2012/11/07

Saint Woody


I read this article in Commonweal by Father Robert Lauder, Woody's Cold Comforts, a while back, and I have found it again after a little searching.  You might enjoy it, and when I want to read it again I will know where to find it.

RL: When Ingmar Bergman died, you said even if you made a film as great as one of his, what would it matter? It doesn’t gain you salvation. So you had to ask yourself why do you continue to make films. Could you just say something about what you meant by “salvation”?
WA: Well, you know, you want some kind of relief from the agony and terror of human existence. Human existence is a brutal experience to me…it’s a brutal, meaningless experience—an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, brutal, terrible experience, and so it’s what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most. I continue to make the films because the problem obsesses me all the time and it’s consistently on my mind and I’m consistently trying to alleviate the problem, and I think by making films as frequently as I do I get a chance to vent the problems. There is some relief. I have said this before in a facetious way, but it is not so facetious: I am a whiner. I do get a certain amount of solace from whining.
( Edit 2012/11/8:  I found an earlier version of this article from 2006 in the magazine, America, Woody's World.)

2 comments:

Jules Aimé said...

Thanks for this. That is really fascinating. I am going to have to give that interview a long, careful read.

Brett said...

Glad you like it, Jules. Thanks for reading.