There's an amusing spoof on You Tube by Martin Heston called The Story of Cinema. It takes the mickey out of his somewhat pretentious delivery, its not bad.
shareThanks for sharing! Love the bit about Dad's Army
"Stop looking at the walls, look out the window." ~ Karl Pilkington On Art
That's priceless - I loved the bit about the Christmas bauble as that truly annoyed me in the first chapter of the Cousins series.
Here's the link for any latecomers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PokB0xPJ--I
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
"Security - release the badgers."
Here's another good one: (adult language in here)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX9crnz6vQg&feature=player_embedded
"I'm right, aren't I?"
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
Brilliant - and almost as funny as Cousins' real interview with Brian De Palma where he starts excitedly panting as he expounds his theories while an increasingly bemused and uncomfortable De Palma keeps on trying to tell him he doesn't understand anything about his movies and can't manage to keep a straight face but keeps on giving in to nervous laughter. (I can't remember if that's the one where De Palma says one of his films is particularly misunderstood 'in this country' and then asks as an afterthought 'what is your country?')
"Security - release the badgers."
I guess this contains some of that, but there are some tricks played with the video, so it may not be a fair indication of how annoying the guy can be:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYWGpjjyhrY
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
I'd forgotten about the Polanski interview, which is much more uncomfortable in its 45-minute entirety but is well represented there. Polanski can be quite a spikey interview but in quite a few of those shows with other filmmakers and actors there's a moment where the interviewee is clearly on the point of walking out as Cousins repeatedly insists there's some arcane subtext in their films - the most common one being clussett hummersaxyewalidy or hummersaxyewal uvvertones - no matter how many times the person tries to explain why he's got the wrong end of the stick entirely (Cousins has a particularly hard time understanding that filmakers in the 40s and 50s worked in a contract system and didn't pick and choose their work, which throws off his elaborate psycho-sexual motivations). There's some good stuff in some of those shows when he lets the filmmakers speak, but too often he's trying to impose his interpretation, particularly regarding anything sexual, and strongly implies they're lying to him when they don't say what he wants.
"Security - release the badgers."
I'm reminded of the time that Howard Hawks was in front of some panel discussion of European critics, and one of them asked him a question of a particular scene in one of his outdoor films. The kind of question with all sorts of philosophical and psychological "insights" that one would expect from the Cahiers crowd and when the person was finished, Hawks replied "All I was thinking of was how was I going to get the shot by five o'clock?"
Yep - the sun goes down at the end of the day even for auteurs.
Polanski was on Dick Cavett's show, one of those single-guest programs and they were discussing that a number of critics took issue with his bloody take on Macbeth, especially as it was his first since the death of his wife.
Polanski merely replied that no matter what he had done, say if it were a comedy, they would have wondered how he could have made that film with the Manson killings right behind him. Sometimes it's not the baggage that the filmmaker brings, it's what the critic is carrying.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
Brilliant!
Exterminate!