{"product_id":"james-ivory-in-conversation-how-merchant-ivory-makes-its-movies-9780520234154","title":"James Ivory in Conversation: How Merchant Ivory Makes Its Movies","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJames Ivory in Conversation: How Merchant Ivory Makes Its Movies\u003c\/strong\u003e by Long, Robert Emmet. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780520234154.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJames Ivory in Conversation is an exclusive series of interviews with a director known for the international scope of his filmmaking on several continents. Three-time Academy Award nominee for best director, responsible for such film classics as A Room with a View and The Remains of the Day, Ivory speaks with remarkable candor and wit about his more than forty years as an independent filmmaker. In this deeply engaging book, he comments on the many aspects of his world-traveling career: his growing up in Oregon (he is not an Englishman, as most Europeans and many Americans think), his early involvement with documentary films that first brought attention to him, his discovery of India, his friendships with celebrated figures here and abroad, his skirmishes with the Picasso family and Thomas Jefferson scholars, his usually candid yet at times explosive relations with actors. Supported by seventy illuminating photographs selected by Ivory himself, the book offers a wealth of previously unavailable information about the directors life and the art of making movies.\n\nJames Ivory on:\n\nOn the Merchant Ivory Jhabvala partnership:\n\n\"Ive always said that Merchant Ivory is a bit like the U. S. Govenment; Im the President, Ismail is the Congress, and Ruth is the Supreme Court. Though Ismail and I disagree sometimes, Ruth acts as a referee, or she and I may gang up on him, or vice versa. The main thing is, no one ever truly interferes in the area of work of the other.\"\n\nOn Shooting Mr. and Mrs. Bridge:\n\n\"Who told you we had long 18 hour days? We had a regular schedule, not at all rushed, worked regular hours and had regular two-day weekends, during which the crew shopped in the excellent malls of Kansas City, Paul Newman raced cars somewhere, unknown to us and the insurance company, and I lay on a couch reading The Remains of the Day.\"\n\nOn Jessica Tandy as Miss Birdseye in The Bostonians:\n\n\"Jessica Tandy was seventy-two or something, and she felt she had to play being an old woman, to act an old woman. Unfortunately, Icouldnt say to her, You dont have to act this, just be, that will be sufficient. You cant tell the former Blanche Du Bois that shes an old woman now.\"\n\nOn Adapting E. M. Forsters novels\n\n\"His was a very pleasing voice, and it was easy to follow. Why turn his books into films unless you want to do that? But I suppose my voice was there, too; it was a kind of duet, you could say, and he provided the melody.\"\n\nOn India:\n\n\"If you see my Indian movies then you get some idea of what it was that attracted me about India and Indians...any explanation would sound lamer than the thing warrants. The mood was so great and overwhelming that any explanation of it would seem physically thin....I put all my feeling about India into several Indian films, and if you know those films and like them, you see from these films what it was that attracted me to India.\"\n\nOn whether he was influenced by Renoir in filming A Room with a View\n\n\"I was certainly not influenced by Renoir in that film. But if you put some good looking women in long white dresses in a field dotted with red poppies, andtheyre holding parasols, then people will say, ‘Renoir.’\"\n\nOn the Critics:\n\n\"I came to believe that to have a powerful enemy like Pauline Kael only made me stronger. You know, like a kind of voodoo. I wonder if it worked that way in those days for any of her other victims―Woody Allen, for instance, or Stanley Kubrick.\"\n\nOn Andy Warhol as a dinner guest:\n\n“I met him many times over the last twenty years of his life, but I cant say I knew him, which is what most people say, even those who were his intimates. Once he came to dinner with a group of his Factory friends at my apartment. I remember that he or someone else left a dirty plate, with chicken bones and knife and fork, in my bathroom wash basin. It seemed to be a symbolic gesture, to be a matter of style, and not just bad manners.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"University of California Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44987089584181,"sku":"ByrdShop_0520234154","price":66.44,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780520234154_0fe90174-d4e9-4c02-bd84-1049109da468.jpg?v=1778825924","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/james-ivory-in-conversation-how-merchant-ivory-makes-its-movies-9780520234154","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}