Classiq - An online journal that celebrates cinema, culture, style and storytelling.

2 November 2026

“My approach is quite different. I never travel to a city with the intention of turning it into a guidebook”: In conversation with Audrey Nait-Challal

”I love the idea of a book that stays with you:
one you can’t wait to open before a trip, already transporting
you there; one you slip into your bag and carry along with you,
then keep afterwards, a little dog-eared, stained and annotated,
bearing the traces of your journey.”

Photos: Courtesy of In the Mood for…Editions

Before a trip, I like to embark on an extensive research of the place I travel to. It’s not exactly an easy task, because some years ago I made a rule to rely as little as possible on the Internet. My idea of a research is pulling out all my stacks of magazines carefully collected over the years and even books – before a road journey to Siena, Tuscany, it was Hisham Matar’s A Month in Siena that I turned to, before a holiday in the Peloponnese, it was Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Mani Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, which led to my favourite of all the travels I’ve made to Greece, and before a recent trip to Sweden, I delved into my own interviews with Swedish artists for fresh references of their true and tried local spots. It’s fun, and rewarding, and a little exhausting, too, as I gather inspiration, take notes and find new perspectives, and yet, a wishful idea lingers each time. The wish for a dedicated voyage guide, the kind “driven by a love for print, photography and graphic design, as well as a desire to create the kind of books I would have loved to take along on my own travels.” These are the words of Audrey Nait-Challal, who has created, written and photographed the In the Mood for… bookguides.

We all document our travels nowadays, as much as some of us, myself included, are trying to resist snapping countless pictures and hoarding them away just because we can (opting for a camera instead of the phone will make you think twice before you press the button, will make the action more intentional, will almost feel like a small act of rebellion), but how different would it be if we slowed down, truly observed the place where we were, stroke up a conversation with the host or the local vendor, just walked, not with a digital map in hand but where our wandering eye took us, and recorded in ink, or at least in typed words, the fleeting thoughts and particular feelings of that moment caught in that very intentional photo we’ve taken, just like an old-school postcard? That’s the kind of thoughtful travel companion In the Mood for… books are.

Audrey Nait-Challal only writes a book after she has felt a natural connection to a place. Not just a place she visits, it’s a world she respects and tries to understand, without rushing. It’s about the experience, not the image, and how a place makes her feel, not how popular it may or may not be.

Her journalistic eye sees beyond the surface and she doesn’t try to force images, trusting herself and waiting for light, movement, feeling to come together naturally. She aims for the truth, but always in hindsight of some deeper connection, emotion, and a sense of being there. A chance to see the true character of a city. Travel is not just one more place to explore, but a new way to be close to what is real.

In our conversation, Audrey tells me how she turned an idea into an independent and uncompromising editorial endeavor, talks about her passion for photography and the ethics of journalism, she takes us to the 11th arrondissement in Paris, and her favourite bookshops, and to quite a few other special places around the world, and thoughtfully passes on morsels of life wisdom.

Traveller, journalist, writer, photographer, storyteller… Audrey, what defines you best professionally?

First and foremost, I’m a journalist. It’s what I’ve wanted to be since I was a child — my father was a journalist, too. I’ve always loved writing, meeting people and discovering their stories, and I was drawn to a profession where no two days would ever be the same. So I studied literature before going on to journalism school. Straight after graduating, I started working for a daily newspaper aimed at teenagers, where I was given the interview and film pages to look after.

Journalism is more than just my profession; it’s part of who I am and shapes the way I see the world. It’s about talking to people, observing, telling stories, remaining true to reality without distorting or misrepresenting it.

Photography has been a passion of mine since my teens. I love it, and I think I could have made a career of it, too. But I didn’t grow up in an artistic or particularly creative environment, and at the time, the idea of studying photography simply never crossed my mind. Yet, I have this deep need to take pictures. There are very few days when I don’t photograph something.

As for travel, I’ve always loved it, although it was something I did within a family setting and during my holidays. I met my husband when I was very young, at seventeen, and we began travelling together every summer, backpacking our way through Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, India… and exploring European cities, back in the days, before mobile phones.

We travelled with a paper guidebook and maps, making do with whatever came our way: local buses, inexpensive little hotels and meals at market stalls. When we had children, we carried on, although we began to focus more on Asia. Every summer, we would set off on an adventure with our backpacks — first with one child, then two, then three! We slept in some truly unlikely places. Looking back, I sometimes think we were a little reckless, and that we were lucky to get away with it!

So, to answer your question, I would describe myself as a journalist with a passion for photography.

“Journalism is more than just my profession;
it’s part of who I am and shapes the way I see the world.”

Is it make or take a photograph? Do you wait for a good photo? Are there times when you simply witness the moment without shooting any picture?

I really don’t think I follow any rules. But when I see a scene, a person… something that catches my eye, whether it’s a composition, a ray of light, a detail… I take a photograph.

Actually, I feel like I see the world through the lens of a camera. It’s almost a professional deformation! But I think that’s precisely what allows me to find beauty and uniqueness almost everywhere.

That said, there are times when I simply don’t feel like taking out my phone or my camera anymore… And those periods are really restful.

“We travelled with a paper guidebook and maps,
making do with whatever came our way: local buses,
inexpensive little hotels and meals at market stalls.
When we had children, we carried on.”

For those who are not familiar to the books In the Mood For…, could you tell us the story behind this project? What was the impulse that led to making your vision a reality?

I have an almost visceral need to share the things I love. A book, a film, a place… Whenever I discover something wonderful, I can’t stop talking about it. I want everyone to read that book, see that film, experience that place. My family gets a little tired of hearing about it sometimes! I’m exactly the same when I travel.

When blogs first began to take off, long before Instagram came along, I started a travel blog where I shared my favourite addresses, insider tips, travel advice and itineraries, accompanied by plenty of photographs. I also wrote about my reading and little snippets of everyday life.

For a long time, I had an idea tucked away in the back of my mind: to do exactly the same thing, but on paper. I’ve always loved books and stationery, and I’m drawn to the idea of a beautiful object, the sensory pleasure of paper, the simple gesture of turning a page, taking time over a photograph. I love the idea of a book that stays with you: one you can’t wait to open before a trip, already transporting you there; one you slip into your bag and carry along with you, then keep afterwards, a little dog-eared, stained and annotated, bearing the traces of your journey. But setting out on my own seemed impossible, and I never quite found the energy to approach publishers.

Then I met Sophie Denux through the blogging world. We got to know each other from a distance before meeting in person. She launched her magazine, Toc Toc Toc, and seeing what she had achieved made me realise that it was possible to create an independent publishing project on your own. Sophie encouraged me, offered advice and even gave me the contact details of her printer. That was the push I needed. I decided to take the plunge. I brought in Else Puyot, a graphic designer I had also met through blogging, and asked my friend Lise Pérot, who is a wonderful illustrator, to draw the maps that open each chapter.

The title, In the Mood For…, came to me very quickly. I think it captures the spirit of the collection perfectly. The idea behind the guides was actually very simple: to share my enthusiasm and favourite discoveries by passing on the addresses I had loved, from restaurants and cafés to bookshops, flea markets, pâtisseries and flower shops. In essence, the In the Mood For… guides are the places I would recommend to my friends before they set off on a trip. And I wanted to accompany these recommendations with beautiful photography: not only pictures of the places featured in the guides, but also images that capture the atmosphere of each city. Rather than focusing on the famous monuments or best-known neighbourhoods, I’m drawn to the details that move me, the things that catch my eye. I particularly love photographing strangers. I write in the first person because I’m sharing my own experiences and impressions. There is a great deal of me in these guides.

And to return to journalism, I approach them with the same professional ethics that guide my work. Every place featured has been selected independently, simply because I genuinely liked it. I’ve never paid to include a place, and I always pay my own restaurant bills. My approach is that of a journalist, not an influencer. They are two very different professions.

There’s something else that’s important to understand, too: I never travel to a city with the intention of turning it into a guidebook. My approach is quite different from that of a professional guidebook writer who sets off alone for a destination with a book project in mind. For me, it’s the other way around. I go on holiday with my husband and sometimes our children, although less and less these days as they’re growing up. We discover places to stay, little local eateries and hidden addresses. We spend time together, meet people and share experiences. And if a city captures my heart, the idea of creating an In the Mood For… guide often takes hold very quickly. That’s when I start taking notes, recording addresses and filling notebooks. We then return a few months later to complete the research, take more photographs and discover new places. One summer, for instance, the five of us spent five weeks in Morocco. From my very first day in Tangier, I knew there would be an In the Mood For… Tangier. A guide to Marrakech might have been a more commercially appealing choice, but I simply didn’t connect with the city in the same way.

You’ve travelled the world, driven by a restless curiosity, finding beauty beyond the obvious, taking time to get to know a place. It takes patience and observation to create awareness, and I believe that this is part of your approach that makes your guides so essentially unique. Do you find it challenging to inspire awareness, especially today?

To be honest, it’s not something I really think about. We all see the world in our own way. We notice different details, respond to different atmospheres, different lights, colours, sounds and flavours. My way of seeing things is neither more valuable nor better than anyone else’s. It’s simply mine.

I know that some people will connect with my sensibility, while others won’t at all. And that’s absolutely fine — in fact, I think it’s a good thing. Personal projects may be more divisive, but they’re also more interesting. I would never entrust the writing of an In the Mood For… guide to someone else, because that would go against the very essence of the project. I think the people who enjoy my guides share my sensibility and my tastes. They also share a certain way of travelling, quite simply, with a fair amount of resourcefulness. We often do home exchanges, or go camping when we travel to the United States. Big hotels, paradisiacal beaches on the other side of the world and cocktails in luxurious places are everything I hate.

I’m always delighted to reach new readers, but what gives me the greatest pleasure is seeing customers buy several books in the collection after discovering and loving one of them. The compliment that meant the most to me came from a customer who, I think, owns almost all my guides. She told me she had travelled to Berlin and missed having an In the Mood For… Berlin with her. I can’t think of a lovelier compliment.

It’s important to understand that I’ve always pursued this project alongside my journalism career. The trips happen during our holidays, and I work on the guides in my spare time too — during holidays, in the evenings and at weekends. I love my job, but I felt a strong need to have a personal, creative project of my own. Doing both suits me perfectly because it means I don’t put too much pressure on the guides. It’s not a financially viable project, and it was never something I could have made a living from. I prefer to work at my own pace, following my instincts and letting each new guide take shape when the inspiration comes, so that the pleasure of creating them remains intact. The fact that the guides aren’t my livelihood also helps me stay true to my ethical principles and preserve my editorial independence.

“I prefer to work at my own pace, following my instincts
and letting each new guide take shape when the inspiration comes.”

This editorial independence is something that defines you and that I myself also hold in high regard. What are your thoughts on the publishing industry? Big, legacy publishers are not the sole players on the market anymore, so many small, independent publications, with a strong voice seem to be at the forefront of a new kind of editorial output. How do you think this course correction will play out?

I have to admit, I have absolutely no idea!

In France, there is a very worrying trend affecting both the media and the publishing industry: far-right billionaires are buying up more and more media outlets and publishing houses, as well as the places where magazines and newspapers are sold, in order to impose their ideas. So it’s a deeply political issue.

The emergence of small, independent publishers is a very good thing, but their economic model is extremely fragile.

When it comes to distribution, there’s also a political dimension. I know that selling my books on Amazon would allow me to reach a much wider audience, but I refuse to do so. I am strongly opposed to everything Amazon represents. I never order anything from them, and I don’t want to sell my books through them either.

“My way of seeing things is neither more valuable nor better
than anyone else’s. It’s simply mine.”

I wholeheartedly agree with you. Which is/are your favourite independent bookshop/s in Paris?

I tend to visit bookshops in my neighbourhood, in the 11th arrondissement. There’s La Tête Ailleurs, on Rue de la Folie Méricourt, a small independent bookshop opened by three friends in their fifties. There’s also Les Parages, on Rue Sedaine, just around the corner from my home, which I really love. For art books, photography books, mooks, magazines and so on, there’s Artazart, on Quai de Valmy, overlooking the Canal Saint-Martin. Laetitia, who works there as a bookseller, agreed to stock my very first guidebook back in 2016, In the Mood for Bruxelles. I was so proud! She then took all the following ones, and ever since, the collection has had a lovely spot right by the entrance of the bookshop. Yvon Lambert, on Rue des Filles du Calvaire, is another beautiful art bookshop, with a very carefully curated selection. Unfortunately, they don’t stock my guides. There are so many wonderful bookshops in Paris! Galignani is a large, beautiful bookshop just a stone’s throw from Place de la Concorde, with a fantastic selection of books in English. In France, we’re lucky to have a law that regulates book prices. Books cannot be sold below the price set by the publisher. This helps protect independent bookshops by preventing large retailers, particularly online sellers, from undercutting them and driving them out of business. Even so, bookshops remain economically fragile. Booksellers are passionate people who work incredibly hard, often for very modest salaries.

What is the latest discovery (book and author) that you have made and loved?

I recently discovered the American author Barbara Kingsolver, whose novels often explore themes of social justice and environmental issues. I absolutely loved Demon Copperhead and The Poisonwood Bible. I’m planning to read all her other books!

Another novel I read recently that really, deeply moved me, and that I consider a truly great work of literature, is Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, a Mexican writer who lives in the United States. It tells the story of a couple and their two children travelling by car across the United States, heading south, against the backdrop of the migration crisis at the Mexican border. It’s both deeply personal and political. An incredible book.

“In France, we’re lucky to have a law that regulates
book prices. Books cannot be sold below the price set
by the publisher. This helps protect independent bookshops.”

What is the state of the newsstand (the kiosk) in Paris? In so many European cities and other parts of the world newsstands have become very scarce, and therefore something important for the community was lost, not just a source for print media, but also a neighbourhood network at the crossroads of so many levels of society.

As for newsstands, there are fewer and fewer of them in Paris. It’s a shame, because they really were part of the city’s identity. But you can still find some outside certain metro stations.

Fortunately, some places have decided to offer a selection of daily newspapers, magazines and books. One of them is Monocle, on Rue Bachaumont, a place I absolutely love. An entire wall is dedicated to newspapers, magazines and mooks from all over the world! And they serve really good coffee too.

I love Monocle shops, too, and their magazines, and what they are doing for print media.

“[If I ever left Paris,] I would really miss the bookshops,
the croissants and pains au chocolat, and even the Parisians!”

Is there a place where you feel you belong to? Has that changed over time?

This is by far the hardest question! I grew up in the Paris suburbs, in Ivry-sur-Seine, where I lived until I was twenty. I didn’t go into Paris very often back then, except to go to the cinema or do a little shopping in certain neighbourhoods.

I really discovered Paris when I moved there. I spent two years in the 15th arrondissement, where my parents had settled, then two years in the 18th with the man who would become my husband. After that, we moved to the 11th arrondissement, and we’ve never left. We’ve been living in the same apartment for more than twenty-five years. It was just the two of us when we arrived, and then our three children were born. Over the years, we’ve regularly rearranged the space to accommodate each new arrival, the children growing up and, eventually, leaving home. Life in an apartment with three little boys is very different from life with three teenagers and young adults! Today, our two eldest have moved out, and we’ve rearranged the bedrooms yet again. I’m deeply attached to our apartment and to the neighbourhood, even though it has become a little too gentrified in recent years.

Five years ago, we bought a house in Seine-et-Marne. It was in a very dilapidated state, and we’ve been renovating much of it ourselves. It also has a huge garden. We spend almost every weekend there, and it has become an essential part of our lives. Gardening has become a whole new passion for us! I’ve found the perfect balance between these two places, and I feel incredibly lucky and privileged.

We travel less these days, partly because we feel less of a need to, and partly because we’re making a conscious effort to limit our air travel. Since 2020, we’ve never taken more than one flight a year. This summer, we went to Italy by train; the year before, we travelled to Madrid by bus. We’d love to explore more of France, but we’re still tempted by the idea of returning to Japan and discovering the country in all its autumn colours.

“Rather than focusing on the famous monuments or
best-known neighbourhoods, I’m drawn to the details
that move me, the things that catch my eye.
I particularly love photographing strangers.”

Aside from France and Japan, where else would you like to return to, or to visit for the first time? How do you choose your next destination, besides the fact that you are taking into consideration travelling less by plane?

I would really love to go back to Berlin (I’ve only been once, about ten years ago), and also to return to the Nordic countries, especially Sweden.

We go to Brussels at least once a year. It’s the city closest to my heart!

I’ve also fallen in love with the English countryside and its gardens. We have a friend who lives in Brighton, so it’s a lovely excuse for a little trip once a year.

This summer, we spent two weeks in Northern Italy (we travelled there by train!): Turin, Genoa and Piedmont. We absolutely loved it! We’d happily go back, perhaps in autumn, which is such a wonderful time to travel.

We’ve been doing home exchanges for about twenty years now, and we also like to let ourselves be guided by the exchange offers we receive!

You mentioned going camping in the US, and travelling by bus or train through Europe. What is the best road trip you have taken in America, and worldwide?

The best road trips we’ve ever taken were in the United States. We’ve done three of them!

The first was a fairly classic road trip through the American West. The second started in Chicago. We travelled as a family for six weeks, covering 12,000 kilometres and crossing eight states. We spent a week in New Orleans and another in Austin (both through home exchanges).

We camped in some extraordinary places, like White Sands.

And the third time, we crossed the entire United States from east to west, all the way from New York to San Francisco!

My favourite of the three was definitely the second one. It was an absolutely incredible experience! So much so that I decided to turn it into a book, In the Mood for… America.

“I think the people who enjoy my guides share my sensibility
and my tastes. They also share a certain way of travelling,
quite simply, with a fair amount of resourcefulness.

Big hotels, paradisiacal beaches on the other side of the world
and cocktails in luxurious places are everything I hate.”

How has Paris changed in all the years you’ve lived there? And what is the best thing about living in Paris and which you would miss if you lived anywhere else in the world?

The biggest change in recent years has been the development of cycle lanes. It has completely transformed the city! I now get around Paris by bike myself, whereas fifteen years ago, it was still very rare to see people cycling. Unfortunately, sharing the streets between cyclists, pedestrians, cars and buses is still a bit complicated!

Paris is also becoming greener. There is a real effort to plant more trees and bring more greenery into the city, and the difference is very noticeable in my neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, there is also a lot of poverty. People sleeping on the streets, beggars in the metro… It’s a harsh and sad reality.

I don’t really know what I would miss the most if I ever left Paris. Not one particular thing, but a thousand little things that make Paris, Paris! But actually, I would really miss the bookshops, the croissants and pains au chocolat, and even the Parisians! Well, not all of them, of course! One of the things I love most about Paris is that there are so many different cities within the city. For example, the 16th arrondissement, very chic and expensive, with its wide avenues and its rather traditional, bourgeois population, has absolutely nothing in common with the 19th, which is more working-class, young and lively, or with the Marais (3rd and 4th arrondissements), which is chic and trendy. Paris is really a city of many different Parises!

“The biggest change in recent years has been
the development of cycle lanes. Paris is also becoming greener.
Unfortunately, there is also a lot of poverty.”

What advice would you give someone who has never travelled to France? Should Paris be the first stop?

That’s a really difficult question, because I haven’t explored all of France, far from it!

I love Brittany and Normandy, especially the Cotentin Peninsula. I’m less of a fan of the South of France, but that’s just a very personal preference!

And yes, of course, Paris is a must! But as with any city, I think it’s important to venture beyond the touristy areas. I’d definitely recommend exploring my neighbourhood, the 11th arrondissement, and also the 20th. They’re my two favourite arrondissements!

You should wander through parks like the Buttes-Chaumont, stroll along the Canal Saint-Martin (10e)…

You started out as a journalist doing interviews and writing about films. What are some of your favourite films and what is the best film you’ve seen lately at the cinema? Do you have a favourite cinema in Paris?

I worked for 26 years at a daily newspaper for teenagers, where I was in charge of interviews and the cinema page. I love both literature and cinema.

My favourite films? That’s such a difficult question!! (But I’ll give it some thought!)

Over the past few months, I’ve absolutely loved Hamnet by Chloé Zhao, On Falling by Laura Carreira, Les Fleurs du manguier by Akio Fujimoto, Kika by Alexe Poukine, The Secret Agent by Kleber Mendonça Filho, and Sentimental Value by Joachim Trier. And more recently, Minotaur by Andreï Zviaguintsev.

I really love the Max Linder cinema on the Grands Boulevards in Paris.

“Taking the time… Time to be together, to care for one another,
to talk to each other. Time to read, to write, to watch films,
to dream, to be lazy, to cook, to make things with our hands,
to enjoy nature…”

You’ve also published three books on Paris Coffee. Can you tell us a few words about them?

One day, I was contacted by Anna, a young woman of Russian origin who is an illustrator and passionate about specialty coffee. She had read an article about my travel guides in a magazine and asked if I would be interested in creating a series of books about coffee with her!

The idea was that she would choose the coffee shops and create the illustrations (using coffee!), while I would visit each place, interview the owners and tell their stories: their backgrounds, how they started, the history of the place, and so on.

We featured 30 coffee shops in total! It was a huge amount of work, but the book sold really well, so we went on to publish a second volume, and then a third, each featuring 30 new coffee shops!

Audrey, in this time and age, what do you wish people appreciated more?

Taking the time… Time to be together, to care for one another, to talk to each other. Time to read, to write, to watch films, to dream, to be lazy, to cook, to make things
with our hands, to enjoy nature…

But many people simply don’t have that luxury. The harshness of our society, driven by neoliberalism, prevents them from doing so. And that makes me really angry and sad.

inthemoodfor-editions.com | Instagram: @inthemoodfor_editions

October newsletter: Stop the Presses, The Anxious Generation and Toys in the Attic

Photos: Classiq Journal

“The diffusion of digital technology into children’s lives
has been like smoke pouring into our homes.
We all see that something strange is happening,
but we don’t understand it. We fear that smoke is having
bad effects on our children, but when we look around,
nobody is doing much about it.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

Viewing

Tootsie, 1982
Sydney Pollack

The first thing that I want to say about Tootsie, which I have recently rewatched after many years, is that it is such a good film which just happens to be a comedy. What I am trying to say is that – as much as I love good comedies and consider that comedy is hugely underrated – what truly lingers after you have watched Tootsie is the core of the story, the gist, not the fact that Dustin Hoffman puts on a dress (which is in fact the only thing I remembered from when I first saw the film, twenty years ago). And, yes, he is funny, but the reason behind it is so serious that it gives the film the spine that Sydney Pollack was looking for in order for him to accept directing the film. He didn’t want to make a drag comedy, the way the script was initially written, of which he thought was “silly and bawdy”, “just one gag”, with jokes that were “thin and repetitive”.

The serious idea behind Dustin Hoffmann’s impersonation of a woman is that, for reasons of survival, he is forced to put on a dress. And Pollack and his co-writers do create “the most dismal possible world for this guy before he puts on a dress”. He is a New York unemployed actor who can not get any work anymore, and one whom his own agent considers unemployable. Furthermore, he is in his mid-forties, unmarried and lives with a roommate (the uninimitable Bill Murray), and unable to treat women with any respect. He’s not exactly a great guy. He goes a long way to change into the man he is at the end of the film, and the dress, make-up and Southern accent do play a role in that. Because by being forced to put on a dress he becomes a better man. “Being a woman has made a man out of you” was the only idea that made sense for Sydney Pollack in order for the film to gauge his interest. Sydney Pollack was such a humanist director who liked to tackle weighty issues by way of entertainment. And here he touches on the complexities of masculinity and femininity in the most subtle yet effective manner. In the case of Dustin Hoffman’s Michael, the macho side gets tempered with sensitivity, understanding, kindness, and thus he becomes a better man. And that’s what the ending is also about, not the conventional Hollywood happy ending, which Sydney Pollack didn’t adhere to at all, but the beginning of another journey.

But I also want to bring up the character of Jeff Slater, the roommate, played by Bill Murray, who is such a key character in Michael’s life, and the definition of a supporting part. Jeff was invented by Elaine May, whom Sydney Pollack brought in to polish the script. “He’s really a structural device to give Dustin somebody to talk to about what he’s going through when he’s working on the soap opera,” the director said. It’s wonderful seeing Bill Murray on screen. I don’t know how many takes Pollack did, but I think Murray’s spontaneity would be different in each one of them.

Groundhog Day, 1993
Harold Ramis

For one reason or another, I hadn’t watched Groundhog Day until recently. It was only after I listened to an episode of Ben Mankiewicz’s Talking Pictures with Bill Murray when I knew I finally had to watch the film. Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a grumpy weatherman who is dispatched with producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliott) to the little town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to witness the annual Groundhog Day ceremony. Phil is demeaning, self-centered, and eager to get out of there as soon as possible. For reasons unexplained in the film (and it’s all the better for it), Phil wakes up the next morning to discover he is reliving Groundhog Day all over again. Imagine his mood. And he relives it again the next day, and the next, and the next. Phil first takes advantage of the situation, knowing in advance what would happen and what to tell to people to get the best reaction from them in his favour. After a few days, the situation starts to drive him to despair, before he begins to put in some effort to change and improve his behaviour. The film is hysterically funny without necessarily trying to be funny, and it uses being funny in a smart way to reveal something about human nature. You genuinely laugh and at the same time root for a better treatment of a person. Gradually and still reluctantly, which I find very realistic, Phil also starts to realise the truth of it all.

The Social Network, 2010
David Fincher

Before I get to see The Social Reckoning, the follow-up to The Social Network, I wanted to go back and revisit the 2010 film. The Social Reckoning is written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, who also wrote The Social Network, directed by David Fincher. Watching The Social Network now, with everything that we now know about Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and tech companies, it dawns on you how different it all began, heralding a world we had no idea what would hold. And yet, the film, so precisely directed by Fincher, does see into that mind-set that changed the world for the worse and does capture the villain in Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg. When it came out, I was reluctant to watch it. As someone who was born right on the cusp between Generation X and The Millenials, I was also reluctant in embracing the digital age. Only briefly did I have a Facebook account, and that was exactly at the time when the film came out. So I was not exactly eager to watch a film about social media, and I was surprised to find out how fascinating it was. It’s not just Aaron Sorkin’s great, overlapping dialogue that makes the film impacient. The one thing that I particularly liked about the film is that it is very cinematic – cinema belongs to cinema – especially the night scenes in the campus, evoking a feeling of unease, anxiety and darkness. It’s probably why I can hardly wait to watch The Social Reckoning. The times we live in are completely different than the times when The Social Network came out. They are bound to take on the form of a thriller to some extent, because how can they not? Who needs an imaginary villain when we have big tech billionaires in our world?

Reading

The Anxious Generation. I don’t believe there is any other book that requires more urgent reading than Jonathan Haidt’s seminal book about the effects of the Great Rewiring of Childhood (the trading, yes, trading, of the childhood based on play for a childhood spent on smartphones) on young generations, starting with Generation Z. This book is essential in understanding how something crucial was lost and how the big tech companies, facilitated, largely unbeknownst to them, by parents, teachers and schools (although I am personally more radical towards parents, because not all parents lacked the discerning quality of registering the harm they would do if they handed their toddlers and young children a smartphone or iPad), are robbing children of their childhood and of essential phases in their emotional, physical, social and, most grave of all, mental development and health. WHY isn’t this book already mandatory for every parent and teacher in the world? WHEN if not NOW will we take collective action and end this?

Terry O’Neill: Every Picture Tells a Story. Black and white has always been Terry O’Neill’s chosen medium. And it’s always his black and white photography that makes me linger over one image or another. He photographed everyone from Robert Redford to Sean Connery, from The Rolling Stones to Frank Sinatra (having compiled his pictures in the book Sinatra: Frank and Friendly). Terry O’Neill has many a tale to tell. And he has told the tales behind many of his legendary photographs (and, somehow, by doing so, he doesn’t take from their mystery, but adds to it). But with good-natured tact, charm, discretion. Always the professional, never intruding. It’s the approach he has also used in his photography. “I suppose I get on with these people because I never wanted to be up front.”

And then there is his colour photography. My favourite of them all is perhaps this one on the cover of this very book: Every Picture Tells a Story. “The Morning After” – Terry O’Neill’s famous photograph that shows a contemplative Faye Dunaway by a deserted Beverly Hills Hotel swimming pool, having just won an Oscar the previous night for her sublime performance in Network. About this shot, O’Neill said: “I set up the whole thing. I said to her, that if she won, I knew exactly the photograph I wanted to take. I’d seen people the day after, when it has suddenly dawned on them what winning an Oscar means. I wanted to capture that 6.30 a.m. moment of realisation.” The way Terry O’Neill captured the glamour, significance and gravity of the moment, with simplicity, honesty and elegance, makes it timeless and impossible to replicate. And quite frankly, makes you nostalgic for a time when movie stars were so much more than celebrities. They were great by the standards of their profession. They “were individuals. Now it’s like they all come out of the same factory.”

Every picture in the book is a story in itself, and Terry O’Neill tells it in his own words. The book is now available in the shop.

Listening

The podcast: Richard Osmon talks to writer John Grisham for The Rest is Entertainment about Grisham’s writing routine, favourite adaptations and the problem with Hollywood.

The soundtrack: The Social Network

The album: Toys in the Attic, Aerosmith

Making

I like talking about making when it comes to travelling. With intention, mindfulness, unhurried and open-minded. Exploring Transylvania with the Slow Cyclist is the definition of that concept.

Exploring

A Wim Wenders retrospective is running in Lausanne until December 13th. On the same note, I am hoping for a book as an accompanying catalogue for the recent exhibition Donata and Wim Wenders: Two Pairs of Eyes that held at the Ernst Leitz Museum, in Wetzlar. Because its concept is worth pondering on beyond the walls of an exhibition. It was curated as a dialogue between two different ways of seeing the world. Wim Wenders’ photographs – often emptied of people, intensely colorful, marked by space and silence. Donata’s work – black and white, close to people, condensed into light, shadow and movement. In their interplay, something unfolds that both artists continuously bring back to life: a quiet, multi-layered dialogue between clarity and dissolution, between the cinematic and the photographic view.

On an end note

To mark its 175th anniversary, The New York Times has selected five revealing, idiosyncratic and nostalgic films about chasing the truth, no matter where it leads. The retrospective is titled Stop the Presses and it is hosted by the Metrograph cinema, in New York City, starting with October 16th. The films include All the President’s Men, Almost Famous, The Insider, Broadcast News and The Parallax View. It is “a tribute to journalism’s role in history and culture – and to the colourful, complicated characters who fill our newsrooms and our screens”. And because I presume many of us won’t be able to attend the Metrograph screenings, there is nothing stopping us from watching the films at home, preferably on our own DVD or Blu-ray. I would add another one to the list: The Paper. Because good journalism is about something bigger than today’s news.

The regulars

The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Ruthie’s Table 4 with Ruth Rogers. Fashion Neurosis, with Bella Freud. AccuRadio. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Rennae Stubbs tennis podcast. Gone to Timbuktu with Sophy Roberts. Sirene Journal, Racquet, Waves & Woods, Legénde, and Monocle, all in print.

“Play is the work of childhood. […] But evolution didn’t just lengthen childhood to make learning possible. It also installed three strong motivations to do things that make learning easy and likely: motivations for free play, attunement, and social learning. In the days of play-based childhood, the norm was that when school let out, children were out playing with each other, unsupervised, in ways that let them satisfy these motives. But in the transition to phone-based childhood, the designers of smartphones, video game systems, social media, and other addictive technologies lured kids into the virtual world, where they no longer got the full benefit of acting on these three motivations.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt / The Slow Cyclist / Every Picture Tells a Story, by Terry O’Neill

Posted by classiq in Books, Culture, Film, Newsletter | | Comments Off

12 October 2026

Read instead…in print #45: John Huston by Lillian Ross

“Beautiful journalism”, John Huston said about Picture, Lillian Ross’s reporting of the making of his The Red Badge of Courage. No stylistic flourishing, no gratuitous metaphors, no speculation or gossip, just clarity and simplicity, a probing insight into filmmaking. Reading Picture, my first introduction to Ross’s writing, originally published in 1952, reminded me about what real journalism is about. Integrity. Objectivity. Responsibility. Power of observation. Respect for the privacy of your subjects.

Picture is one of the most authentic and accurate documentations of how a movie is made, of how the big studio Hollywood mechanisms work and how an original, artistic film and a director’s uncompromising vision can be slashed into a whole different thing when the studio heads and producers step in and cut down by a third a film.

But what I believe Lillian Ross captured first and foremost, and so well and effortlessly, was that rare quality that John Huston had for looking at and making art with enthusiasm and curiosity, but without intellectualisation. She was able to capture the essence of the artist, with his many facets, just by reporting the facts. That’s a rare quality, too.

Before Picture came out, Lillian Ross had started to write for The New Yorker for a few years, and in 1949, her article Questions, recounting her meeting in New York with John Huston, was published in the “Talk of the town” column of the magazine.

Over the next four decades, Ross wrote about Huston while immersed on the set of The Bible in Rome in 1965, on the Brooklyn set of Prizzi’s Honor in 1984, relentlessly back and forth to through Manhattan during the filming of The Letter from the Kremlin, at the preview of Fat City or at the pre-production stage of Own the Victory. Beginning with Quenstions and concluding with a paper on the set of the film directed by Anjelica Huston in 1996, Bastard Out of Carolina, the volume John Huston by Lillian Ross (presented here in the first French edition of the book and available in my shop) gathers seven valuable articles by Lillian Ross for The New Yorker. Every brief journalistic piece bears her unique voice, and while demanding compression it allows for immersive, sharp, witty and comprehensive insight into the world of making movies and into the character of one of the most charismatic, enigmatic and visionary filmmakers. Every word counts, therefore there is no fancy writing, just getting to the essence of the story in the most beautifully simple and total way.

Read instead… in print is about a good book about cinema or filmmakers. No discursive, pretentious analyses, no verbose scrutiny. Because the idea is to invite you to read the book, not read about it here. But instead of using social media, I use my journal. Back to basics. Take it as a wish to break free of over-reliance on social media (even if it’s just for posting a photo of a good book) for presenting my work, cultural finds and interests. These are things to be enjoyed as stand-alone pieces in a more substantial and meaningful way than showing them in the black hole of Instagram thronged with an audience with a short attention span. This is also a look through my voluminous collection of books about film that I use as research in my adamant decision to rely less and less on the online and more on more on print materials.

Editorial: Make them laugh

Louis de Funès and Bourvil in “La grande vadrouille”, 1966, directed by Gérard Oury. Les Films Corona, The Rank Organisation

The Editorial: thoughts, short stories
or essays about the world of cinema

It’s 1942. Three Royal Air Force pilots are shot down over Nazi-occupied Paris and land right on the doorsteps of the city’s quirkiest characters, who couldn’t be more different than each other: Bouvet (played by Bourvil), the working class everyday man, and Lefort (Louis de Funès), the eccentric star conductor of the Paris Opera. Against their will, the two Parisians find themselves guiding the three pilots to the Free Zone. A perilous, albeit hilarious, tribulation ensues, and a masterfully crafted one at that.La grande vadrouille (1965), directed by Gérard Oury, was the most successful film of all time in France until it was outtaken by Titanic, in 1997. That says something about the French audience, how seriously they take humour and comedy.

The year before, the same Oury had made La Corniaud, also with Bourvil and Louis de Funès in the lead roles, which was another success for audiences and earned him great reviews from fellow filmmakers, such as François Truffaut and Henri-Georges Clouzot, who both wrote him letters of appreciation, with Clouzot praising the film as the best French film he had seen in ten years. The film revived the French cinema, which hadn’t experienced such success since 1940, not even for films that benefited from successful press campaigns. A classic gangster story, with car chases, plot twists, confrontations and misunderstandings, that takes on a different tone because of Bourvil and de Funès, two of the best comedic actors in the history of cinema.

Gérard Oury was an adventurer of the 20th century, who lived by the motto: “I do what I like in my life.” But he knew that the path to his aim was work. And work he did. “To make a film, it takes me 12-17 months. A film is like a boat you want to use to sail around the world – to embark on a great adventure. You have to design it, build it, launch it and steer it with great care and firmness if you want to reach your destination safely,” the director remarked in an interview for Republique Le Provencal, when the film was released.

In Oury’s opinion, there had never been a crisis in the French cinema, but rather a crisis between certain film producers and the public, a rift that stemmed from years of relying on easy solutions in the realm of cinema. “I have no reason to stop halfway along the new career path that I have set out for myself. My next film, while remaining in the comedy genre, will be different from the first. It will be something like ‘To be or not to be’ that the French faced during the occupation.”

That next film was La grande vadrouille. The filmmaker took comedy seriously, not shying away from expressing mild contempt for “intellectual” directors who were benefitting from huge press coverage. Gérard Oury is as much part of the identity of French cinema as the New Wave. But for Oury, the criterion of success was very simple: “I do not make films for small groups of aesthetes. I think that entertainment as a whole – theatre, cinema, television, radio – needs to address itself to the mainstream. Films that are not made for the public do not interest me.” He made films for the large public, but that doesn’t mean his films were easy entertainment. He showed great admiration for the great Hollywood comedy directors, especially Frank Capra. Regarding them as touchstones for his own film-making, he believed that an important aspect of their appeal lay in their universality. “Humour is not only a defining feature of mankind, but also a mark of international brotherhood much more appealing than tears. Laughter is a collective response that has no frontier, a cultural phenomenon as important as any other.”

La grande vadrouille is fast, and funny. Gérard Oury’s comedies may not have travelled well overseas, to America, not even to Great Britain, but that has nothing to do with how good they are, but with an obtuse way of thinking. Indeed, the humour is more subtle, the beautiful French language more nuanced, the farces realistically funnier. And there are no more different temperaments than Bourvil and Louis de Funès, and maybe that’s exactly why they go so well together. “One practices humour with sensitivity and discretion, the other explodes in gags and ludicrous effects,” the director remarked. And Oury knew exactly how to channel de Funès’s torrent of antics without overplaying him, so nicely balanced at times with Bourvil’s rush of honest feeling. Frankly, there are few things that can lift my spirit as quickly as a Louis de Funès comedy can. Just the sight of his expressive face makes me laugh, without ever falling into stifling amusement. It’s pure relief and joy and childlike abandon to playfulness. It’s fresh and naïve, I laugh without guilt, and I love it for it. The director also took great advantage of the medium, the film camera, relying on action rather than dialogue, seizing the urgency of desperate feats in desperate times. In this urgency I truly see Ernst Lubitsch and his own To Be or Not to Be.

September newsletter: The Paper, T.O.C. Marseille, and Wolf by the River

Photos: Classiq Journal (left), Caesar Equipment (right)

“We are shaped by our childhoods, and my childhood
wasn’t about airplane trips. I flew for the first time
when I was 17 years old. I rarely travelled outside Sweden.
My summers were spent in Stockholm and on Koster. The majority
of my childhood memories came from the Koster Island and the sea.”

Artist Petter Alexis Askergren (Coast Culture magazine)

Photos: Classiq Journal

Viewing

The Paper, 1994
Ron Howard

What’s it like to be a reporter? How is it done? How do they talk, how do they behave, what expressions do they use, how fast do they talk, how fast do they think, how do you get the story right, how do you work against a deadline? What is journalistic integrity? How often does a newspaper follow the unwritten rule to go with a story on hand and the fix it tomorrow? Watching The Paper, you get a lot of these questions answered. It is very authentic. It’s thrilling to see how characters interact, how conversations overlap, how their principles surface, how they compete, and what the job does to their personal lives. Especially Robert Duvall’s. He’s in a supporting role, but by the end of the film you know him better than everyone else. That said, the feeling I had was that all the actors (Michael Keaton, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei) breathed life into their roles, not through imagination, not through personal experiences, but through real observation, and through their reaction to each other and the circumstances. They’re real.

Tickets, 2005
Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach

It’s Kazuo Ishiguro who inspired me to watch Tickets, with his list of favourite films set aboard trains that he curated for the BFI Southbank earlier this year. Films like Shanghai Express, 1932, The Lady Vanishes, 1936, and Night Train, 1959 (that extraordinary Rear Window-like microcosm of human experiences that I wrote about in this editorial), firm favourites of mine, I was happy to find in his selection, while others were new discoveries, like Tickets. A crowded train that travels through Italy, to Rome, focusing on different characters from episode to episode. Usually, when there are more directors involved in a film, the chapters, individually directed, are explicitly separated from one another (Boccaccio ‘70 comes to mind). Not here. The transition from one chapter to the next is done very smoothly, and although there are elements that define each episode, it’s wonderful to see how this type of film can bind together three different visions in a continuous form.

Gimme Shelter, 1970
Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin

San Francisco, 1969. The Rolling Stones gave a free concert at the Altamont Speedway Park, during their first tour of America. Worried about the security which was practically nonexistent for an overall very poorly planned event, the Stones asked the Hells Angels to keep order for them – there was a crowd of approximately 300 thousand people – but the day ended tragically as drugs broke loose and violence broke out and a fan was killed, something the documentary almost accidentally captured on film. Gimme Shelter begins with the aftermath of what happened and Mick Jagger’s reaction to it in the editing room. It is an extraordinary documentary, certainly one of the best music documentaries ever made, it’s also chilling and terrifying, the way the camera captures the electrifying energy of Mick’s performances, the madness of the crowds and that barbaric event. It’s also an unvarnished portrait of a rock band, a rock band that shook the world and that has always embraced the reputation of bad boys.

Reading

I first came into Sophie Denux’s work through her photography. Her photography is a discreet and elegant guidance into the culture and people of the places she travels to. Not just aesthetically pleasing, but a real representation of them, arising a humanistic feeling. She is after a deeper connection, one that is based on an equal exchange and on the respect for a land’s richness of culture. And the people generally respond by being themselves. Her stories are rooted in traditions of craft and artisanship, past and present, which translate into beautiful, enriching conversations with communities, custom and heritage.

The bi-annual independent magazine created by Sophie Denux, Toc Toc Toc Editions (Travel Observe Create), was born from the desire to share a certain vision of creation, of contemporary craftsmanship and its various players, taking the form of an invitation to discover their world, their living spaces, their workshops, their journeys. A continuum of cultural knowledge and creativity.

With her most recent creative project, she has turned her eyes to the place where she lives, Marseille. The book Take a walk on the creative side: Marseille Part I is like a character map, their stories coming together in the city of Marseille, a character in itself, opening door after door, to artists’ homes and studios, exploring how artists are, how they create, how they live, teaching us life lessons, nurturing our minds and creative sides.

I am very happy that Sophie has trusted me with carrying her book in my shop, where it is currently available.

Listening

The radio: Monocle on Sunday

The soundtrack: Gimme Shelter (1970)

The album: Not Bad for New Jersey, Brian Fallon

Making

In the Mood For…, a different kind of voyage guides, “driven by a love for print, photography and graphic design, as well as a desire to create the kind of books I would have loved to take along on my own travels.” We all document our travels nowadays, as much as some of us, myself included, are trying to resist snapping countless pictures and hoarding them away just because we can (opting for a camera instead of the phone, even if it is digital, will make you think twice before you press the button, will make the action more intentional, will almost feel like a small act of rebellion), but how different would it be if we slowed down, truly observed the place where we are, stroke up a conversation with the local vendor, just walked, not with a digital map in hand but where our wandering eye took us, and record in ink, or at least in typed words, the fleeting thoughts and particular feelings of that moment caught in that very intentional photo you’ve taken, just like an old-school postcard? That’s the kind of thoughtful travel companion In the Mood for… books are.

Exploring

I do love a small film festival with personality. This autumn, Ocean Film Festival Italia is touring Italy, from October 14 to November 12.

On an end note

Booksellers, and antique booksellers in particular, have been raising alarms over rare books being bought and scanned to feed AI models and training programmes, and then destroyed. In August, NPR talked to 404 Media cofounder and reporter Emanuel Maiberg in this interview about a large shipment of rare books that arrived at an Amazon AI training warehouse in the US. Maiberg explained why they target rare books: “The AI models are mostly trained on all the information that they scraped off the entire internet. At the point at which they did that, that content was human-generated. Articles from newspapers, from blogs, scientific articles, just people chatting online. And what AI companies discovered is that – once they scraped all that data and they were looking for more data to make their AI models even better, they tried generating data with AI and then having the AI train on that text.

It turns out that that causes a problem called model collapse, where if an AI trains an AI training data, it gets worse. So now they’re looking for more human-generated text because they already scraped the internet. The next logical step is to scan books that are not easily available online. This is why, at least the books that I’ve seen that end up in these orders, are not popular, common, easy to find books. They’re more rare books.” A rare book means more than a first edition of a classic novel from the 1900s. “A rare book is most likely a book that was never printed in large quantities because it is about a niche subject. It is what is called vanity publishing, where someone self-publishes a book. It’s an instruction manual for a product that’s no longer available. It’s really things like this that people at the moment don’t really care about. They don’t have high emotional value. But we don’t necessarily know what we might find valuable in the future.”

The obvious question to ask, I believe, as an individual, is: How can we fight this? Stay human. Get creative. Live in the real life. And read. Read a lot. Physical books. Read strange writing styles – here is how Craig Mod so eloquently puts it in his brilliant newsletter Roden: “My best response to the ‘horde of agents colonising our brains’ is: Be as weird as possible. Write as strangely as possible. The books I love the most, the ones I come back to again and again, I return to because they’re singular and of a singular voice. That alone makes them odd.”

Read books, magazines, as rare and indie as possible, essays in other languages than English. Learn a new language, if you have to. Read local authors. Buy books and cherish them. Take a detour. Start asking more questions. Stop relying on the Internet. Create a magazine, a paper-only magazine, and make it available to your small community.

Earlier this month, Andreas Åhrman, the co-founder of the brand Caesar Equipment, whom I had the pleasure to interview not long ago, generously sent me a bunch of Coast Culture magazines. It’s a beautiful editorial endeavor exclusively reserved as giveaways to Caesar customers and other selected retailers, hotels and some restaurants. Newspaper paper, large format (the kind that has gauged my interest lately, from various reasons), ad-free and, most importantly, gathering a very select number of stories that seem intentionally crafted to try to reclaim our right to take time over reading a newspaper or magazine and so that the limited collection of thoughtful stories and visual storytelling published can patiently inspire and truly be appreciated. Which is exactly my own philosophy when it comes to this cultural journal that I write, even if it is a digital publication. Maybe this kind of Coast Culture initiative is another answer to fighting the suppression of ideas that is happening and the rise of the AI. The stories written in Coast Culture magazine are about making, keeping and nurturing real connections – between people, between people and nature – about authenticity, about passing on real knowledge and life choices. We must get curious about everything. A simpler life, a broader mind.

Photos: Classiq Journal

The regulars

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