I know I didn’t think very much about Natasha Richardson after I chatted with her for about 45min in 2006 – I wasn’t obsessed, though, like a lot of people, I was smitten. I remember that she had some tea from a large silver pot provided by the hotel, and that she answered her telephone and apologized to me, explaining that her husband was in state, fishing, and that she was to meet him later. I remember wishing I could talk to him, too. I dug out the tape of that interview tonight after hearing that she’d died – and there she was – soft-spoken, elegant, lovely. I didn’t listen to much of it.I remember that we talked a lot about our children before our interview proper; about how they were the same spacing in age and her telling me how it was so wonderful a gift to give a child a sibling. I’ve thought that thought a lot as I watch my kids play. I know what a comfort it was to have a sister when my father passed away. There’s no one else on the planet, at that moment, that knows exactly how you feel without having to compare notes. At the moment you’re the loneliest, see, you’re not alone.
She asked to see a picture. She was a beautiful person.
3 comments:
Interview is here. Thanks, Walter, for the memories. A lovely and talented woman among a family of lovely and talented women. She was onscreen far less than I would have preferred, but she shone in everything.
What do you think of modern film criticism?
"It's a part of the industry now, isn't it? So much of it out there is plot, plot, plot and then a sort of go or don't go, there's no real analysis provided or required and so the movies fall in line. There are a few out there that I find myself to fall in line with more than others, of course, and so I don't condemn the entire professions, just that it doesn't seem to be about a conversation as much as a consumer report.... I think that criticism can be terrific when it illuminates something like that--puts something in the perspective of articulating what we can't put in terms. And certainly for the smaller films, critics are often the only hope that anyone will see the films. The quickness, the facileness of so much of it, though, is very disheartening. I don't mind the bad review--but I do mind the glib ones."
Well, dear Walter whether she meant to or not, she described why you one of the very best in a shocklingly, dwindling pond of relevant and insightful, terrific film critics delving into why popular films (and not so popular, of course) matter in our lives. I didn't followed her works closely, but her mind here was also quite beautiful.
...you are one of...
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