A great podcast series (featured here previously) comes from the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s archive of post-screening discussions. Usually right at the edge of celeb fawning, though just shy of becoming an all-out Actor’s Studio Liptonfest, this episode pays tribute to the work of actor/director Ethan Hawke. On the heels of his Linklater years, evolving further into a filmmaker as Seymour: an introduction goes now into wider release, Hawke engages with interesting insights about the little genre of classical music documentaries (that I’m lately spending all my time on). Seymour Bernstein shows up at the end and plays a Brahms Intermezzo.
This is an unusually articulate, smart and engaging conversation (if you can ignore the interviewer’s drooling/fawning) with Canadian director David Cronenberg. The Film Society of Lincoln Center has revived it for “The Close Up” podcast, from 1995, around the time of his A History of Violence. A highlight for me was his blunt insight on violence in cinema, calling it not at all “edgy,” and really just a manifestation of attitude. Hope you like it.