The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

46 Bill Condon
And then there’s a little of that with Liam Neeson in Kinsey. Liam Neeson,
who famously knows his way with the ladies, having this disastrous first
sexual encounter. And so it’s weird how certain things and little moments
work their way in and you’re not even aware of it.
It’s filled with moments that I love. I love that Michael J. Pollard’s father,
Dub Taylor, the actor, keeps hitting him because of the tattoos. That’s a very
’60s thing, but that’s a ’60s idea that is grounded in the reality of the time,
too. That’s when it’s done well. I would say probably the scenes that I keep
coming back to are the scenes between Bonnie and Clyde. There’s great fun
with everything else, and Gene Hackman is amazing and Estelle Parsons
does great stuff. But every time that they’re in that bedroom together and
trying to figure out this weird family that they’ve created, those seem to be
the best. Maybe it is that scene where we’re finally so deep into the movie
and he’s comforting her and it finally looks like they’re gonna get it on and
he still can’t do it. That seems, I don’t know, “favorite” seems like an odd
word for that, but it is one of the most powerful.
Have you ever met anybody connected with the film?
Condon: Actually, I was at the SAG Awards the other day with Laura Linney,
and I met Warren Beatty and we talked about Shampoo because we were
talking about Kinsey. We didn’t talk about Bonnie and Clyde. The latter part of
Kinsey is about this sexual experiment where Kinsey tries to create these open
marriages and sort of environment where people can have sex without consequence,
and there’s the sense that Shampoo deals with similar ideas.
Did you ever think about how your life might have been different if you
hadn’t seen the film when you saw it? Would you still be a director?
Condon: That’s a good question. It’s hard to know, but I think the way I’ve
probably described this before is that Bonnie and Clyde led to two things—a
love of movies at a fortunate moment when movies were really interesting,
and also a love of writing about movies, because Bonnie and Clyde was written
about so much. And that’s what kind of ultimately pointed me in the
direction of making movies as opposed to theater.