Last night, my friend Nick IMed me about recent deaths. For Burt Reynolds, he said, “My fave of his is Breaking In, directed by Bill Forsyth (Local Hero &) , written by J Sayles (that guy). A little jewel.” I said I'd just gotten a Filmstruck subscription (Criterion, Warner Bros.: expect a lot of Cagney reviews) and had come across my own forgotten Forsyth jewel: the once beloved “Gregory's Girl.” A few years back I'd been looking for good movies about adolesence/growing up for my nephew, got a few good ones (“Dazed and Confused”), couldn't find others (“Twist and Shout”), and had completely spaced on “Gregory‘s.” For shame.

“Whatever happened to Forstyth?” I wondered. “Is he still making movies?”

Nope. Done before 2000, according to IMDb. This quote in his bio may explain:

And so the passion ultimately fizzles out because of the limitations of the goal; because movies are really not that important. At the very end of the day you’re sitting with an audience of four or five hundred people and all they want is to be entertained. You see we‘re dealing with a medium which really only wants to involve itself in the superficial manipulation of emotions.

That’s one of two “personal quotes” IMDb lists. As much as it jibes with my own experience, I think I like the second quote better. It's actually a lot like the first, it just sounds more Forsythian. I‘ve put it in dialogue form:

Reporter: Why aren’t there any bad guys in your films?
Forsyth: Everybody has reasons.