Eric Rohmer on French Canadian TV, 1977, on Criterion Channel

 Here it is without subtitles:

There's a 1977 interview with Eric Rohmer on The Criterion Channel, an interview on a French Canadian TV show called Parlons Cinema (Movie Talk). 

Just a few random items from the episode:

They asked Rohmer how he felt about about Gene Hackman's character in the movie Night Moves (also available on the Criterion Channel) saying that watching his movies was like watching paint dry. Rohmer said he hadn't seen the movie. He had heard about it. "Like watching paint dry" isn't an idiom in French but he correctly guessed its meaning and accepted it. Some people find his movies boring. If you're not interested in the conversation, you feel left out.

There was talk about the progress of his early career.

Even back then, in the days of 16mm, before home video or prosumer camcorders, they thought "anybody can make a movie". There are two guys asking questions so I'm combining them here:

Q. It was harder for young filmmakers back then than it is today. Even so, you can draw a parallel between then and now, because cinema is now in a crisis similar to the 1950's, perhaps worse. But it's different. The avant-garde has become the mainstream. Before there was commercial cinema, and "outsider" cinema which no theaters would show.

A. It was scorned.

Q. Now just about anyone can make a film, but they can't get it shown. It might get a three-day run somewhere, but that's all.

A. It was a type of cinema hated by even amateur filmmakers. They admire professional-looking films in 35mm with special effects, etc. But now you can make films in 8mm or 16mm, and there's always some sort of audience. Back then, the only audience for it was the Cine-club du Quartier Latin, and that was it.

Q. Everything changed in the late '50's, when new technology made filmmaking cheaper, leading to the birth of the New Wave.

Later in the interview, Rohmer says:

"One of the paradoxes of cinema is that it has form without content. Cinema's lack of ideas is its deepest flaw. I myself as a filmmaker lack ideas and that's probably why I made films. I'm not an author. I have no ideas. And when I speak with my friends, they often say, 'I don't have any ideas either.' Very often it's the people with the fewest ideas who end up having the most. A story either comes about by chance, or it's the fruit of a thought process that takes a long time to develop.

"Very few films have truly original scripts. Today's scripts aren't very original, though perhaps more than before, but on the other hand, they lack the compelling power of earlier cinema. Scripts used to be adapted from existing stories that were thrilling, interesting, enthralling for audiences. Now scripts are pages from private journals so the audience isn't as interested, even if it's a very refined, intellectual one."