Q & A with GREGORY CREWDSON: BRIEF ENCOUNTERS filmmaker Ben Shapiro and subject Gregory Crewdson, recorded November 8, 2012

Summary: GREGORY CREWDSON: BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: Gregory Crewdson’s riveting photographs are elaborately staged, elegant narratives compressed into a single, albeit large-scale image, many of them taken at twilight, set in small towns of Western Massachusetts or meticulously recreated interior spaces, built on the kind of sound stages associated with big-budget movies. Ben Shapiro’s fascinating profile of the acclaimed artist includes stories of his Park Slope childhood (in which he tried to overhear patients of his psychologist father), his summers in the bucolic countryside (which he now imbues with a sense of dread and foreboding), and his encounter with Diane Arbus’s work in 1972 at age 10. Novelists Rick Moody and Russell Banks, and fellow photographer Laurie Simmons, comment on the motivation behind their friend’s haunting images. But Crewdson remains his own best critic: “Every artist has one central story to tell. The struggle is to tell and retell that story over again – and to challenge that story. It’s the defining story of who you are.” This podcast episode is a recording of a Q & A with filmmaker Ben Shapiro and subject Gregory Crewdson, recorded November 8, 2012, at a screening of the film at Film Forum.