Like Hitchcock and Truffaut, Kent Jones lives for and through the movies. Over the past two decades, Jones has worked as an archivist, programmer, critic and documentarian. He’s now the director of The New York Film Festival and also one of the chief editors at Film Comment. His latest picture, Hitchcock/Truffaut, is one of the year’s finest films, an adaptation of Truffaut’s book-length interview of the same name. It’s still hard to fathom, but when Truffaut undertook the project, Hitchcock was not well regarded in America. Truffaut considered Hitchcock “the world’s greatest director” and aimed to free Hitchcock from his reputation as a light entertainer. Hitchcock/Truffaut is a film about filmmaking with an entire cast of filmmakers. Picture makers ranging from Hollywood's 2nd Golden Age (Scorsese, Schrader, Bogdanovich) to new auteurs (Wes Anderson, Fincher, Assayas) make pithy observations throughout the documentary about Hitchcock's entire body of work. Jones pays special attention to Vertigo and Psycho. It'd be no exaggeration to say that the former is Hitchcock's greatest achievement, while the latter is the most famous film he ever made. To quote Mr. Bogdanovich, Psycho "was the first time going to the movies was dangerous." Jones's film is ultimately a tribute to both Hitchcock and Truffaut and a masterpiece of film preservation.
Just last week, Kent Jones was kind enough to call me up for a little conversation about his film.
Just last week, Kent Jones was kind enough to call me up for a little conversation about his film.
Michael Montag: Hitchcock/Truffaut is one of the most famous books in film history. The idea of adapting it into a film is quite an original, imaginative one. In its singularity it reminds me of what Arthur Penn did when he translated an Arlo Guthrie album into Alice’s Restaurant. When did the idea of translating the book into a motion picture first occur to you?
Kent Jones: Someone asked me (laughs). One of the producers asked me if I’d be interested in making a film based on the book. That’s interesting what you’re saying about Arthur Penn and Arlo. I grew up in the Berkshires, so that was all happening around me—the whole Alice’s Restaurant scene and the massacre. I watched that movie again recently; it’s like watching home movies.
Just the idea of taking a book, a famous film text, and putting it to film, that’s never been done before—it's like taking an album and turning it into Alice’s Restaurant. They’re both really original, creative ideas.
I was really into the idea of working from audiotapes. I was really into that challenge. And it’s a book I’ve lived with since I was a kid. I bought it when I was twelve. I really loved that idea of trying to make that work. And then making a film about filmmaking, where I had a lot of filmmakers in it.
When Truffaut undertook the book project originally, it was with the aim of rescuing Hitchcock from his reputation as a ‘light entertainer,’ something I still find hard to believe. What was your aim in adapting the book into a film? I was curious if had you a similar aim. These days Hitchcock is regarded as a master.
I think that in the matter of art there is always an action of recovery and rescue. I’m saying this warily because it has a lot of different manifestations, and it works in a lot of different ways. It’s never mission accomplished. In Hitchcock’s case, Vertigo was recently voted the best film of all time by Sight and Sound, and it’s fair to say that his films are pretty much cemented into the popular imagination; so one could say that he really doesn’t need to be rescued. On the other hand, every time I turn around and hear someone talking about him, they’re generally talking about him in terms of fetishism or cruelty or pathology.
Kent Jones: Someone asked me (laughs). One of the producers asked me if I’d be interested in making a film based on the book. That’s interesting what you’re saying about Arthur Penn and Arlo. I grew up in the Berkshires, so that was all happening around me—the whole Alice’s Restaurant scene and the massacre. I watched that movie again recently; it’s like watching home movies.
Just the idea of taking a book, a famous film text, and putting it to film, that’s never been done before—it's like taking an album and turning it into Alice’s Restaurant. They’re both really original, creative ideas.
I was really into the idea of working from audiotapes. I was really into that challenge. And it’s a book I’ve lived with since I was a kid. I bought it when I was twelve. I really loved that idea of trying to make that work. And then making a film about filmmaking, where I had a lot of filmmakers in it.
When Truffaut undertook the book project originally, it was with the aim of rescuing Hitchcock from his reputation as a ‘light entertainer,’ something I still find hard to believe. What was your aim in adapting the book into a film? I was curious if had you a similar aim. These days Hitchcock is regarded as a master.
I think that in the matter of art there is always an action of recovery and rescue. I’m saying this warily because it has a lot of different manifestations, and it works in a lot of different ways. It’s never mission accomplished. In Hitchcock’s case, Vertigo was recently voted the best film of all time by Sight and Sound, and it’s fair to say that his films are pretty much cemented into the popular imagination; so one could say that he really doesn’t need to be rescued. On the other hand, every time I turn around and hear someone talking about him, they’re generally talking about him in terms of fetishism or cruelty or pathology.
Which is really reductive, don’t you think?
I think it’s so reductive that it’s just beside the point. When I hear people talking about analyzing his fetishism, it makes me chuckle because he seems to do it pretty well himself. In other words, such ideas are posited on the assumption that he’s not aware of all this stuff himself, which just seems absurd to me. How could the man who made Vertigo not be aware of the presence of fetishism in his work? Of course he is. He’s just not moralizing about it. What David Fincher says in my movie is absolutely right and that is if you think you can hide as an artist you’re nuts. It’s just not possible. You can’t, and if you try to, you’re going to make mediocre movies. There are a lot of those out there, many of them win Academy Awards, and get a lot of accolades.
I think that you see this constant swing toward talking about movies in terms of everything but the art of cinema. In the sense that maybe it’s a good movie from a movie stance. I suppose that it used to be what meaning does it have, whereas now it’s how responsible is it socially? It’s framed in a different way for a different era. Take the current obsession, for instance, with how women are represented in a given film. Yes, that’s a very important question, the question of women’s subjugation. The question of how they’re represented in film, while I suppose it’s important, also strikes me as the wrong way to look through the telescope. I’ve seen movies faulted by very intelligent people because they include a scene that goes lax in the representation of women. This trivializes a very important issue. And it trivializes cinema in the bargain.
I think your picture really stands on its own. I wanted to know how you avoided making the film just an extension or illustration of the book because it’s really a great movie in and of itself.
Thank you. How did I avoid it? Well, I worked hard at making a movie. Let’s this say this, you’re probably thinking that a lot of movies that are made about movies are as you described. They are audio/visual historical aides, footnotes, extensions, etc. Sometimes they’re kind of great as a DVD extra. I really love some of the stuff that Criterion does, and I’ve done some of it myself. That’s of course of a higher order. I do think that people often get fixated on the materials of which a movie is comprised without talking about what the movie is. So, in other words, my movie uses documents, letters, footage, and photographs—the same kind of archival materials that a lot of other movies use. There are good movies made with those materials and different movies made with those materials and a lot of bad ones as well. For me, that is the nature of the enterprise, so that’s what I’m working with. It’s not about doing a clip show of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest hits. It’s not about doing an illustrated version of the talk or doing a Hitchcock 101 lesson with, say, The MacGuffin and all of that stuff. That’s quite different from anything I wanted to do. It’s not where I would go. What I wanted to do is create a film and make a film experience, so that it all functions as a whole. I wanted to make film with concision and tension and structural integrity to it and energy. The rhythm is important. The clips are never just clips—they can’t be. If they are, I definitely drew them out.
I actually have a more personal question for you. The critic-turned-filmmaker has always fascinated me. Truffaut comes from that tradition, as does Peter Bogdanovich and Olivier Assayas who you interview in your documentary. You come from this tradition now, too. What do you think is the transition point from being a critic to becoming a director, that is, from being an interested party to calling yourself a director?
That’s an interesting question. When I was working on My Voyage to Italy with Marty [Scorsese] and Thelma Schoonmaker, we were in a room and I was writing some narration for the film, and I wrote, "this is the beginning of modern cinema." You know what I mean of course. And so Thelma read it and said this is great. I know what you’re talking about, you know what you’re talking about, your friends know what you’re talking about, but you have to think about somebody out in the middle of nowhere who isn’t familiar with cinema references and film history. For them, modern cinema is the independent cinema of today. "Modern cinema" is a confusing term; so let’s think of something else. I thought, well, that’s interesting. It made me think about the whole construct of cinema from the outside.
Let’s say this, the construct of cinema from the outside is referred to by some people as cinephilia. In a way, that describes this as some kind of divine affliction. That never sat right with me. I never got into the idea of cinema as a divine affliction. As I’ve gotten older, however, I’ve also started to feel like cinephilia is terrific. It’s terrific up to a point, but when it starts to become an engine that keeps itself alive first and cinema alive second, it starts to become a little weird. I like the term cinephilia only insofar as it describes people who like cinema. The idea of mythologizing it seems a little weird to me. I guess God knows I’ve benefited, as we all have, from the politique des auteurs, from auteurism, what it brought to us. Cinema is absolutely the better for it. When I started to actually make films, to get into the nuts and bolts of films, cinephilia started to feel even more delicate and fragile to me and very far away from the actual process of making a film.
I think it’s so reductive that it’s just beside the point. When I hear people talking about analyzing his fetishism, it makes me chuckle because he seems to do it pretty well himself. In other words, such ideas are posited on the assumption that he’s not aware of all this stuff himself, which just seems absurd to me. How could the man who made Vertigo not be aware of the presence of fetishism in his work? Of course he is. He’s just not moralizing about it. What David Fincher says in my movie is absolutely right and that is if you think you can hide as an artist you’re nuts. It’s just not possible. You can’t, and if you try to, you’re going to make mediocre movies. There are a lot of those out there, many of them win Academy Awards, and get a lot of accolades.
I think that you see this constant swing toward talking about movies in terms of everything but the art of cinema. In the sense that maybe it’s a good movie from a movie stance. I suppose that it used to be what meaning does it have, whereas now it’s how responsible is it socially? It’s framed in a different way for a different era. Take the current obsession, for instance, with how women are represented in a given film. Yes, that’s a very important question, the question of women’s subjugation. The question of how they’re represented in film, while I suppose it’s important, also strikes me as the wrong way to look through the telescope. I’ve seen movies faulted by very intelligent people because they include a scene that goes lax in the representation of women. This trivializes a very important issue. And it trivializes cinema in the bargain.
I think your picture really stands on its own. I wanted to know how you avoided making the film just an extension or illustration of the book because it’s really a great movie in and of itself.
Thank you. How did I avoid it? Well, I worked hard at making a movie. Let’s this say this, you’re probably thinking that a lot of movies that are made about movies are as you described. They are audio/visual historical aides, footnotes, extensions, etc. Sometimes they’re kind of great as a DVD extra. I really love some of the stuff that Criterion does, and I’ve done some of it myself. That’s of course of a higher order. I do think that people often get fixated on the materials of which a movie is comprised without talking about what the movie is. So, in other words, my movie uses documents, letters, footage, and photographs—the same kind of archival materials that a lot of other movies use. There are good movies made with those materials and different movies made with those materials and a lot of bad ones as well. For me, that is the nature of the enterprise, so that’s what I’m working with. It’s not about doing a clip show of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest hits. It’s not about doing an illustrated version of the talk or doing a Hitchcock 101 lesson with, say, The MacGuffin and all of that stuff. That’s quite different from anything I wanted to do. It’s not where I would go. What I wanted to do is create a film and make a film experience, so that it all functions as a whole. I wanted to make film with concision and tension and structural integrity to it and energy. The rhythm is important. The clips are never just clips—they can’t be. If they are, I definitely drew them out.
I actually have a more personal question for you. The critic-turned-filmmaker has always fascinated me. Truffaut comes from that tradition, as does Peter Bogdanovich and Olivier Assayas who you interview in your documentary. You come from this tradition now, too. What do you think is the transition point from being a critic to becoming a director, that is, from being an interested party to calling yourself a director?
That’s an interesting question. When I was working on My Voyage to Italy with Marty [Scorsese] and Thelma Schoonmaker, we were in a room and I was writing some narration for the film, and I wrote, "this is the beginning of modern cinema." You know what I mean of course. And so Thelma read it and said this is great. I know what you’re talking about, you know what you’re talking about, your friends know what you’re talking about, but you have to think about somebody out in the middle of nowhere who isn’t familiar with cinema references and film history. For them, modern cinema is the independent cinema of today. "Modern cinema" is a confusing term; so let’s think of something else. I thought, well, that’s interesting. It made me think about the whole construct of cinema from the outside.
Let’s say this, the construct of cinema from the outside is referred to by some people as cinephilia. In a way, that describes this as some kind of divine affliction. That never sat right with me. I never got into the idea of cinema as a divine affliction. As I’ve gotten older, however, I’ve also started to feel like cinephilia is terrific. It’s terrific up to a point, but when it starts to become an engine that keeps itself alive first and cinema alive second, it starts to become a little weird. I like the term cinephilia only insofar as it describes people who like cinema. The idea of mythologizing it seems a little weird to me. I guess God knows I’ve benefited, as we all have, from the politique des auteurs, from auteurism, what it brought to us. Cinema is absolutely the better for it. When I started to actually make films, to get into the nuts and bolts of films, cinephilia started to feel even more delicate and fragile to me and very far away from the actual process of making a film.
I haven’t seen My Voyage to Italy, but I have seen your documentaries about Val Lewton and Elia Kazan. I like to look at your documentaries as works of film preservation. You’ve collaborated with Scorsese on all of them, he even co-directed one of them with you. How did you two become such close collaborators and friends?
I started working for Marty 24 years ago. I was his video archivist, and then for a time, I was in charge of his film archive, his print archive. When we met, he and I were able to speak a common language. When I was doing the video archives it was a matter of taping everything off of TV or VHS or Super VHS. I didn’t have to go to Leonard Maltin and look films up. I knew most of the work. So right away he knew I was someone interested in cinema and that I knew my way around it. Over the years, we got to be closer and closer, and at a certain point he asked me if I would start to come aboard and work on My Voyage to Italy and I did. The Kazan film is a very special enterprise. It’s something that’s made from his point-of-view. It’s a personal thing between him and Elia. That was a great time, because we started both movies at the same time, literally. The Kazan film and the Lewton film, the editing rooms were both open at the same time. But it took much longer to finish the Kazan film. Marty is one of my closest friends.
How did you decide upon the directors you chose to interview for Hitchcock/Truffaut? I’m also curious why you opted for directors rather than, say, film critics and historians.
The discussion between Hitchcock and Truffaut is a discussion between two filmmakers, not a critic and a filmmaker. At that point, Truffaut had made three films and was an international superstar. He wasn’t coming at it as a critic. Obviously, there are a couple of points in the conversation that are journalistic. But the nature of the enterprise is a discussion of filmmaking between two filmmakers. So I decided that that’s what I want to do. I want to extend that. I want to have a discussion about filmmaking. I just wanted filmmakers. If I had experts, film historians, biographers, it could turn it in another way. I didn’t want to do that, because it’s not about your personality except to the extent that personality is revealed in that act of discussing filmmaking. I just wanted to fill the movie with filmmakers, and I figured they aren’t going to be preoccupied with talking about Hitchcock’s personality. They’re only going to be talking about the questions that are discussed between Hitchcock and Truffaut. I chose people whose work I admired and I chose people who in many cases I knew. I happen to know a lot of filmmakers, some I’m very close to like Olivier. But a degree of closeness isn’t what I was thinking of, I was thinking of people who have an ability and a desire to share their thoughts on filmmaking and could speak extemporaneously, who could think of their relationship to filmmaking as they spoke.
Do you have a personal favorite Hitchcock film?
I don’t really have one and that’s honest. For Sight and Sound, I put Notorious but if it were ten seconds later it would’ve been Vertigo, ten seconds after that it would’ve been Rear Window. For me, it’s more about the whole body of work, which is just an overwhelming experience; it’s an endless revelation. I find his work endlessly revelatory and exciting and I go back and look at it a lot and every time I see one of his movies it’s brand new. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen North by Northwest, and I’m not interested in counting, because it really doesn’t matter. My familiarity with the film is nothing in the face of the film itself. You can’t say that of everybody’s movies. Ozu’s body of work is like Hitchcock’s. There are no bad films. There are some that are better than others but there are no bad films. Nothing’s second tier. So no, I don’t have a favorite. It’s a favorite body of work.
I started working for Marty 24 years ago. I was his video archivist, and then for a time, I was in charge of his film archive, his print archive. When we met, he and I were able to speak a common language. When I was doing the video archives it was a matter of taping everything off of TV or VHS or Super VHS. I didn’t have to go to Leonard Maltin and look films up. I knew most of the work. So right away he knew I was someone interested in cinema and that I knew my way around it. Over the years, we got to be closer and closer, and at a certain point he asked me if I would start to come aboard and work on My Voyage to Italy and I did. The Kazan film is a very special enterprise. It’s something that’s made from his point-of-view. It’s a personal thing between him and Elia. That was a great time, because we started both movies at the same time, literally. The Kazan film and the Lewton film, the editing rooms were both open at the same time. But it took much longer to finish the Kazan film. Marty is one of my closest friends.
How did you decide upon the directors you chose to interview for Hitchcock/Truffaut? I’m also curious why you opted for directors rather than, say, film critics and historians.
The discussion between Hitchcock and Truffaut is a discussion between two filmmakers, not a critic and a filmmaker. At that point, Truffaut had made three films and was an international superstar. He wasn’t coming at it as a critic. Obviously, there are a couple of points in the conversation that are journalistic. But the nature of the enterprise is a discussion of filmmaking between two filmmakers. So I decided that that’s what I want to do. I want to extend that. I want to have a discussion about filmmaking. I just wanted filmmakers. If I had experts, film historians, biographers, it could turn it in another way. I didn’t want to do that, because it’s not about your personality except to the extent that personality is revealed in that act of discussing filmmaking. I just wanted to fill the movie with filmmakers, and I figured they aren’t going to be preoccupied with talking about Hitchcock’s personality. They’re only going to be talking about the questions that are discussed between Hitchcock and Truffaut. I chose people whose work I admired and I chose people who in many cases I knew. I happen to know a lot of filmmakers, some I’m very close to like Olivier. But a degree of closeness isn’t what I was thinking of, I was thinking of people who have an ability and a desire to share their thoughts on filmmaking and could speak extemporaneously, who could think of their relationship to filmmaking as they spoke.
Do you have a personal favorite Hitchcock film?
I don’t really have one and that’s honest. For Sight and Sound, I put Notorious but if it were ten seconds later it would’ve been Vertigo, ten seconds after that it would’ve been Rear Window. For me, it’s more about the whole body of work, which is just an overwhelming experience; it’s an endless revelation. I find his work endlessly revelatory and exciting and I go back and look at it a lot and every time I see one of his movies it’s brand new. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen North by Northwest, and I’m not interested in counting, because it really doesn’t matter. My familiarity with the film is nothing in the face of the film itself. You can’t say that of everybody’s movies. Ozu’s body of work is like Hitchcock’s. There are no bad films. There are some that are better than others but there are no bad films. Nothing’s second tier. So no, I don’t have a favorite. It’s a favorite body of work.
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