Richard Schickel is a film critic, documentary filmmaker, and movie historian. Before participating in a panel on L.A.’s image onscreen, he sat down in the green room to talk books, writing, and inspiration.
Q. What’s the last book you read?
A. I’m reading Joan Didion’s Blue Nights. It’s very good. And I just finished The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, who’s my current favorite novelist.
Q. What comes easily to you?
A. Everything. I don’t block when I write. I write every day. Personal relationships are the hardest.
Q. Who do you want on your side when the world ends?
A. I’m an optimist—I don’t think the world’s going to come to an end any time soon. I don’t know, it’s a chance question: It could be some perfect stranger on a street corner.
Q. How do you pass time when you’re stuck in traffic?
A. Fuming. A lot of times when I’m pulled up at a stop sign, something pops into my head—I solve a writing problem or something like that.
Q. Do you have any recurring dreams or nightmares?
A. I have lots of dreams, and some nightmares, but they don’t stay with me very much.
Q. What inspires you?
A. I don’t think I’m a very inspired person. I’m a worker. So, work inspires ideas, thoughts. I get little inspirations that don’t amount to much.
Q. What’s the strangest place one of these has come to you?
A. I don’t know, they kind of just come up.
*Photo by Sarah Rivera.