An interview with Jim Hemphill about his BAD REPUTATION
August 10th, 2007 by Scott Marks
An interview with Jim Hemphill about his Bad Reputation
How many of you can boast that you had a movie character named after you receive oral sex in a car?
See what kind of an onscreen tribute a teacher is afforded when he befriends a star student? Director Jim Hemphill and I met in my History of Cinema class at Chicago’s Columbia College and for the next four years he became my exclusive projectionist. This kid could focus a film so sharp you could slice London Broil with it.
From the outset there was something different about Jim. He has a boyish look about him that caused several classmates to dub him “Doogie Howser.” In spite of a well scrubbed, inexhaustibly gentile demeanor, once could instantly detect a sense of slumming cinematic enlightenment oozing from the boy.
First off, unlike many of his contemporaries Jim actually watched and enjoyed films made prior to 1990. He held Spielberg in contempt and elevated Scorsese to His rightfully lofty position.Jim is fearless in the face of bad cinema and I could always count on him to accompany me to films that no one in their right minds would dare see. In class it was all Hitchcock and Welles, while at the multiplex contemptuous slop like The Jerky Boys
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