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Mondo Cinema
By Devin D. O'Leary
APRIL 20, 1998:
Chatting With Judy Stone, Author of Eye On The World: Conversations
With International Filmmakers
When one thinks of people with a lifelong association with Hollywood,
one thinks, naturally, of movie stars like Jimmy Stewart, Robert
Redford and Elizabeth Taylor--people who seem to have spent every
cradle-to-grave moment of our collective memory performing on
the silver screen. But there are others, far less noticeable,
whose dedication to the art of filmmaking has lasted just as long.
Take, for example, journalist Judy Stone. For more than 30 years,
Stone served as an editor and film critic for the San Francisco
Chronicle. During her tenure, Stone interviewed hundreds of
filmmakers from around the world and bore witness to every major
movement in modern cinematic history. Stone herself will soon
be in New Mexico to attend the Taos Talking Pictures Film Festival
(April 16-19). She, along with other notable critics and film
historians, will host the festival's Salon Cinema lecture series.
Recently, Stone's historic interviews were collected into a single,
826-page volume titled Eye On The World: Conversations With
International Filmmakers. What makes Stone's work so different
from other celebrity chat books is her unique "global"
approach. In an era when Hollywood rules the roost, it's difficult
to remember that there are other parts of the planet producing
films. Stone's interviews represent more than 40 countries. There's
Gillian Armstrong from Australia, Zhang Yimou from China, Jean-Luc
Godard from France, Danny Boyle from Great Britain, Alfonso Arau
from Mexico, Ang Lee from Taiwan and a host of lesser-known talents
from such decidedly non-Hollywood places as Tunisia, Portugal
and Burkina Faso.
So how do such international talents view the Hollywood money
machine? With derision and dismissiveness? "No, they're not
dismissive at all. They're a lot less dismissive than I am,"
admits Stone. "What fascinated me in so many of those interviews
I did with directors overseas was how they were all inspired,
early on, by American film."
Times, however, have changed. "Now, there's a very difficult
situation," stresses Stone. "They're all trying to imitate
Hollywood, and it just doesn't work very well. For instance, I'm
afraid that's true of my friend Volker (The Tin Drum) Schlondörff's
film Palmetto--which I really enjoyed. In terms of film
noir, it was dismissed by most critics for not being up to the
American film noir. ... The same thing is true of another director
I admire very much, Costa-Gavras (director of the Oscar-winning
Z). I enjoyed his last film, Mad City. It got dismissed
by all the critics. I don't know if I'm less critical now that
I don't have to sit down and think about it and write about it.
But it is an example of two foreign directors not succeeding in
the American market when they're really so talented."
America, of course, gets its due in Eye On The World with
interviews of Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Allison Anders, John
Huston, Spike Lee, John Waters and dozens more. Another attendee
at this year's Taos Film Festival will be writer/director Paul
Schrader, whom Stone interviewed in 1992. "There's a lot
of very personal material in (that interview) about his former
drug addiction, etc. One of the things I respected him for--there
is such a dearth of movies about workers in America. Blue Collar
was one of the few in recent years. It's a subject nobody wants
to pay much attention to. I can't think of anything recent. Full
Monty was about unemployment, but it was in England."
Most of Stone's interviews are brief (she doesn't reach nearly
the level of intimacy that Peter Bogdonovich did in his recent
compilation Who The Devil Made It?). Where others go for
Hollywood glam and show business gossip, though, Stone concentrates
on the personal. "I must say that, temperamentally, I am
opposed to million, million, million dollar extravaganza pictures.
What I'm interested in are smaller pictures with a more human
touch." It is this "human touch" that elevates
Judy Stone from passing journalist to lasting historian. (Silman-James
Press, paper, $35)
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