BY CHRIS WADE
Of
all the actors to emerge in the 1970s, there are few, if any, as captivating,
unpredictable and exciting as James Woods. He began the decade, and his on
screen career for that matter, for legendary director Elia Kazan in The
Visitors (1972), and in the next few years established himself as one of
American film's most promising young performers. He turned up as villains in
such classic TV shows as Kojak and Streets of San Francisco, but he also
appeared in some major 70s movies too, such as 1973's The Way We Were, Arthur
Penn's Night Movies (1975) and The Gambler (1975). But it was his performance
in The Onion Field (1979) which really signalled his arrival, as the
sociopathic cop killer Greg Powell. The film, based on Joseph Wambaugh's best-selling
non-fiction book, was a critical smash and earned Woods his first wave of
acclaim. It was a stunning performance, equally charismatic and frightening,
and it brought in a new face for cinema, an actor so convincing in his
intensity that you would have been scared of him had you met him in the street.
Of
course, it was really only the beginning. Into the next decade he proved
himself to be one of American cinema's most reliable, quirky, and appealing
character actors, appearing in such classics as Eyewitness (1981), David
Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983), Sergio Leone's masterpiece Once Upon a Time in
America (1984), Against All Odds (1984), Oliver Stone's Salvador (1986), for
which he received his first Oscar nomination, Best Seller (1987), Cop (1988)
and True Believer (1989). It was one of the most remarkable runs for any actor
of the era.
Woods
went on to appear in more than his fair share of stand outs in the following
decades, in such films as Chaplin (1991), The Hard Way (1992), The Specialist
(1994), Martin Scorsese's Casino (1995), for Oliver Stone again in both Nixon
(1995) and Any Given Sunday (1999), in Sofia Coppola's Virgin Suicides (1999)
and John Carpenter's Vampires (1998). His filmography reveals an almost
faultless body of work.
I
first had the idea to write a book about Woods' filmography in May 2021. I had
interviewed James in 2020 for a book I had written about Once Upon a Time in
America and, somewhat unexpectedly, we had stayed in touch. After I put
together a retrospective article for a vintage film magazine I sometimes put
out (Scenes), I presented the idea of a full book. He said he was OK with that,
but I presumed I would just write it and that would be it. No, he was happy to
do interviews- and we certainly did. For months in fact, we would speak every
week for hours on end, going over his many classics, from his early career days
in the 1970s, through his iconic films, right up to the most recent work. I got
the chance to interview the likes of Sharon Stone, Debbie Harry, Oliver Stone
and Jim Belushi, not to mention having Dolly Parton herself write the foreword
(she and Woods made a film together, Straight Talk). However, for the most part
the book is a journey through the career of James Woods, with Woods himself
acting as a sort of tour guide through his canon, and in the process, a part of
film history itself; beginning in the early Seventies with his experiences with
such directors as Sydney Pollack, Kazan, Harold Becker and others, through his
turbulent but rewarding work with Oliver Stone and numerous other legendary
filmmakers.
Woods
said to me at one point that the book was turning into a conversation between
two film lovers, one of whom just happened to be James Woods. And that, I
believe, sums it up rather well. This is a film lover's book, and it has the
distinction of having its subject as a kind of co-author. The resulting book,
The Films of James Woods, is a journey through a film career, yes, but it is
also a relaxed, freewheeling chat between two men, one in the UK, one in America,
and one who just happens to be a cinema legend. There is no gossip in the book,
no tell-all tattle, but a lot of movie talk. A hell of a lot, in fact.
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