I’ve never known my film critic pals to be anything but sharp, knowledgeable, inquisitive, highly charged. But Francois Truffaut was on to something when he suggested during one of the “Hitchcock-Truffaut” discussions that imagination might not be among their strong suits. Paradoxically or not so paradoxically, my imagination got in my way when I was trying to launch myself as a film critic back in the late ’70s. I tried to sound like a “film critic”, but deep down I always had something more free-form and fuck-offish in mind. It took me a long time to find the brass to just be myself. My reactions were always more along the lines of “it would be better if…” rather than “it doesn’t work and here’s why.” In my early struggling years it was my imagination that blocked me, got in the way. Then I embraced it, and then everything started to come together.