Movie Natters: May 11, 2008 Archive

I've been working my way through Milos Forman's memoir "Turnaround" in recent days. He tells of his childhood and how things changed when the Gestapo took away his parents.

He began living out of a suitcase, moving between family members and friends. He says that's where he made a few discoveries about life.

He writes: "I found out that being a rebel and raising hell is a huge existential luxury, and I suppose that I grew up to be more of a diplomat than anything else. I learned to read people's moods and to understand what they felt even if they didn't fully understand it themselves. I noticed that people don't always believe in doing the things they do, that there often is a gap between who they think they are, and who they really are."

"I didn't know it at the time, but I see now that living out of a suitcase gave me a very good training for my future training as a director."