David Thomson: "Liar . . . Liar"?

[Glenn Anders]

I may as well throw this chum into the water (posted on the daily IMDb WENN) before more ravenous critics find it:

KIDMAN BLASTS BIOGRAPHER

"Nicole Kidman is furious with a film critic for writing a unauthorized biography on her after only having one brief phone chat with her. The Moulin Rouge star was shocked when she found out David Thomson was writing a book and was unaware her short interview would be exploited in the form of an explosive biography. Kidman claims she was deceived by the author, who told her he was writing a series of articles on several different films. According to Kidman's publicist, Wendy Day, "Nicole has never met David Thomson. She has only spoken to him briefly on the phone about her acting processes and various films. He's a well-respected film writer and she accepted the interview only because she was under the impression he was writing a series of film essays." The book, entitled Nicole Kidman, hit bookstores in the US this week and paints a picture of the actress as a power-hungry fame seeker who used her 10-year marriage to Tom Cruise to hit the big time in Hollywood. The biography also claims the star is too self-obsessed to give herself to a husband. Kidman married country star Keith Urban in June. Thomson even goes as far as to suggest Stanley Kubrick's 1999 thriller Eyes Wide Shut ended Cruise and Kidman's marriage because it mirrored their off-screen relationship too closely. Kidman has not yet announced legal action against Thomson, who in his previous book, The Whole Equation: A History Of Hollywood, confessed to having a huge crush on her."

While it is hard to imagine that Miss Kidman had not been made aware of Thomson's book long ago, if the above is true, I must reluctantly put distance between Thomson and myself. I had just read an interview with Thomson, in which he praised the actress, said they had gotten along well together; she was behind the project, had given him leads to people close to her, etc.

Thomson may have let his Wellsian fabulist streak really get himself into real trouble, this time.

Let's see what he has to say.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

If Mr. Thomson treats Welles and Kidman -- people he says he admires so much he wanted to write books about them --with the kind of loving biographies he's produced, I wonder what'd he'd have to say about someone he didn't have any admiration for!

[Glenn Anders]

Be careful:

Todd Baesen is attending a birthday party at the Ha-Ra Club. He's enjoying a Gimlet with a beautiful, exotic woman. They are laughing. Suddenly, out of the Geary Street night comes an elderly man with grey, crewed hair.

"You Todd Baesen?" asks the man.

"Why, yes, and who are you?"

"It doesn't matter. Call me Streeter, Van Stratten," the man snarls reaching into the pocket of his black jacket. "Call me anything you like. I'm from LA now, and I have a message from David Thomson."

A Glock 6.5 spits fire.

The beautiful woman cradles the dying Baesen, as the juke box plays "Flamenco Sketches" by Miles Davis.

That killer is never caught. It's as though he had stepped back into an ancient movie of intrigue.

Glenn

[tonyw]

Glenn, You can't say that about him, He's David (Ego) Thomson neither can you take the love of his readers away from him!

[Tony]

Finally, Glenn, you're understanding Thomson:

"Thomson even goes as far as to suggest Stanley Kubrick's 1999 thriller Eyes Wide Shut ended Cruise and Kidman's marriage because it mirrored their off-screen relationship too closely."

Same old method.

[tonyw]

Tony, The Kubrick reference is as reductive as suggesting that Osron Welles is Charles Foster Kane 100%. So much for critical subtlety!

[Glenn Anders]

It is one thing (if true) that David Thomson took a couple of phone interviews with Nicole Kidman, and parlayed them into a supposed friendship in which intimate confidences were transmitted, and based a biography upon them, but you guys always insist on going overboard yourselves.

For instance, tonyw, Thomson never suggested that "Orson Welles was Citizen Kane 100%." There are at least half a dozen uncanny autobiographical allusions which suggest that Welles (and/or Mankieweicz) were embedding Welles in the life of Kane.

I don't know why that idea drives you so nuts!

The fact remains that, at this moment, I'm deeply disappointed in Mr. Thomson, but I shall withhold final judgment until I hear his side of it.

Humility is a virtue. David Thomson may not have much of it, but we should all try to practice it.

Glenn

[Tony]

Glenn: This is the idea: a work of art has nothing to do with the artist; it is a separate thing. It may come from the artist's experience, or life, but it's a separate thing. It may in part or totally be based on the artist's experiences, but it's a separate thing. All of it comes from the artist's mind, but it's a separate thing. It may have nothing historically to do with the artist's life biographically or psychologically, but it's filtered through the artist's consciousness- and it's a separate thing.

But to understand a work of art, it is not only unnecessary to know or speculate about the artist's life, it distorts the understanding of the work of art: a work of art stands alone: if it stands a long time, it is a work of high quality.

We know nothing substantial about Shakespeare or Bach: this only helps thinking about their work because we don't get confused by biography, or psychology, pseudo or otherwise. There's just the work.

That's the idea: don't confuse the artist with the work. Citizen Kane towers on it's own: the artist's name is unimportant, just like Chartres, as Welles himself observed.

This conflating of the artist and the work is a modern fetish, powered by psychology and celbrity culture.

Stravinsky said "I am the vessel through which 'Le Sacre du Printemps' passed". He believed that artists were transmitters, used by God: as he said, the more he stayed out of the way, the purer the work. However, in our age of egotism and hubris, artists think they are the source of the work- and they are encouraged by all the biogrpahies, the celebrity worship, and the pop psychology.

Remember what Welles said about Chartres in 'F For Fake'?

This is the idea. :;):

[Harvey Chartrand]

I beg to differ. If Irving Pichel had directed CITIZEN KANE, it would now be a forgotten film. (How many of us sat through Pichel's TOMORROW IS FOREVER only because Welles is in it?). So yes, the work of art has everything to do with the artist. Chartres, for example, was built by my family – the Chartrands!
If a writer of such prodigious talent as David Thomson wants to meditate on Orson Welles the way Norman Mailer meditated on Marilyn Monroe or the way Welles meditated on Pablo Picasso in F FOR FAKE (that is, unhindered by exactitude), so be it. Don't let the facts stand in the way of a good meditation.

[tonyw]

:) I fully support what Tony and Harvey say here. The autobiographical /realist fallacy has been disproved long ago and the work should stand on its own while the fantasies of non-researchers like Kael and Thomson should be treated with the contempt they deserve.

[Glenn Anders]

Well, you guys really can really confuse a poor ancient country [at least suburban] school teacher like myself.

Tony, what you are imparting in the primer you give me is essentially "The New Criticism." I grew up in The New Criticism, and I accept a number of its tenets. However, when Cleanth Brooks and the Louisiana Group brought forth there manifestos in the early 1940's, they were revolutionaries. They were standing against much of the history of criticism from Shakespeare down to their own time. Theirs was a useful corrective, but revolutionaries tend not to leave well enough alone.

Forgive me, but to reject ANY biographical influences on a work of Art is stupid. Especially in such a naked public art as the Movies. If that be your criterion, then we should not have Wellesnet at all. For Welles is the least typical candidate one could imagine to illustrate your theory. His movies are shot full of grandly egotistical autobiographical illusions from first to last. [Which is why he is a mainstay of the "Auteur Theory."] We should only be discussing individual works, never touching on the time, place and personalities which produced them. By your lights, we should, indeed, call CASABLANCA the greatest movie ever made because it stands for what it stands for, and it would be difficult to find but the vaguest biographical detail in the movie which might be attributed to Michael Curtiz, Austro-Hungarian though he be. Not to mention Murray Burnett, Joan Alison, the Epsteins, Howard Koch (Welles again, ouch!) or even Casey Robinson.

If a large number of memoirs and diaries from Shakespeare's milieux had survived, we no doubt would find the biographical influences on his plays and poetry unavoidable.

When Welles makes his beautiful observation on the importance of Chartres, no matter who designed and constructed it, he really is going against the evidence of almost every movie he ever made. And he has just given us well over an hour of ego-fueled self-promotion, in which he attaches himself to everyone and everything in the film. What he says in that time is that all the factors which drive him drives F FOR FAKE. And if he is an impostor and a fraud in certain regards, so be it.

I would remind you, too, that his profound observation on the nature of Art comes in F FOR FAKE's final half hour, when he tells us he might well give us straight-faced lies.

Finally, either tonyw is pulling our leg, or he is someone's idiot son, because he cannot agree logically with both Tony and Harvey because what they say diametrically oppose the views of the other!

But forgive me, I'm wasting my time here. I must return to my great American novel about how my hero, Alistair Strawberry, hunted the Cape Buffalo with Ernest Hemingway in 1931. I know virtually nothing personally about the subject, of course, and therefore my novel will surely be scintillating, compared to one I had thought about writing, dealing with an old man slowly dying in the Tenderloin of San Francisco!

Glenn

[Tony]

Glenn: "His movies are shot full of grandly egotistical autobiographical illusions from first to last."

Would it surpise you, Glenn, to hear that I think Welles's films have no autogiographical allusions, or references, or elements, at all? I firmly believe there is no autobiography in Welles's films- even if he used events which happened in his own life. Welles's films are indeed works of his consciousness; however, they are not autobiographical. They are speculative searches, inquiries, travels- they move into the future, not the past. This is why a film like, say, The Other Side of the Wind, seems to be about Welles, but it is not. Even if actual events from Welles's life were in the film, he would be only using familiar events to explore the character Jake Hanneford. In fact he specifically decided not to play Hanneford because he believed Huston would be better, and to discourage "the film buffs" from interpreting the character as self-referential. Welles always denied that his films were autobiographical in any way: Glenn, why can't you believe him? When asked if Charles Clay in "The Immortal Story" was autobiographical in that a movie director tries to shape reality as Clay does, Welles simply scoffed.

For us to reduce his art to autobiography, or as you have put it, to "grandly egotistical autobiographical illusions from first to last", is not only insulting and demeaning to Welles, but greatly misunderstands the true value of his art, and what it was he was up to.

[Glenn Anders]

Actually, Tony, it does not surprise me that you "think that Welles' films have no allusions, or references, or elements at all." You have made that perfectly clear, as someone used to say.

You probably don't believe in the efficacy of Global Warming or a possible merit in the Darwinian Theory of Evolution either.

Are you following some kind of syllabus? You seem to be if not a serious autodiadact, at least an amusing idealogue.

According to your thinking, I say again, let's limit Wellesnet to simply the films, the radio shows, and a few pieces of theater. Let's limit any discussion to simply a synopsis of the plot, and comments on the performances. [F FOR FAKE and all the radio commentaries must be jetisoned, surely.] We shall have to be extremely careful, lest we stumble into the hell of biographical fallacy.

You sound, I must say, terribly unbalanced on this subject.

But I do not pledge any longer to go to the stake for Wellesnet!

I leave it for others to judge, Tony, the sanity and logic of your more dialectical assertions.

Glenn

[Tony]

I must repeat , Glenn: why can't you trust Welles on this, instead of David Thomson, for example: are you sure that Thomson has the secret key to Welles's psyche, as Carringer, Higham, et. al. also thought?

I hope you've noticed I've not engaged in any "ad hominem" attacks in this discussion; personal attacks and insults are just counter-productive, as I'm sure you'll agree.
:;):

[Glenn Anders]

Well, Tony, I sometimes wonder about these exchanges. They seem to get rather personal, it seems to me. But let me try a new path toward understanding:

Was Orson Welles a colossal egotist?

Or was he a self-effacing, "Art for Art's Sake" follower of Walter Pater? Was he an aesthete of the purest sort? Did he "burn with a pure gem-like flame," or was he, as Geraldine Fitzgerald suggested, an ego-maniacal artistic "busted water main"?

Your answers to the above questions, and your defense of them, will easily show the logic of the incontovertible truth you assert. Others will profit from your logic and breadth of knowledge.

Even if your answers and defenses do not hold up, your skills as a critical technician will be admired. You can't lose in my eyes.

Then, perhaps we shall be able to give poor damned David Thomson a rest!

Glenn