SimpleWeblog

Movie Review: No Maps for These Territories (Neale)

This movie is simply an interview with William Gibson, one of my favorite authors, while he is sitting in the backseat of the car. Apparently they thought this might be too boring, so they intercut lots of visual images and included a few people reading from his works (Bono is a William Gibson fan?) and talking about him. I thought this was overdone most of the time - he had enough interesting things to say that you didn't need to rely on the gimmicks.

But I appreciated getting to hear him talk about some interesting topics, especially his view of how media has changed our entire culture. Even something as simple as audio recording - it wasn't that long ago that no one had heard recorded music. Now we think nothing of being able to hear dead people speaking.

Of course, not everything in the conversation is profound, so the movie will probably feel a little long. Maybe this wasn't the best format for conveying these ideas, but it was an interesting peek inside an author's head. It is interesting to see that a really good writer's everyday speech is not always particularly articulate, although every once in a while he will use a turn of phrase that reminds you, oh yeah, he really can string words together nicely.