It was a gift. The ticket was taking me to a completely
different film. From a different director. From a different era. And yet I
arrived fifteen minutes before my film was scheduled to start and wandered,
totally unknowingly, beyond the black curtain.
Dark room, one or two
confused stares, and the big screen of Gene Hackman smashing a small statuette
of Jesus Christ.
This was how it
happened. I was hypnotized by those final six or seven minutes and knew
straight away that however good my film would turn out to be, it's The Conversation I had come to see.
David Shire's beautiful score, Gene Hackman playing the saxophone and a
sinister political mystery that I still can't get out of my head.
