David Thomson, or "David Thomson"? Critic or stalker?
David Thomson is often described as a "film critic," but film criticism is not quite what he does. Nor is he a journalist or a biographer or a historian by any traditional definition of those terms. Thomson is a cinephile, a fantasist and an autobiographer, who writes about movies -- and the characters in them, and the people who make them -- as his possessions, imagined aspects of himself.
In the introduction to his best-known book, the idiosyncratic and provocative "A Biographical Dictionary of Film," he admits that, in writing about movies, he is unavoidably writing about himself -- and, indeed, the book might be better titled "An Autobiographical Dictionary of Film." All film criticism (and all writing, fiction or "non-fiction") is to some degree autobiographical, and Thomson has been more aggressive and up-front about his obsessions with his fantasy-objects, from Warren Beatty to Nicole Kidman, than most. But I'm not sure his treatment, or imaginative possession (sexual and otherwise), of his not-at-all-obscure objects of desire is any less tabloid-creepy because it is presented as critical nonfiction rather than as gossip or on some fanatical fan blog, except that Thomson's writing is better.
Last week, Kidman's reps said Thomson had misrepresented himself in the one telephone interview he did with Kidman for his ostensible biography, being sold under the title "Nicole Kidman." From The Daily Mail:
According to the star's publicist Wendy Day: "Nicole has never met David Thomson. She has only spoken to him briefly on the phone about her acting processes and various films.So, if Thomson is going to write about movie-fed fantasies, and he's decided to focus his on Nicole Kidman, what are his ethical responsibilities when it comes to soliticiting her unknowing cooperation in his enterprise? A review in the New York Times, which calls the ostensible biography "a weird and unseemly mash note," offers several quotes from the book, including:"He's a well-respected film writer and she accepted the interview only because she was under the impression he was writing a series of film essays."
“I should own up straightaway that, yes, I like Nicole Kidman very much. I suspect she is as fragrant as spring, as ripe as summer, as sad as autumn and as coldly possessed as winter.... That’s why I’m writing this book, I think, to honor desire.�Thomson also speculates about what might have happened on the set of "Eyes Wide Shut," in this excerpt from the book published in the Sunday Times of London:“Just as I take the breakup with Cruise as the liberating and altering experience in Kidman’s life, so we have to see that Tom was changed, too.�
“I dare say she wakes up some nights screaming because she felt it [aging, losing her looks] was about to happen. (Not that I can be there to witness it — or stop imagining it.)�
Together, the extended schedule and the natural blood lust of the British press towards celebrities promoted unsubstantiated rumours that Cruise and Kidman required some psychological and sexual education to do their work. The couple successfully sued the Star in relation to these allegations. [...]Thomson speculates, along the lines of those "unsubstantiated rumors" in the Star, that Kubrick set out to undermine the Kidman/Cruise marriage as part of his directorial strategy for the film, including nude sex scenes shot with Kidman and her character's memory/fantasy lover:A director is an interloper if he is male and his actress is married. He says, I have to talk to you privately, intimately, because I have to talk to you about the way your desires — your desires, Nicole — may merge with and give body to your character. Alas, this has to be done away from your husband. It must be just the two of us. Oh, Tom, I must take Nicole away to somewhere private. This afternoon.
The two players took off their robes. They were stark naked. Goba noticed how beautiful she was. Then Nicole asked for a closed set. Kubrick would operate the camera himself. It was just the three of them.Scott Eyman in the New York Observer puts the book into perspective this way:It lasted six days.
Many situations were shot that do not figure in the film. There was a scene in a bath, for instance. There was also a scene in which he administered cunnilingus to her, in some detail, for which she wore a pubic wig. The restraint of the film-making process, its etiquette, is wondrous. I do not mean to suggest that the scene is gratuitous or unnecessary. It is an important part of the arc of the film. Not that it had to be as graphic as it is. Not that it is easy to see why six days were needed to get it all done. [...]
"Eyes Wide Shut" ends with huge uncertainty and the feeling of a psychic load not quite delivered. It’s as if the divorce between the leading players is the ending it needs. I think Kubrick made a film that whispered to Kidman: you are a real actor, a sexual phenomenon — and he is not. Nobody can see the film without inhabiting that dismay. So why should the two central players not feel it themselves?
There’s enough that’s self-indulgent in Mr. Thomson’s book to enable a certain kind of critic—the ones who clutch their pince-nez glasses as they lecture the class—to dismiss it as the equivalent of a hot-sheet special, the effusions of a critic in lust.From all accounts (and I have read only excerpts), Thomson's book sounds like a clip job, pieced together from other press clips, with minimum original research, like so many of those celeb "biographies" that are hastily thrown together to cash in on a star's fame. The difference is that Thomson himself has a reputation as a critic, albeit one who (as Eyman correctly observes) puts himself out there -- and puts his subjects out there, too, so that he can mingle with them.But Mr. Thomson has always put himself out there—he’s one of the rare writers who view criticism as an art form in its own right, and every artist has to reserve the right to fall on his face. In this particular book, there’s a dream sequence set in a Parisian bordello that verges on the embarrassing, and there are occasional sentences that could have been lifted directly from Photoplay magazine circa 1938: “It is Nicole’s nature to be sturdy, cheerful, robust, a real person, full of common sense.� At these times, the book is simply what my grandfather used to call a “mash note.�
Mr. Thomson has earned the right to his enthusiasms, if only for his "A Biographical Dictionary of Film," which is never less than interesting, frequently irritating, occasionally maddening—and one of perhaps half a dozen indispensable books about the movies.
Last week I wrote about "Death of a President" and the British tradition of presenting speculative fiction about future events in the form of a documentary. Is that something like what Thomson thinks he's doing here, presenting his speculations about past events, real and imagined, from Kidman's off-screen life (mixed with his own sexual fantasies about her) as a "biography" -- the obverse of Edmund Morris's fictionalized "official" biography of Ronald Reagan, "Dutch" -- a biography presented as fiction? If so, shouldn't "Nicole Kidman" be positioned as criticism/fiction in the form of a celebrity biography, rather than as traditional nonfiction?
How much license does a critic or other kind of writer have over the image of an actor or filmmaker? When it comes to libel law or fair use of a person's likeness, is an actress the same kind of "public figure" as an elected government official like a president? How are Thomson's biographical speculations, mixtures of journalistic sources and fictional techniques, significantly different from James Frey's autobiographical self-inventions in "A Million Little Pieces"? If fantasies about the personal life of an actress are to be considered legitimate forms of film criticism, then on what grounds do we object to reviews in the Los Angeles Times of screenplays, which likewise have a relationship to, but do not actually correspond to, what appears in a finished motion picture?
As you can probably tell, I'm bothered by the ethical implications of this kind of writing about film and celebrities. Thomson has long assumed the role of critic/stalker, a perpetual outsider who imagines himself an insider, who fantasizes himself an intimate of the people he writes about and makes few distinctions between them as movie characters, public figures, or actual human beings. It can be a fascinating approach, and (often at the same time) a horrifying and pathetic one. (I remember an insufferably smug Film Comment piece he wrote about Scorsese in the 1980s that spoke directly to "Marty" in a sophomoric way that made me mildly ill. He has written screenplays, including one -- as yet unmade -- called "Fierce Heat" that, according to his Wikipedia entry, was to have been produced by Scorsese and directed by Stephen Frears. I don't know what it's about or why it was not made [maybe I'll imagine a piece of criticism about it sometime], but Scorsese has made a movie about a Thomson-esque character before: Rupert Pupkin, in "King of Comedy.")
I've admired Thomson's criticism -- especially his indispensable "Biographical Dictionary" -- for years, but found his "journalism" (particularly his feigned "insights" into how the American entertainment business and culture works) to be superficial and largely based on speculation and wish-fulfillment. Which is why what I've read of, and about, this book has been troubling. This blurb on the Random House site about Thomson's collection, "Beneath Mulholland: Thoughts on Hollywood and Its Ghosts," nicely summarizes Thomson's fantasy approach to movies:
If most film critics write about movies, David Thomson creates their literary counterpart with essays that are as dazzling, haunting, and moving as the pictures they discuss. In this bravura new collection, the Esquire columnist trains his eye on Hollywood's ghosts, exploring their tendency to rise from the grave or descend from the screen to intimately haunt our lives.That's the nice way of looking at it, but there's another side to the coin. It's one thing to imagine alternative lives for dead people or movie characters. But does Thomson have the right to claim anyone and everyone associated with movies as his personal Plaything? What do you think? Anybody read the (whole) book yet?Thomson conjures up Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, and Cary Grant in any of the pictures where he makes every scene look like a lucky accident. With equal aplomb, he imagines a James Dean who survived the car crash and a post-Saturday Night Fever Tony Manero. We learn the "20 Things People Like to Forget About Hollywood" (Number 3: "You Are Their Playthings, Not the Other Way Around"). And on every page of Beneath Mulholland, we are educated, entertained, and enlarged by a book as savvy and incisive as any Hollywood reportage and as lyrical as the best fiction.
While reading this piece, I couldn't help but think back to what you wrote last week about "Death of a President." You say here that you are "bothered by the ethical implications of this kind of writing about film and celebrities." But is there not an ethical dilemma in depicting the murder of a sitting president and superimposing his image without his permission? While the situations are different in that Thompson writes about things as if they actually happened and "Death of a President" is a speculation on the future, it seems exploitative and wholly unappetizing to use a person's image that way.
JE: I thought of that too, Doc. That's why I wondered about the differences and similarities: "When it comes to libel law or fair use of a person's likeness, is an actress the same kind of "public figure" as an elected government official like a president?"
Yeah, Jim, I've read it. Or skimmed it, which is about as much as you need to do. You pretty much nailed it. It's not a clip job, in the sense that he interprets the films and her career through his own filter and doesn't do a straight bio, per se. I was hoping for some insight on EYES WIDE SHUT and got his whole Kubrick-horny-for-Kidman hallucination. But, to give him credit, he does recognize the genius of BIRTH, which you would appreciate. Gotta wade through a lot of critical rutting to get to that, though. I don't know whether to laugh at his baldly-stated fantasies about Kidman, or admire the fact that he got a book publisher to pony up for such a pseudo-intellectual wanking off. But any star like Kidman who's willing to shed her clothes on screen and sell her sensuality on magazine covers should never act shocked that somebody is writing about her in a lustful manner. I'm more irritated by her specious response than his schoolboy writing, frankly. In the end, he's no Henry Miller. But she's no Katharine Hepburn, either.
JE: Thanks for your take, TLRHB. I don't object to the sexual fantasies at all -- just the packaging of them as "biography," and his securing her "cooperation" with the book under false pretenses.
Hello Jim. I haven't read the book nor I think that I will ever read it.
Even though I agree with one of the comments on your post about how Nicole Kidman shouldn't be surprised with this apparently fan fiction of sorts, Im way too much concerned by the idiotic fantasy he has placed Stanley Kubrick on.
In a world where a country openly lied the world about the reasons to lead the invation of a another country (whatever the true motivations are) and 3 years after having done so even more people believe that there were indeed WMD's (or at least according to that recent Harris poll).
I just can't help but worry about this whole ridiculous picture of Kubrick turning his film Eyes Wide Shut into an excuse to witness first hand an act of oral sex being performed on Nicole Kidman by the mysterious Gary Goba (the man who played the Naval Officer and who has no other film credit on the imbd except that one) and any other Cinemax scenario that Thomoson has probably made up. Being perpetuated into some kind of urban legend thanks to the irresponsabilty of the oftenly decontextualized information provided in headlines and lead paragraphs by news services carrying the news about the book (and possible scandal).
Mr. Kubrick is dead. He can't retort this fan boy crap that undermines his muscle of work among the gossip hungry masses (maybe he wouldn't had f he were alive but the doubt is enought to lament). This could become one of those irritating myths that some people love to profess over and over again, adn therefore perpetuate(even some film school teachers).
This is not like the french documentary "Opération lune" that was sanctioned by the Kubrick state and in whcih even his widow and Jan Harlan collaborate in (and a cynical Donald Rumsfield "pretending" he's into a whole farse about cheating on the American people and the rest of the world). This Mr. Thomson has made a terrible mistake mingling the fantasized version of himself with that one of a respected artist.
Maybe in the future Kubrick will be indeed trying to make out with Kidman in 1998 while in next room Bill Gates was mailing everyone informing he wants to share his fortune with everyone who forwards his message...
ps: I do believe that DoAP is one truely questionable movie.
I have a tough time calling David Thomson a cinephile. Sometimes it seems he exists only to write about how awful movies are, and how much of a waste of time he finds them to be. He is, however, a gifted writer, and may be one of the few critics who I disagree with so completely on an ideological level, but whose writing still engages me (though only sometimes.) He's written some really irresponsible garbage before, including both the dreadful Biographical Dictionary and his ludicrous book on Orson Welles. I doubt I'll be going out of my way to read the Kidman book.
Ms. Kidman was simply clarifying the conditions and means by which the speculative biography was secured and released. Why, then, the exaggerated reaction by the poster of the second comment (Mr./Ms. tlrhb)? Perhaps he or she has a personal agenda against Ms. Kidman (as evidenced by the last sentence in the post)?
It is truly disappointing that Ms. Katharine Hepburn is popularly seen as the epitome of film acting, when there are so many actresses who are, quite frankly, better than her. I would personally include Ms. Kidman in that list. In that sense, I would agree that Ms. Kidman "is no Katharine Hepburn, either."
Don’t worry "Jim". I’d say the difference between you and Thompson is that you write intelligent articles on film and he writes his fantasies about Nicole Kidman while stroking the wig that he put on top of his Nicole Kidman cutout.
JE: We can only hope that's where he put the wig, given what he wrote. Seriously, though, Thomson can be a great writer about film. I just don't see how (to use his words) what he wrote here serves to "honor the desire."
Whether it was an essay or a book-length rumination, she did agree to talk to him, so where are the false pretenses? And I don't believe it's packaged as a bio, per se. In many ways, it is very much a packaged series of film essays, each chapter or most of them under the heading of a movie title. I don't think he did anything unethical in how he approached Kidman. And anybody who knows Thomson's work should know what to expect. I just don't believe publicists' spin from Hollywood personalities. They want to control everything, and when they can't control it, they try to deny it. If Kidman was smart, she'd laugh it off and move on. She's treated more seriously here than she is in Vanity Fair. She's just giving him more publicity to sell the book.
JE: It's the voyeurism (or movie-watching) dynamic again: Complicity runs both ways. As you say, "access" to stars is strictly controlled by the gatekeeper-publicists. And my feeling is that if they'd known he was going to be selling a book called "Nicole Kidman" based on one phone interview, they would not have set up the interview. It makes it look like Kidman was cooperating in the venture, when she didn't necessarily know what the venture was. Again, if this had been a magazine article, I'd have no qualms at all. So, Kidman got screwed by Thomson (which is what he wanted all along). I think you're right about what her response should be: Now that her "people" have made their official disavowal statement, she should just ignore it and move along. Otherwise, it does indeed begin to look like she's complicit in trying to sell the book. (Hey, maybe she and "interloper" Thomson are conspiring the way Thomson implies she and Kubrick did...)
Hmmm... Thomson's recent Kidman article in the Sunday Times was very lyrical, interesting and well-written, but these Eyes Wide Shut "anecdotes" bother me a bit. They might work in context with the rest of the book, but I'm not sure.
I'm all for stretching the art of film criticism, but Thomson could have chosen a less crooked path if he had restricted his literary fantasies to the fictive characters his beloved actors and actresses embody in their films. At least, that's what I did...
I have not read Thomson's "Nicole Kidman" biography, but I do want to speak in defense of his style, based solely on the (justly praised, in my opinion) "Biographical Dictionary", which I frequently will turn to just before going to bed (and I don't mean to imply that it creates drowsiness in its reader).
It seems to me that what Thomson frequently does in his writing about film is assume the point-of-view of the viewers' subconscious. In other words, he puts out in the open the dirty little secret that many filmgoers and (especially) film critics refuse to acknowledge...namely, that one of the primary appeals of moviegoing is identifying with movie stars and starlets, and fantasizing that we are in fact the friends (or perhaps more than that) of Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, etc.
Now, perhaps I am giving Thomson the benefit of the doubt. It's entirely possible that he is not consciously attempting to make his readers recognize their own tendency to overly-identify with movie stars (or directors). Perhaps Thomson is, as you suggested, merely a Pupkin-style fanatic with delusions of being an insider. But even if that is the case, I value his willingness to go beyond the traditional boundaries of film criticism into a new kind of artistic expression...a "reactionary" art, if you will, which is created out of his own primal reactions to movies and the actors who populate them.
I will agree with you that the inherent danger in this approach is if Thomson is misleading people into believing that what they are reading is factual rather than a (bizarre) form of creative writing. Given that his Kidman "biography" is being marketed as a straight non-fiction book, it seems as if this may in fact be the case.
Are you kids so cynical? Thomson's eternal subject is his weird, tortured love of cinema (and TV, and tabloids, and all the make-believe we've accrued into "popular culture" since the Lumiere Bros. made their big debut). Who else actually bothers to write what they think about nearly everyone in film history?
His meditations on "Eyes Wide Shut" are easily misunderstood if you haven't read the book - he paints the making of the movie as the defining shift in the Kidman/Cruise relationship (and the moment before Kidman became Kidman), and it's a ludicrous theory until you realize it was 2 years of strenuous overrehearsal and reshooting and mind games from Master Kubrick, many long days of near or complete nudity, and the Brit tabloids going wild the whole time with gay rumors, infidelity rumors, countless others. His analysis of the film very nearly made me want to watch it again - even when he hates a movie, he makes it sound grand.
"Nicole Kidman" isn't Thomson's best work by far (the bits with his "imagined" movies aren't nearly as clever as he thinks), but it's a damned fascinating treatise on voyeurism. Jim, your cheap shot about Thomson screwing Kidman misses the point - he doesn't want to have sex with the real Nicole Kidman, so much as screw the public persona, the angel/whore from Moulin Rouge and To Die For. Who wouldn't want to screw a movie star? It's just that Thomson actually writes about it, and writes beautifully. He's weird, but I think his point is, we're all pretty weird, spending hours of living in the dark with the movies.
JE: You're absolutely right about it being the image of Nicole Kidman that Thomson wants to possess (in every way). That's an essential component in the appeal of movies, and that's what I was getting at in my first and last paragraphs, about Thomson treating these images as his personal playthings. (If I may indulge in a bit of Thomsonian speculation: Perhaps his masochistic fear/fantasy is that Kidman will emasculate him as she does Tom Cruise's character in "Eyes Wide Shut." As Slavoj Zizek points out, the moment a fantasy is enacted the illusion that keeps it imaginatively alive is destroyed, and that can be excruciating.)
So, I do understand and respect the difference between image and actuality (whether Thomson does in his prose or not, which I think is arguable) -- and sometimes I think it makes for some provocative writing. My ethical objection is to the mixing of fantasy with biography, of treating the Nicole Kidman who exists independently of his imagination as if she were his creation, and of soliciting her cooperation in a phone interview without telling her he was going to be using it for a biography, a book with her face on the cover and her name for the title. We can, and should, talk about the idea/image of movie stars, but let's not pretend that our sexual fantasies about them constitute a biography of THEM. I suggest Thomson's book might be better titled: "Nicole Kidman: An Autobiography by David Thomson."
Alex,
You make an interesting point, though I have to ask who exactly has "praised" Thomson's "Biographical Dictionary?" I've always been under the impression it was the bad joke or the Billy Carter/Roger Clinton of film criticism.
The point I find interesting though regards the claim that "one of the primary appeals of moviegoing is identifying with movie stars and starlets, and fantasizing that we are in fact the friends (or perhaps more than that) of Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, etc."
I think this describes Thomson's approach (or at least one of his focuses) fairly well. Perhaps it also describes why, outside of admiration for his writing style, he holds little interest for me.
I have never "identified" with stars, cared about being their friends, hanging out with them or, in any way shape or form, getting to know them. In fact, I have repeatedly turned down offers to interview actors/actresses (admittedly, few "big" stars) in favor of interviewing directors, writers, editors, etc. At Toronto last week, I was much more focused on meeting with a few critics rather than any stars. OK, even I admit that's weird.
There are actors I like, but nobody I've ever developed a fantasy relationship with or would want to. Directors? OK, I admit I've always thought it would be cool to hang out with Werner Herzog. And, now that I think about it, I sure would have liked to meet Klaus Kinski. But then agree I probably wouldn't have wanted to.
So does Thomson appeal mostly to readers who share this star-fascination? It's an interesting question, and I hadn't quite thought about Thomson in that light before.
Excellent, thought-provoking piece. I have always loved Thomson's writing, but I join others in finding this all a little embarrassing and unworthy of him -- as though someone had found his diary and published it.
It's not objectionable per se, as long as it is clearly sold as the fantasies of a film critic (perhaps for the nanny he never had), rather than an actual non-fiction examination of Kidman's work. I also find it a little sad, and evidence of very poor judgment on Thomson's part -- at least, if he values his reputation.
In response to Christopher Long...I didn't mean to indicate that EVERYONE necessarily fantasizes about being close/intimate with movie stars (to be honest, I rarely do...although I've always wanted to meet Steven Spielberg), but it is certainly one of the primary appeals that has made movies so successful a medium.
How else to explain the general public's fascination with the latest "Brangelina" developments at the same time they ignore the reprehensible tone and implications of their sole cinematic collaboration, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith".
I don't know why something like this bothers you. Whether or not it's actually a true biograhy people are usually going to read a book about movies not for facts but for entertainment value, whatever might be written. Even if it's not actually a biography and it's well written then you can appreciate it just for that.