Colder than the coldest winter was cold

RIP Dana Wynter AKA Becky, Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

Talk

Christopher Hitchens on writers and their voice:

The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn’t precisely one of the things that engage you, often at first without your noticing it. A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful. This is how philosophy evolved in the symposium, before philosophy was written down. And poetry began with the voice as its only player and the ear as its only recorder. Indeed, I don’t know of any really good writer who was deaf, either. How could one ever come, even with the clever signage of the good Abbé de l’Épée, to appreciate the miniscule twinges and ecstasies of nuance that the well-tuned voice imparts? Henry James and Joseph Conrad actually dictated their later novels—which must count as one of the greatest vocal achievements of all time, even though they might have benefited from hearing some passages read back to them—and Saul Bellow dictated much of Humboldt’s Gift. Without our corresponding feeling for the idiolect, the stamp on the way an individual actually talks, and therefore writes, we would be deprived of a whole continent of human sympathy, and of its minor-key pleasures such as mimicry and parody.

The full Vanity Fair article is here.

I hurt somebody's feelings once

As a young man you were influenced by the music and writing coming from America, rather than Japanese culture. What were these influences?

I think this is like asking an Englishman like Eric Clapton why he’s so drawn to the blues. If you asked Clapton the same question, I have a feeling he’d shrug his shoulders and say he isn’t sure why.

Haruki Murakami interviewed in 2004, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel. Full interview here.

Pictured: Ronin (1998). That third car chase here.

Is it just –

David Mamet interviewed by Fred Topol in 2004:

Do you see your career in any kind of continuum? There’s a sense, like with Soderbergh, when he did FULL FRONTAL and he did SOLARIS, and SOLARIS didn’t happen and FULL FRONTAL was kind of mixed. Now, he’s back to OCEAN’S TWELVE because he’s looking at the mountain-scape of his career and the effect of money on it. Do you ever consider that in your career, or are you writing from your soul and working from there?

I don’t know. I’m just making it up as I go along.

Well, is it just—

Well, it’s always there. I think no matter what anyone says, you always make it up as you go along. It’s like they say when you have babies, you know, nobody gave you a how-to book. Nobody gave you a manual. The important things in life, whether it’s your career, whether it’s your marriage or whether it’s child rearing – you make it up as you go along. You try to have certain precepts and hold to them, but sometimes they even change.

Full interview here.

Took up drinking to stop myself from thinking

Je vois la vie en rose

Q: I’ve been wondering, because of something Bruce said – he mentioned the Rockford Files in terms of some of the tone of the show – and I get the impression that Burn Notice is kind of a mash-up of the Rockford Files and It Takes a Thief. I was wondering how you get that balance?

Matt Nix: I’d say that there’s actually a lot of kind of classic television, and The Rockford Files, It Takes a Thief. People bring up Magnum, MacGyver, The A-Team, a lot of these shows, some of which I watched, and some of which I didn’t watch. But all of us, between the entire staff, we all watched all of those at one point or another. And I think that one of the things we kind of use as a touchstone that owes a lot to that kind of classic television is the idea that we’re really – like, Michael is a classic hero. We all like Michael. We all like Sam. We all like Fiona. We all like Madeline.

I think if you think about a lot of contemporary television, including a lot of my favorite shows, I should say, I mean I’m not slamming this at all. It is an important part of contemporary television, feeling ambivalent about the characters that you’re watching is, you know, it’s kind of something that people do now. And I think Burn Notice is not that. I think that when you look at Rockford, Rockford is just kind of a guy. At least my reaction to him was, you know, he’s a guy you want to know, you know, like Magnum is just cool, like, he’s a good dude.

And when we’re all writing Sam, you know, we’re thinking about what’s the brother we want. Who’s that guy? When we think about Michael, it’s whatever challenges or whatever darkness he may struggle with, ultimately he’s a hero. He’s a guy who’s going to put his ass on the line to save people, and so that kind of – you know, those are the kinds of touchstones we use, and I think that is a bit of a throwback to classic television.

It’s a world where people are really trying to do the right things for other people, and where the characters on the show, however they bicker, are a family and they stick together, and that’s what they do. And I think that’s sort of comforting, and it’s fun to write, and I think there are a lot of interesting and subtle things to explore within that. But, you know, that’s the kind of television that I really cared about growing up, and I think there’s a place for it, and that’s part of what we’re doing.

Full interview with Burn Notice creator Matt Nix here.

And no dream is ever just a dream

Above: Kubrick then (1949) and later (2001, i.e. 1968). Below: Kubrick then (1949) and later (The Shining, 1980) A portfolio of the director's work as a photographer here.