1. On dedication to work as an attempt to understand oneself: This is a theme I think tackled well in the film 'Adaptation' (Charlie Kaufman). What is elaborated in that film is that obsession has this recursive, gravitational pull: a journalist becomes obsessed with deconstructing the root of obsession of an orchid thief; she craves deeply to know and understand what it feels like to be obsessed with something. A film maker becomes obsessed with his portrayal of the journalist and the orchid thief. We cannot see the end to the recursion which is what it makes its gravity so strong. We are all achingly looking for something to get lost in (to disappear, as you say), and if we are lucky, find the looking is what gets us lost.
2. Re this: "Max tells his interviewee that his goal is to make people think on their feet. He wants hits interviewees to join him in a different place from their usual talking points.4 And he’s remarkably effective at this." - Henrik's essay on Werner Herzog's interview style elaborates on this point well:
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The interview starts with the Reverend talking about how the Lord works in mysterious ways, and so on—polished clichés. You notice that Herzog is trying different prompts to get him to open up. Nothing works. The Reveren keeps repeating things he’s said before—words that protect him from his thoughts, that allow him to perform the role of Reverend, instead of being what he is: a man named Lopez, who will soon have to feel a man go stiff under his hand.
At one point, the Reverend Lopez, as a part of a monologue about the beauty of God’s creation, mentions that he sometimes meditates on the beauty of the squirrels he sees on the golf course. Herzog says: “Please describe an encounter with a squirrel.”
Lopez is a bit surprised by the question, but he takes it in a playful spirit—his voice lifts, joyously. He starts to talk faster. He is no longer saying versions of things he has said before, he’s not a facade, he’s just there. The entire interview has changed into an open human drama.
You’ve sold me on watching Adaptation! Gravitational pull is a great way of putting it—I usually think about this kind of obsession as something you don’t really have a choice in, if you happen to find it (and that is somehow fundamentally mysterious to you).
Also love “open human drama” — I feel like the tricky thing is trying _too_ hard to get someone to open up or approaching an interview with that sole goal in mind is (ironically) inauthentic, and I wonder if Herzog happened to fall into asking something he really wanted to know that was also interesting to the Reverend
Great read! Doing 70+ interviews will certainly result in having some insight into this stuff.
I think a lot of this can be boiled down to saying an interview should feel like a real conversation that is interesting to listen in on even while you cannot participate in it. If the interviewer is mostly absent, it's no longer really an interview, is it? But there are nuances here - who are your hypothetical listeners? What will they find interesting?
That's why I think the idea that "Everything I’m saying assumes that an interviewer is doing their level best to be extremely prepared for an interview, which hopefully doesn’t need to be said" should not always be true. If you really want to do a super deep dive into the details of someone's work, yes, this make sense. But if you want to provide an overview, going in with surface level knowledge and just a rough plan of attack can be good, in the sense that you are put in the position of the listener, and must actually think on your feet instead of trying to queue up the next question you've thought up before.
At the end, it's more art than science, even if there are rules of thumb and some wisdom that can be garnered by listening to the greats.
Fair enough! Agree that it’s not a science. I still find a lot of value in looking at patterns in the interviews I really like, and the ones I really like (and want to produce) demand prep 🙂
1. On dedication to work as an attempt to understand oneself: This is a theme I think tackled well in the film 'Adaptation' (Charlie Kaufman). What is elaborated in that film is that obsession has this recursive, gravitational pull: a journalist becomes obsessed with deconstructing the root of obsession of an orchid thief; she craves deeply to know and understand what it feels like to be obsessed with something. A film maker becomes obsessed with his portrayal of the journalist and the orchid thief. We cannot see the end to the recursion which is what it makes its gravity so strong. We are all achingly looking for something to get lost in (to disappear, as you say), and if we are lucky, find the looking is what gets us lost.
2. Re this: "Max tells his interviewee that his goal is to make people think on their feet. He wants hits interviewees to join him in a different place from their usual talking points.4 And he’s remarkably effective at this." - Henrik's essay on Werner Herzog's interview style elaborates on this point well:
///
The interview starts with the Reverend talking about how the Lord works in mysterious ways, and so on—polished clichés. You notice that Herzog is trying different prompts to get him to open up. Nothing works. The Reveren keeps repeating things he’s said before—words that protect him from his thoughts, that allow him to perform the role of Reverend, instead of being what he is: a man named Lopez, who will soon have to feel a man go stiff under his hand.
At one point, the Reverend Lopez, as a part of a monologue about the beauty of God’s creation, mentions that he sometimes meditates on the beauty of the squirrels he sees on the golf course. Herzog says: “Please describe an encounter with a squirrel.”
Lopez is a bit surprised by the question, but he takes it in a playful spirit—his voice lifts, joyously. He starts to talk faster. He is no longer saying versions of things he has said before, he’s not a facade, he’s just there. The entire interview has changed into an open human drama.
///
You’ve sold me on watching Adaptation! Gravitational pull is a great way of putting it—I usually think about this kind of obsession as something you don’t really have a choice in, if you happen to find it (and that is somehow fundamentally mysterious to you).
Also love “open human drama” — I feel like the tricky thing is trying _too_ hard to get someone to open up or approaching an interview with that sole goal in mind is (ironically) inauthentic, and I wonder if Herzog happened to fall into asking something he really wanted to know that was also interesting to the Reverend
Great read! Doing 70+ interviews will certainly result in having some insight into this stuff.
I think a lot of this can be boiled down to saying an interview should feel like a real conversation that is interesting to listen in on even while you cannot participate in it. If the interviewer is mostly absent, it's no longer really an interview, is it? But there are nuances here - who are your hypothetical listeners? What will they find interesting?
That's why I think the idea that "Everything I’m saying assumes that an interviewer is doing their level best to be extremely prepared for an interview, which hopefully doesn’t need to be said" should not always be true. If you really want to do a super deep dive into the details of someone's work, yes, this make sense. But if you want to provide an overview, going in with surface level knowledge and just a rough plan of attack can be good, in the sense that you are put in the position of the listener, and must actually think on your feet instead of trying to queue up the next question you've thought up before.
At the end, it's more art than science, even if there are rules of thumb and some wisdom that can be garnered by listening to the greats.
Fair enough! Agree that it’s not a science. I still find a lot of value in looking at patterns in the interviews I really like, and the ones I really like (and want to produce) demand prep 🙂
thank you for writing this 💐
Thank you for reading! 🙏