It might seem an odd thing for a publication like PW to observe, but spending an afternoon with David Thomson—author of nearly 20 fiction and nonfiction books—is enough to make anyone want to rush out and rent a handful of (mostly) old movies.
A quick glance at Thomson's bibliography (published almost exclusively by Knopf since 1985) shows a variety of talents and interests: biographies of Hollywood legends Orson Wells, David O. Selznick and Warren Beatty; novels Suspects and Silver Lake; essays, albeit typically about Hollywood; and a quirky nonfiction book he produced with his wife, photographer Lucy Gray, called In Nevada: The Land, the People, God and Chance. But he is perhaps best known for a title first released 25 years ago in his native England. And it is the fourth edition of that work, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, released by Knopf last month, that PW focused on most when we met on a cloudy fall afternoon in Thomson's cozy, colorful, eclectically decorated Victorian home in the Pacific Heights section of San Francisco.
At first Thomson seems a bit shy (it could be British reserve), but he easily warms as the conversation skips around, touching briefly on his background, what brought him first across the Atlantic (a teaching job in '75) and then across the continent (an adventure with his new wife in '81), but always coming back to the movies. Yet sitting on a cushy couch in the living room of the home Thomson shares with his wife and two young sons, there is no evidence of his celluloid passion. Art and books greet a visitor first, although an extensive video collection occupies a corner in an adjoining room, along with more art and books.
Thomson half-jokingly attributes his love of film to a misspent youth frequenting movie theaters and to a somewhat wayward education. "I went to what was the only film school in England," says Thomson, neglecting to mention that he passed up a scholarship at Oxford to do so. He says he learned two rewarding things before not finishing his studies there: "First, that probably the most valuable contribution I could make to film making was as a writer. And secondly, that if I really wanted to write seriously, it was awfully important to find out about publishing." So from 1963 to 1971, he worked his way up at Penguin in London from proofreader to editor.
His lessons from publishing were also unexpected. "I appreciate that it's a business," he says of publishing. That turned out to apply to film as well. "The big thing I learned is that there was this thing called 'the film business' that made movies, but was very different from what I had anticipated."
The first edition of The Biographical Dictionary of Film turned out differently than he contemplated as well. The original plan called for a mix of profiles with basic information about the movie business. When he found gathering the basic material boring, he did what most any writer would do, put it off. "So I began writing about the people," he says. It all sort of clicked around Jack Nicholson. "I think that was an important entry because, in doing it, I realized how much I liked him," says Thomson. Four years of hard work later, the result was a much more opinionated and personal book than originally intended. And Thomson's ability to convey with wit and aplomb an entire career—in an amazing economy of words—are precisely the elements that have drawn films buffs to The Dictionary for a quarter century.
It's hard to think of many dictionaries that people actually read (William Safire and publishing veterans aside). "I've been told that people began by looking something up, but they become a reader of the book," he says. "There is a conversational quality about the book."
Perhaps a random reading can illustrate the dictionary in action. Starting at A, there's Abbott and Costello, whose "Who's on First?" riff Thomson compares to Beckett, Freud and Wittgenstein. For real. Of Woody Allen he asks, "[C]an he break out of the claustrophobic self-regard that has always threatened to make yet more 'Woody Allen film'?" As for Allen's acting, Thomson dubs him "a Chaplin hero for the chattering masses." Dame Judi Dench: "Face it, she is close to being Katharine Hepburn." But he is not always so nice. Hugh Grant is "an incipient sneeze looking for a vacant nose." And he actually wonders out loud if he is the only one waiting for Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange to fight on film, "just once." Along with the quips come personal asides, social commentary and observations about the price of "making it" in Hollywood.
The peril of sustaining a career in Hollywood today appears to be one of his favorite topics. "Take Reese Witherspoon," he says, referring to one of 300 new entries in this edition of the dictionary. "She made three or four films in which she was so different, so fresh and sharp, it was amazing. But it seems to me that already the business is taming her and that she's being turned into a star version of Reese Witherspoon, and that's a pity."
Spotlight on Quentin Tarantino. "He burst on the scene with two films and now he has virtually stopped," Thomson continues. "It's very difficult for a kid to have tremendous success and carry on as himself and not become the figure the business wants him to be."
For all of its flaws, the old studio system, Thomson says, might have been better at helping actors cultivate careers. He cites Joan Crawford as an example. "MGM screenwriters produced material that was good for her, and they learned how to photograph her, and those things are not to be sneered at as aids to developing a career." Nowadays, he says, people are on their own and go from project to project, with little and sometimes bad advice from agents and lawyers.
Publishing parallels exist, although there are fewer dollars involved. Donna Tart's 10-year hiatus between A Secret History and The Little Friend comes to mind. Thomson wonders what people like Tarantino and Tart faced after their successes that has kept them from producing something for a long time. More than simply criticizing such impediments, Thomson shows sincere interest in the career decisions people make.
He began working on The Biographical Dictionary of Film as a film teacher in England. "The experience of being in the classroom, and more or less organizing a discussion, and sometimes deliberately saying provocative things in order to get a response, colored the book." Thomson employs many strategies to engage someone in a dialogue about film. "One of them is to say something that on the face of it seems so unexpected that you want to jump up in argument."
Thomson credits Tom Rosenthal at Secker & Warburg in the U.K. with the idea for the dictionary and the courage to publish it even when it became something very large and opinionated. "He published it and he published it well," says Thomson. After Rosenthal retired, the dictionary moved over to Andre Deutsch in the U.K.. For this fourth edition, Little, Brown is the U.K. publisher and Knopf is the American publisher for the second time. (William Morrow published a previous U.S. edition.)
As the head of Knopf, Robert Gottlieb remembers very well how he first heard about David Thomson. "Many years ago, I had published the autobiography of Irene Mayer Selznick—the daughter of Louis B. Mayer and wife of David O. Selznick—and I came across a review in our publicity file that was published in the Lincoln Center magazine by a man named David Thomson," he tells PW. He thought the review was brilliant. "I did something that I don't think I've done three times in my endless career—I got in touch with him just to thank him." At that point, Gottlieb didn't know about Thomson's dictionary. "But it was clear to me that he understood Hollywood in a more profound, more complicated and more interesting way than almost anyone I knew or had read."
Gottlieb and Thomson first teamed up professionally on Suspects, which, curiously enough, is like a fictional version of the dictionary—though a scant 274 pages to the dictionary's 900-plus. In Suspects, Thomson creates entire life histories for the characters from some of the best-known films in history. For instance, he imagined a connection between Norma Desmond, institutionalized after having shot Joe Gillis, with the character Julian Kay played by Richard Gere in American Gigolo that could arch even Joan Crawford's eyebrow.
When Gottlieb left Knopf for the New Yorker, Thomson worked with another editor at the house. As luck would have it, Gottlieb's return to Knopf coincided with Thomson's delivery of the first edition of the dictionary to be published there. "I don't think the book would have been published in its latest edition without him," Thomson says of Gottlieb. With 3,000 miles of country between them, much of their work is done over the phone, but it doesn't deter them much. "He's a great editor because he never asks you to be something you're not, but he's wonderfully good at seeing just how much better you can be," Thomson says.
Since 1975, Thomson has met some of the subjects of his criticism, although few have expressed complaints directly to him. "I've bumped into a few people in life and realized that they were not happy," he adds with a sideways grin. Over time, he has developed friendships with some of the subjects, and while he is wary of the effect such relationships might have on his criticism, he says he thinks such associations have helped shape The Biographical Dictionary of Film into a better book. "I tended to think that filmmakers lived in an ivory tower," he explains. "Now I know differently: that everything is some sort of mess and a compromise and an abortion, and that nothing springs purely from the mind."
After a quick tour of Thomson's spacious office, dominated by books both shelved and cluttered among papers scattered about the floor beneath walls decorated with movie memorabilia (most notably an original Citizen Kane poster and a signed, handwritten song by Orson Wells), PW poses that dirtiest of questions ever posed to a writer who has just published a book: What's next?
Thomson likes to have several projects going at once, although he admits that it is harder switching gears as he gets older. Currently, he is working on a nonfiction book for Knopf about the relationship between making money and making art in Hollywood and a screenplay about Louis Armstrong for producer Ed Pressman (Badlands, Das Boot, Reversal of Fortune, Wall Street and American Psycho among his credits).
A clear theme in the dictionary is how many authors, Faulkner and Fitzgerald among them, got sucked into Hollywood to their creative peril. Considering his fascination with Tinseltown's taint on careers, will Thomson be the exception? "Don't count on it," he jokes. "Until I've sampled the flesh pots, I don't know if I can overcome them." Thomson laughs loudest when he turns his wicked wit on himself.
