Arthur Penn is dead

[Randy Twizzle]

New York Times obit

[medjuck]

I was at that premiere of Bonnie and Clyde that they mention in the obit. The reception was tumultuous. The next day I got to interview Penn for the cover story of a magazine I was helping to edit. He was very articulate and spoke in complete sentences (most of us don't) so much so that we took out my questions and ran it (with his permission, I think) as if it were an article he'd written. I also interviewed him on the set of Alice's' Restaurant but don't remember much about it except that he told me his next film would be Little Big Man.

[AllenLowe]

I like Little Big Man, and tend to think that Bonnie and Clyde has not aged well - I also remember The Left Handed Gun, Paul Newman as Billy the Kid, in which he OD's on The Method. Fun movie, though.

[brownie]

Liked Penn's early films (including The Left-Handed Gun and The Miracle Worker).

Most of his films after Bonnie and Clyde left me somehow disappointed!

Edited September 30, 2010 by brownie

[AllenLowe]

Night Moves was a dud. Forgot about Miracle Worker, a good flic.

[P.L.M]

NIGHT MOVE is a great film, one of this best. He was doing an action/ film noir, and he was playing mostly on "the dead" and contemplative moments. He was opening the way to a new generation of Film Noir, mostly done by european director on both sides of Atlantic. The film had some sublime dialog (Gene Hackman speaking of Nouvelle Vague films he has seen, and saying "I've seen once a film of Eric Rohmer and it was like looking at a painting getting dry". No surprise than Ingmar Bergman has said of him than he was one of the american cineast he admires the most.

I had the pleasure to interview him in 1986 at the Cannes Film Festival where he was showing some reels of his movie to come (with Hackman and Matt Dillon don't remember the title).

It was a nice man, so sweet and, like it have been said, articulate. I could understand everything he was saying. Very interesting as a person and as a film analyst. He knows, deeply inside of him at this time, than his great years was behind him, but he wasn't bitter and was very interesting by what was going in the cinema of the time.

At the end of the interview we ran in Emir Kusturica who was totally unknow at the time and who had just presented is second movie "Dad is on Bussiness travel" (translation of the title. I don't know what could be the english title)in competition. I had interview Kusturica few days before and we get alone well, particularly when we start to speak about football (soccer). So, I presented Kusturica to Arthur Penn and Penn to Kusturica. Kusturica was petrified. He says in his bad english (worst than mine) to Arthur Penn "your films have save my life. To see them was to escape from our jailed country" or something like that. Of course nobody of us know at this moment that Emir was going to win the Palme d'Or few days later and that the Yougoslavia was going to explode throught a terrible ethnic war.

Edited October 3, 2010 by P.L.M

[AllenLowe]

gotta disagree on Night Moves, which was really a case of ambition over ability.

[P.L.M]

gotta disagree on Night Moves, which was really a case of ambition over ability.

Your taste, not mine.