We still have here (in France, I wouldn't know) this kind of great, slow paced interviews from time to time on art channels and such.

But for the most part we have to turn to the public radio for this kind of stuff nowadays, and not as many cultural figures still speak French as before - most American writers no longer do, except a few like John Irving (a great deal of scholars still do, thankfully).


Our radio had the good idea of an archival series for summer, broadcasting a whole series of old interviews with writers, songwriters, actors, intellectuals from the 70s (which were originally done for TV by a wonderful interviewer, who later became a landmark politician as our first Minister for Women's Affairs, who corresponded with De Beauvoir and Sagan, throwing ideas around. Those were the days! They broke that political mold, I'm afraid.) They have her, she's really old now, introduce each one and place it in context. Great series so far (internationally known names include Gainsbourg, Hans Selye, Brassens, Catherine Deneuve, Jacques Brel).

At the bottom of the page of the article, someone posted a link to more old TV interviews like this, this time from Québec, from our counterpart to the BBC (Some guests or subjects might be obscure to you, others probably not. There's a legendary interview in French with Jack Kérouac among them, and Le Clézio, Raymond Devos, Jiri Mucha, Anaïs Nin, Jean Piaget, Léo Ferré, René Goscinny (of Astérix's fame), Jean Rostand, Han Suyin discussing Mao's rise, Karl Stern, Jeanne Moreau, Alberto Moravia, Joséphine Baker, Jean-François Revel, Bazin, Tati. There's also a priceless news report from 1965 on the declining practice among Québec's catholics of abstaining from eating meat on fridays and the rumor, believed possibly false, that Rome was about to officially call an end soon to the practice... interviews with a psychiastrist (!), a theologian, a fish grossist and, that really shows our mixed heritage still more present at the time, they visit a fish & chips foodstand. Cute.