My Dinner With Michael

Paul C. tagged me for the My Dinner With _______ meme. Here are the rules:

1. Pick a single person past or present who works in the film industry you would like to have dinner with. And tell us why you chose this person.

2. Set the table for your dinner. What would you eat? Would it be in a home or at a restaurant? And what would you wear? Feel free to elaborate on the details.

3. List five thoughtful questions you would ask this person during dinner.

4. When all is said and done, select six bloggers to pass this Meme along to.

5. Link back to Lazy Eye Theatre, so people know the mastermind behind this Meme.

I hope Paul wasn't looking to be surprised, because my dinner guest choice isn't going to shock anyone.

1. I'd invite Michael Powell, the filmmaker whom I came to know first through a used-bookstore purchase of the first volume of his autobiography, A Life In Movies. Entranced by his romantic, aspirational, art-for-art's-sake vision of film's purpose and possibilities, I devoured the movies he made with his collaborator Emeric Pressburger wherever and whenever I could find them. Ever since, he's represented to me the filmmaker's filmmaker, the director who pursued a singular vision with an incredible set of collaborators (including actor Roger Livesay and cinematographer Jack Cardiff) whom he fashioned into an instrument for transmitting his genius.


2. Powell was an Englishman through and through. So I'd want to sit down with him at a cafe in a vacation spot like Bath, and have tea. Yep, a proper English tea with biscuits and cakes and such. And because I'm magnanimous like that, I'd invite his wife Thelma Schoonmaker to come along. Seems like she might have some stories to tell, too. Because I wouldn't want to be underdressed compared to my guests -- Powell was usually seen in a three-piece tweed suit -- I'd have to get myself a sharp but cozy fitted wool suit with a pencil skirt that falls just below the knee.
   


3. Five thoughtful questions? Here we go:
1. What filmmaker working in 2008 comes closest to achieving what you tried to achieve?
2. If you were creating a film scored entirely to rock music, what musician or musicians would you like to employ?
3. If you could adapt one novel for the screen, what would it be?
4. What's your ideal for non-fiction film? What characteristics would you expect to find in the perfect documentary?
5. You seemed to make movies for yourself first. What's your opinion of the movie-going public? Who is your ideal audience, and what consideration does a filmmaker need to give to his audience?


4. Hey, following six people! Give us your version!
1. Mark at Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
2. Keith at Candy Cigarettes
3. Stevie at Keep It Like A Secret
4. Whit at Voices From The Depths Of The Cultural Coil
5. Victor at Rightwing Film Geek
6. Bri at Have Goggles, Will Fly