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“I was dazzled by Tyrone Power, Black Swan<\/em>; Rita Hayworth, dancing; Bette Davis, The Letter<\/em>. But nothing captured as much as when, at eleven, I saw Now, Voyager<\/em>. On a ship, transformed. I was haunted by ships crossing the ocean, and being transformed. So powerful is that theme that when I finally did cross the Atlantic, on the Queen Mary in 1960, I was determined I would be transformed.” — Adrienne Kennedy<\/big><\/p>\n Your must-read of the month: Thomas Beard interviewed playwright Adrienne Kennedy<\/a>, now 88 years old, for Criterion. And it is a wondrous interview. It’s filled with so much insight – not just about her process, or how she started writing her plays, back in the 60s when the experimental theatre scene in New York was on FIRE – but about the MOVIES, her first inspiration, alongside formative events as a kid like reading Jane Eyre<\/em> and Secret Garden<\/em>. Kennedy LIVED the movies – in a way so many of us will relate to – and her love of movies is so directly related to her plays, which often deal with movies – and not just movies – but STARS. She LOVES actors. When she was a child, she felt that Jimmy Stewart in Shop Around the Corner<\/i> was her friend, her secret friend. Anyway, all that and more in this fantastic interview<\/a>. Here’s just one section of it: <\/p>\n The movies then became mad clusters of intoxication\u2014the Brando fixation, which included Kazan, the discovery of Sidney Poitier, Montgomery Clift. Living in New York, 1955, I was lost in foreign films for years: Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni. I was then trying hard to write stories. I remember studying Orpheus, Wild Strawberries, La dolce vita, The Leopard<\/em>, trying to understand the statements they were making about the world.<\/p>\n I definitely felt a distance. It was not like the closeness of Mrs. Miniver<\/em> or Gaslight<\/em>, but it was a passion new to me. I wanted to be like the filmmakers. I wanted to create like L\u2019avventura<\/em>. I was now studying the images of La strada<\/em>. I felt I was studying the world. I felt I was studying a society, something impossible in Notorious, Suspicion, The Lady Vanishes<\/em>; the society was there, but I saw only the stories. No more buying spectator pumps because Bette Davis wore them in Now, Voyager<\/em>. No more trying to do my hair like Paula in Gaslight<\/em>. I wanted to know what Visconti thought of nineteenth-century Italy, what Rossellini thought of postwar Italy.<\/p>\n I watch some movies again and again. Even though I cannot define it I know those movies are healing me. I know when I see Wild Strawberries<\/em> I am learning how to compose my disparate memories.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If you haven’t read Kennedy’s work, there’s a very good collection out: <\/p>\n