Ross Gay in Praise of Kurosawa’s Dreams and Making Beautiful (and Un-Beautiful) Things
In Conversation with Mychal Denzel Smith on the Open Form Podcast
Welcome to Open Form, a weekly film podcast hosted by award-winning writer Mychal Denzel Smith. Each week, a different author chooses a movie: a movie they love, a movie they hate, a movie they hate to love. Something nostalgic from their childhood. A brand-new obsession. Something they’ve been dying to talk about for ages and their friends are constantly annoyed by them bringing it up.
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In this episode of Open Form, Mychal talks to Ross Gay (Inciting Joy) about the 1990 film Dreams, directed by Akira Kurosawa.
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From the episode:
Ross Gay: I so admire that one of the best filmmakers of all time is experimenting late in his practice, which I aspire to do and I admire when I see folks who are like, yeah, I’m trying to do something I don’t know how to do. Which is also why some of the dreams I remember more powerfully.
This is what I’ve been thinking lately—people who are really good at stuff, who make beautiful things, also make un-beautiful things. To me, that’s a quality. You make stuff, and you’re trying hard. Some of the shit you make should not be beautiful.
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Ross Gay is the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights: Essays and four books of poetry. His Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Be Holding won the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. He is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. Gay has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University.
