The film world is changing very fast and - if there is a seventh edition (I need a grant) - I'm sure it will include people I don't know yet. Q: Have you already singled out anyone you could see adding to the next edition of your book?Ī: People remark on how many people are in the book, until they realize how many are omitted. Q: Who are some of the actors and directors you write about who show the most promise?Ī: Cary Joji Fukunaga, Derek Cianfrance, Jonathan Glazer, Clio Barnard, Sarah Polley, Andrew Wagner, Jeff Nichols and many others.
I fear it's easier today to write good or decent gloom than exhilarating comedy. I suspect he could do anything, but a great Mullan comedy would require outstanding writing. Time for a comedy?Ī: I think Peter Mullan is one of the awesome actors of today - and he's a brave director, too. Q: Not all the new entries are fresh faces I was happy you included Peter Mullan, the great, weathered Scottish actor, whom you describe as "the most naturally, honestly frightening person on the modern screen." But you'd like to see him branch out. But people who know me say I am often wrong. The public disagreed with me, so I must have been wrong. I thought it was prettified, show-off and empty and I was horrified at its claiming the great Stefan Zweig as an ancestor. What did you make of it?Ī: I did not admire "Grand Budapest Hotel," and said so in the New Republic. His latest, "Grand Budapest Hotel," came out too late for this edition. Q: You haven't been won over by Wes Anderson's movies. You write this about the polymath: "How does one deal with James Franco in just a few hundred words?" Do you think he gets a bad rap?Ī: I'm very fond of James Franco - from his " James Dean" to "Spring Breakers." Plus, I feel that someone with his natural reticence, or shyness needs to be encouraged to explore and to handle his bad rap with tolerance. Q: Your take on James Franco, a new entry, is quite kind - and funny. Technology has altered and I am deteriorating. The book is now twice the original length. How many editions did you envision when you wrote the first one?Ī: I had serious doubts about the first edition being published - it was so odd, unexpected and long, and done before the age of the computer or video. Q: You're up to your sixth edition of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.
Thomson, who lives in San Francisco, was last week presented with the Mel Novikoff Award by the San Francisco International Film Festival. There are more than 100 new entries in the sixth edition, and they're enormously, characteristically satisfying - whether you agree with them or not. Thomson's indispensable magnum opus - oh, let's go ahead and call it a bible, unmatched in its scope and insight and ferocious wit - now totals 1,154 pages.
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