Episode 36 – John Ford&'The Long Gray Line' - a podcast by Phi Phenonenon

This time last century, John Ford was an actor, day-player, and assistant director hanging with his actor-brother in the emerging medium of motion pictures. Now legendary, he is the current record-holder for most Best Director Academy Awards, and in many ways the author of what we consider the mainstream movie-going experience. On today’s episode I’m joined by filmmaker Henry Butash, where we discuss not only the movie he made before his “celebrated masterpiece” The Searchers (quotation marks mine), its tonally difficult first hour, but also its justifying and deeply moving last hour fifteen. Also, randomly: Butash’s marathoning of 40 Ford films over the summer, Ford’s guilt and legend-making storytelling instincts, his intensive prolificacy (six features in one year!), his expressiveness in the studio system, his poetic tendencies, and the unending discovery that is his prodigious, uneven, deep filmography.

The Long Gray Line is available to rent VOD and frequently appears on Turner Classic Movies.

Henry Butash is a New York-based filmmaker who began his career in the editing room with director Terrence Malick on films including Knight of Cups, Voyage of Time and Song to Song. He wrote and directed his feature debut, The Atlantic City Story, starring Jessica Hecht (Friends, Breaking Bad) and Grammy Award-winner Mike Faist (Dear Evan Hansen, Steven Spielberg’s upcoming West Side Story), with the film recently premiering at the Denver Film Festival.

Further episodes of Phi Phenomenon

Further podcasts by Phi Phenonenon

Website of Phi Phenonenon