Projections 14: The Director's Cut

Projections #14

by John Boorman, Walter Donohue

The best of 14 years.

Containing big names revealing private and fascinating insights into theory work, this book provides an introduction for anyone new to the series. It is suitable for cinephiles everywhere.

Genres: Nonfiction

370 pages, Paperback

First published November 16, 2006

About the author

John Boorman is an English filmmaker who is a long time resident of Ireland and is best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, Hope and Glory, The General and The Tailor of Panama.

Reviews

[Jayakrishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was at the second hand book store and this book with De Niro's picture on the cover caught my attention. The guy who did the billing saw me glancing through the book. He got up and walked up to me and insisted that I buy it. He also showed me another edition of Projections which had interviews and articles by European filmakers whom I had never heard of. Anyway, I have always preferred American movies to European ones, so I bought this book. I did not read everything in the book, just the interviews and articles by the directors and actors whom I liked.

Martin Scorsese talks about making studio films like Cape Fear, as against films that he really wants to make. This sort of echoed what Brian De Palma said in the documentary De Palma (2015) - most filmmakers do not make the films they want to. Certain films come their way and they make the best of it. He gave a few examples of how he would be working on one screenplay or a novel but then he would be offered something else to make and he would abandon the project he was working on. I thought that was very interesting. I guess Scorsese made more personal films than most other American filmmakers of his generation. He also speaks about many of his other films starting from Mean Streets to Casino, the story behind Travis Bickle's mohawk, how he nearly made Schindler's List instead of Spielberg etc. This was a really awesome interview.

Clint Eastwood speaks about meeting every important filmmakers of the 50s, 60s and 70s including Stanley Kubrick, Elia Kazan, Billy Wilder and how they all rejected him. He also speaks about his relationship with Don Seigel with whom he made many films. And also about Sergio Leone's tantrums.

Paul Thomas Anderson in a conversation with Mike Figgs said that he would spend hours and hours in the editing room just cutting and enhancing his movie. He would literally sit in a room with his film for days. I thought that was pretty interesting.

Robert Towne talks about writing Chinatown. I have not seen the film in many years so I was unable to appreciate everything that he talked about. But he spoke about how he did not want to write a film that was a polemic about the growth of a cancerous city and the power struggles behind who got the water supply. So he had to fit a detective story in there somewhere.

There are a lot of other interviews and write ups in this book about Lee Marvin, James Stewart, Frances Mcdormand, Jamie Lee Curtis etc. I am sure I will return to this book sometime in the future.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of interviews, drawn from the first 14 years of the Projections series. I love the approach this series took - very uninterested in showbiz and glamour, just keen to get people from the film world giving their perspectives on their work and experiences. Some of the highlights here are Jimmy Stewart, interviewed near the end of his life, Jamie Lee Curtis interviewing her father Tony and her mother Janet Leigh in two separate pieces, Frances McDormand interviewed by Willem Defoe about the craft of acting, and Mike Figgis and Paul Thomas Anderson having an incredibly frank discussion about making movies. The only thing that keeps it from 5 stars is that there is no contextual info for any of the interviews; it would be so useful to have the dates of these pieces - you have to just guess based on clues in the conversations.

[Carolyne Borel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read, a tad outdated, but still some insights from the insiders.