Any Fool Can Write A Novel But

In The Past We Have Always Assumed That The External World Around Us Has Represented Reality, However Confusing Or Uncertain, And That The Inner World Of Our Minds, Its Dreams, Hopes, Ambitions, Represented The Realm Of Fantasy, And The Imagination. These Roles, It Seems To Me, Have Been Reversed. The Most Prudent And Effective Method Of Dealing With The World Around Us Is To Assume That It Is A Complete Fiction - Conversely, The One Small Node Of Reality Left To Us Is Inside Of Our Own Heads.

The Surrealists, And The Modern Movement In Painting As A Whole, Seemed To Offer A Key To The Strange Postwar World With Its Threat Of Nuclear War. The Dislocations And Ambiguities, In Cubism And Abstract Art As Well As The Surrealists, Reminded Me Of My Childhood In Shanghai.

The American Dream Has Run Out Of Gas. The Car Has Stopped. It No Longer Supplies The World With Its Images, Its Dreams, Its Fantasies. No More. It's Over. It Supplies The World With Its Nightmares Now: The Kennedy Assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.

It Seems To Me That What Most Of Us Have To Fear For The Future Is Not That Something Terrible Is Going To Happen, But Rather That Nothing Is Going To Happen... I Could Sum Up The Future In One Word, And That Word Is Boring. The Future Is Going To Be Boring.

Films, Like Memories, Seem To Re-shoot Themselves Over The Years, Reflecting Our Latest Needs And Obsessions. In Many Cases They Can Change Completely, And Reveal Unexpected Depths And Shallows. Will Four Weddings And A Funeral Be Seen One Day As A Vicious Social Satire? Could Jaws Become As Tearful And Sentimental As Bambi?