I'm Not (Only) Here and My Name Isn't Norman Lloyd, More's the Pity

I didn't go into this in the blog last week because I was on deadline for the story, but I spent most of my 54th birthday in the Weinstein Company hospitality suite waiting to interview Todd Haynes. As you know if you are a regular reader of this space, I was quite taken with his Dylan biopic (or is that bipolar pic?), and when I was asked to do a piece for the Jewish Journal of LA, one of my regular outlets, my eyes lit up like cash registers as I contemplated selling the piece to the Detroit Jewish News and Jewish Week as well. (There is absolutely no overlap in the circulation areas of the three papers, I retain all my copyrights, so I'm perfectly within my legal rights. This is the only way freelance writers can make a living.) Haynes is a terrific interview; the guy studied semiotics at Brown and he's very self-conscious about this work in a way few American filmmakers are, plus he's very bright and amusing.

So, to make a long story short, my editor at JWeek wanted a substantial shift in focus, so I did a rewrite and the result is two pieces on the film and its director and screenwriter, which can be found here and here. I think if you are interested in the film or Haynes, you'll want to read both.

Meanwhile, also at Film Forum shortly is a delightful documentary about the actor-director-producer and wonderful raconteur Norman Lloyd. It happens that Lloyd is Jewish, so I ended up doing an interview with him for JWeek for a story that can be found here. I had such a wonderful chat with Lloyd -- it really was more a chat than an interview and we stayed on the phone for about 85 minutes until he looked at his watch and said to me in a fatherly way, "I think it's time you ate some dinner" -- with some really fascinating insights into the three directors he considered his best, Jean Renoir, Alfred Hitchcock and Charles Chaplin, that I promise to relay more of the interview in this space in the next day or two. At the very least, though, you should try to catch the film at Film Forum (if you are in town), where it will play for a week with Saboteur, not one of my favorite Hitchcock films, but in 35mm, hey.