Green Echo

Posted on: 05 January 2008 by Thom Ernst

Years of wheedling and cajoling David Thomson to agree to an interview and I’m not about to spoil it by showing up at the airport behind the wheel of a two-door Echo sedan. I get my wife to drive. For one thing, it’s a stick shift and I’m lousy at stick shifts whereas Nicole can maneuver through the gears like she’s cruising the Riviera coastline in a silver birch Aston Martin DB5. Second, irrational as it may seem, I haven’t been able to shake the notion that real men don’t drive economy – and what makes it even more irrational is that I think Thomson might think so too.

I suspect this arrested impression of machismo is connected to a comment Richard Widmark makes during this weeks Saturday Night at the Movies: The Interviews. It’s an encore presentation of Widmark in the Dark in which Widmark, a younger version than the one you would meet today but still aged and wise, appears courtesy of TVO's 35-year old archive of interviews.

Widmark’s easy and unassuming manner is a far cry from the sneering, menacing terror he creates in the character of Tommy Udo in KISS OF DEATH.

Widmark's chilling debut as the psychopath, Tommy Udo in KISS OF DEATH

Teetering on the edge of humility Widmark talks about Hollywood, acting, Elia Kazan, and the films in which he appears (notably KISS OF DEATH and PANIC IN THE STREETS both of which air this weekend).

Richard Widmark and company in director Elia Kazan's PANIC IN THE STREETS

During the course of the interview Widmark professes to being embarrassed by the whole mechanics of his profession. The suggestion that acting is not a worthy pursuit for a man to follow is an idea expressed not only by Widmark, but also by Marlon Brando, by Robert Mitchum and if De Niro hasn’t said it by now, he will eventually.

I’m reluctant to believe that Widmark and others are merely categorizing their careers as either feminine or masculine and then subscribing an importance of one over the other. Instead their comments have less to do with gender politics and more to do with what they might see as an imbalance of adulation and public respect for something they believe to be trivial. Not one of them is saying that what they do is wrong, they’re simply admitting to being somewhat embarrassed by the whole thing.

Picking up David Thomson in my wife’s green Echo (a car she so adores that she’s given it a nickname) is not wrong. It’s just a bit embarrassing.

You must appreciate what an interview with David Thomson means to a show like ours. What Gore Vidal was to TVO’s Allen Gregg In Conversation, David Thomson is to Saturday Night at the Movies: The Interviews. I’ve been calling Thomson routinely over the years, vying for an interview. He’s come to expect it the same way one expects a yearly calendar from their insurance agent. This year when I call, things connect. Thomson’s daughter is attending an AIDS conference in Toronto, and this, along with the opportunity to finally get me off his back, proves to be the right incentive.

Author David Thomson

It can be truthfully said of Thomson that he is a walking dictionary of film. Thomson wrote, and continues to update, THE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM. It is one of the best and most entertaining tomes on cinema and the movies available – one of those delicious (a word Widmark would probably never use beyond describing a meal) books filled with audacious opinions, wit and observations requiring you only to open to any page and begin reading.

Example: Of Oliver Stone he writes, "It is easy to scorn him, for he can be very bad and very foolish. Still, he is an example of the confidence that believes it can turn complex ideas and problems into crowd pleasing movies."

The easy-to-scorn Oliver Stone

But of poor Richard Donner he simply writes, "Mr. Donner has made several of the most successful and least interesting films of his age. And one doubts it's over yet."

We meet Thomson, my wife and I, at the airport and drive him safely, comfortably, to his hotel. The next day what we get from Thomson is a great 2 1/2 hour plus interview on Widmark, film noir, and just about any aspect of cinema you can imagine. If the sight of the Echo at all disturbed him, he was kind enough to keep these feelings to himself.

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