Interview with:Christopher Lloyd [christopherlloyd]
MOVIES-TV
 | What is your specialty? Production, direction, something else? Film criticism. |
| Is there a link to a site where we can see references to your work? www.captaincritic.blogspot.com
www.thefilmyap.com
www.heraldtribune.com |
| How did you begin in this field? Who introduced you to it? The critics I read in newspapers and watched on TV as a boy. Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel and Jay Boyar are probably the most influential. |
| Which have been the most symbolic works of your career? Not really applicable, since films can be symbolic but criticism is not. |
| Do you work for a client, for the audience, or for your own creative adventure? All three. But my own enjoyment is probably the prime reason. |
| What should a good script have in order to interest you? Characters who draw a strong reaction, an interesting plot, and something important to say about our society. |
| Name three contemporary directors or producers that you admire. Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam, Steven Spielberg. |
| What movies or television shows inspired you to work in this field? Well, obviously all the movies I saw growing up. As for TV, watching Siskel and Ebert's show was an important influence. |
| How interested are you in image technologies such as robotized cameras, special effects, etc.? I am only interested in them as far as they help the filmmakers in telling their story. It's the result, not the process that's important. |
| What magazines or websites of the sector do you follow regularly? Various newspapers with critics I respect, www.imdb.com, www.boxofficemojo.com, many others. |
| What is the best movie than you have seen in the last year, and why did it seem especially good? Wall-E, because it was a bold and daring art film wearing the clothes of a kiddie animated flick. |
| Do you eat popcorn at the movies? Not anymore. I worked at a theater as a teen and college student, and ate several lifetimes' worth of popcorn before I was 22. |
| What do you think of public subsidies for cinema? I wouldn't object to it, as long as there wasn't any government censorship as to the subjects or content of the films. |
| Which do you like more, large budget or small independent productions? I really have no preference, as long as it's good. I'm not one of those critics who thinks only foreign and indie fare is worthwhile. |
| Is the future of cinema the Internet? Mobile phones? The Internet can be a wonderful corollary medium, but I don't anything equals seeing a new movie on a huge screen with hundreds of strangers. |
JOURNALISM
| What is your specialty? What subjects do you deal with? Film, although my web site www.captaincritic.blogspot.com also includes some general pop culture commentary, and occasional personal goings-on. |
| In which media do you presently work or have you worked? Web, newspapers, radio, television, magazines. |
| Please list a web address where where one can view an example of your work. www.captaincritic.blogspot.com
www.thefilmyap.com
www.heraldtribune.com |
| What is "news"? Any piece of information that is important, relevant or entertaining to a certain segment of the population. |
| To you, what is objectivity? An unattainable but vital goal for any serious news-gathering organization. It means not favoring any particular side or sides of a given issue, and not injecting our own opinions into our news judgment. |
| What is the best headline you have ever read? It's hard to remember them, except for the few decent ones I wrote. It's not my strength. |
| What headline would you like to see printed one day in the newspaper? "Christopher Lloyd wins Pulitzer Prize for criticism." |
| Which paper do you buy on Sundays? Where do you read it? Indianapolis Star. I read it in my hands, ink on dead trees. |
| Does freedom of expression end where the editorial line begins? Of course not -- not for good journalists, anyway. |
| Do you feel that analytical and investigative journalism is being lost? It's not being lost so much as diminished and marginalized. The movement is toward quick hits, celebrity gossip and dumbed-down shorter articles. |
| With a camera on every mobile phone, is every citizen becoming a correspondent? To some extent. |
| How would you explain the boom of the tabloid press? Finding or creating the lowest common denominator, and catering to it. |
| What is your position regarding the right to privacy of famous people? They have a right to privacy, although as media case law has shown, one has less right to privacy when you're in the public eye. |
| What can you teach us about the art of the interview? Sometimes it's a good to ask a provocative question that you know the subject isn't willing or able to answer, just to see how they react to it. |
| Please list well-known people you have interviewed. Too many to remember, but here's a few: Shaquille O'Neal, Jesse Jackson, Jeb Bush, Haley Joel Osment, Penny Hardaway, Daunte Culpepper, Randy Moss, Dennis Green, David Ogden Stiers, Tia Carrere, Ving Rhames, Jon Voight, Kevin McDonald, Phil Collins, Jason Scott Lee, Andreas Deja, Famke Janssen, David Benioff, Ralph Winter |
| Would you say the journalism blog is revolutionizing the profession? Not revolutionizing -- it's more a symptom than a causation. It's allowing journalists to speak on a wider range of subjects than their bylined stories. |
| Will the paper press disappear? Someday, but not for decades unless they can come up with a cheap, workable version of e-paper, where people can download the daily newspaper to a flexible, portable screen. |
| What are your thoughts of the free papers distributed in cities? Though they vary wildly in quality, they are an indispensable part of the media. In many cases, they are the watchmen of the watchmen -- a source that can turn a critical eye on the metropolitan newspaper in that city. |
| What is the book you would like to write? Probably a pretty bad one, that brings the sword-and-sorcery genre out of the juvenile section of the book store/library. |
| Is there a motto or ethical principle that clarifies your decisions in moments of confusion? Don't pay attention to what people say, but what they do. |
| What advice would you give to someone who has just left university and wishes to start in the profession? Don't go anywhere near a daily newspaper, unless you know it's financially healthy and preferably owned by a non-profit or a private group that views journalism as more than just a business. |
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Christopher Lloyd
Indianapolis
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