I’m a bit behind on this, but I can not get enough of the interview of Andor show runner and Michael Clayton director Tony Gilroy by Ross Douthat in the Times. Gilroy just takes him to task, over and over, zero fucks given.
Douthat: Is “Andor” a left-wing show? Because this is something that I’ve said a couple of times in my writing about it, using it literally as an example, as a conservative columnist, of a work of art that I think of as having different politics from my own that I really, really like. And I’ve had friends, especially on the right, come back to me and say: Oh, you know what, it’s not left wing or right wing; it’s just a TV show about resistance to tyranny. But I think you’ve made a left-wing work of art. What do you think?
Gilroy: I never think about it that way. I never think about it that way. It was never ——
Douthat: [Scoffs.]
Gilroy: I mean, I never do. I don’t ——
Douthat: But it’s a story, but it’s a political story about revolutionary ——
Gilroy: Do you identify with the Empire? Do you identify with the Empire?
Douthat: No, I don’t. But I don’t think that you have to be left-wing to resist authoritarianism.
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Gilroy: You could say: Why has Hollywood for the last 100 years been progressive or been liberal? I think it’s much larger. I’ll go further and say: Why does almost all literature, why does almost all art that involves humans trend progressive? Let’s stick with Hollywood. Making a living as an actor or as a writer or a director — without the higher degree of empathy that you have, the more aware you are of behavior and all kinds of behavior, the better you’re going to be at your job. We feed our families by being in an empathy business. It’s just baked in. You’re trying to pretend to be other people. The whole job is to pretend to be other, and what is it like to look from this? People may be less successful over time at portraying Nazis as humans, and that may be good writing or bad writing, and there may be people that have an ax to grind. But in general, empathy is how I feed my family. And the more finely tuned that is, the better I am at my job.
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Douthat: I love “Michael Clayton.” And I would, again, describe it as kind of a left-wing movie.
Gilroy: I’m going to really push back against “left-wing” on that picture. I don’t understand at all what is left or right about poisoning people with a pesticide and lying about it. I don’t think anybody on the right wants to be — let’s keep my politics out of it, but I can’t see myself ever, in any iteration of myself, identifying with the corporation that has been fighting a class-action suit for poisoning people.