I think the phrase I used was “petit-point-on-Kleenex,” and a lot of it seemed to have that situation. But no, I think people know more about film now than they knew then. And I think critics really have a more accurate sense of how pictures are put together, and why certain things work the way they do. People know a little more about the business. There were so many great pictures in the ’70s; I think, gradually, people were looking at them in a serious way.
From Aaron Hillis’ IFC.com interview with Joan Didion, pegged to the current run of The Panic in Needle Park at Film Forum in Manhattan.
Didion was responding to a question from Hillis inregards to her circa 1973 essay “In Hollywood,” in which she also declared that there are only three “non-Industry people in New York whose version of Hollywood corresponds at any point with the reality of the place” –– all daughters of former moguls –– and includes “reviewers being courted by Industry people” amongst those “who do not understand the mise of the local scene” and are thus likely to try to flirt at a Hollywood dinner party.
In the IFC interview, Didion also praises The Reader, talks about the future of the Tuesday Weld-starring adaptation of Play it as it Lays, and refuses to lament the loss of old, seedy New York.
