Reading at the movies

Every now and then, English and comparative literature professor Michael Wood sprinkles his love of movies into his courses. What his students may not know is that outside of the lecture hall, film critique takes a more prominent role in Wood’s life. Aside from teaching, he also works as a contributor for journals such as the “London Review of Books,” where he writes his latest thoughts on film and literature. The Daily Princetonian catches up with Professor Wood as he discusses everything from his favorite directors to teaching a class.

Q: How and why did you decide to become a professor at Princeton?

A: I always knew that I wanted to do something with writing and language, but I didn’t know what that would be. I did stay at Cambridge University to do a Ph.D., but even when I was doing a Ph.D. I had not decided to become a professor. I thought it was a possibility, but I also thought of becoming a journalist. I also thought about working in TV, and I also thought about being a diplomat. When I finished my Ph.D., I was still thinking about those three things … Since then, I’ve been able to be both a journalist and a professor.

Q: When did you first get interested in film?

A: I had been interested in Westerns when I was a kid, before I went to college. At that point, I wasn’t particularly interested in film as art. I had never seen an art film. Then, towards 1959—60, I think it wasn’t just me — I think a whole generation of people got interested in art film. They started thinking, “There is something else apart from Hollywood movies.” They started thinking that movies had directors, and the directors were really responsible for putting things together. It was a time when there were a lot of great movies being made by amazing directors of all kinds.

Q:What is it like writing about contemporary popular films versus classic films?

A:I think it’s easier to write about the classics than it is to write about pop culture. I’m not sure we’ve even learned yet how to write about pop culture; I think it’s quite hard to do — to write about it intelligently. There was a time when a lot of people interested in theory moved from high-brow classics to popular culture, but they just used the same instruments. They weren’t sensitive to what pop culture was doing that was different from classics.

Q:Do you try to keep up with pop culture films?

A:I try to keep up with new films, as many as possible. But there is a kind of popular culture — all the movies about high school baseball or teen movies — I don’t really keep up with them. And I couldn’t bring myself to keep up with the “Twilight” series.

Q:What is your opinion of the Academy Awards? Do you think they’re a good gauge of a film’s quality or success?

A:No, they’re not good. They’re fun, I think. It’s members of the Academy, it’s not quite the public, it’s not the industry itself. It’s a kind of insider world. It tells us something about what people like.

Q:What do you look for in a good film?

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

A:Something has got to be going on visually always. It can’t just be storytelling. There’s got to be something that will catch your eye and make you think in a graphic way. And then some kind of exploration. A film has to define what it’s exploring, and then take us along with it … They’re either trying to find something new to do with the medium, or they’re trying to find something to do with the narrative, or they’re trying to find some way of thinking about the mind that hasn’t been used before.

I liked “Inception” — I thought it was in a way too clever and it got lost. I saw it, and then I didn’t like it all that much. And then I was on a “10 Best Films” jury, and I saw a lot of films. And the more films I saw, the better “Inception” got. It was intelligent, it was going somewhere, it was up to something and it was using the medium in ways that were interesting.

Q:What was your pick for Best Picture for the Academy Awards?

A:I thought “The King’s Speech” was okay, I didn’t think it was great. The one I liked best was “Winter’s Bone.” And I like “True Grit,” too. I thought “The Kids Are Alright” was alright, but not great, and I thought “Black Swan” was just dire. It was just appalling. I liked “The Social Network” — I thought it should have won more Oscars than it did. Even if it had been “Hollywood-ized” in a certain way to make it sentimental. A great story about a lonely genius, who, if his girlfriend had been nicer to him, wouldn’t have made Facebook.

Q:How do you go about teaching a class on two different mediums? What do you find valuable about learning film and print together?

A:Film teaches you how to watch. You can watch closely and you know you’re seeing things … But we’re in the habit of using print for other purposes, so we’re not used to reading print in that way. So I do think you can learn to read books better by watching movies.

Q:Do you have a favorite director?

A:If I just had to name one, I would say Luis Bunuel. But there’s a lot of directors whose work I like. I like [Jean-Luc] Godard a lot as well. I like David Lynch, too. I did like Jonathan Demme a lot at one point, but he hasn’t made a good movie in years.

Q:What do you do when you aren’t working?

A:I play music and read at the same time. I play music all the time, both jazz and classical. I watch movies even when I’m not working. It’s quite hard when you teach and also write reviews in journalism to do anything else. It’s true that everything is fun, so even work is a kind of play. But the boundaries between play and work are not quite what they would be … We all wish we had a little more time for sheer pleasure. On the other hand, we’re grateful that most of what we do for work is also pleasure.

Q:You have studied French, German and Spanish. Do you have a favorite language to read or work in?

A:I like Spanish the best, because I’ve never learned it properly. I learned French and German in school, in a university, and I got a Ph.D. in French. So I’m supposed to know French and German. But Spanish I learned on my own, and I’m married to a Mexican so I speak Spanish at home. I think I probably make more mistakes in Spanish than I do in French or German, but I also feel more fluent. I feel at home.

Q:Do you have any ideas for classes you want to teach in the future?

A:I’d like to teach more film courses or to use film in other ways. I taught a graduate course a few years ago about narrative. The theoretical works are all books, but the objects of study were all films. I’d also like to teach a course on a particular filmmaker and follow their work. Like Bunuel, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock; someone like that.

Q:If you could have any job in the world other than what you do, what would it be?

A:If you asked me that question a few years ago, I would have been a veterinarian. Now I would say I would still be an academic, but I would probably be a philosopher.

Q:What is one interesting fact about yourself that someone wouldn’t think to ask you about?

A:Well one thing is that I wrote screenplays for two or three movies. Several movies never got made, but two of them did. (This was in England in the ’60s.) One was a short fiction film, about a half hour, called “Scene Nun, Take One.” It had Susannah York in the movie, and she just died actually … The second one was called “Praise Marx and Pass the Ammunition.” It was done in ’68 and it was about 1968 in Paris. The chief actor was John Thaw, the guy who plays Inspector Morse in the English series … The director of both these movies was a man called Maurice Hatton ... At the time we were so influenced by the French — by [Francois] Truffaut and Godard — essentially you could think the first one was sub-Truffaut and the second one was sub-Godard.

Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Lisa Han.