Elia Kazan

"It’s the best show business book that I’ve read. It’s brilliantly written and it’s about a brilliant director who was very meaningful to me when I was growing up and becoming a filmmaker. Schickel understands Kazan; he understands Tennessee Williams; he understands Marlon Brando; he understands A Streetcar Named Desire . He writes with great historical knowledge, insight and liveliness. Show business books are usually not worth reading. They’re just silly and shallow. But this is a fabulous book. I’m a great compartmentaliser. I always feel one has nothing to do with the other. You can watch Triumph of the Will – it’s a magnificent work of art – and you can still hate Leni Riefenstahl because she was a Nazi. You can listen to Wagner’s music – it’s magnificent, and he was a terrible person. The same thing is true here. I’m not saying Kazan was a terrible person. Those issues were extremely complex and the easiest thing to do was just to remove yourself and self-righteously make criticisms. Some of those criticisms might be very justified when you argue them out, I don’t know. That’s a different argument. But the films that he did, the plays that he did – his creative work was wonderful. Whatever you think of Kazan politically, it has nothing to do with the fact that the guy was a great director."