The Recalcitrant Interviewee

What is a "recalcitrant interviewee"? In short, they are the best kind.

As any film journalist knows, few things are more frustrating than conducting an "in depth" interview with a film practitioner in which they reveal eye-opening insights into their craft, only to discover later that they have said exactly the same thing to everyone else. Anyone who has ever interviewed such literate, articulate directors as David Cronenberg, Ken Russell, Wes Craven, or William Friedkin will know just how easy it is for them to fall back upon the well-rehearsed vignettes and entertaining anecdotes that have served them well over the years. In the case of Cronenberg in particular, it is virtually impossible to get a "bad" interview out of the director, who produces the same lively, well-reasoned responses even when faced with the most asinine line of questioning.

For the lazy and ill-prepared interviewer, this may be a relief. Yet it is equally difficult to get Cronenberg to say anything new—not because of laziness on his part, but because there are so few aspects of his work that he has not already intelligently considered and discussed elsewhere. In relation to his adaptation of William Burroughs's cult novel The Naked Lunch (1991), for example, Cronenberg musingly told me that the film was "kind of a fusion of Burroughs and me, as if we'd gotten into the telepod from The Fly together."¹ At the time, I thought our conversation had led him to such an interesting and amusing observation. Later on, I discovered that he had used the same phrase in almost every other interview about Naked Lunch. The repetition did not make Cronenberg's pithy observation any less astute. But it did prove that the great challenge with Cronenberg is to ask him something he has never been asked before.

Having spent over two decades interviewing filmmakers for a range of magazines (from the horror bible Fangoria, to the British Film Institute journal Sight and Sound), UK newspapers (The Independent, The Observer), radio shows, and television documentaries, I have come to the conclusion that recalcitrance is a virtue, to be embraced rather than avoided. The interviewee who needs to be coaxed and provoked will often have more intriguing things to say about their work than the filmmaker who can happily speak for themselves, at great length. Indeed, even the most gregarious interviewee will hesitate, stumble, or reconsider if properly questioned by someone whom they trust and (perhaps most importantly) respect. I do not think that I have always been successful in this area—far from it. But for what it is worth, here are a few observations based on my own experiences of trying to get the best out my interviewees.

Always Watch the Films First

The most important thing, when interviewing any filmmaker, under any circumstances, is to have actually seen the film about which you are talking. This may sound obvious to film scholars, but you would be surprised just how often it does not happen among journalists. Any working practitioner who has served their time on the promotional circuit will be more than familiar with the interviewer who has done nothing but skim the press notes—and occasionally, not even that. So it has become increasingly necessary to state at the outset of an interview that you have seen the film (or films) in question, just to put your subject at their ease, and to encourage them to feel comfortable discussing all and any of their work. This is not something you can lie about: you must not, under any circumstances, pretend to be familiar with films which you have not seen—it will only end in tears. So let your interviewee know that they are in safe hands. Often such groundwork may be established in preliminary negotiations, such as e-mails and phone calls setting up the interview. But it never hurts to begin your questioning with the clear declaration that you have shown your interviewee the respect of doing your homework. And in the age of DVD, there really is very little excuse for not familiarizing yourself fully...