IN CONVERSATION WITH KARINA LONGWORTH

Karina Longworth's informative and often addictive podcast "You Must Remember This" focuses on the forgotten history of Hollywood's first century. I can't begin to fathom what I would do without it... especially during the hours upon hours I spend driving on the 405 freeway every week. Each season, Longworth dives so deep into subject matter like eroticism in '80s + '90s film, Charles Manson's Hollywood, and most recently "The Old Man is Still Alive" where she explores the late careers of silent and early sound era filmmakers. I had the honor of speaking with Karina about the new season, John Huston's extravagant lifestyle, safari jackets, David Lynch's death, her personal style, and so much more.

Hagop Kourounian: I read that you grew up in Studio City, I’m a valley kid too! Do you have any love for this part of LA? It usually gets a bad wrap in Hollywood circles and in films. We’re always the butt of the joke!

Karina Longworth: Oh, yeah, totally. Studio City is really different from when I was growing up there in the '80s, but I definitely have nostalgia for the valley. I went to high school in Reseda so I'm not totally East Valley, I have some West Valley experience as well. There's almost nothing that I used to do that still exists. There's a short street right behind Ventura Blvd called Ventura Place and the two things that were a really big part of my childhood disappeared within the past four years. One was this hobby store called Kit Craft and then there was this Indian restaurant called Gangidin. 

Hagop Kourounian: I typically gravitate to LA movies in general, but more specifically valley movies. Do you have any favorite films that take place here?

Karina Longworth: Oh gosh. I'm sorry, I wasn't prepared to answer this question, so I hadn't thought of anything. You know, nothing comes to mind, but I do remember when I was a kid and just starting to watch MTV, the music video for Tom Petty's "Free Fallin’" was shot in the valley. There's a line about moving west down Ventura Blvd, and some of that was actually shot in Sherman Oaks. I want to say just east of Van Nuys on Ventura Blvd, I remember that there's this car wash over there that was in it and I was living pretty close to there around that time and I felt like watching that music video meant that I was famous. 

Hagop Kourounian: I’ve been a big fan of your podcast for a while. I loved the Manson season, 1969 is just an era of LA that I am obsessed with… and most recently the Erotic ‘90s season. I’m always in awe of the depth to which your research goes. What does your research process look like? Where do you start? And how do you know when you’ve done enough digging?

Karina Longworth: Well, usually it just ends because I run out of time, but it's a long process and whenever I start researching something, it takes me a long time to figure out what the story is. Let's say it's a director, I try to figure out what the most authoritative book about them is, if there is one. That would be what I would read first and then from there I would be making notes and I'd be writing down other questions that I have. Sometimes you can go through the bibliographies of those books and a lot of quotes will come from a Playboy interview or a Rolling Stone interview and then you can go look for that. I buy a lot of vintage magazines on eBay. I go to the Margaret Herrick Library. I've found that they've been really useful for me over the years, but even then there's some stuff that they don't necessarily have archived. That's why eBay becomes a really useful resource and even YouTube for video interviews. So I just basically try to figure out what the story is and then I try to figure out how to tell the story with as much depth and color as possible. I just keep reading and looking for sources until I feel like I've hit that point. I'm a big over researcher and overwriter, so I try to keep these podcast episodes no longer than about an hour and 15 minutes. They all could be a lot longer because I just find so much material and then the challenge is to sort of cull it into a narrative structure. 

Hagop Kourounian: Not to name drop… but I spoke to Francis Ford Coppola late last year and when talking about the personal style of a film director he said that the look had changed a lot over the course of history. He brought up the horse whip wielding riding jodhpurs wearing era of directors like Ceil B. DeMille and how it had shifted from that to the ‘70s cliche of a young director with a beard. He claimed he was the one to change the look… How would you describe the change in styles of film directors? Why do you think it changed? And would you agree with Francis that he was the one to usher in the era of the young director with a beard?

Karina Longworth: He’s probably right He was famous before George Lucas or Spielberg or Scorsese.

Hagop Kourounian: I do remember reading a George Lucas biography and there was a passage about the fact that he and Francis bonded because they were the only ones with beards on the Paramount set. But, why do you think the style changed so much and how would you describe the different eras of directors and their styles? 

Karina Longworth: Wow, that's a complicated question. I mean, I guess the only thing I can really say about why style would change for directors is that style is always changing. These kids with beards were a full new generation coming into Hollywood. And so they just had different values in a lot of different ways and one of those values had to do with the way that they looked. If you look at a lot of the directors that I'm talking about in this new season, it's the ‘60s and a lot of them are still dressed the way that they would have in the ‘40s. With the exception of somebody like Otto Preminger, who's trying to get in with the kids by wearing a Nehru jacket and he's dressed more like the Beatles than he's dressed like George Stevens. Sometimes he looks cool and sometimes that looks embarrassing. One thing about older men is that sometimes they just kind of pick a style when they're younger and then keep buying those clothes but within that you can have a personal style. John Huston was somebody who was always stylish. I'm kind of fascinated with him because he was somebody who loved to spend money. There's lots of anecdotes about the different brands that he wore. He used to shop at this store in Paris called Salk and I am constantly looking on eBay for a pair of Salk pyjamas because apparently he would just hang out at his castle in Ireland wearing his pyjamas all day.

Hagop Kourounian: That's incredible. He also has so many great outdoorsy looks with hunting gear etc. 

Karina Longworth: Yeah, because his whole thing was that he was into horses and fox hunting, he was a real outdoors adventure guy until the last 20 years of his life when he was really sick with emphysema. 

Hagop Kourounian: I think I remember reading somewhere that Brian De Palma used to look to him for some kind of style inspiration because if you look at some photos of John Huston he's wearing these great safari jackets and then that becomes a signature look on De Palma a couple decades later. 

Karina Longworth: A safari jacket is actually really useful for a director because it has so many pockets so you can keep all your stuff in it. You know, you can have your glasses and your sunglasses and your cigar and your viewfinder. 

Hagop Kourounian: Both of these last answers you've given are kind of the reason why I started talking about this topic because it’s such a silly niche to look at but within the style of directors you can see how clothing itself changes and evolves over time. Then with something like the safari jacket it's cool to see the way a lot of these directors like Huston and Kubrick and whatnot repurpose military gear, hunting gear, fishing gear for a new subsection of workwear and essentially recontextualize what those garments stand for. 

Karina Longworth: Actually now that you mentioned Kubrick he might have had a beard before Francis. Also Kubrick had probably left for London before Coppola sort of started getting his picture taken. So Coppola could use plausible deniability. 

Hagop Kourounian: I know you’re not the biggest fan of contemporary films but what are your thoughts on the way directors dress now?

Karina Longworth: I have no idea how they dress now. 

Hagop Kourounian: How important is a director's personal style? What can someone's clothes say about them?

Karina Longworth: I don't think it's very important to be honest. I think what you do is really cool in terms of highlighting it where it becomes another thing that you can appreciate about somebody whose movies you love. But in terms of the job of directing or the stardom element of directing I don't think it's nearly as important for a director to have personal style as it is for a star to. And certainly they're not scrutinized nearly as much. 

Hagop Kourounian: Who do you think are the best dressed directors from the episodes covered in your “The Old Man is Still Alive” season? 

Karina Longworth: Well, certainly one of the most distinctive is Frank Capra. It's not always pleasing to my eye. But he was very flamboyant in terms of the sports coats he'd often wear, he'd mixed patterns a lot. I think Vincent Minnelli was somebody where design was his whole thing. I mean he started out as a designer for the windows of department stores and so I think that he was always very stylish. 

Hagop Kourounian: And who do you think are the best dressed directors generally from any era? 

Karina Longworth: I really like Peter Bogdanovich and his whole commitment to the ascot. I think another reason why there's been so much backlash against him is when he got together with Cybil Shepherd, they were just so gorgeous. People weren't used to a director being that charismatic and that much of a star in his own right. I think now we can appreciate that a little bit more than people were able to in the mid ‘70s. I think the ascot started as a kerchief and that would make sense on the set of ‘The Last Picture Show’ when they were in Texas and shooting in the heat. It's nice to have something around your neck to dab your face with it. 

Hagop Kourounian: A lot of the names you cover in this season are generally not “good” people. Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, John Ford, etc have had their fair share of controversial actions and statements. While you do a great job of pointing out all their flaws and the people they’ve hurt, do you think it’s possible to talk about their sartorial tastes in any kind of way that doesn’t come off as insensitive or rude or edge lordy?

Karina Longworth: I'm somebody who just thinks that all human beings are really complicated. There's very little that somebody could do in their personal life that would make me feel like I couldn't watch their movies anymore. I mean for me it's kind of Mel Gibson and that's pretty much it. But I understand that everybody has different standards when it comes to that and so you know I wouldn't say that my point of view is necessarily the correct one and it's certainly not the right one for everybody. But I also would say that just because somebody thinks that John Ford's actions or perhaps some of his statements or elements of his movies are offensive, I don't think you can dismiss John Ford entirely. I mean I just think he is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. 

Hagop Kourounian: This season is focused on Hollywood’s early generation of legends and how they navigated the changing film landscape in the late stages of their careers. What do you make of the movie brats generation as they are in the prime of their own late careers? Do you have any thoughts on Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis? Or the fact that Spielberg and Scorsese are continuing to get their films made albeit with disappointing box office sales. Or that their counterparts George Lucas and Brian De Palma have almost completely come to a halt?

Karina Longworth: But what is blowing up the box office? Nothing good. I think that movies right now are kind of broken in terms of commerce. I don't think that that's the right way to evaluate anything. I really like a lot of those movies. I liked ‘Megalopolis’. I've never really been a Spielberg person but I loved ‘The Irishman’. I love what Scorsese is doing. I love Michael Mann's ‘Ferrari’. I think a lot of these movies are really interesting and so I think they're really valuable and I just feel I'm so disconnected from what the modern movie goer wants that you know it doesn't really surprise me that these aren't making money but I think that they're worth championing. 

Hagop Kourounian: I read and agreed with something you said recently which was that you were impressed by the levels of technique and confidence that only filmmakers around the age of 80 can bring to something! What do you think of Quentin Tarantino’s philosophy on going out on a high note with just 10 movies to his name? It seems like he sort of cringes at the work some of his heroes made at the end of their own artistic careers and wants to avoid that for his own resume. 

Karina Longworth: Yeah I'm fine with him not making any more movies. 

Hagop Kourounian: A great tragedy from this year was the loss of David Lynch. Do you have any thoughts on his late career output? I think the final contribution he made to movies was his role as John Ford in ‘The Fabelmans’, what did you think of that?

Karina Longworth: For me it was the reason to see ‘The Fablemans’ and I really loved that aspect of the movie. And I wish that the last thing he had done in popular culture was make another movie. His death hit me really hard. He was certainly a foundational figure for me and becoming interested in movies. Twin Peaks was on the air when I was like 10 years old and it was such a huge phenomenon that even at 10 years old I had peer pressure to watch it. I was really moved by how many people were moved by his death and how it brought so many people together in a way. That week after the news broke I was in therapy and I started crying talking to my therapist about how I wish that he could see how many people he touched. So, it's really sad but I mean talk about a stylish man. He looked terrific until the end. 

Hagop Kourounian: Do you have any optimism for the future of Hollywood and film?

Karina Longworth: I mean there were movies last year that I liked. I think that there are still great movies being made. It just seems to be really difficult to get people to go to the movie theater and it seems really difficult for things that are about humans to rise to that level of the mainstream and so I find that really frustrating. From studying Hollywood I understand that everything is cyclical and a lot of the things that people are saying now about the death of Hollywood they were saying in the 1930s they were saying in the 1970s and ‘80s. So I think things are going to change. I hope that they change for the better but I think there's a lot of economic and industrial things that need to be worked out. 

Hagop Kourounian: I’ve really enjoyed your red carpet looks, you’re a fan of Rodarte, vintage Moschino, you wear a Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso, so much great taste! How much time do you spend thinking about clothes?

Karina Longworth: On a daily basis not very much, because on a daily basis I literally don't see another human being. For the red carpet I mean I find that situation very stressful and the only thing that's sort of good about it is that it gives me an excuse to collect vintage. It's fun and it feels like having a garment that's really special. My favorite store in LA is called Recess. It's on La Brea Ave and I've bought a lot of stuff from there for special events. I buy a lot of stuff on The Real Real as well.

Hagop Kourounian: Thank you, Karina!

Karina Longworth: Thank you so much!