The Conversations is a treasure, essential for any lover or student of
film, and a rare, intimate glimpse into the worlds of two accomplished
artists who share a great passion for film and storytelling, and whose
knowledge and love of the crafts of writing and film shine through.
It was on the set of the movie adaptation of his Booker Prize-winning
novel, The English Patient, that Michael Ondaatje met the master film
and sound editor Walter Murch, and the two began a remarkable personal
conversation about the making of films and books in our time that
continued over two years. From those conversations stemmed this
enlightened, affectionate book -- a mine of wonderful, surprising
observations and information about editing, writing and literature,
music and sound, the I-Ching, dreams, art and history.
The Conversations is filled with stories about how some of the most
important movies of the last thirty years were made and about the people
who brought them to the screen. It traces the artistic growth of Murch,
as well as his friends and contemporaries -- including directors such as
Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Fred Zinneman and Anthony Minghella
-- from the creation of the independent, anti-Hollywood Zoetrope by a
handful of brilliant, bearded young men to the recent triumph of
Apocalypse Now Redux.
Among the films Murch has worked on are American Graffiti, The
Conversation, the remake of A Touch of Evil, Julia, Apocalypse
Now, The Godfather (all three), The Talented Mr. Ripley, and The
English Patient.
"Walter Murch is a true oddity in Hollywood. A genuine intellectual and
renaissance man who appears wise and private at the centre of various
temporary storms to do with film making and his whole generation of
filmmakers. He knows, probably, where a lot of the bodies are buried."
