Of
the many thrills that come from interviewing creative people —
variously, unknown, ascendant and at the top of their game — there’s
also the under-discussed flipside: talking with, 1) vapid young
“actors” (line-reciters is more like it) who have neither a sense of
film history nor an appreciation for their occupational good fortune
and, 2) perfectly genial writers and directors who are nonetheless so
relentlessly on script — occasionally reciting entire career-checking
passages verbatim from press notes no doubt spit-polished into
significance by some friendly faction in the dark wings — that you
realize they actually have less summary insight or thoughts about
several months or years of their own work than you do after 90 to 120
minutes with it.

The former are I suppose to be expected in a culture that so readily embraces the subsequent casts of The Real World and other MTV reality
show jetsam as bonafide celebrities. Who needs “craft,” after all, when
you can colorfully carouse and pontificate about your misguided
hook-ups on national television? That latter, though… whew, well those
are just the most depressing interviews. I was reflecting upon this
recently — and in particular an interview with the director of an
American independent film, with major stars, that released last year —
and it struck me doubly disheartening because it’s (generally) not like
these people are complete idiots.

No, they’re just folks who’ve lucked their way (or been born) into
the comfortable middle. And while they may nominally be decision-makers
or creators, they’re not really. They’re just industrious cogs in a
machine, functional advancers of agenda who speak in simple enough
sentences to delight those who are predisposed to automatically agree
with them. Ask them what any of it might mean, however, and you’ll find
an alarming vacuum of original thought or opinion.