David Thomson is a revered British writer on film —a critic, historian and author of more than 40 books — who has been described by the Los Angeles Times as “without doubt, the greatest living film historian”; by the New York Times as “among the most ardent cinephiles of the past half-century… sometimes, his books deliver greater pleasures than the multiplex”; and by The Atlantic as the writer of “the most fun and enthralling prose about the movies since Pauline Kael.”
Thomson is best known for a giant tome that was first published in 1975 under the title A Biographical Dictionary of the Cinema, and that was updated and reissued five times since, most recently in 2014, as The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. In it, he profiles a wide array of figures from across film history — from household names like Cary Grant and Julia Roberts to behind-the-scenes masters like graphic artist Saul Bass and film editor and sound designer Walter Murch— with not just facts but also opinions, which are often contrarian and always thought-provoking.
The Biographical Dictionary was selected, in a 2023 survey of film industry heavyweights conducted by THR, as one of the 100 greatest film books of all time, and in a 2010 poll of critics and writers coordinated by Sight and Sound as the single best film book of all time. The late film critic Roger Ebert once declared that it “does the best job in the fewest words of capturing the essence of its hundreds of subjects,” and the award-winning author Geoff Dyer has described it as “not only an indispensable book about cinema, but one of the most absurdly ambitious literary achievements of our time.”
Thomson’s latest book, A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies, was published by Simon & Schuster on Tuesday and became an instant bestseller on Amazon. In it, the former Dartmouth College professor dissects the evolution of the medium and provocatively arguesthat the glorification of anti-heroes on screens big and small over the course of the past century — from Citizen Kane’s Charles Foster Kane to the Corleones of the Godfather films to the most memorable figures of Peak TV, such as The Sopranos’ Tony Soprano and Breaking Bad’s Walter White— helped to pave the way for the presidency of Donald Trump and other assorted global problems.
On this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, the 85-year-old, speaking via Zoom from his home in San Francisco, reflected on how a humiliating childhood stammer sparked a fascination with language and a desire to express his views; how he wound up being asked to write a book for the first time, which became 1967’s Movie Man, and how the first edition of the Biographical Dictionary took shape just a few years later; why, of all his books, he is proudest of a trilogy that he wrote that blended fact and fiction; why, in recent years, his books have tended to focus on the impact of movies on those who watch them; plus much more.
You can listen to the full conversation via the audio player atop this post or any major podcast app; or you can read memorable excerpts, some lightly edited for clarity and/or brevity, below.
On how a humiliating childhood stammer sparked a fascination with language and a desire to express his views…
“The stammer was easily the single most distressing thing about my childhood… I was barely able to say a word, and I felt tremendous embarrassment about that, and a sort of shame… It made me very angry because there were things I wanted to say… I do think that that triggered a love of language and an urge to speak out. And although once upon a time I had dreamed of being an actor, the stammer was bad enough that I internalized speech. I do think that it was a tremendous sort of energy that drove me towards writing.”
On being asked to write a book for the first time, which became 1967’s Movie Man…
“I was in publishing. I had a friend at another publishing house who had talked to me and knew how interested in film I was. And he said, ‘Would you look at a manuscript we’ve just had submitted about film and give us a report on it?’ I gave a report on it and nothing happened. But then about two months later, the same guy called me and said, ‘We were looking at your report and we just got the idea that maybe you could write a book about film.’ I had not dreamed of writing a book before then.”
On the backstory of the Biographical Dictionary…
“The idea was initially to have an encyclopedia, and there would be entries on technical terms, on national cinemas and on leading figures. It was reckoned to be a big book in terms of length, and I went away and started writing it — and I found that I was sort of carried away by writing the biographical entries on people, and I wasn’t doing the other parts of the book. I showed what I had to the publisher and said, ‘I don’t know whether you’ll approve of what I’ve been doing.’ They looked at it and they said, ‘Yes, we do approve. Go on like that.’ So it became a book of biographical sketches of directors, actors, actresses, producers, writers and a few other people… Over the years and six editions, which is what the book has had now, it became recognized as a provocative but useful and stimulating book. And it’s certainly the best-selling book I’ve ever had.”
On why there will not be further editions of the Biographical Dictionary…
“The book, in its latest form, might be twice as long as the first edition. It had grown enormously… It’s over a thousand pages now, and to keep going at that rate, it would be hard to bind and hold in the hand. In other words, there would have to have been two volumes. And I think that alarmed publishers, and for good reason… The book got sort of outdated technologically, as a form. And Knopf, the publisher of the book over here [in the United States], reached a point where they said, ‘We’re not sure it’s economically viable to go on making this book bigger and bigger and bigger, when already most of the people who would be potential buyers for the book have one edition, or maybe two or even three, because they’ve been keeping up.’ So they came to the decision, which sort of pained me at the time, that no, they would not do a seventh edition. That meant that I was able to stop making notes in the way I had been. And I now see, which maybe they saw and didn’t really want to tell me, that I was getting to be a little too old for the labor, which was fairly intense. So I was sort of freed from it, in a way. And there will not be another edition.”
On his trilogy of metafiction — 1985’s Suspects, 1990’s Silver Light and 2023’s Connecticut— of which he is prouder than any of his other books…
“A publisher came to me after the Dictionary appeared and said they loved the format of biographical sketches… and they said, ‘What about a dictionary of characters from films?’ I loved the idea and I thought about it and I said, ‘I think that could be terrific, but I don’t think you can mix genres. I think the whole book would have to be characters from one genre or another.’ And film noir was the obvious one to start with. So I proposed a book that would be, let’s say, a hundred characters from film noir, and I would write a biographical sketch that included what we know about the character from the films they’re in, but would also go back beforehand and then afterwards so that you would tell the story of a character as if the movie was just one part of that life, and that turned into Suspects. It’s now called a metafiction, but as I was doing it it seemed to me that it was fiction, but a kind of film commentary that got at what the films were most about. That was a turning point for me because I discovered, by doing it, a genre that was me: the absolute confusion of fact and fiction. And over the years, I have done two more books, Silver Light, which is the western, and Connecticut, which is the screwball comedy. I do feel that those are the trilogy of books that I would offer for the best I’ve done and probably will ever do.”
On his controversial 2006 book Nicole Kidman…
“It was trying to get at who she is and what she had done, but also about what she meant as an iconic figure. And this book was done a while ago, when she was still a young woman. She’s gone on to a middle-aged career, and obviously she’s going to become an old lady, and she’s interesting enough and smart enough to make those periods as interesting as when she was a very young, very hot, sexy woman. I’m not saying she isn’t sexy still. But I did get a lot of flak for it, and teasing, based upon the idea that I had a great crush on her. I liked her very much. But I don’t think I had a crush on her. Not that I don’t have crushes on people.”
On how screen antiheroes helped to pave the way for the presidency of Donald Trump…
“There is something dreadful about The Godfather. It’s, let us say, one of the best-made films ever. It did hugely well at the box office. It won prizes, deservedly so. But it is about a shaming fantasy. The guys who watch it —and it’s really a guys’ film —want to be in that gang. They find the security and the companionship so attractive and so appealing that they dream of being Corleones. And I think that is a terribly dangerous situation. And I’ve been prompted particularly in this line of thought by the realization that we have a president [Trump] who clearly, in my view, is acting as if he’s in a movie, and it’s like a version of The Godfather — I mean, it is the emperor as a gangster. And I don’t think that process is one that film buffs can simply write off. I think it’s in the nature of the medium.”
On his current feelings about film versus television…
“We’re kidding ourselves if we don’t understand that Ozark or Babylon Berlin or any of those long form series are movies. They’re like old-fashioned serials — you follow them for 40, 50, 60 hours. We found a way of making films that virtually go on forever, and the audience loves them… You can’t think of making a list of the great American movies of the last 30 years without including The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Ozark and several others. They are the great works. They’re beautifully made in the way in which they’re shot and acted and written —very high quality work —and they’re about the real country in a way that the movies simply don’t match these days. A time came where, for me, it became increasingly clear that what was being shown on my television screen was actually more compelling than what was being shown on movie screens, and that it was silly not to take account of that and recognize it. So I have spent more and more time watching those things and writing about them. I think they’re central to the modern experience.”
On how he manages to be such a prolific writer…
“I don’t sleep very much, which is a problem, but it gives me more time. And also, for decades now, I have had issues of depression —manic depression —and nothing treats them better than writing. Composing, for me, is not just composing a sentence or a book, it’s composing myself, my inner-self. So I do it to stay well and to stay alive, really. There’s something profoundly organic about it for me. I have to write. And really, if I don’t write for two days in a row, I get very edgy, and I’m likely to get very depressed.”
On the subject of the book he’s writing now…
“Mickey Mouse.”