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Hi transcendent1, I love your posts except...

Along similar lines... Monte Hellman at the National Film Theatre (as was) in London in 1995, being interviewed during a retrospective of most of his films. But not all... The interviewer politely skipped over one of the titles in his filmography but I was less discreet and asked him how he came to direct Silent Night Deadly Night III...

To be fair, I didn't say the film sucked - I hadn't, and haven't, seen it. He said he'd made the film as a favour to a friend.

transcendent1 wrote:Would you like it if someone said that about *your* films?

Come on.

Depends on whether you're talking to Aki Kaurismäki or not.

Talking of which, has any interviewer ever started an interview with Kaurismäki by slagging off one of his films? Given Kaurismäki's famously self-deprecating attitude towards his work, it would seem like an obvious strategy, but I can't honestly recall an example.

GaryC wrote:Along similar lines... Monte Hellman at the National Film Theatre (as was) in London in 1995, being interviewed during a retrospective of most of his films. But not all... The interviewer politely skipped over one of the titles in his filmography but I was less discreet and asked him how he came to direct Silent Night Deadly Night III...

To be fair, I didn't say the film sucked - I hadn't, and haven't, seen it. He said he'd made the film as a favour to a friend.

He's fairly open and proud about the film (he still calls it his best work), so I don't think there was any need to skirt around questions about it.