Dear FiLM Club,  I have often said that the interview process
has become part of the process of film-making itself for me. It
is in those many interviewsliterally thousands since last May,
when Spider was first shown at the Cannes Film Festivalthat I am
forced to become articulate about things that were almost
entirely intuitive when I did them. The first question I am most
often asked is, why did you want to make the movie Spider? And
my answer inevitably is: Because on some profound level, I am
Spider. I then go into a fairly abstract discussion about
existential reality and the novels of Samuel Beckett.  Little
did I know how many times, and in what a concrete way, I would
be playing the role of Spider myself when I undertook my
9-cities-in-9-days tour of America for Sony Pictures Classics.
Many people have told me how much they love the first, flowing
shot of Spider, which ends with Spider himself, played by Ralph
Fiennes, descending gingerly from a train in London onto the
empty platform. You know right