John Huston by Lillian Ross

Texts from The New Yorker 1949 – 1986

For seven decades, Lillian Ross was one of the New Yorker ‘s leading reporters and a pioneer of “literary journalism.” Her long-term meetings with John Huston gave rise to texts that have become cult in the United States, published now for the first time in France.

Lillian Ross wrote her first report on Hollywood in 1948. The following year, her article Questions, recounting her meeting in New York with John Huston, was published in the “Talk of the town” column of the magazine. Her writings on Huston continued in 1952 with the book Picture.

Over the next four decades, Ms. Ross wrote about Huston while immersed on the set of The Bible in Rome in 1965, on the Brooklyn set of Prizzi’s Honor in 1984, relentlessly back and forth to through Manhattan during the filming of The Letter from the Kremlin, at the preview of Fat City or at the pre-production stage of Own the Victory. Concluding with a paper on the set of the film directed by Anjelica Huston in 1996, Bastard Out of Carolina, this volume presents seven valuable articles by Lillian Ross for The New Yorker, collected here for the first time.

EDITOR’S NOTE

“Beautiful journalism”, John Huston said about Picture, Lillian Ross’ reporting of the making of his The Red Badge of Courage. No stylistic flourishing, no gratuitous metaphors, no speculation or gossip, just clarity and simplicity, a probing insight into filmmaking. Reading Picture, my first introduction to Ross’writing, originally published in 1952, has reminded me about what real journalism is about. Integrity. Objectivity. Responsibility. Power of observation. Respect for the privacy of your subjects.

Picture is one of the most authentic and accurate documentations of how a movie is made, of how the big studio Hollywood mechanisms work and how an original, artistic film and a director’s uncompromising vision can be slashed into a whole different thing when the studio heads and producers step in and cut down by a third a film.

But what I believe Lillian Ross captured first and foremost, and so well and effortlessly, was that rare quality that John Huston had for looking at and making art with enthusiasm and curiosity but without intellectualisation. She was able to capture the essence of the artist, with his many facets, just by reporting the facts. That’s a rare quality, too.

DETAILS

Language: French

84 pages
12cm x 16.5cm

Published by Carlotta Films, April 24, 2019