Passing the Three Gates: Interviews with Charles Johnson

An Interview with Charles Johnson (1992)

AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES JOHNSON PHOEBE BOSCHÉ PART I On a r e c e n t , r a t h e r brilliant May afternoon, I spoke with writer and critic Charles Johnson in his office on the campus of the University of Washington . He had just returned from viewing a film as a juror for the 1992 Seattle International Film festival. Along one plainlooking wall a row of his own books was lined up smartly, like good little soldiers, English and foreign translations intermingled : Faith and the Good Thing, Oxherding Tale, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Being and Race: BlackWriting Since 1970, and Middle Passage, winner of the 1990 National Book Award. BOSCHÉ: As far as judging films, you once said that “film of course is wonderful, but I can’t think of a single film, even 78 Reprinted from the Raven Chronicles 2.1 (1992) and 2.2 (1992), by permission of Phoebe Bosché. the ones that I love, that are as rich and complex, and have the same vision and depth, as the greatest novels.” So when you’re judging films, what are you looking for? JOHNSON: I guess two things. One is I want to experience it the way that I believe the producer wants it to be experienced, which is as art, as an entertainment. Just as a common reader or viewer. That’s how I approach either a book or a film. But after that, after I experience it on that level, I want to think critically about it and see how good the film is. BOSCHÉ: These are literary things, aren’t they? Narrative, plot. . . . JOHNSON: If it’s a low-budget production, you really have to emphasize what you’ve got, which is usually a few locations, okay. It might all be primarily interior, like a thing I was looking at today, ’cause you don’t go out on location a lot.You might have two or three central characters and what’s really going to matter is the depth of development and exploration of character . The sense of story. I look, in many ways, on the level of narrative and story and character, for the same things I often look for in fiction, but then when you step back you have to look at the film’s technical achievements or lack thereof. BOSCHÉ: Have you seen trends or patterns emerging in any of the new films? JOHNSON: What I’ve seen is a real focus on telling the story in mostly all of them . . . an emphasis on character, on very, very quiet moments in lives that would be marginalized or that you wouldn’t necessarily know anything about. The one I just saw, Confessing to Laura, takes place against the background of revolution which is happening in the streets but which forces, and this is very interesting to me, which forces this rather lonely government worker who has problems with his wife, who is very overbearing, to stay in the apartment, across the street, of his wife’s friend, to whom he takes a birthday cake. This is just when all the stuff begins to break out in the revolution. So he’s stuck there and his wife is watching him from across the street. An Interview with Charles Johnson (1992) 79 It’s about the revolution in their lives, in that apartment, because they can’t go out because they’ll be shot in the street. BOSCHÉ: So you do look at films the same way you do novels. . . . JOHNSON: Storywise, storywise. These are not terribly filmic films, that is to say basically they are carried by narrative, character , and plot. They are not carried by a sequence of images, for example, or techniques that are somehow coming together to create some kind of gestalt in your mind by the end of the film. They don’t have the money to do that.You go back to fundamentals when you have a very low budget. BOSCHÉ: Are you still working on the script about the allblack World War II air squadron? JOHNSON: I finished that. That was done in January. I was the second scriptwriter to come on. BOSCHÉ: So it is being produced? JOHNSON: We’ll see. I wrote it for the head of Columbia, Frank Price. The most recent thing I’ve heard, that bankrupt Orion is about to be bought by three people and...