best sci fi films ever?

LD: Its assumed now that DVDs have materially altered the fortunes of many
movies, given them an afterlife, garnered them a following, but this always
somehow happened with certain films -- it was the case with BLADE RUNNER,
which was also a critical and financial flop on initial release. Leonard Maltin
still only gives it one-and-a-half stars, despite its standing in the years since as
a science-fiction landmark. DARK CITY, on the other hand, gets three stars. I
dont quite get this discrepancy, myself. I tend to believe my movies bad
reviews more than the good ones. I do think DARK CITY is kind of in the
shadow of BLADE RUNNER, just as THE LIMEY has POINT BLANK hovering
over it (as well as GET CARTER). They say if you cant be first be best, if you
cant be best be first -- but first and best still beats all. I appreciate everyone
who truly likes DARK CTY and THE LIMEY and I wouldnt want to discount
their sincere interest and enthusiasm, but Maybe its just impossible for a
participant, the screenwriter above all, to feel the same excitement or be at all
objective, but those earlier models seem to me somehow heavier and more
meaningful. The anxiety of influence again. Even if BLADE RUNNER is a bit of
a mess, with all its variant versions and everything, as a movie, and culturally,
its more impactful. Bigger star, director, production design, more influential
in every way. Thats a fact.

55

DS: I posit that the Strangers, in the film, get their ideas on humanity not
from different periods of real human history, but from different periods of
Hollywood film history. Is this so? And was it intended? And, this would
explain their nave-te as well as their perplexity over human reactions
that are not cartoon-like.

LD: I knew that I was getting my ideas from different periods of Hollywood
history -- or specifically the classic film noir period, but Im perfectly willing to
accept your interpretation that the Strangers formed their notions from the
same source.

DS: Lets speak of the acting in the film. Kiefer Sutherlands character
never uses contractions- was this your idea? I ask because its a subtle
way of showing his anal retentive qualities. What other little bonus tics
did you toss into some characterizations, to make them more real to the
viewers?

LD: I really cant remember if his dialogue was written that way in the script
originally, but Im sure it was just his -- Keifers -- choice to play it that way,
with that halting Peter Lorre delivery, with Alexs approval. I know Alex feels
Keifer was unjustly maligned for acting in that way, and I agree, I think hes
interesting and unusual in the part. Seems even better to me now, now that
we know he wasnt, in fact, a Brat Pack has-been, but on the cusp of a big
breakthrough as a tough guy leading man. Again, Ill go with your reading of
the role, though I dont know if anyone at the time was conscious of that being
a reason for him speaking that way. As for tics, Ive no idea. Its odd about
actors -- sometimes its the tiniest little thing that attracts them to a role, that
provides the key for them. Ive found this quite often to be the case. The
producer told me William Hurt wanted to play his part because of one line. Its
the scene where he draws a gun on Rufus Sewell, ordering him not to move --
and Rufus immediately runs away. Hurt says, in quiet exasperation, Nobody
ever listens to me. A line I wrote from the heart! And from what Ive heard
about William Hurt, he does have a tendency to talk -- somewhat abstrusely at
times -- and has probably had the experience of people responding with blank
stares.
And to the extent that Robert De Niro can become animated and engaged in a
script conference, this occurred in his hotel room when we discussed his
characters climactic line to his younger rival in THE SCORE: When did you
start thinking you were better than me? That became the goal post for him.

DS: I mention the obvious influence of UFO Contactee and Abduction
mythos in this film. Did you read any books on the history of claimed
alien encounters when adding your input to the screenplay? Or did you
just graft things from classic sci fi films of the 1950s? And what did co-
56

screenwriter David Goyer contribute vis--vis you, as he is more of a
linear and comic book level writer in the action film world.

LD: No, I did no research for DARK CITY. I dont think I ever thought of any
sci-fi films of the 1950s. It was set up at Disney when I was hired, and Ive
always preferred fantasy to science fiction. I honestly was thinking, not just
of crime films, but of MARY POPPINS and the PETER PAN London you fly over
at Disneyland -- and MR. TOADS WILD RIDE -- and I think that fairy-tale,
Sleepy Hollow, Magic Kingdom quality can be felt in the film -- the boat ride
they take, the floating birthday cake scene, which would be one of mine, by
the rivers edge. Some of the more Pythonesque or Ealing comedy or TWILIGHT
ZONE aspects. HEAVEN CAN WAIT and ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE and THE
WIZARD OF OZ.
William Hurts detective character, I thought, was a bit like the one in
Melvilles LE DIEUXIEME SOUFFLE -- and the police station scene between
Rufus Sewell and Jennifer Connelly another gloss on Bresson that Paul
Schrader already ripped off in AMERICAN GIGOLO. Frankenheimers
SECONDS -- the chance to remake yourself. These were some of the
antecedents I had in mind. I wouldnt say this is mere appropriation, which I
find boring in art, but in the service, I hope, of making the present work and its
characters live -- something of a DARK CITIAN paradox, perhaps.
I do think that after the project left Disney, and me, it became both more
science-fictiony and conventional. I suppose my main suggestion at the outset
and contribution was perhaps to emphasize the love story, the marriage, for
one thing. And also, if I remember, I think the original script by Alex was more
or less a crime film-science fiction hybrid set in an alternate world or
universe. I believe one of the first things I said was, alternate to what? And
from there we built the idea that these were real people snatched from earth to
populate this alien simulacrum of a human city. I told you Rod Serling was a
favorite.

DS: Yes, I recall that old The Twilight Zone episode of the whole town
snatched up and studied on an alien world. The scene that ends the film,
shows Jennifer Connelly on the end of a long pier. This shot was almost
totally replicated in later films starring Connelly, Requiem For A Dream and
House Of Sand And Fog. Is there something iconic or deeply atavistic about
that shot? Why has it become the most famous and copied shot in Dark
City, a film laden with far more evocative images?

LD: I havent made it through either of those subsequent Connelly films,
maybe I should. Ive always thought, and said, that DARK CITY owes a lot to
Alex Proyass autobiography and country -- Australia -- and to a lesser extent,
as his helper, to mine. Australia has its own frontier myth, distinct from
Americas, and a culture that remained closer to that of England. The seaside,
57

the Pier, these are very iconic images, or tropes, if you like. England being an
island, as well as notoriously grey and rainy -- sunshine and holidays and
beaches were long the stuff and symbols of dreams for ordinary people, for the
working class, especially in the days before modern and widespread ease of
transportation. And Alex is from Sydney -- he remembers the shabby funfair
or amusement area that once existed, with its aquarium by the water. But I
suppose the lure of the sea, the end of the frontier, is a pretty basic human
longing. Gatsbys green light. I dont know if DARK CITYs endings been
copied or not, or if its a copy itself. Thats an instance where I was thinking
of a science-fiction film -- LOGANS RUN, with its couple escaping the artificial,
domed city, making it out into the sunlight and natural world, with Jerry
Goldsmiths soaring music.

DS: Logans Run was a fun movie unfairly maligned in the wake of Star
Wars. In the DVD commentary, you bitch about Connellys performance as
not being up to par? Who did you see in the role? What specific
weaknesses did Connelly reveal? And, were the flaws really Connellys or
the characters?

LD: I suspect I was slightly more circumspect than that, but, granted, were
not talking about Dame Edith Evans, J.C.s subsequent Academy Award for A
BEAUTIFUL MIND notwithstanding. DARK CITY is one of those movies where
you can pretend that deficiencies of script or performance are actually
strengths -- hey, theyre meant to be cardboard cutouts! But I guess I felt that
-- like so many actors now -- theres a maturity gap. She still seems like the
girl in LABYRINTH, rather than a genuine, smoky femme fatale. Lauren Bacall
was very young in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, but to even make the comparison
is manifestly absurd. Fashions change. They just dont seem, in DARK CITY,
like actual adults in an actual marriage thats had its ups and downs. Yes,
theyre just going through the motions -- because theyre being made to by
outside forces. But if this is really supposed to be evocative of a noir universe -
- did Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer seem like they were born yesterday? In a
movie about people who were born yesterday, this might or might not be
construed as a defect. But its also entirely possible that under-writing and
under-directing are contributing factors. I think Alex would agree that being
an actors director is not his primary focus of interest.

DS: In the commentaries and extra features on the DVD, the general
consensus of Proyas, you, and Goyer, is that this version is superior to
the theatrical release. To me, though, its a wash. I wrote: Other than the
aforementioned lengthening of the film, there is the loss of the opening voiceover
by Kiefer Sutherland. Proyas and the other members of the creative team all
think this improves the film, but since we learn of what is stated in the films
voiceover within the first twenty or so minutes, and it bears little on the films
58

ending, the voiceover is really a non-issue, dramatically. In Blade Runner, for
instance, the cheesy voiceover at films end, especially, adds to the film by
leavening many of the trite and mawkish scenes that are viewed with an almost
PoMo and unwitting self-deprecation. Thats not true, in this instance. In short,
its loss does not remove any of the pop from the films mystery. In fact, one
could argue that the opening voiceover actually does more to make the film
ambiguous than does the Directors Cut. Why? Because Sutherlands voice
actually notes that The Strangers took these people from our small, blue world,
meaning Earth. Thus, the surprise when Murdoch and Bumstead bust through
the brick wall into outer space is more of a shock, because we have seemingly
been told we are on earth. In the Directors Cut, sans that statement, there
always seems to be something off and artificial about the city, so the notion that
it is a large spaceship is not quite as dramatic. Some opening scenes that show
the city asleep during a tuning are moved to later in the film, and, again, this is a
non-issue, since the tuning at films opening only makes sense if the voiceover is
there. The effects showing Murdochs ability to tune are not as glaring from early
on in the film any longer. This makes it seem as if Murdoch is learning his
powers as he goes along. A slight plus, possibly, but, since the early evidence of
his tuning ability comes in uncontrolled moments, wouldnt a fierce burst be
evident? There are other minor effects enhancements, and more of an insistence
on featuring the spiral motif of the killer persona Murdoch was supposed to get.
Also, Bumstead seems more equivocal in the added scenes we see of him.
Finally, during the singing scenes, Jennifer Connellys real voice is used, not
Anita Kelseys. Finally, the changes seem more akin to those made in Francis
Ford Coppolas Apocalypse Now/Apocalypse Now Redux recut- the film is longer,
but still of the same generally high quality. Had Proyas not held on to his pet
peeves, no one would have uttered a complaint about anything missing from the
original film. Comments?

LD: I think its probably a wash, too. I havent got round to watching the new
version, except for bits and pieces, and I know I can barely tell the difference.
On the whole, Im not thrilled with Directors Cuts. Theyre interesting for film
buffs to have and to hold, but theyre very often disappointing, if not actual
acts of vandalism -- especially years after the fact when the director might have
lost his marbles in the interim. Can you even obtain TOM JONES or THE LAST
PICTURE SHOW anymore as they were first released and seen? I mean, these
are movies that won Oscars. The historical record should count for something.
At the moment theres outrage over Friedkins tinkering with THE FRENCH
CONNECTION. Youre right, things often end up getting less focused, more
diffuse, or at any rate just not that different an experience overall.

DS: Of the film, I also write: .while Dark City has many influences, it
transcends them all, and becomes more the influencer than the influenced. In
this way, it is a work of art that is a bottleneck. It takes all that came before
59

and reconfigures it so that it influences all that came later. Bottleneck art and
artists are almost always a sure sign of greatness. Walt Whitman did it in
poetry, Henrik Ibsen did it in drama, and films like The Birth Of A Nation,
Citizen Kane, and 2001: A Space Odyssey did it in film. It also has, in over a
decade, never had a film come close to it. Do you think that the film is a
bottleneck film? If not, why not? Do you believe in the idea of
bottlenecks in art? That is to say that there come artworks and artists
that are the sum of all before them and which form the bases for all
subsequent art. Walt Whitman and all Modern poetry is the best example.

LD: I dont know. You could sort of say that about any great writer, artist,
composer, inventor, couldnt you? The world, the art form, Before and After
them. Shakespeare or Tolstoy or Dickens or Joyce -- or J.K. Rowling. There
are trends and fads and fashions and movements -- its all a continuum of
influence, if you ask me. Everyone takes from those who came before, from
favorites, from wherever. Artists pick and choose from the whole history of art
and make it their own. All art is one, was Michael Powells favorite saying.
Alex Proyas was greatly influenced by science-fiction literature, and its true,
its a shame there dont seem to have been serious science-fiction films at
anywhere near the level that readers have always enjoyed, with anything like
the complexity or philosophy or ideas. If he had other films in mind, they
would have been Tarkovskys, for the most part.
Hollywood is happier thinking of science-fiction as special-effects-driven,
comic book, cartoon spectacles for numbskulls. But they think this across all
genres now, to the extent that genres even exist anymore. Cant they make a
pirate movie without calling it PIRATES and making it a spoof? Do romantic
comedies have to be utter crap? You wont be seeing the likes of NINOTCHKA
or THE APARTMENT or TOOTSIE again anytime soon, or ever.
Your image of a bottleneck would seem to me to apply more to negative or
anti-art developments, suggesting as it does something constraining, some
unpleasant blockage or obstacle to be gotten around -- like the ultimate victory
of television and the wave of TV execs who become film execs, thus ending the
cinema of the 70s, and ushering in the non-cinema of the 80s.
I know a lot of people like DARK CITY -- I do, too, and it was a wonderful
working experience -- but other than an homage episode of BUFFY THE
VAMPIRE SLAYER and some vaguely unreleasable movies whose titles I cant
even come up with, I dont see that its materially altered the universe. And if
youve read Fritz Leiber and Robert Heinlein, it makes sense that DARK CITYs
characters are wearing old hats.

DS: Then there are films that may not be bottlenecks, but stand alone as
great works of art that are nonpareil. In film, three that stand out in my
mind are Louis Malles My Dinner With Andre. This is a simple conversation
(granted, not a simple conversation) wherein the power of words
60

dominates. I can still visually recall scenes described only in the dialogue,
such as where Andre describes being buried alive. Another film in this
vein- one that is nonpareil, is Chris Markers La Jetee. All but a few
seconds of this film are still photographic images, yet, as with My Dinner
With Andre, the mind recalls actual motion in the scenes, where there
really is none. The third film in this vein, ones that play with memorys
functions, is Bela Tarrs Satantango, wherein a seven hour long film, told
in excruciatingly long takes, compresses like an accordion in recall. It
plays faster than many bad 80 or 90 minute long films. All three play
around with memorys physical function in the brain. So, since memory
seems to be a key part to some of your work, have you ever thought of
doing a film that works on the levels of these three films?

LD: All those films kind of bore me, I have to say. I like MY DINNER WITH
ANDRE, as far as it goes, but its what I mean when I say theres no tradition of
intellectual cinema in America. Even though its an American film, per se,
albeit directed by a Frenchman, its what passes for intellectual discourse in
American film. The talk is amusing and interesting and engaging, but its all at
the level of earthy-crunchy, ethereal-spiritual, New Age, talking-to-animals,
Tibetan, UFOs, hippie, New York theatre world, psycho-babble claptrap. The
example you cite -- buried alive -- a case in point. Its not like theyre
discussing Augustan poetry, or textualizing the feminine in fin-de-sicle Paris,
which, granted, might be even more boring. Youre not having dinner with
Irving Howe or E.M. Cioran.
What saves the movie in the end is Wallace Shawns own bursting of this
pseudo-intellectual bubble.

DS: I mentioned your rip on Jennifer Connelly, but in the DVD you rag on
Tom Cruise even more, for the fact that he was once considered for the
Rufus Sewell role. I agree, hedve been horrible. There are certain actors-
Cruise, DiCaprio, John Wayne, etc., who cannot act. Someone once
uttered the lines that, an actor becomes the character while a star makes the
character become him. Was that at the root of your Cruise revulsion?

LD: I really should force myself to listen to that commentary track -- while
humming and holding my ears. Surely you have me confused with someone
else. I know Im a bigmouth, but I feel no revulsion towards Tom Cruise. What
I suspect I said was simply that things were put on hold for a week or two while
Tom Cruise pondered the project. He was evidently interested in finding a
science -- or speculative -- fiction piece, hence his later attachment to VANILLA
SKY, MINORITY REPORT, WAR OF THE WORLDS. But I know Alex Proyas was
worried that this was a potential good news/bad news situation -- the 300-
pound gorilla of a Movie Star can change the equation considerably, as regards
power politics, studio scrutiny -- the whole nature of the beast. Tom Cruise
61

would have changed DARK CITYs fortunes at the box office, thats for sure,
even if the script had remained the same in all other respects. Robert Mitchum
once said of Steve McQueen that he doesnt bring much to the party. Look
whos talking! But movie stars do bring baggage with them, for better or for
worse. They do bring a persona. It depends whether you think its a
compelling or a bland one. When William Friedkin failed to get Steve McQueen
to star in SORCERER, he went ahead with Roy Scheider and forever regretted
he didnt buckle to McQueens demands. The characters in SORCERER were
meant to be existential Everymen. As in a Walter Hill film, when someone
sticks a gun in your face, character is how many times you blink. Well,
Scheider, a good enough actor, doesnt project a great deal of charisma or
sympathy, or inspire audience identification or fantasy or fascination. An
absence of character in the script will be felt as such by the viewer, unless the
actor is powerful enough to compensate. Similarly, the protagonist in DARK
CITY is a cipher, an amnesiac. How do you convey who he is when he doesnt
know himself? It was Alexs feeling that he is a tabula rasa, for the viewer to
project himself onto. Interesting theory, in practice problematic. The ideal
would be to cast an unknown in such a role and through the force of their
personality discover a new movie star. Easier said than done.

DS: I think Sewells performance is excellent. Why is it that there seems
to be no logical correlation between an actors abilities and his success?
After all, Sewell is as good looking, if not better looking than Cruise, can
act rings around Cruise, yet his is a peripheral name in film while Cruise
owns his own studio. Comments?

LD: The eternal mystery of who has It and who doesnt. The camera and the
audience like who they like. I think it was DARK CITYs producer, Andrew
Mason, who first noted Rufus as a London stage actor with a rising reputation.
Like I said about the eternal delusions of screenwriters, when it comes to
taking a chance with a new leading man, everyone takes a deep breath and
hopes for the best. I was happy to see Andrews talent-spotting abilities
validated recently when Rufus appeared to great acclaim -- and a Tony award -
- in Tom Stoppards ROCK N ROLL. But plays, films, novels, theyre all very
different. Not everyone can bring their strengths from one to another.

DS: Dark City came out at the time of other lesser sci fi flicks with similar
themes about the nature of reality and memory: Cube and The Thirteenth
Floor, among them. The film Armageddon came out amidst other
apocalypse films, and, a decade earlier, The Abyss saw the release of
several underwater-based sci fi films. What is it about science fiction that
generates these waves of films with similar themes?

62

LD: Its not just science fiction. At the moment (Awards season, 2009) there
are seven -- seven! -- arthouse type period-piece movies about the 1960s. In
the space of a year in the 1970s, there was a whole crop of rodeo movies, all of
them more or less the same and fairly watchable -- JUNIOR BONNER the most
notable, along with THE HONKERS, WHEN THE LEGENDS DIE, J.W. COOP
KAFKA was made around the same time as ZENTROPA and SHADOWS AND
FOG and other mad author confections -- NAKED LUNCH, BARTON FINK
Are SF films more prone to coincidence, do you think, or the clich about the
collective unconscious? But I also wouldnt discount the, uh, free flow of ideas
in the incestuous fish tank of the film business.

DS: In the film commentary, you claim (I paraphrase) that, ones soul is,
and can only be, the sum of ones lifetime memories; that home is always in your
head. Alex Proyas disagreed. I am reminded of the ending to the great
1988 Woody Allen film with Gena Rowlands, Another Woman, which ends
with the Rowlands character asking, Is a memory a thing that you have, or a
thing that you have lost? The answer is both, but why is it that so few films
even ask such queries? Why is film so puerile and driven for the 18-24
year old demographic? Is it all just money? Because, if it is, it has not
worked well, as the last decade has seen film slowly lose capital to the
brainless video game industry. Comments?

LD: People seem to assume that Hollywood is all about money -- and yet how
can it be? Just look at the shit they make that doesnt have a hope in hell of
making a dime. All you and I have to do is see the first photograph from many
upcoming films and it might as well be the universal skull & bones symbol for
poison. You think, why didnt they just go to the expense of taking that one
photo, with those loser actors wearing those stupid wigs in those ludicrous
costumes, and quit while they were ahead? Dont they know people the world
over will cross the street to avoid any theatre showing that movie? With that
actor? Well, no, they dont. Theyre peabrains.
The movie business historically was always in the hands of professionals. It
was in the hands of the people who invented it. They knew what the public -- a
wide public -- wanted. Jack Warner spanned the 20
th
Century from silent films
to BONNIE AND CLYDE (even if he hated it on first sight). The business is now
overwhelmingly in the hands of completely unqualified incompetents and
amateurs, across the board, lacking even the most basic knowledge, or instinct
for the business theyre in. And the constant turnover of new people,
condemned to make the same mistakes over and over again, increases at an
incredible rate of speed. No one seems to have any experience anymore. For
most of its existence, the movie industry was by and large a closed shop, a
professional secret, like any other business. You had to actually be interested
in it, get the idea to be in it, on your own, and somehow make your own way
here. There werent film schools, or published screenplays (that was just
63

getting started when I was young), or ten million How To Write A Screenplay
books, or a billion film festivals, or box-office charts in anything but trade
publications. No one invited you. There was no sense of entitlement. The first
film school generation wanted to write screenplays, not just sell them for a
million dollars. Hollywood embraced the skilled and the talented. People the
world over dreamed of becoming stars, but not filmmakers -- and certainly
not development dickheads, agents assistants, and interns at Sony.
Memory is far and away something that, culturally and institutionally, has
been lost.

DS: Let me now turn to The Limey, an even rarer film than Dark City,
because it deals with many of the same issues, and more, but in the more
adult genre (not meaning porno) it also transcends- the revenge thriller.
First off, I have to ask about Terence Stamp. I first saw him, as a kid, in
Modesty Blaise. This guy can act with his eyes alone- in this film its all
regret and sorrow. I think hes an easy in for one of the ten greatest film
actors of the first century of film, along with Marcello Mastroianni,
Charlie Chaplin, and a number of others we could argue over. Do you
agree with Stamps standing? Yet, despite that, hes never been the
megastar his talents deserve recognition for. Is this just random chance
at play? And, I think this is one of a handful of films where an actors
performance so dominates a film that any other actor in the role would
have not only made the film different, but inferior. Comments?

LD: I dont know about inferior, but always different. Its like wondering what
children would be if one of their parents was someone else. Once in a while
you catch a glimmer of an alternate reality -- a photo of Albert Finney in
costume for LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, or screen tests or footage of actors who
were replaced in the final film, but its all such a mystery. A movie is a unique
set of circumstances, lightning in a bottle. I just watched a Terence Stamp
movie, funny you should ask, called TERM OF TRIAL. One that somehow
slipped through the net all these years. It stars that other Laurence -- Olivier -
- rumored to be the greatest actor of all time. And all the way through, my
foremost thought was: hes miscast. I just dont buy him in this role at all --
as the object of a sixteen-year-old schoolgirls affections, Sarah Miles, no less!
Now, maybe, if the schoolgirl was also a dowdy, mousey type -- instead of one
of the most notorious sex kittens of Swinging London. And Olivier by this time
had not aged like Cary Grant. He was a long way from Heathcliff. So its a
matter of taste and intelligence and judgement on the part of the filmmakers,
along with whos available or able to attract money from moment to moment on
the rickety merry-go-round of film financing. One of the dumbest things about
moviemaking is that no one decides to make a movie and then casts it
appropriately. The financing of almost all movies is cast-dependent. Thats
how you end up with Nicole Kidman -- or Jennifer Connelly -- as cleaning
64

ladies, Anthony Hopkins as an African-American, and Gary Sinise as Philip
Roth (THE HUMAN STAIN). You wonder, why bother even making the fucking
thing? So any time youre able to marry the right actor with the right role,
youre very lucky indeed.
Soderbergh considered Ryan ONeal as Terence Stamps nemesis in THE
LIMEY. Would he have been a sadder or slimier antagonist? But with Peter
Fonda you got that two icons of the Sixties thing -- and Peter had just become
hot again after ULEES GOLD. Its entirely possible that Ryan ONeal was
only THE LIMEY away from being hot again. Thats what actors have to live
with. What we all do. Its roulette. Colin Firths agents called about KAFKA --
before Colin Firth was sexy -- and before Jeremy Ironss insecurities helped
torpedo the movie. On THE SCORE Brando was bonkers right from the start,
and the producers said why dont we save ourselves a lot of grief (and money)
and just get Christopher Plummer instead. And everyone thought, but its
Brando.
Terence is a wonderful fella, but your placing him in the pantheon is, um,
idiosyncratic, I dont think hed mind me saying. Its been pretty well
documented that he embraced his era with perhaps more passion than his
profession and became a famous 60s dropout, so to speak. Some people think
life is more important than movies, God help them. One legend is that Jean
Shrimpton broke his heart.
Swinging London flashback: When we came back from our early 70s year in
Hollywood, we stayed in David Hockneys London flat for a couple of months
while my father looked for a house to buy. My fathers friend Jean was over
one evening when my little sister and I were already asleep in camp beds in
Hockneys studio. She hadnt seen us since we were much younger. I hazily
opened my eyes, in the dark studio beneath a Hockney canvas, with the light
from the hallway streaming in, to see Jean Shrimptons face peering down at
me.
I know how Terence felt.

DS: What are your thoughts on acting styles, like the Method, or those
where an actor tries to create an imaginary backstory? Do you encourage
it, discourage it, or take a whatever works approach?

LD: Dont care one way or another. You just hope theyre nice people. By now
everyone knows the Method is something of a pain in the ass. The Why dont
you just act, dear boy? method seems to get the job done just as well. Let the
director worry about corralling a variety of acting styles -- and it can be a
worry. David Lean on ZHIVAGO struggling to get everyone on the same page --
in the perfect take -- with a Method actor like Rod Steiger, and classically-
trained English theatre actors like Guinness and Richardson, and Angry Young
Men like Tom Courtenay, and delicate newcomers Geraldine Chaplin and Julie
Christie, and a leading man from a completely different tradition in Egyptian
65

cinema -- and Klaus Kinski just for laughs. Makes you glad to be a writer. But
maybe not for David Lean -- if you were to ask Robert Bolt.
Acting is mysterious. More mysterious than writing or directing. And
probably better left a mystery. That other Olivier story of a visitor finding him
weeping in his dressing room after a particularly great performance, the friend
saying, You were marvellous, and Olivier saying, But I dont know why. It
can require a quality of almost supernatural concentration, or self-hypnosis.
Simenon would shut himself in his room and immerse himself so completely in
a book, identify so totally with the psychological state of his protagonist, that
the mental strain would become unbearable -- thats why he said the books
were so short -- he would emerge sweating and shaken.
One day Michael Powell took me to visit the set of Mankiewiczs SLEUTH. We
had to move because we were in Oliviers eyeline. So Ive seen Olivier in
performance and Olivier in performance has seen me.

DS: I start off my review of the DVD with this claim: ....in rewatching The
Limey on DVD, after six or seven years, and then watching it with the two
available audio commentary tracks, Im amazed to have seen something in the
film that no other critic apparently has, and that is the fact that the viewer is
never sure whether or not any or all of the remembered scenes depicted are,
indeed, real (within the fictive cosmos the film resides in). I stand by that
claim. Do you agree? If not, why? If so, was this intentional, or one of
those happy accidents that occurs in the making of great art? Could the
film just be a fantasy that Wilson is having? And why do you think no
critics (in major magazines or newspapers, nor subsequent online reviews)
have mentioned this?

LD: Oh, I think lots of people have mentioned that. Maybe not so much in
mainstream media -- see earlier discussion of reviewers vs. genuine critics --
but its clearly a facet of the film thats entirely intentional, more on Stevens
part than mine. Isnt he the one who characterizes it as POINT BLANK meets
Alain Resnais? POINT BLANK is most easily read as a modern variant of
OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. I normally hate that its all a
dream crap. I much prefer things to be real. As Billy Wilders collaborator
I.A.L. Diamond once said, I want to know what happens next, not what
happened LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. But the viewer is free to read a film or
a book or an artwork in whatever way gives the most pleasure.

DS: Is the film a sequel to Ken Loachs Poor Cow (a film Ive not seen)? I
dont think its cut and dried, as I point out in my review. If so, however,
its the most ingenious sequel ever made. To what extent did the earlier
film affect this film, in terms of characterization? Your comments?

66

LD: No, its not a sequel. It was Stevens idea to interpolate footage of the
actor, if possible, from an earlier film, simply because it hadnt been done
before and we thought it would be very moving, to show that passage of time --
in reality -- rather than resort to a younger actor made to look like our star.
Which never works. And which we wouldnt have done, in any case, because
there was never any narrative need or desire for flashbacks in the usual sense.
This was just for fun, for poetic effect. Something a bit deeper than, say, the
opening of THE SHOOTIST showing John Wayne in his glory days before
introducing the old guy in the present. In that sense, the theme of memory
was something of a happy accident found more in the making than in the
conception. I suggested POOR COW, which I had a bootleg tape of, and which
Steven wasnt familiar with -- which just happened to be perfect. Just what we
needed -- because Terence had played a petty thief in it, almost exactly a
younger version of the type of man in THE LIMEY -- same type of man found in
countless British crime films and TV shows. But this was our actor, Terence
Stamp, in precisely the snippets of film we would want to have -- stealing from
a car, sitting around with his gang, being sentenced in court, appearing with a
woman and child. It was too good to be true. I cant think what we would have
used had it been Caine or anybody else. And touch and go whether we would
get the rights to use it. Legal rights aside, Steven had lunch with Loach to
make sure it was morally permissible to borrow another directors hard-won
slices of life -- to Loach poach. But use it we did -- it didnt use us. The only
direct effect the actual narrative of POOR COW had on me, I think, was to give
my Wilson his Christian name. There are secret links, though, if you know the
milieu -- one of his cronies in POOR COW is a real-life London gangster of THE
LIMEY school -- see also PERFORMANCE, VILLAIN, HE WHO RIDES A TIGER,
NOWHERE TO GO, SITTING TARGET, et al. And if you recognize POOR COW
actress Carol White and know of her sad fall and sordid end, it adds extra
poignancy to glimpses of her character in THE LIMEY. Not a happy
accident, exactly, but all too fitting.

DS: I point out another critical boner made about the film: Some critics
have carped about the fact that there are seeming plot holes, such as the fact
that two of Jennifers friends, recruited by Wilson, seem to have no qualms about
helping him in his revenge plot. First, if the films flashbacks are memories, and
accurate, this is no problem because 1) Luis Guzmans character, Eduardo Roel,
is, like Wilson, an ex-con, and is no choirboy. Plus, he was Jennys friend (whom
he met in an acting class), and, as the tale goes on it becomes clear that her
accidental death was likely not an accident. Its certainly no stretch that he
would go out of his way to help his friends father get justice (however rough),
especially considering his own violent resentment toward rich people (throughout
the film he wears t-shirts of murderous revolutionaries- Ayatollah Khomeini, Che
Guevara, and Mao Zedong), and after he is shot at by Valentines head goon. 2)
Then there is Lesley Ann Warrens Elaine, an actress who taught Jenny and
67

Eduardo in their acting class. Why would she become involved in the revenge
plot? Well, as with Eduardo, she was Jennys friend, and, like Eduardo, she
experiences violence (the foiled hit on Wilson), and therefore would be more
disposed to helping Wilson take down these bad men. Add in to the fact that
both characters likely have their own guilt over not having done more to aid and
counsel Jenny over her distressing lifestyle, and foreseeing its deadly turn, and
there really is no implausibility. In fact, both characters actions easily pass that
old bane of dramatic theory, T.S. Eliots objective correlative. But, even these
reasons are no great stretch, in themselves, they are not any reasonable
objection if one factors in Wilsons mismemories or outright fantasies of
convenience, to justify his crime spree in search of vengeance. Even if Eduardo
wanted to stay on the straight and narrow, and even if Elaine wanted nothing to
do with Wilson, theres simply no reason to believe that Wilson might not, as an
act of self-justification, alter the events we viewers see, so to make himself more
heroic, if only in his own eyes (as well as viewers hed not know of). And this
includes the last minute conversion scene, wherein Wilson finally gets to
Valentine, and finds out that his daughters death was due to her pretending she
was going to turn Valentine in for drug dealing, and he either deliberately or
accidentally killed her when they struggled over the telephone. Valentines goons
then put her body in a car and made her seem as if she had died in an accident.
This resonates with Wilson because weve seen his memories of Jenny, as a girl,
threatening to turn her dad in if he didnt mend his ways. Wilson now realizes
there was no way Valentine could have known Jenny would not have finked on
him, and that Valentine only did what Wilson would have, had Jenny not been
his daughter. Thus, he cannot blame Valentine. Im not asserting, with certitude,
that this is the best and most correct way to view the action detailed in the film,
just that its more than legitimate to do so, induces no narrative nor
characterization problems, and-most shockingly- is totally uncommented upon
by all the major critics reviews one can find online. Do you agree? And what
are your views on Eliots objective correlative? I think it can be a useful
critical tool, but when applied willy-nilly, in all facets of drama, it
becomes useless.

LD: Again, hard to miss, I would have thought. How thick does the viewer
have to be not to get what the climax of the movie is all about? Its not a
proposition from Wittgenstein -- to quote Basil Fawlty, a less forgiving limey.
And Jennys two close friends acquiescing in her fathers quest doesnt strike
me as a very egregious break with movie conventions, if its plot holes youre on
the lookout for. But need I say with over-much emphasis that there was a lot
of material relating to character and motivation that was given the toss. And
other stuff that was belabored (I wrote in the Ch T-shirt, but not the other two
-- which Ive never noticed). As for Eliot -- who also said that between the idea
and the reality falls the shadow -- yeah, sure, its meaningless applied across
the board. Like different acting methods, whatever gets you to the emotion will
68

do. There are times when you want to evoke feeling through the surf rippling
onto the shore or the sound of church bells or the way an actor holds a
cigarette -- but sometimes just having them come out and say, I love you
works pretty well too.

DS: I think the DVDs commentary is one of the best ever recorded. You
and Soderbergh make the film even more interesting with your bickering.
You seemed to resent most of the films positive reviews being laid at
Soderberghs feet, while the negative at yours. Yet, the critics were flat
out wrong about the screenplay- its not underdeveloped at all, but sharp,
incisive, and filled with little moments that speak well of the characters.
My review eviscerates several such claims against the screenplay,
however, I do agree with Soderbergh re: much of the character
development. I wrote: As example, Dobbs wanted Fondas character to have a
lengthy soliloquy on the 60s zeitgeist, but Soderbergh cut that, and he was right.
Even Fonda, in the other commentary, pans the soliloquy as being too saccharine
and out of character. One need not know everything about every character, and
Valentine is a slippery, seedy son of a bitch. Knowing why hes that way is
always going to be an exercise in futility. Also, its likely that Valentine is
incapable of such reflection. Dobbs also wanted Wilson to reflect upon and
mention a criminal mentor, back in England, called Lambeth. But, we already get
enough hints of his past from the Poor Cow scenes; some mystery has to be
retained, lest viewers be subsumed in the petty. Another example comes in
Dobbs desire to have the two hitmen, played by Katt and Dallesandro, explicitly
shown as being related, with Katts character the nephew of the older, dumber
man. But, this would have done nothing to aid the characters, nor viewer
interest. Two scenes illustrate how well these very minor characters are
developed. The first is when we first glimpse them, and we see Stacy provoking
a fight at a pool table with a pair of other men. The guy he enrages steps toward
Stacy, and the older hitman conks him in the head with the pool cue. Stacy then
kicks the guy in the face and knocks him out. The way they work together shows
much of their long term closeness. A bit later, we see the duo stalking Elaine and
Wilson on the set of her television series, and Stacy starts making crude remarks
about the people around the set, especially the homosexuals. That scene
perfectly illustrates typical male relationships: a) the two men are not looking at
each other eye to eye, but next to each other, as if at a ball game and envisioning
something in the ether, and b) they are so comfortable with each other that we
sense their relationship is more than just partners in crime- and clearly the older
man is either slightly retarded or somehow mentally impaired. We simply do not
need to know more- and, of course, we get a bit of their collective greed a bit later
on, and it leads to their demise. Soderbergh got this right, whereas Dobbs
elaborations would have weighted the film down in unnecessary detail, as well
as some questionable psychology (think of the most outdated Hitchcockian
villains). I recall the line from Woody Allens film Another Woman, where the
69

lead character, played by Gena Rowlands, states something to the effect that
just because some things (like feelings) are important to the writer does not mean
it has import to the objective observer, who will see something as maudlin,
overblown, and embarrassing. In short, Lem, I think you wanted to gild a
lily that was pitch-perfect. I dont think you realize just how
outstandingly you wrote the characters and scenes- such as the two
hitmen. Leaving a bit of X factor in their relationship draws the viewer in
to imbue the film, and participate in the act of co-creation, which invests
them more in the films outcome, as well as wanting to rewatch the film
to pick up more insights. However, this commentary is almost a decade
old, so have you changed your mind or mellowed in some of your opinions
re: the film?

LD: No, I wanted Fondas characters ex-wife to have a lengthy soliloquy on the
Sixties zeitgeist -- precisely because Valentine is incapable of such reflection. I
reserve the right to believe the film would be a richer experience if the
characters were more fully developed and situated in settings and relationships
more akin to real life than simplistic movie scenes. Theres a difference
between God being in the details and God being too lazy to give a shit about
them. Simply for the sake of narrative, let alone character, these additional
details would have made the story and the characters movements more
comprehensible. I dont mean in a spoon-fed to idiots way. I mean more
interesting and enjoyable, more satisfying. As I said, I cant ignore the fact that
people like it -- I just think theyd like it more. I think it could easily have been
a better movie, and consequently a more successful one. Whats wrong with
getting more good reviews and fewer bad ones? So no, I havent changed my
mind about its faults and limitations as I perceive them, but I have mellowed
as its strengths have become more apparent to me -- partly through such
terrific responses as yours -- partly through learning not to give a shit myself
so much anymore, and moving on.

DS: Id earlier mentioned the like/dislike axis in criticism, but one also
has to recall that a positive/negative criticism is apart from a good/bad
criticism. A positive criticism is so when positive on a good or bad film,
and the same with negative, but a good criticism can be positive or
negative, depending on the objective quality of the film, and same with a
bad criticism. Praising Saving Private Ryan is bad, but positive. Damning La
Notte is bad and negative. Comments?

LD: Like/dislike is the trouble with reviews. It tells you nothing. There is no
Great Tradition in reviewing. Either the reviewer is just some contemporary
fool who doesnt realize that VERTIGO and THE SEARCHERS and PEEPING
TOM are great and enduring works of art made by masters and instead
lavishes praise on high-minded mediocrity that will soon be forgotten -- or the
70

consumer reading the review is a clod who has no idea what the new film
releases are and is just looking for some sort of guide to make up his mind for
him what to go see. Like an article in the New York Times publicizing a rare
screening of A HARD DAYS NIGHT -- which will tell me (if I bother to read it,
simply to see how many factual errors they make) who the Beatles were, and
what the British Invasion was, and how Richard Lester invented the music
video -- its all just filler to wrap fish in, which is why news papers are on the
way out. Who is that article supposed to be for? A high school student? A
recent arrival from Uzbekistan? Good criticism is by good writers who tend to
like what theyre writing about and are able to convey their enthusiasm to the
reader, who they assume is their well-informed, reasonably-educated cultural
equal, and support it with illuminating detail and insight. Im always reading
historical, cineaste criticism for help and inspiration when I write scripts. I
much prefer reading an intelligent critical biography of a director, say, or a
good book just about his movies, than a straightforward account of his life or,
God forbid, his own blathering autobiography, which is usually unpublishable
but published anyway. Even if someone like Sarris is making negative
pronouncements about some directors in his great compendium THE
AMERICAN CINEMA, his overall project is one of obsessive love for cinema,
backed by extraordinary and comprehensive knowledge, as well as superior
intelligence and writing ability. If anything demands elitism, its criticism -- of
Hollywoods popular art no less than any other.
But elite isnt synonymous with the Establishment, which is what its sort
of come to mean lately. You do need a Roger Ebert to recognize the greatness
of a WILD BUNCH when its new -- and say so, and tell people why, in the face
of Old Guard scorn or indifference. George Ballanchine said to his dancers,
about audiences: They look but they do not see, so we must show them.
Whats true for great directors should be true of their -- sympathetic -- critics.

DS: By the way, since I mentioned it a second time, have you ever seen
Allens Another Woman? What is your opinion of his screenwriting, films,
career, and would you ever want to work with him, as unlikely as that
may be, since he writes all his own scripts? Also, I pin Allens Golden Age
as between 1977 and 1992, starting with Annie Hall, and ending with
Husbands And Wives. Even his lesser films, in that era, were very good.
Since then, hes run out of ideas, and has reworked and stolen from
himself. Do you worry of ever falling into that trap of repetition?

LD: How much it is, after all, to have any talents to squander (Orwell again).
Theres a difference between repetition, with its connotation of dullness and
exhaustion -- and variations on a theme, which presumably can be endlessly
enriching, if somewhat dependent on the rest of the oeuvre. I could happily
have had a few more Moral Tales from Eric Rohmer, for instance. Hurry up
71

and translate the rest of Simenon, please. What I wouldnt give to fall into
Woody Allens trap of repetition.
He was always one of those filmmakers whose new, whose next film you
always wanted to rush to see, on opening day more often than not. Did
something go out of him, or ourselves? Is going to the movies just not
necessary anymore thanks to home viewing? I think youre right, theres a
vigor that was once there thats gone missing, and a certain laziness has set in.
Even with the odd one thats judged better than the ones preceding it, like
MATCH POINT, or something, partly because of the novelty of the London
location, or a darker, more dramatic storyline than people have come to expect
from him. Or do most people, and reviewers, simply have no idea hes doing
A PLACE IN THE SUN, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Patricia Highsmith ?
There we go again.
Its so easy to go wrong. Filmmakers make choices, yes, but also from whats
available or expedient. What if Peter Bogdanovich had discovered the young
Meryl Streep for DAISY MILLER instead of casting his girlfriend? The film is
not wholly awful in other respects. It might have been a classic. The latest
Woody Allen, WHATEVER WORKS, he originally wrote in the 70s for Zero
Mostel. And if you squint, you can see that movie, and Mostel inhabiting that
character and how it might have been passably okay. Instead we have current
television personality Larry David, who to his credit told Woody Allen he was
not an actor. And it doesnt work.
But what a tremendous body of work. Never less than interesting, each film
as part of the complete tapestry. I mean, Jesus Christ, the energy, if not the
vigor or rigor. The productivity. That in itself is a great and enviable talent.
Like Chabrol, you know, to make movies faute de mieux. If youre Picasso,
yknow what? -- you can dash off a daily Picasso. The fertility of natural born
genius.
I think vigor is something thats gone out of film generally, and much of it is
because of money. People literally cant make movies anymore due to the
expense. So movies seem small and cheap and in the absence of any aesthetic
interest, scarcely worth making at all. ANNIE HALL and MANHATTAN -- and
LOVE AND DEATH, inexpensive as it was in its day -- theyre like epics
compared to what films feel like now. There were B-movies that used to have a
big finish at Hoover Dam or Yellowstone National Park. There were Z-movies
that sacked Carthage. Paul Schrader has expressed the opinion that movies
may just have been a 20
th
Century art form. A hundred years. Quite a long
time, really, for something to live and die. Technologies end up destroying the
industries they help to create. Just ask anyone in the fishing industry.
Ive seen ANOTHER WOMAN, but dont remember it too well, which is part of
the problem with such abundance. If hed made only ten films, not only would
they be more distinct, youd have rewatched them all many more times.
One is tempted to have that fantasy that Woody Allen expressed -- in
MANHATTAN? -- in reference to relationships, that you always think you can
72

be the one whos going to change the other. Or save them. Collaboration with
Marshall Brickman did seem to be good for him -- those seem like the best
screenplays. But as we know, so much of his writing is in the making,
especially the editing, of his movies. By all means, though, if you happen to
run into him, give him my number.

DS: In the commentary you speak of visualizing the screenplay, such as
the scene in Valentines where Wilson steals his daughters photo. You
complain that it was unrealistic that the Amelia Heinle (an actress who
reminds me of Denise Richards with less plastic surgery) character would
not notice it. Is such visualization unique to screenwriting vs. novel
writing? Or is it unique to you, son of a visual artist of talent?

LD: No, shouldnt have anything to do with being the son of a visual artist.
Film is a visual medium, as hackneyed as that now sounds. What else should
screenwriters do but visualize the movie, preferably with the director -- the way
Jean-Claude Carriere wrote six films with Buuel, the way Hitchcock and
Lean worked with their writers. But havent people always seen what theyre
reading? Why else would a novelist describe anything? More than a few
novels, you know, have been made into movies -- some by putting scene
numbers in the books margins. Visualizing a screenplay is a redundancy.
My complaint was about the filmmakers placing of that photo in the most
glaringly noticeable location -- all by itself on a wall at the top of the stairs --
rather than a more realistic, subtle, and less obvious position -- in a hallway,
surrounded by other photos -- where Wilson could more surprisingly and
movingly notice it -- as explicitly indicated in the script. Nobody cares.

DS: Ive not heard them, but have found out you also did DVD
commentaries for films like The Sand Pebbles, Von Ryans Express, and
Double Indemnity. How did you get involved in those projects? Was it your
work as a film historian? And what exactly does such a title entail? Is it
more film preservation or just cataloguing the things in films?

LD: I have a great friend, Nick Redman, who does a lot of DVD work, and he
invited me to collaborate on a few titles he knew I had a particular feeling for.
We just have fun sitting and chatting while watching the films; he prompts
with good questions, eliciting movie buff thoughts and trivia and, in the case of
DOUBLE INDEMNITY, personal memories of Billy Wilder. We try to make it
entertaining and informative for the seven people who might ever listen to
them, and not just restate the bleeding obvious. Im happy if I can put across a
couple of nuggets you might not find elsewhere.

DS: After Dark City and The Limey, in 2001, you worked on
theaforementioned Robert De Niro and Edward Norton film The Score.
73

Were you a script doctor on that, as well? This was another film that did
modestly at the box office. Has the lack of a financial blockbuster film on
your resume been a hindrance in being able to pitch ideas or be offered
screenplays to work on?

LD: Nothing has been a hindrance to pitching ideas, since I would rather slit
my wrists than pitch anything I ever wanted to write.
As it happens, THE SCORE did very well at the box office. It was a major
studio production and release, not at all like the little films THE LIMEY and
DARK CITY, and its one of the most successful Robert De Niro films ever made
-- other than his MEET THE PARENTS comedies and ANALYZE THIS, and his
voice work in the cartoon SHARK TALE. THE SCORE in its theatrical release
made millions or tens of millions more than HEAT or GOODFELLAS or CASINO
or RONIN or JACKIE BROWN or twenty other De Niro films in recent years.
Its the most successful Marlon Brando movie since APOCALYPSE NOW and
SUPERMAN two decades earlier. The fourth highest-grossing Edward Norton
film (go ahead and laugh) in his twenty-film career. Defensive much? I can
look up box office charts like anyone else. Obviously a financial blockbuster,
which is a different order of success entirely, on anyones resum, makes
Hollywood easier to navigate, but as I said, another dumb job has always come
along if I ever wanted or needed one for the last thirty years. THE SCORE was
one such, a god-awful script in all its various versions, so it was not a case of
script doctoring, which implies relatively small or specific fixes, but a full-on
rewrite. You wont believe this, but in the draft I was first given to read, to
subsequently revise, the climax comes when the De Niro character cleverly
tricks the Norton character into opening the bag containing the loot,
whereupon a boxing glove on a spring pops out and punches the Norton
character in the nose. The loot in question was a pack of ancient tarot cards
stolen from -- get this -- the Library -- of Antiquities. De Niros character
also managed to evade FBI surveillance on his house by putting on a false
moustache and a beret and leaving via the front door as if he was just another
innocent pavement artist -- which is what the coda found him working as in a
foreign country, evidently fulfilling his lifelong dream.
Judging, correctly, that Robert De Niro was not quite ideal casting for an
Inspector Clouseau movie, the producers determined this draft to be in some
ways deficient. Notice, though, that De Niro had nonetheless expressed
interest -- along with Marlon Brando, Edward Norton, and Frank Oz. When
people want to make a heist movie, by God, they make a heist movie.
I said, Well, do they work -- the tarot cards? Do they actually predict the
future? Do they open a window onto the soul? Are they magic?
Sarcasm sometimes gets you the job.

DS: Well, so much for me relying on online movie box office websites for
information! Let me switch gears and ask of your opinions of some other
74

peoples work. First, I once claimed, in a review, that Ingmar Bergman
could have been considered the greatest published writer of the 20
th

Century based upon his screenplays. Whether or not you think as highly
of his writing as I do, the point is that screenplays are almost wholly
ignored as works of art unto themselves. Why is this? And who, if not
Bergman, would you rank as amongst the greatest screenwriters, as well
as greatest published writers, period, of last century?

LD: Screenplays cant be works of art unto themselves because theyre not
unto themselves, theyre roadmaps to something else. If someone discovered
an old box in Stratford-on-Avon and inside were a bunch of handwritten plays
by a totally unknown Elizabethan named William Shakespeare, would they be
works of art? I take your point. I suppose they might. The language would
still be language the likes of which no one had ever seen. Thats why theatre is
another medium, where the writer is more prominent. But screenwriting is not
writing. Nobody reads Faulkners screenplays, produced or unproduced, as
anything but scholarly ephemera. The published works of Ingmar Bergman are
certainly better than the published works of John Grisham -- or Doris
Lessing, if you ask me, but its just too different a form. I love the form. Im
very happy writing a screenplay, thinking in that way. Id be happy being a
screenwriting monk, working in silence and solitude in a cell and never
showing them to anyone. Thats a very real fantasy. Almost Bergmanesque.
But screenplays are always unfinished. Theyre loadstones. Jacques Prevert
needs Marcel Carn to be complete.
Philip Roth is the only living writer published in the Library of America.
That seems about right. THE SUN ALSO RISES and THE GREAT GATSBY are
still the best American novels of the last century, and have weathered the
competition posed by Toni Morrison. The greatest published writers of the 20
th

Century are ones who were publishing in the 19
th
Century. Dead white males
are awesome. Nobody else is.

DS: Ive argued that film is really literature with pictures- i.e.- closer to
literature than the other visual arts. It is, to neologize, cinemature. Do you
agree or not?

LD: Yeah, said so. Most good movies are novelistic, most good novels are
cinematic. Usually when they say a book is unfilmable, its also unreadable -
- or it just hasnt been filmed properly.

DS: I think that the reason so many film school idiots go wrong is that
they fundamentally do not get the cinemature aspect of film. I find most
film criticism- especially that based in film theory, however, wholly
ignores screenplays, character development, themes, etc., while
masturbating over editing, lighting, sound, and mise-en-scne. Yet, what
75

do you think all those technical aspects- dolly shots, editing, scoring,
effects- are for? To serve the story! After all, film is called motion
pictures, not pictured motions! While I could be generous, and state
that these critics, historians, and theorists simply focus on what interests
them, I know- from years in writing groups, that the real reason is simply
that the technical aspects of film are far easier to understand than the
abstract language-based aspects. How many times have you read that a
critic says a film is well-written, but the conversations are a string of
banalities? In Film Criticism Comes Of Age Phillip Lopate wrote, Inevitably,
this concentration on movies plots as sociological treasure troves provoked a
formalist backlash. In emphasizing the movies script or literary values, argued
the formalists, something was lost: proper attention to composition, lighting,
camera movement, art direction, the actors costume and body language in
short, films visual allure. The old chicken-and-egg argument regarding form and
content had reemerged. While it was of course impossible to separate form
strictly from content, the dispute had its periodic uses, since each film critic did
tend to allot different proportions of interest to a films dialogue or message and
its cinematic technique. But, most people are not moved, even subliminally,
by visual technique- such as the on the shoulder compositions in
LAvventura, much less can they understand them. This sort of criticism
reminds me of the masturbatory sort that bad Academic poets blurb for
each other over garbage that lacks style, music, and depth, but is claimed
as poetry. Comments?

LD: I dont quite understand myself how, why, or when technology and the
technical aspects of filmmaking completely overran, overcame, overwhelmed
the human, the emotional, the intellectual, the real. Was it when kids first
started bringing pocket calculators to school with them? They would have
been more or less the first film school generation. So there came to be
filmmakers who were somehow excited by Kurosawa, but not by the Western
Canon that excited him -- Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky -- and who thought
Godards jump-cuts were sexy, but could no more discuss his interest in
Nicholas Ray or the dialectics of Marxism than they could fly to Mars,
filmmakers who can imitate Hitchcocks technique, but are incapable of
emulating his emotional or narrative complexity. Writers, directors, actors,
even when relatively young, once seemed mature. Somewhere along the line,
quite recently, that changed. Now, no matter what their age, theyre immature,
and the films reflect that. The obsession with technology appears to have
accelerated this process of infantilism and occluded all else. There are
Hollywood half-wits now, maybe approaching a majority, who genuinely believe
that a Batman movie, THE DARK KNIGHT, is worthy of an Academy Award for
Best Picture, or that a childrens cartoon, in its writing, directing, cinematic
artistry -- in its 3D -- is the contemporary equivalent of THE BRIDGE ON THE
RIVER KWAI.
76

So, actually, I think weve reached the point where people are not just
stimulated, but only moved by visual technique.

DS: Since I mentioned it; what of mise-en-scene? Is it one of the great
vapid ideas in art, one of those catch-all terms that really has no concrete
definition? Its as if any time a wannabe film critic wants to sound deep
he mentions the term, and uses it to bludgeon whatever film or director
he simply does not like, because- unlike dialogue, character development
or even a technical thing like camera movement, it is a nebulous thing. It
seems that many film theorists try to remove film from the circle of arts
by positing an exceptionalism that only a select few of them can
understand. Yet, most of their writing is bad and self-indulgent. Which of
that critical lot do you view as having done the most to damage,
especially, foreign films appeal to the masses?

LD: Nothing wrong with the term mise-en-scene. It means a films or, usually,
a directors visual style. So I think its more often employed to celebrate those
directors who possess a readily-identifiable or distinctive style and attitude
rather than to castigate those who dont.
No critic has done anything to damage foreign films appeal to the masses.
The masses by definition are dolts. Its the once-educated, but now no longer,
segment of the public that supported foreign cinema to a greater extent. And
they still go to the (fewer) remaining art house cinemas in the cities. Its a two-
way street -- the filmmakers used to exist to support and excite the audience.
And if I need to catch up with the latest Eric Rohmer film, well, personally I
love the advent of home ownership of motion pictures. Its magic in my
lifetime. I watch movies as they were meant to be seen -- on the portable DVD
player on my desk.

DS: On a tangent; there is no such thing as non-narrative film or
literature, nor is there any such thing as non-representational art- there
are only different types of both. Films like those of a Stan Brakhage are
narrative, their narratives are simply simplistic and not that deep.
Paintings like those of the Abstract Expressionists are representational-
an orange smear, or a dot, represents an orange smear or a dot. The fact
is that most people see through the intellectual shallowness of such
claims- even those who have little critical ability. Thoughts?

LD: Its precisely people with little critical ability who see through the
shallowness of such claims. Ordinary people, despite my apparent hostility
toward them in other respects, have always and will always prefer traditional
narrative and representational art. The human figure, form, and face. The
human clay. The crooked timber of humanity.
77

What people mean by the movies of the 70s is movies that felt real -- more
so than in the present feeble age of deliberate reality entertainment. In THE
KING OF MARVIN GARDENS, Jack Nicholson puts a cereal box on a kitchen
counter and it falls off, and Bruce Dern at a bonfire reacts when an ember flies
in his face. You dont notice things like that anymore. Would they cut them
out or reshoot them?
When Dickens wrote his early sketches, he made a point of calling them
Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People. This was the original
artistic impulse -- daubed on the walls of caves. And it will outlast Stan
Brakhage.

DS: On the other end, many claims of poor screenplays or writing are
simply wrong. As example, 2001: A Space Odyssey, is not an example of a
poor screenplay, but a great one that uses a different technique to get its
tale out. And look at how it builds character. If this were not true, why do
viewers react so viscerally to the scene where Keir Dulleas Dave Bowman
character basically lobotomizes HAL 9000?

LD: People -- whether they write them or comment on them -- do persist in
thinking that screenplays, or good ones, are mostly a matter of subject matter
or dialogue or plot twists. Youre not supposed to direct on the page. But of
course you should -- not by explicitly specifying shots, but by describing what
you see and what you hear, by indicating a point of view. Clearly if the director
is also the writer theres greater command and control of the process and the
writing extends to the filming and editing of the picture. All the other arts are
involved in filmmaking, so of course they should be on the mind of the
screenwriter. Its not just words or prose its music and theater and
photography and painting -- lighting and composition, mood, atmosphere,
ambience, sights and sounds and silence. There are still idiots who think that
thinking visually means pretty, pictorial landscapes or descriptions of scenery
-- instead of expressive use of the camera or the power and magic of montage --
which doesnt mean someone trying on different wacky outfits in front of a
mirror in a clothing store. It means one image juxtaposed with another. It
means shots or scenes flowing or intercut in a sequence.
SEQUENCE, SIGHT AND SOUND, MONTAGE, MISE-EN-SCENE, CLOSE-UP -
- these are names of traditional, serious-minded -- and, it would seem,
outmoded -- movie magazines.

DS: Have you ever done ghostwriting? The best example of this was when
the mediocre Good Will Hunting won Oscars for Ben Affleck and Matt
Damon, yet they never even wrote the film- as proof, what have they
written since?

78

LD: Ghostwriting, per se, doesnt exist in films. I know theres a rumor to that
effect re GOOD WILL HUNTING, but the ghostwriter in question, William
Goldman, has pretty well debunked it. Rewriting a script without credit, which
is everyday common procedure in the movie business, is not the same thing as
publishings accepted and deliberate practice of ghostwriting.
Many, if not most, movies bear little resemblance to the piece-of-shit so-called
screenplays that spawned them -- if there even was one. Most screenwriters -
- especially, as weve noted, Oscar nominees of recent years, are freaks and
neophytes and lottery-winners who are seldom heard from again, very far
removed from the career screenwriters of yesteryear.
Screenplay credits are infamously inaccurate. Pierre Boulle, who apparently
spoke no English, winning the Oscar for THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI.
Or Robert Rich for THE BRAVE ONE. These were infamously due to the
McCarthy blacklisting era. Other credits are routinely rendered ludicrous by
the Writers Guild arbitration process or sometimes for personal reasons. The
classic Western RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY is credited to N.B. Stone, Jr. Why
no more great films from the mysterious N.B.? Well, supposedly he was a
fellow with an alcohol problem, down on his luck, recommended as a favor by
another writer, William Roberts -- who then felt obliged to complete the script
himself, anonymously. But William Roberts has sole credit on another classic
Western, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN -- because its original writer, Walter
Newman, had a tiff with the director and withdrew his name. I have Newmans
SEVEN script and its virtually the same as the movie -- Roberts was evidently
the guy on location making the usual adjustments and additions as they went
along. But whats the most famous line in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, thats
been endlessly quoted? Its by the films director, Sam Peckinpah -- a line of
his fathers -- All I want is to enter my house justified. There is no film
directed by Sam Peckinpah that Sam Peckinpah didnt write -- whether his
name is credited with the screenplay or not. Your question about
screenwriting styles unfortunately too often collides with your question about
Hollywoods basic instinct to reduce everyones styles to mush. VILLA RIDES --
screenplay by Sam Peckinpah and Robert Towne, or Sam Peckinpah/Alan
Sharps THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND. Its ghost writing of a kind -- flashes in
the dark of the men behind the names.
Its just a game.

DS: Would you compare a screenplay to the final film as being akin to a
poem and its translation into another language? If not, what metaphor
would you use?

LD: Thats a vaguely interesting notion, I suppose -- but only if you
presuppose a screenplay is translated at all. A screenplay is the language of
film, so what is it being translated into? And as we know, its usual fate is to be
changed and altered, often by other writers, as well as the director and the
79

actors, chopped up, chopped down, maimed and mutilated -- or even improved.
Anybody try this with Pushkin lately?
What youre talking about is more akin to a composers music played and
interpreted by different conductors or orchestras or instruments -- poorly or
brilliantly, but still faithful to the original composition.
The age-old architects blueprint metaphor has never made much sense,
either, because, as its always pointed out, contractors generally must follow a
blueprint for fear of the house falling down. (In which case, producers and
directors must be fearless.) Gropius and Mies van der Rohe may have had
creative battles with financiers or carpenters, but I dont think they routinely
ended up with staircases that went nowhere. What then are we to make of the
old screenwriters joke, driving past the residence of Otto Preminger: Is that
Otto Premingers house or a house by Otto Preminger?
The nearest thing to a translation I can think of is the stand-alone experiment
of Gus Van Sant replicating Hitchcocks PSYCHO shot-by-shot.
The better analogy would be a prince turned into a frog or, for the fortunate
few, a frog turned into a prince.

DS: In the above mentioned commentaries, and elsewhere, you seem to
agree, as you have made the point that most of the narrative techniques
that critics claim as cinematic are really novelistic, therefore showing a
line of descent from the novel. Could you expound upon this lineage and
give a couple of examples of the techniques themselves, and analogues
from novels and films to demonstrate the kinship?

LD: When Eva Marie Saint drops one of her gloves in ON THE WATERFRONT
and Marlon Brando picks it up and plays with it and puts it on his own hand,
thats what the scene becomes about, instead of or in addition to the words
theyre speaking. It may well have been a happy accident, as legend has it,
that the instinctive genius of Marlon Brando literally picked up on -- but
theres also no reason it couldnt be screenwriting, if the writer thought of it.
When Apu sees a train for the first time in PATHER PANCHALI, Satyajit Ray
does not show it from Apus point of view. Instead his camera is on the other
side of the tracks, the train passing between us and the little boy. Apu has
heard the sound of the train before, has dreamt about it, but has never
ventured far enough from the confines of his village to see it with his own eyes -
- and when he does, were deprived of his reaction. We dont stand with him.
There is no closeup on his face as he gazes with awe at this monster, this
marvel. The perspective is that of a novelist. An adult viewing a childs world,
as if from memory. Its an artistic choice, its a storytelling choice.
In a good movie, a glove is more than a glove, a train much more than a train.
Marlon Brando is at once aggressively male and, by putting on Eva Marie
Saints glove, extraordinarily delicate. Its a connection between them, a
80

foreshadowing, an anticipation. Its funny and awkward and touching and
tentative and teasing and erotic.
(For another tight fit where Evas concerned, see train going into tunnel after
she and Cary Grant clinch in train berth at end of NORTH BY NORTHWEST.)
Apus train -- Rays train -- need I say represents the outside world, wider
possibilities, the future -- the city encroaching on the countryside, modernity
imposing itself on a way of life unchanged for centuries.
Whether its Montgomery Clift and John Ireland admiring each others guns
in RED RIVER or the passion and potency of Hemingways bullfights, whether
its the glasses in the pond in Towne/Polanskis CHINATOWN or the glasses on
the billboard in Fitzgeralds GATSBY, the use of signs and symbols and other
techniques are the same. Cinema comes from literature.

DS: Name the three or four best screenwriters of all time, and name the
best currently working. Do most fall into the indy film scene? What are
your thoughts on such screenwriters like Charlie Kaufman, Mike White, or
even someone like Frank Whaley?

LD: Oh, I dont know. Directors who also write or so closely supervise the
writing as to make no odds, are more likely to be consistently the best in the
ongoing debate about film authorship. Towne, I think, is or was the best, the
most intelligent, screenwriter in America -- and he would name Renoir. Robert
Bolt -- but not when he directed his own movie. On the DVD of LAWRENCE
OF ARABIA, Steven Spielberg says its the best screenplay ever written, and I
couldve kissed him. Yes! I hope there are people, students, who see him
saying that and are sufficiently curious to wonder what he means and view the
film in that light. KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS may be my personal favorite
single screenplay of all time. Youre not likely to see wit or sophistication at the
level of Billy Wilder or Preston Sturges again, and of course they became
directors. Theres a reason William Goldman became William Goldman, but
the light seems to have gone out of him a long time ago. Alvin Sargent, too, for
someone who adapted the work of others, was very impressive -- in the pre-
SPIDERMAN era. Alan Sharp at his best -- NIGHT MOVES, ULZANAS RAID.
Huston in top form.
There is no best currently working. Theyre all hideous. (Im talking about
solely screenwriters, you understand, not people primarily thought of as
directors Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, who have
written some terrific screenplays for films theyve made.) Screenwriters now
are to screenwriters of the past what Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio and
Johnny Depp are to Robert Mitchum and Lee Marvin and Steve McQueen. But
even screenwriters of the Golden Age, that is prior to the cinema-savvy
generation of the 60s/70s, often seem in interviews and memoirs hopelessly
nave about movies -- totally befuddled at Ford or Hitchcock getting all the
glory -- in many cases none-too-bright altogether, like the jerks we have now.
81

I see the name Frank Whaley and my thought is: What the hell is he talking
about? He cant mean that minor actor from the 1980s. I had to Google Frank
Whaley to find out he made some Sundance-type films that bring to mind the
old joke, What time does the show start?/What time can you get here?
Similarly Mike White -- you mean that kind of bizarre comic actor-writer of ...
Jack Black movies? Charlie Kaufman, at least, one can grudgingly admire as
an actual writer of original screenplays of some distinction -- its just that Id
rather be tied to a horse and pulled forty miles by my tongue (THE
HEARTBREAK KID) than endure much more of that originality.

DS: Great art reflects the percipients true self more so than the true self of the
artist. Agree or not?

LD: Both. The true self of the artist more so, but when the work leaves his
hands it becomes a commodity up for grabs. The real difference may be that
the percipient is more likely to recognize himself -- or herself! (Im not being
politically correct, just noting that great art is human and universal) -- whereas
the artist often does not. (As I mentioned before, autobiographies are seldom
as useful or revealing as good critical biographies. I will constantly return to
Chris Fujiwaras book on Preminger -- but never need to pick up Premingers
own book again.) A percipient critic like Robin Wood absolutely sees himself in
the work of Hawks or Hitchcock, but rather depends on them not being aware
of what theyre revealing. Hes placing them on a pedestal -- so he can look up
their dress. Most artists feign ignorance or indifference when their thing is
pointed out to them -- John Ford the most intransigent interview subject of
them all. It may be instinctive self-preservation. Self-consciousness can be a
killer, preceded by self-parody. Hemingway or Peckinpah -- this is what they
think I am, fuck it, well, then this is what Ill be.

DS: Ive read that The Great Escape is your favorite all time film. Why?
Name four of your other five favorite films of all time, and contrast them
with your picks for five best films of all time. I.e.- lets compare your
hearts and heads choices. And why the schism, if there is any?

LD: Theres a world of difference between the films you know are great and the
ones you think are great. You have a better shot at being able to explain the
former -- intellectually and objectively -- than the latter, which tend to be more
personal/autobiographical, emotional. THE GREAT ESCAPE is not GRAND
ILLUSION, but seen in early childhood it was simply the one that became
everything to me, that made Movies my God and my goal. Many of my
generation -- I found later -- had the same visceral reaction to that film, and
that actor in that role. Who knew Steve McQueen would become the iconic
superstar of our time? And yet we did know. It was obvious. There he was in
all his glory. It was more exciting than any movie Id ever seen. And remains
82

so -- the one I can watch over and over again with the same degree of pleasure.
We were primed, of course, by THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, almost a prequel --
three of the seven reappearing in ESCAPE. Maybe it was that I was a half-
American boy in England. Has there ever been a greater Anglo-American
friendship movie?
Indeed it became a British institution, shown on television as a ritual every
year at Christmastime in the pre-video era. Elmer Bernsteins theme music is
now an alternate national anthem -- for the England soccer team. Robert
Zemeckis and I watched it -- he brought his Betamax tape with him -- in
Mexico when we were making ROMANCING THE STONE. His theory is that its
the best rebel in school movie ever made. See it when youre a kid and you
remain forever young in its company, in the company of its characters. There
are people who feel this way about RIO BRAVO or ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS
or HATARI -- the Hawksian isolated group, a family of friends cooperating in a
difficult job or task, humor and tragedy in balance. Unlike classic Hawks,
however, THE GREAT ESCAPE has no girls in it! Making it a sort of ultimate
boys adventure story. Like THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, which has a brief
boring girl scene or two, and ZULU. Others in the Top Five -- BILLY LIAR,
which has arguably the best girl scene in the history of cinema -- and THE
PROFESSIONALS, THE WILD BUNCH, COOL HAND LUKE, THE SAND
PEBBLES, HOW THE WEST WAS WON, IF, FAT CITY, THE FRENCH
CONNECTION, KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, THE
BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, PAT
GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID, NIGHT MOVES, THE LONG GOODBYE,
JUNIOR BONNER, SOME CAME RUNNING, DR. ZHIVAGO, SUNSET
BOULEVARD, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS,
SLITHER (1973), JEREMIAH JOHNSON, APOCALYPSE NOW, FIVE EASY
PIECES, THE CINCINNATI KID, THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY, THE FLIGHT OF
THE PHOENIX, CHINATOWN, A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL, A MAN FOR ALL
SEASONS, 12 ANGRY MEN, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, BEFORE THE
REVOLUTION, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE
Favorites are films that are touchstones of childhood and youth, that are
revealing of your own thoughts and fantasies. The best films you discover and
appreciate with maturity. Theyre more universal, if less universally popular,
in revealing profound truths about the human condition, as complex -- or
simple -- as mysterious and meaningful as the masterpieces of art in any
medium.
The only ones in my favorites list that might arguably make it onto a Best list
are AMBERSONS, LAWRENCE, WILD BUNCH, CHINATOWN, maybe SUNSET
BOULEVARD, possibly APOCALYPSE NOW.
But, really, the best films of all time -- I go along with the generally agreed
upon canonical titles: CITIZEN KANE, SEVEN SAMURAI (or IKIRU), THE
SEVENTH SEAL (or WILD STRAWBERRIES or PERSONA), LA TERRA TREMA,
THE BICYCLE THIEF, M (or METROPOLIS), BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN,
83

SUNRISE, CITY LIGHTS, THE SEARCHERS, VERTIGO, LA REGLE DU JEU,
LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS, THE GODFATHER, LAVVENTURA, LATALANTE,
GREED, THE BIRTH OF A NATION, THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, TOKYO
STORY, RAGING BULL, HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, DR. STRANGELOVE,
STAGECOACH (or YOUNG MR. LINCOLN), LA STRADA, UN CHIEN
ANDALOU/LAGE dOR, PANDORAS BOX, LA BELLE ET LA BTE, UGETSU
MONOGATARI (or SANSHO THE BAILIFF), The APU Trilogy, THE LAST LAUGH,
THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI
These are films that define, sometimes by transforming, the art of cinema.

DS: What great film would you claim has the worst ending of all time, and
why? I would pick Akira Kurosawas Rashomon, with that sunny ending
and the baby. Just awful, and moves the film from the top of the
Kurosawa rank down to fifth or sixth. Another great film with a horrid
ending is Orson Welles The Trial. By contrast, what are the three or four
greatest endings to a film, regardless of the rest of the films quality? Id
nominate 2001: A Space Odyssey, of course, but also Kurosawas High And
Low- a devastating end, although The Bad Sleep Wells ending is even more
terrifying, if not as dramatic.

LD: THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS may be the best movie with the worst
ending -- the most notorious example of sappy, syrupy, sunny -- demanded, as
usual, by studio philistines and not even shot by Welles. Which goes to show
how hard it is for Them to really ruin a great film. Welles, of course, the poster
child for this phenomenon -- TOUCH OF EVIL, etc.
When you say devastating, I think of LA STRADA, BICYCLE THIEF
GREEDs Death Valley. All those late 60s and 70s movies that end with the
same look of disillusionment/ultimate resignation on the protagonists face --
LAWRENCE, THE GRADUATE, MIDNIGHT COWBOY, SERPICO, DOG DAY
AFTERNOON, THE GAMBLER, HARPER, NIGHT MOVES, ULZANAS RAID
Forget it, Jake, its Chinatown. The hand falling silent in ALL QUIET ON THE
WESTERN FRONT. Joel McCrea falling silent in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY.
SHANE. PATHS OF GLORY. Jean Gabin and Marcel Dalio making it across
the border in the snow in GRAND ILLUSION (and James Coburn making it to
the Pyrenees in that other GREAT ESCAPE). The V.C. Honour Roll in ZULU.
Madness Madness. KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS. SUNSET
BOULEVARD. IKIRUs playground. The graves of the four SAMURAI. A guilty
pleasure finale: TOO LATE THE HERO. And Bronsons smile in DEATH WISH.
Muni disappearing into the dark in I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG.
Rosebud. The climax of THE WILD BUNCH is still the greatest and most
electrifying of all time, and its ending proves that one great movie can feed off
another, Peckinpah quoting Huston (TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE). Just
as the ending of THE THIRD MAN becomes the ending of THE LONG
GOODBYE.
84

Print the legend

DS: On a tangent, name some famous scenes or dialogue in films that, if
you had a chance, you would rewrite. And, give the reason why you think
the current scenes or dialogue fails.

LD: You want me to find fault with films I like, and I can barely come up with
any. If I like them I accept them, flaws and all. They are what they are. Sure,
it would be nice if THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS had its right ending and if
ACROSS THE WIDE MISSOURI or WIND ACROSS THE EVERGLADES or A
NEW LEAF werent cut and compromised, but it has never once occurred to me
to rewrite any famous scenes or dialogue. I might want to restore more
Milius to APOCALYPSE NOW -- or Conrad, for that matter. Theres an ending
that does disappoint and an actor who moved us so much more when his
dialogue was scripted rather than spoken in tongues. In THE GETAWAY, when
Ali MacGraw challenges McQueen, saying he doesnt trust anybody, Steve at
his coolest says, You wanna see what I trust? In God I trust -- as he holds
up some paper money -- and then totally ruins it by explaining the line for
dimwits: Its the words on the back of every bill! Studio blockheads? The
script? McQueen? Who knows?

DS: Do you think foreign films are superior to Hollywoods current dreck?
What do you think of current filmmakers like Theo Angelopoulos, Bela
Tarr, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Abbas Kiarostami, and Mohsen Makhmalbaf? It
seems to me that they value the intellect of their audience.

LD: Interesting, but boring. Of course theyre superior in a more intellectual
way than American filmmakers are allowed to be or capable of. But as you can
probably tell, Im afraid Im still something of a cultural isolationist. The great
foreign films of cinephilias heyday, with the possible exception of the very
Japanese Ozu, say, were not really all that foreign. The newer international art
cinema youre referring to, apart from not being as great, in my estimation, is
more alien in other ways, as well as almost perverse in its insistence on
distancing techniques. Theyre a hard slog these movies, for too little reward,
and I cant say Im eager to delve too deeply or completely into those directors
filmographies (and we might include Wong Kar-wai, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward
Yang, Ousmane Sembene ). I can admire them, on an occasional basis,
without really embracing them. I do feel a bit guilty about it. Youve inspired
me to educate myself in this area. Ill order some DVDs, which is the next best
thing to watching them. But there are still all those Borzage films I havent
seen

DS: Jean-Luc Godard is one of the most overrated directors Ive ever seen.
I mean, I grew up watching Jimmy Cagney and John Garfield films with
85

my dad, and Breathless is pure imitation, with much bad technique, a bad
screenplay, and poorly technically made. It is not homage, but imitation-
and a poor one. Theres simply no comparing Godard with Bergman, at
least not in the Frenchmans 1960s work, which Ive seen. Comments?

LD: Bergman is the greater and more enduring artist. His talent never flagged.
Godard seems more of a passing fad, flighty and frivolous. The tortoise and the
hare. Thats not to say Jean-Lucs 60s output is merde. I rate BREATHLESS
higher than you do -- and CONTEMPT, WEEKEND, TWO OR THREE THINGS I
KNOW ABOUT HER, ALPHAVILLE, PIERROT LE FOU, A WOMAN IS A WOMAN,
UNE FEMME MARIE, MADE IN U.S.A. We should all have it so good.

DS: Another digression, while we speak of foreign films. Perhaps its
because I grew up sneaking into theaters in the late 1960s and early
1970s, to see the latest Godzilla release that hit stateside, but I cannot
stand subtitling. Dubbing is so vastly superior, yet when I hear others
complain about being distracted by unsynchronized lip motions, I ask,
Well, are you not distracted by having up to a third of the visual medium
covered? With DVDs, luckily, when I watch a film again, to review a
commentary, I often pick up on visuals covered by the words. I simply do
not get how any rational being could prefer subtitles. To mention
Bergman, I recall watching his Spider Trilogy of films, and the dubbing
actually helped the film because the different actor voices for, say, Max
Von Sydow, helped differentiate the different characters he played in
Through A Glass, Darkly and Winter Light. Plus, as cartoons have shown, the
easiest portion of acting to replicate, and to convey emotion, is the voice.
The great actors are always separated from the mortals by their ability to
act with their bodies, faces, or just a body part- and thats all retained in
dubbing. Which camp do you fall into, and why?

LD: Neither one is optimum. I sometimes find I like watching a film twice, if
both versions are offered. And different subtitled versions where the
translations vary. Theres nothing like the actual voices of the actors youre
watching in their original language -- subtitles are preferable. But Ive never
hated dubbing, if its adequate. A shame it went out of style, actually, as it
encouraged and enabled a wider audience to enjoy many more foreign films, in
a more innocent time.

DS: Yes, I always watch foreign films twice- and a good commentary helps,
because then I can turn off the dubbing and watch what Ive seen, but
watch even more intently. To digress, Ive always raged about how one
can get the latest Hollywood schlockbuster film for far less than a quality
foreign film from DVD companies like The Criterion Collection, Kino, or
Anchor Bay. Do foreign film DVD distributors simply not want to get into
86

this market? It seems like an artificial wall designed to keep those
Philistine American plebeians from accessing great art.

LD: I shouldnt think its anything more than supply and demand. Theyre
servicing a shrinking niche market and cant expect to sell that many copies.
We can only hope one day, and it may be soon, well be able to type any
existing title onto a keyboard and the movie will appear on our TV for a
nominal sum.

DS: In the DVD of his latest film, Three Monkeys, Nuri Bilge Ceylan is
interviewed and says something really remarkable. He claims that too
many filmmakers (and artists) in countries with oppressive governments
use censorship as an excuse to not be creative, thus essentially giving in
and writing only moralistic political art rather than using the limits as a
way to be more creative. Thus why so much writing in Latin America, as
example, is so bad and laden with political screeding. Thoughts?

LD: Yeah, we covered this earlier. You cant have authorship under
authoritarianism. The state is the author. There can be one or two landmarks,
but not a rich cultural landscape. MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT, for
instance, is a marvelous movie, but thats it, thats Cuban cinema, right there,
one movie. Give the man a cigar.

DS: I mentioned indy films, and the lineage goes back to Orson Welles and
John Cassavetes, and runs through John Sayles till you get to a number
of lesser known filmmakers today. Only Woody Allen and Terrence Malick
seem to have enough respect to do what they want in major studios, while
someone with potential, like David Gordon Green, is forced to make silly
comedies like Pineapple Express. Why is Hollywood so obsessed with
teenaged level films when there is literally a goldmine to be had with the
forty and over crowd, as they make up, by far, the largest and still
growing demographic? Serious adult (not porno) films can succeed. This is
not just bad art but really bad business. Agree or not?

LD: Woody Allen doesnt get to do shit for major studios. Hes been making his
movies recently in England and Spain and France, with money from those
countries. There is probably not a goldmine to be had with the forty and over
crowd ever again, except in increasingly rare circumstances, given the expense
of making movies now and transformational changes in technology and
distribution patterns.
As America becomes more of a Third World conglomeration, with the
attendant breakdown of schools and social institutions, standards lowered
instead of raised, obviously popular entertainment will follow rather than lead,
to accommodate the changing demographics and chase the bottom dollar.
87

With vast undereducated, illiterate populations come Cantinflas and masked
wrestler movies, Bollywood and kung fu and cannibal moves, anim, comic
books, video games, Tyler Perry, and SAW IV. A movie like THE GREAT
ESCAPE was once popular entertainment, made for adults, but children could
enjoy it, too -- and learn something about World War II by default. Now movies
are made for children and adults are expected to enjoy them, too, and have
apparently been made to do so. The average thirty or forty-year-old now seems
to be about as smart as we once assumed a college student might be; college
students the equivalent of high-schoolers, high-schoolers no brighter than
grade school kids in the 1950s and 60s.
Dumbing down may have seemed an appropriate coinage when the
phenomenon was first noticed. Infantalization is what has actually occurred.
Cultural stupidity is a consequence. The current Film Comment has THE
FANTASTIC MR. FOX on its cover. Last issue they were extolling WHERE THE
WILD THINGS ARE. On the one hand, what the fuck else are they going to
comment on? On the other, these are present-day films and directors they like
a lot. Teenagers used to be a niche audience. Now everybody else is.
Maybe mature, sophisticated movies will make a comeback -- its not like
theyve entirely vanished, though theyre no longer as interesting or important -
- but they will be increasingly marginalized, made smaller and cheaper, for a
relatively miniscule audience, like books, plays, opera. Everything scaled way
down.
I mean, look, these seven movies about the sixties I mentioned that have all
just been sent to Academy members in the hope of getting Oscar nominations -
- A SERIOUS MAN, A SINGLE MAN, AN EDUCATION, NINE, TAKING
WOODSTOCK, THE DAMNED UNITED, PIRATE RADIO ... These were not made
for teenagers. But have Baby Boomers and 60s nostalgists rushed out to see
them? Have you? Most of them had small budgets and smaller audiences, if
any, and are largely indistinguishable from competently made telefilms. How
many people can barely contain their excitement at the prospect of a new Ang
Lee movie? The film by the Coen Bros. -- unsurprisingly -- is the one most
likely to be interesting to cineastes in years to come, as part of their substantial
oeuvre.
When you ask, when everyone asks, why are movies so terrible, and isnt that
a bad business model, youre missing the point. Everybody thinks that Mel
Brookss THE PRODUCERS is one of the greatest comedy ideas ever dreamt up
-- but its also quite realistic. A few years ago the commercially-savvy Disney
studio created a separate division called Hollywood Pictures -- and Hollywood
Pictures proceeded to make a series of movies so ghastly, no one could believe
their eyes. The joke around town soon became If its the Sphinx, it stinks --
because the logo of this company was a sphinx, which was itself a kind of
sinister in-joke, I think, because the riddle of the sphinx isnt hard to decipher
if youre familiar with the term money-laundering. What do you do when
money pours in from THE LITTLE MERMAID and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
88

and all the other cartoons -- money thats pure profit, that you dont have to
share with talent or the guilds, that just rains from the sky forever? Do you
just give most of it to the government in taxes? That would be stupid. Instead,
you reinvest it and make a bunch of cheap movies that will almost certainly be
write-offs -- that will open and close in a week. But -- and heres the big movie
business but -- at the end of the day you have a library. A list of titles on a
piece of paper. And thats a gold mine.
Yes, it would be nice if that list includes James Bond and Pink Panther and
Rocky movies, but you cant count on that. You can count on the fact that
when someone needs to have content for some new cable channel or pocket
movie player, youll be able to monetize your library of movies. And now that
movie studios are largely out of the business of making movies as we used to
know them, and the art-house business has imploded, and the profession of
film critic is going the way of wheelwrights and village blacksmiths, this is the
economic model that virtually all remaining film finance companies operate on.
Its why the Vestrons, Cannons, Cinergis, and Carolcos come and go and
always will. Remember, the great Hollywood studios of the past -- or the
British Broadcasting Company which would routinely erase the tapes of shows
they could have made millions from ever since -- they didnt know they even
had libraries, that there could ever be value in the vault. Individual titles from
week to week were what they focused on. And thats the answer to why theres
nothing you want to see from week to week anymore when you look at the
movie listings in the paper -- while you can even still do that.
They dont care.

DS: Let me use John Cassavetes as an example. His greatest film, to me,
is The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie. Here you see realistic violence, and the
aftermath of that violence, which is more violence, blood, guilt, worry,
and uncertainty; and this is emphasized as the film ends with life going
on. Thoughts on Cassavetes, that film, or the realism it portrays?

LD: BOOKIE is the Cassavetes I like best, too, probably because its the
nearest to a recognizable crime/noir/70s genre film. But like is too strong a
word, since hes another case of someone I recognize, admire, respect and all
that without being able to say I really enjoy his output. Mainly, again, my
thoughts about Cassavetes are personal. An editor friend worked on his final
film and I visited one day and Cassavetes invited me to sit on the couch with
him as he viewed a scene back and forth. You felt instantly the warmth of his
personality, understood completely the guru-like devotion he inspired in his
friends and followers. Just twenty minutes sitting chatting with him a little, he
seemed a marvelous man. And not long for this world.

DS: Another thing that films tend to do is overuse close-ups and musical
scoring to highlight particular moments or points they want to make. Yet,
89

detachment and silence has a power; think of the end of the original 1968
The Planet Of The Apes. After the Charlton Heston character sees the half-
buried (or shattered) Statue of Liberty, he falls to his knees in the surf,
pounds the sand, and wails of the idiocy of mankind. But, theres no
musical cue that says, Aha, he was on earth all along! Just the utter
indifference of the cosmos to Hestons characters colossal loss, as
represented by the ongoing sound of ocean waves. Putting aside the great
psychosexual and political imagery, the ending is great because it just
stands naked. Thoughts on that ending, and why so many films refuse to
let their merits stand alone?

LD: Its one of the great endings, absolutely. Great film composers knew when
not to have music -- and were once allowed to collaborate with like-minded
directors, as screenwriters were, in a much freer environment, before
Hollywood became the planet of the apes.
Since you mention it, Ive often thought my desire to drop out really seriously
dates to when APES composer Jerry Goldsmith died, not so long ago, and THE
GREAT ESCAPEs Elmer Bernstein at virtually the same time. That seemed
more an end to an era to me than almost anything. Seeing THE GREAT
ESCAPE as a little boy and humming the unforgettable music then and
forevermore. Who hums movie music anymore? Or could? What studio would
allow so unusual a score as Goldsmiths for PLANET OF THE APES?
Wonderful music by these great talents was a central component of the joy of
movies -- even bad movies, which were redeemed if you saw the name Jerry
Goldsmith on the credits, or Alex North, John Barry, Maurice Jarre, Lalo
Schifrin, Jerry Fielding, Jerome Moross, Alfred Newman, Max Steiner, Victor
Young, Tiomkin, Mancini, Morricone, Herrmann, Kaper, Rozsa, so many
others. Everybody knew the music from JAWS/STAR WARS/THE
EXORCIST/THE STING/EXODUS/ LAWRENCE/ZHIVAGO/KWAI/A SUMMER
PLACE/ BREAKFAST AT TIFFANYS/THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN/THE BIG
COUNTRY/THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY/ROCKY/A MAN AND A
WOMAN/LOVE STORY/BUTCH AND SUNDANCE/THOMAS CROWN
AFFAIR/BORN FREE/MIDNIGHT COWBOY/MODERN TIMES/SATURDAY
NIGHT FEVER/CHARIOTS OF FIRE/James Bond
Its like movies have lost a limb. Think of what music once meant to the
culture generally; popular music, rock music -- to more than just teenagers
and morons. Are composers now totally talentless, as well? They will tell you
that studios and even directors dont want themes anymore. Do you believe
that? Theres no way to get your head around it, unless madness is the new
normal.
At least one can be grateful for a little space and cost savings. Its hard
enough keeping up with the avalanche of archival releases (but for how much
longer) of these (mostly) dead guys soundtracks. Imagine if you felt it
90

necessary to buy CDs of new movie music too -- thered really be no room for
cooking and sleeping accommodation.

DS: German filmmaker Werner Herzog has famously claimed that films
purpose is to bring new images to replace old and hackneyed ones. While
a bit hyperbolic, I know what he means, such as one sees the same sorts
of scenes in the same genres of films, or even on the evening news, where
every story about science shows stock footage of someone in a lab coat
pipetting one fluid from a test tube into another. Why do so few films
even desire to break a formula, the way the three films I earlier
mentioned (My Dinner With Andre, La Jete, Satantango) do?

LD: How many different ways can I answer the same question? Morons,
assholes, simpletons, idiots. The death of imagination. Theyre incapable of
recognizing clichs. Just when you think youve heard a character at the
climax of a movie declare that theyre not scared anymore for the last time --
you havent. Or seen a car door open and a pair of shoes step out. Or that
fucking crowd of extras who dont know what the movie theyre in is even about
but have nothing better to do than stop to clap and cheer, anyway. That may
have been when movies ended -- when movies had to end that way, in the
desperate and pitiful hope that the applauding audience onscreen would
inspire the braindead audience in the theatre to similar heights of ecstasy.
Every time I see those clapping extras I picture a gigantic Monty Python weight
dropping onto the heads of everyone involved in the making of the film.
What does it mean when every single work of fiction without exception, no
matter how grim, has to say its funny on the cover? Is it written down
somewhere? Is it a law? Has no one noticed this? Does every protagonist of a
book at some point have to describe a dream theyve had? Does every
childrens book, like every child, now get an award just for showing up? Has
there ever been a novel about one generation in an Asian-American family? Its
no longer an option for the heroine of a rom-com, in the films trailer, to trip
and fall -- its mandatory. It is not possible to make a movie with any kind of
action in it if that action does not include or consist of a car exploding --
behind the protagonist as he or she or he and she dive towards the camera.
Not possible to depict two armies clashing on a field of battle, whether theyre
human or robots or aliens or animals, and despite the advances in computer
technology, without it being the exact same long-shot angle showing the two
opposing sides like cartoon ants rushing towards each other from left and
right.
There have been ten thousand movies in the past twenty-five years -- and
ninety-nine thousand more scripts -- and more than one pinhead is writing one
right now -- with a hero named Jack. (Jake is the fall-back position.) Every
actress whos ever had an article written about her in any publication in the
91

last quarter-century somehow possesses that one-of-a-kind, utterly unique
quality of being able to convey strength yet vulnerability.
Who are these people who are capable of writing that in all seriousness one
more time? Who plaster unreadable books with gushing blurbs? Are they
outright liars? Beyond belief imbeciles? Or are they truly deranged? What
people seem to be doing is just automatically reproducing nonsense phrases --
and images -- totally divorced from meaning -- not to mention taste,
intelligence, or the most basic rational thought process.
Contrary to Ralph Ellison, when did it become codified, as if by unwritten fiat,
that there must be a V.N. (Visible Negro) in not just every scene, but every shot
where there are background extras, clapping or pre-clapping, in every movie,
no matter how ludicrous or unlikely the context -- but no movies at all about
mainstream, middle-class black life?
Pretense, political correctness, and clich go hand in hand.

DS: I wrote a book, still in manuscript form, called Five Film Masters:
Thoughts On Antonioni, Bergman, Fellini, Herzog, And Ozu Into The 21
st
Century,
and near its Introductions end I wrote:
Finally, I write this book especially for younger readers, who tend to be more
openminded, and willing to challenge dogma. Younger people tend to embrace
newer and better approaches to art, and life in general. They have not festered
into middle-aged bile, and closed down their minds, and taken to repeating ad
nauseum the empty apothegms older people spout without any understanding of
their meaning- such as speaking of the language of cinema, for even though
they claim film as an exceptional art, and seek to distance themselves from
literature, they still cannot even move beyond a basic metaphor that reveals the
visual mediums utter dependence upon that other art.
I do find it ironic that, the same way the word poetic is tossed about as
the ultimate artistic compliment- thus de facto acknowledging that art as
the highest form of art, that most film critics find it almost impossible to
speak of their vaunted exceptional pure cinema without resorting to
comparisons to writing. Why do you think that is? Is it a failure of the
critical comprehension, or conveyance?

LD: Festered into middle-aged bile? What do you mean by that?
Look, here I am starting a sentence with the word look. Why do people say
that? Do I really mean look? Dont I really mean listen? -- which has become
interchangeable in this context. I want you to see what I mean.
This is the self-conscious debate-slash-twaddle that semioticians -- of
Screen, notably -- have bequeathed us. What other language have we got?
We use the word scene to describe a segment of a novel, a film, a play -- or
something depicted in a painting. Why should the word change if the medium
does? Cinema is storytelling, its an extension of the literary tradition -- but
92

also of photography and the visual arts. All art is one. Its why a screenplay is
nothing but a dependent entity.
It cuts both ways.
This very day I was reading an A.N. Wilson introduction to a Tolstoy story: It
has the quality of cinema verit as in a good film, we take what is offered as
a slice of reality itself [Tolstoy] can move into a mountain pass at night, and,
as it were, film it for us.
And in a book review of a new biography of Booker T. Washington, the
reviewer writes that Washingtons project was to develop a new script for race
relations.
Literature, for better or for worse, has been irrevocably and overwhelmingly
influenced by the invention of motion pictures. James Joyce opened a cinema
in 1909. Kipling wrote a modernist masterpiece about cinema --
cinematically -- in 1904. Alexandre Astruc tried to conflate cinema and
literature with his notion and neologism the camera-stylo, but it doesnt enjoy
much currency these days, as far as I can tell -- or see. Its an interesting tool
for auteurists, but unwieldly in practice.

DS: Have you ever read Transcendental Style In Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, by
Paul Schrader? What do you think of it? I thought it was poorly written
and even more poorly thought out. If so, why has it been such an
influential work in cinema?

LD: No, it isnt readable. Its a students thesis thats taken on retroactive
interest because of who the author became -- as the back cover of the reprint is
eager to proclaim. I think Schrader would be the first to dismiss it as juvenilia.
Its terribly dated, quite unscholarly, and hasnt been particularly influential --
just referenced a lot thanks to him and his high-concept title. And I suppose
his name as a filmmaker has steered a certain number of people to Ozu,
Bresson, Dreyer, which is all to the good -- but his essay on film noir has been
much more far-reaching, I would say, as well as his early advocacy of Japanese
gangster films.

DS: Let me talk about the business side of Hollywood. I have tried to get
a few dozen actors/directors/celebrity types (ranging from soap operas to
B film stars to overlooked actors from stage and indy film) for these
interviews, and usually I run into an entourage, their people, or just
some idiotic agent. Many of them are utterly clueless as to the power of
the Internet. Yes, doing a local radio show or tv promo may help one in
the few weeks surrounding a films release, but as far as a lasting impact,
it is worthless. I even had some agent (a character straight out of Woody
Allens Broadway Danny Rose) who represented an almost forgotten
television personality from decades ago, claim to me that his client was
loved by people 18 to 88, booked up the wazoo, and expected payment for
93

the interview; even though this interview series has been read by millions,
and if you Google the television personality, youll find no clips of his
show online, a website that looks like it was made circa 1995, and an
utter indifference to his work. Yet this Last Century Jones (as I call such
fossils) still believes its 1970, in terms of PR. You did not have such an
entourage. I simply contacted you though your union. First, why no
entourage? Second, do you think such proliferations of entourages is why
so much of Hollywood is so out of step with the rest of America? And, by
that I dont mean Right or Left politics, but in even knowing what the
average moviegoer wants- the occasional thought-provoking steak rather
than the vapid, puerile fast food diet its usually fed?

LD: I thought the whole point of being a writer was so you could stay alone in
your room and not have to go in among em. Ive never understood why
screenwriters, of all people, would want to surround themselves with
managers, publicists, etc. The hustler-sleaze-salesman screenwriter is a fairly
recent phenomenon, and an ugly one -- entirely in keeping with the movies
they write, and the five thousand self-congratulatory awards shows and circuit
that never used to exist. People probably think I employ a publicist because
Ive enjoyed an unusual, you might say disproportionate, amount of attention
for a screenwriter -- like this interview -- but I would be quite happy never to be
asked again.
People in Hollywood live in a bubble, politically and every other way (see
awards shows, proliferation of). The problem from the financiers point of
view, even though theyve done everything possible to kill the moviegoing habit,
is that the masses used to just go to the movies. They would go to whatever
the weeks new programme was at the local theatre. In England it was a
maxim that a British film could make its money back from people sheltering
from the rain. The operating assumption used to be that people wanted to see
what Hollywood had to offer. The assumption now is that they dont -- that you
have to force them somehow. So people go now, and movies are hits, based on
the promise of entertainment rather than the actual delivery or experience of it.
Its the difference between product and merchandise. A product is something
people want or need. Its made, not just sold, by someone who takes pride in
it. Merchandise is just shit you move off the shelf -- by whatever means
necessary -- the customers nothing but marks and suckers.
And you cant have art without artists. In the history of art there arent Mona
Lisas and Sistine Chapels by people you never heard of. But Awards Season
in recent years has become largely a celebration not of the talented few, but the
talented new. Its a sign of the times that the Lifetime Achievement Oscars,
which were the only reason to watch the show, have just been relegated to a
private industry event so as to keep them off the telecast, the better to publicize
the doubling of the Best Picture nominees, most of which are entirely devoid of
aesthetic or authorial interest. Like quality television, theyre merely
94

decorous or literate or of above-average intelligence compared to
TRANSFORMERS and G.I. JOE. Serious, well-crafted, well-intentioned, even
skillfully made, but nothing more. Its why in the entire history of the world
theres no such thing as a great television director.

DS: On a related score, I think the reason the book publishing industry is
dying is that the cronyism fostered by the MFA writing system has totally
excluded real world working writers (folks outside of Academia), people
who have talent and insight. Is there an analogue to the MFA writing mills
with film schools? As example, a filmmaker as great as Yasujiro Ozu
dismissed some of the film school ideology, such as eyelines needing to
meet when dialogue occurs, for a viewer doesnt care less. Have film
schools created a closed society in Hollywood, where innovation and
talent is killed and feared?

LD: I wish it was much more closed -- like it was for the first seventy or eighty
years. Its not a closed society, its a closed mindset, and has nothing to do
with film schools. You think most of the idiots making decisions which films to
make went to film school? Anybody can be in the movie business now. Just
say you want to. Just make a film. Is there anybody who hasnt? Someone
has yet to write the book on whats become of the fifty million people whove
gotten a degree in film -- or screened their film at Sundance. Film schools are
largely a racket, but Hollywood is still not top-heavy with film school graduates,
most of whom never get within spitting distance of a film career, and are even
less likely to in the future.
Its that people are stupid now.
There were always bad movies, bad books -- but they didnt seem incompetent
like they do now. Laughable ineptness -- Edward D. Wood, Jr. -- was unusual,
not pervasive. It appeared sporadically on the margins, but not usually in
mainstream major studio filmmaking, where its now commonplace. I was
watching a movie the other day, a Fox release, and I swear, I started to think
political correctness has reached such an extreme that they actually hired a
genuine mentally-challenged person to direct a motion picture. And not for
the first time, either. I looked up this directors previous film in Maltin, and the
brief capsule comment found room to say it was not only nonsensical but
brainless. You wonder what the usual multitude of nitwit producers and
studio executives were thinking, if anything, and will this poor director, who
clearly took an ill-advised career path, have anywhere to go from here? The
script, the acting, the casting -- just unspeakable -- every aspect. Now, this
was just cheap garbage, but weve come to expect even the most expensive
action movies these days to be visually incoherent.
Stupid people are obviously more comfortable with other stupid people. The
clueless, who can be counted on not to make reference to anything unfamiliar
or challenge the prevailing norms -- as those norms continue to sink. So what
95

you get in place of professionalism and pragmatism is pretense. They now
want to feel theyre working with someone whos passionate about the project,
but since they, the producers, have so often picked the project themselves -- a
hopeless idea, a godawful book or graphic novel, a horrible existing script, a
film that should never be remade -- you cant go into a meeting and say this
sucks, that you might be able to make it good, but
Because whats good writing anyway? Its an abstraction, an irrelevance.
Theyd much rather hear what they think is a cool take. But not knowing
whats old, they have no idea whats new. So the whole phony, broken system
is an exercise in futility and another reason movies are much more uniform in
their awfulness. Theres absolutely no patience for, or respect or appreciation
for, ideas outside the airless dome of a very limited frame of reference. If you
engage in a discussion of who the villain is, for instance, youd better do it in
an excited and animated way (this is why its helpful to have a writing partner
whos also wearing big ol baggy shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and a turned-
round baseball cap and chortling) -- because to roll your eyes and sigh and
question whether there even has to be a villain would be to challenge the whole
current paradigm. And the villain, of course, once established, has to be
motivated by nothing less than destroying the entire world -- and so on -- from
clich to clich. If youre unwilling to -- sincerely -- play this game, you might
as well stay home.
Its like the freak show of American politics. What kind of person even enters
that arena anymore? Studio politics are no different. How many times can you
sit in a room discussing whether the clues the killer taunts the cop with are
derived from nursery rhymes or planets, and act like you care? Can you feign
interest in yet another stultifying space station project? You have to be
interested. Talents a nice thing to have, but what you really need is need.
Conversely, imagine being a studio executive having to listen to ten thousand
hacks in ten thousand meetings pitching ten thousand heros journeys about
redemption without gagging on your own vomit.
As situation has replaced story, movies have come to feel static and stagnant
from start to finish and even big, expensive movies seem to take place entirely
on a soundstage -- only not like CASABLANCA. And every scene, every set, has
the physical dimensions of a soundstage. The entryway to the house/mansion
-- with that grand staircase with curving banister that someone will inevitably
slide down -- the living room with that chandelier someone will inevitably swing
on -- the underground tomb, which is simply the same entryway/living room
with the stairs and chandelier removed and fake boulders and stone idols
strategically placed instead -- until they turn it into the loft that everyone in
New York lives in, no matter what their income level, because the filmmakers
are too ignorant to know how to position or move a camera in an actual New
York apartment, or anything like it.
Closed set, closed mindset.
96

Who was the villain in THE GREAT ESCAPE, or THE DIRTY DOZEN?
Remade now -- and dont think theyre not trying -- there would have to be an
evil, evil, evil, evil Nazi in alternating scenes, constantly snarling, I want them
caught, I want them stopped, I want them dead!
When movies were good, the filmmakers and their bosses were more or less
creative, intellectual, cultural equals. Unfortunately the same is true now
when movies are bad.
So aspirants in film school or elsewhere, take heart -- youve probably heard
that Hollywood is crying out for new talent. Believe me -- or read a few
screenplays in development -- theyre evidently eager to locate the untalented,
as well.

DS: Let me now ask a few queries that I ask almost all my interviewees;
because this is a series, and the parallax of replies is of interest to me and
my readers. I started this interview series to combat the dumbing down of
culture and discourse- what I call deliteracy, both in the media, and online,
where blogs and websites refuse to post paragraphs with more than three
sentences in it, or refuse to post anything over a thousand words long.
Old tv show hosts like Phil Donahue, Dick Cavett, David Susskind, Tom
Snyder, even Bill Buckley- love him or hate him, have gone the way of the
dinosaur. Intellect has been killed by emotionalism, simply because the
latter is far easier to claim without dialectic. Only Charlie Rose, as a big
name interviewer, is left on PBS, but near midnight. Let me ask, what do
you think has happened to real discussion in America- not only in public-
political or elsewise, but just person to person?

LD: The people youve just mentioned, first of all, they were people --
individuals, characters -- like the old movie studio moguls. Individualism was
once prized. In a more corporatized climate, as we know, as we knew in the
fifties, or in a more authoritarian environment, the opposite is true. And they
were allowed their idiosyncrasies and given room to grow and become as
known to us as their guests -- can you believe, Dick Cavett sitting and talking
to someone for ninety minutes -- on a network -- when people were still awake?
But infantilization implies an undifferentiated, unruly, cacophonous rabble.
Infants havent matured into who theyre going to be yet. No discussion is
possible. They havent the capability. And theyre demanding. So we have
movies and books and music and culture on-demand. This is a big change
from the supply-system that once prevailed.
Something happened not so long ago. Pick your own moment -- was it when
you started seeing adults, in the evening, lined up outside theatres showing
Disneys THE LITTLE MERMAID or BEAUTY AND THE BEAST -- with the
collusion of the mainstream press long before Film Comments paean to THE
FANTASTIC MR. FOX? Thats what the discussion started to be about:
whatever was most publicized. Or when great reviews began hailing the
97

superior thrillers of John Grisham -- only, when you went to read THE FIRM or
THE PELICAN BRIEF you thought wait a minute this is shit. I mean,
truly terrible. And there, too, the unmentioned influence, the near plagiarism,
of specific famous movies. Is Pelican really so removed from Condor that
the reviewers didnt notice? As well as ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN, THE
STEPFORD WIVES People thought Harold Robbins or Jacqueline Susann or
Mickey Spillane were bad writers. What would their editors have done with
the manuscript of THE DA VINCI CODE, do you think?
Its like an hourglass has been turned upside down. The professionals have
fallen out, and the business, the industry, the profession -- film and publishing
-- is now overrun by amateurs. These people are so removed from what movies
and books used to be, even from what they are. It was bad enough when
movies, say, became just one cog in a bigger corporate machine. Movies at that
point became at least unimportant. They were widgets. But when the
corporations and mergers went too far and got too big and then began to
collapse in the present recession/depression, suddenly its become a whole lot
worse -- now movies are important as engines. So they have actually turned
their Evil Eye onto movies and are almost deliberately destroying them. Its
like theyre taking away Americas pastime! No more stand-alone movies was
a recent studio directive. In other words, no movie that cant also be a comic
book, a TV series, a Broadway musical, a video game, or lead to sequels and
toy merchandizing. The middle ground -- dramas as they now refer to most
normal movies -- is no more.
And its not just movie music thats been lost, or casts of character actors --
or the art of screenwriting, editing, direction. Theres no more regionalism.
Movies once had a sense of place. Thats a great loss. For people. The world
over. Who once got a feel for what New York was really like, what it really
looked like and felt like. Or the South. Without the viewer ever having been
there, or ever being likely in their lives to have a chance to go except in the
movies. Very sad.

DS: I coined a neologism- deliterate. Its a term I came up with in
opposition to illiterate. By deliterate I mean the willful choice to not read
great nor compelling writing. To avoid the classics in favor of reading
blogs. To write in emailese rather than proper grammar. Basically, I claim
that deliteracy is far more of a problem than illiteracy is. Do you agree?

LD: Youre right, theres a willfulness to their ignorance now, a strange new
pride in it -- which is why I maintain weve moved beyond stupid into some
sphere of mental illness. The insane decision to increase the number of films
worthy of an Oscar -- when none are. The buffoons who remake classic films,
who like to announce that theyve never seen the original, or that theyve gone
back to the book -- which is meant to make us feel more confident of their
artistic integrity. Or else pretend that the original film was okay in its day, but
98

could do with an update because audiences are so much more sophisticated
now. Cant you tell? Who but the de-literate would even come up with the
buzzwords reimagine and reinvent for their incompetent remakes.
Its only recently that studio executives have taken to calling their movies
smart -- in the face of all evidence to the contrary. And screenwriters with far
more finesse than me -- who apparently all got the memo -- always say in
interviews how smart those hardworking executives are in turn. Studio types
even realized at some point that the term high concept was making them look
ridiculous, so now they say they want movies with big ideas. This does not
mean new hope for your script about Jrgen Habermas and the Frankfurt
School. They will no longer make a movie thats execution dependent --
which all movies once were -- a frank admission that they cant make good
movies at all.
Virtually no one under the age of forty knows how to write its or its
anymore. [Or my pet peeve- the use of loathe for loath- AHHHH!- DAN] Try
reading the writing of graduate students from every prestigious university you
can think of. Professional writers, journalists, and presumably their editors, in
articles in famous magazines, have no idea what disinterested means.
Barack Obama is taken for eloquent on a daily basis when its plainly obvious
as his head bobs back and forth between teleprompters, or by any standards of
the past, that ineloquent is the only applicable word.
It may be that a tipping point has been reached. The sum of human
knowledge is just too great. A good research library as recently as three or four
decades ago could make a reasonable claim to completeness. Now they dont
have the money, dont have the space -- will digitalization turn out to be a
savior or the final nail? The years keep going by -- itll be harder and harder
for film buffs in the future to have seen everything. Therell be more
specialists. I think there are now -- people whove devoted their lives to
spaghetti westerns and peblum movies -- or the life and work of John
Cassavetes. Thats the good news about movies being less interesting now.
You dont have to see them. Theyll mean nothing to film history. Like the
disappearance of great soundtracks, it allows for some breathing room.
The gap between people now is more and more, I think, not what they believe,
which used to define difference, but what they know. Its a knowledge gap.
And thats the greatest difference of all. The true believer is someone to whom
the truth, in fact, has not been revealed.

DS: I also believe that artists are fundamentally different, intellectually,
than non-artists, and that the truly great artists are even more greatly
different. Let me quote from an essay I did on Harold Bloom, the
reactionary critic who champions the Western Canon against
Multiculturalism: .the human mind has 3 types of intellect. #1 is the
Functionary- all of us have it- it is the basic intelligence that IQ tests purport to
measure, & it operates on a fairly simple add & subtract basis. #2 is the
99

Creationary- only about 1% of the population has it in any measurable quantity-
artists, discoverers, leaders & scientists have this. It is the ability to see beyond
the Functionary, & also to see more deeply- especially where pattern recognition
is concerned. And also to be able to lead observers with their art. Think of it as
Functionary
2
. #3 is the Visionary- perhaps only 1% of the Creationary have this
in measurable amounts- or 1 in 10,000 people. These are the GREAT artists, etc.
It is the ability to see farther than the Creationary, not only see patterns but to
make good predictive & productive use of them, to help with creative leaps of
illogic (Keats Negative Capability), & also not just lead an observer, but impose
will on an observer with their art. Think of it as Creationary
2
, or Functionary
3
.
What are your thoughts on this concept of mine? Have you discerned any
differences between non-artists and artists, or average artists and the
greats? And, if you are copacetic with such a system, where on the scale
would you place yourself? And do you think disciplines like teaching or
criticism are 180 from creativity?

LD: I think its probably a very bad idea to suggest that artists are somehow
different. People are good or bad, happy or sad, whether theyre artists or
great artists or whoever. I always thought the clich of the mad artist was kind
of strange because I lived with an artist who was just dad -- even if he did
pose nude with David Hockney on the cover of a magazine. So perspective as
well as personality makes a difference, just as critics, contrary to many artists
beliefs, are often better judges of the artists standing than the artist himself
(but not often contemporary critics).
Yes, theres probably a level of narcissism or self-absorption common to
artists -- but cant a plumber be a narcissist? Cant a plumber be creative?
Its telling everyone theyre creative thats the problem. Delusional parents
who believe that their children are gifted, and think thats a good thing.
Theres a school here in L.A., probably in many other cities, too, that actually
calls itself for gifted children. Could there be a bigger come-on? Can you
imagine doing that to a child? Disappointment comes from expectations. The
people who want you to read their screenplay, or someone to listen to their
demo, or who bother an artist to look at their slides, though they have no
talent, what they do often have in common is a sense of entitlement. Thats
what they were actually gifted with -- usually by parents who told them how
special they were. Whereas many successful artists -- and people -- as we
know, got no encouragement. They were simply obsessed, from a very young
age. They worked hard, with focus and dedication. A gift is something passive.
Its what you do with it that counts. Clint Eastwood is always being asked
about his extraordinary old-age career. A child of the Depression, he always
responds -- a father who said nothing is given to you, you have to work for it.
Who else is still going to be directing movies at 80? Like Ive said, the culture
now celebrates jackpot winners -- people who walk into the casino and pull a
handle -- which requires no creativity at all.
100

I always think about a line in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. In the movie, John
Hurt is an ambitious, conniving weasel whos hoping Paul Scofield can get him
a position at court, in the Kings circle. Instead Scofield mentions a job
opening as a schoolteacher, suggesting Hurt would make a fine one, perhaps
even a great one.
Hurt is crushed: And if I was, who would know it?
Scofield replies: You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public,
that.
Most people will always be mindless drones. Having any kind of interest or
passion to begin with, let alone the ability to pursue it, is a gift in itself. Think
of all the people who go to jobs to make a living and have a hobby they enjoy
in their spare time. And all the artists and writers who have also had to work
in an insurance office, or teach. Youre incredibly lucky if youre able to merge
your life with your work -- your real, your committed work, thats more than
just a means of earning a living.
I have no more idea where talent or degrees of talent come from than anyone
else -- though Blooms made a pretty good stab at defining it there. [That was
my definition- DAN] But why should a great artist be any different in the final
analysis than a great botanist?
Teaching and criticism are not creative on the face of it -- and thats not a
criticism. They are disciplines that illuminate, that comment on creativity,
explore it and expose it to people -- in the most exciting way possible if the
teacher or critic is any good. Theres obviously a lot of evidence to support the
assumption that many teachers and critics are frustrated or failed creatives,
but that doesnt mean theyre also failed teachers or critics. And as with so
much of what weve been discussing, there was a time when there was
greater fluidity, much more overlap between critic-cinephile-writer-filmmaker.
The French New Wave most prominently, Bogdanovich and Schrader in the
U.S., in England a whole slew of interesting people -- Lindsay Anderson and
Gavin Lambert, Kevin Brownlow, Mark Shivas, Linda Myles, David McGillivray,
Chris Wicking, Dave Pirie, Paul Mayersberg, Chris Petit ...

DS: A few years back I co-hosted an Internet radio show called
Omniversica. On one show we spoke with a poet named Fred Glaysher,
who- in arguing with my co-host Art Durkee, claimed that, in art, change
does not come until some giant- or great artist, comes along, and buries
the rest of the wannabes. Its akin to Thomas Kuhns The Structure Of
Scientific Revolutions. Agree or not? And name some film giants you feel
whove buried past tropes or styles with their canon.

LD: Well, youre talking to someone who in his impressionable years prayed at
the altar of the author of BIG WEDNESDAY -- the day when a wave will come
thats so big, so great a force of nature, that it will wash away all that came
before and nothing that comes after will ever be the same.
101

Were back at your bottleneck theory -- and the difference between favorite
movies and great movies. Just see my list of the latter -- those are the
directors who reinvent the art form. But its not as dramatic as youre
suggesting. There are no Big Wednesdays in art. Any art that declares out
with the old, in with the new isnt art at all, its avant-garde crap. Truffaut
admitted his notorious burial of an older generation of French filmmakers
was mainly a shock effect to make a name for himself rather than something
heartfelt.
Jed Perl this year in The New Republic: No art worth considering can ever
really be understood as post-this or post-that -- as a rejection of classicism or
of modernism or, for that matter, of Dadaism painters and sculptors have for
centuries quoted from the work of earlier artists, which involved an emotional
engagement with the inner life of a previous achievement logical next step is
pure art-world Leninism, grounded in the idea that there is always a vanguard
with a privileged knowledge of History.
The old and the new go hand in hand. Orson Welles famously prepared for
KANE by repeatedly screening STAGECOACH. The old masters, he said --
John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford. THIS SPORTING LIFE and IF were
British New Wave films and Im sure critics responded with revolutionary
blurbs about them, but Anderson was a passionate disciple of Ford. Bergman,
Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray -- all devotes of Ford. The most successful and
influential filmmaker alive today, Steven Spielberg, has quoted Ford in movie
after movie. (And naturally John Milius, another leading member of the now
not so New Hollywood, cast Ford stock company player Hank Worden in BIG
WEDNESDAY.)
I agree. I think Ford was The Best. (But try arguing with a Hawksian.) And
what tradition was Ford building upon? -- D.W. Griffith? The greatest artists,
you might also argue, arent influential at all and dont, in fact, bury past
tropes and styles -- because theyre inimitable. Aside from a few isolated
copycats here and there, who else could be Buuelian?
Visionaries do see farther -- beyond their own lifetimes. And allow us to see
ourselves. They discover a new way of looking at the world.
Athletes, to connect this question to your last one, are skilled and talented,
but not generally known for their intellectual brilliance. That part of their
brain that controls their physicality is dominant. Thats why an Ali, who was
both physically magnificent and unusually intelligent, was such an unbeatable
aberration -- the nearest thing to an artist in the ring, and certainly someone
who KOd all the wannabes.
Genius has been defined as the ability to combine two things no one else ever
thought of putting together. To bridge a gap no ones ever jumped. Its not like
everyone else sees the gap and says, oh, no, we couldnt possibly make it -- its
a gap no one knows is even there until the genius jumps it. We know genius by
its absence -- when someone cant walk and chew gum at the same time.
102

In the newest New Republic theres a mention of the glass genius of Toledo,
Ohio, formerly a manufacturing hub of car windows and windshields. When
the auto industry collapsed, he repurposed his energies into solar technology --
and brought the local economy back to life. That is, the industry may fade,
but expertise doesnt.
Unfortunately that has not been true of Hollywood.
T.S. Eliot also said that a great writer creates the taste by which he is
appreciated.

DS: Have you ever watched Michael Apteds The Up Series documentaries
for the BBC? What are your thoughts on it as a longitudinal study of
human development? How about sociologically? Do you agree with its
epigraph, the Jesuit proverb, Give me a child until he is seven and I will give
you the man.?

LD: Absolutely among my favorite films of all time, and taken as a whole one of
the greatest. Im with Roger Ebert on that. Sociologically its especially
meaningful to me because Im more or less of the same generation as the
subjects, from the same country, so its like a slice of my life, too, having little
to do with class distinctions. I think Apted has admitted that while it may have
started out as a study of class, thats faded over time -- the longitudinal gaze --
the human, what a shock -- has come to predominate over the ideological and
excited universal interest. I know he feels its his legacy, however many
fictional films hes made. As I said about my own script EDWARD FORD --
what did I really do? -- I portrayed a single, real human life over time, with as
much detail as I thought necessary and interesting. I am a camera -- and
look what the results and the response can be. The best movies are character
studies.
And anyone who has children is a Jesuit. They are who they are.
Nature/nurture/shmerture they are who theyre going to be. Even if you
dont have children -- dont you feel you are who you always were?

DS: A few less intense queries. That old chestnut- name a few folk from
history youd like to break bread with, and why?

LD: Oh, Jesus Christ -- well, not him, or any other cult leader -- I dont know.
This is MY DINNER WITH ANDRE territory now. I dont really enjoy breaking
bread with anyone. I prefer a well-lit table in a corner with a magazine. I
mentioned Lincoln and Churchill earlier -- pretty standard choices, I imagine.
Churchill once asked to meet Isaiah Berlin, hed heard he was so brilliant. A
dinner was arranged and Churchill found himself breaking bread with someone
whose conversation he found less than scintillating. Turned out, an error had
been made and it was Irving Berlin whod been invited.
103

My time-travel fantasies are more voyeuristic -- to be a fly-on-the-wall and see
and smell what it was really like on the HMS Bounty, or invisibly follow Hitler
around during his missing years in squalor in Berlin. One would like to stop
by the insurance office and say to Kafka, hey, yknow, youre really good.

DS: At this point in your life, have you accomplished the things you
wanted to do? If not, what failures gnaw at you the most? Which of those
failures do you think you can accomplish yet?

LD: Well, other than the whole underachievement thing Being the 11,789
th

most powerful person in show-business aint too shabby. The elephant in the
room is always the book(s) I havent written. Uh, and all those other
screenplays. But I keep meaning to, you see. Its the future that gnaws at me
the most, because overall I do think its quite extraordinary that Ive done what
I set out to do from early childhood -- have a successful life in the movie
business. The fact that the movie business sucks worse than ever before may
be a shame, but quite beside the point. Whered I just read someone saying
midlife is when you reach the top of the ladder (if even that, which would seem
to be an accomplishment) -- only to realize the ladders been leaning against
the wrong wall all along?

DS: Let me close by asking what is in store, in the next year or two, in
terms of your work?

LD: Im still absolutely convinced Im about to get cracking seriously on the
Top 100 most pressing projects Ive been making notes on and dabbling with
for years. As you may have deduced, its all too easy for me to while away the
time watching movies and reading books. (In fact, the reason all those strange
female pulpy melodramas have been on my mind is because of my imminent
third Soderbergh movie. But thats for future discussion.) Soderberghs
talking about retirement, too. Its a nice fantasy. Ive always found people who
walk away very appealing -- Robert Ardrey, Alexander Mackendrick. Dont
really think I can -- yet -- but I do always intend to practice, like Joyce, silence,
cunning, and exile. So this interview is further proof of failure.

DS: Thanks for doing this interview, Lem Dobbs, and let me allow you a
closing statement, on whatever you like.

LD: Well, thank you for your keen interest. And to anyone whos gotten this
far. Despite all the ranting and raving (see Truffaut; provocation), its
important to say that Im still excited about writing screenplays, and I actually
do like some recent movies, and even a few people in the movie business. Its
really people like you who are inspiring and encourage me to start fresh
tomorrow.
104

Interviews are a great resource and tradition. I always tell aspiring writers
and students that. Better than film school or stupid screenwriting books by
cretins. The best thing, I think, other than watching movies. When I was in
high school, I carried around a long, in-depth interview with John Milius in
Film Comment like the Bible. I knew it by heart. The Playboy interview with
Sam Peckinpah was the equal of any favorite or influential book in my library.
My copy of the one book that existed at the time of interviews with
screenwriters fell apart from rereading until I had to keep it together with
rubber bands. The Paris Review interviews are even better than breaking
bread with all those writers. Bogdanovichs FORD book. Nogueiras
MELVILLE. The Truffaut-Hitchcock interview is, I think, the most valuable
movie book that exists.
So there.