Richard Ayoade appeared on Channel 4 News last night (October 21) to promote his new book Ayoade on Ayoade. His interview with presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy has appeared on the show’s Youtube channel with the caption, “Who’s interviewing who?!”
During the interview Ayoade seized upon the presenter’s apparent misreading of his latest work and said his book was a “comic book about film” and not a “deconstruction” of the interview process.
Last year Guru-Murthy endured a torrid time when he challenged Django Unchained director Quentin Tarantino about the violent nature of his film.
However, Guru-Murthy appeared to be in on the joke to some extent as Ayoade highlighted “the essential lie of the interview situation” where the interviewee treats proceedings as an advertising opportunity.
Ayoade admitted to Guru-Murthy that interviews are “like commuting, no one loves it” and that “in a way” he’d done the same thing as Tarantino had done by turning the tables and “shutting down” his interviewer.
Ayoade’s tongue in cheek tome is sub-titled, A Cinematic Odyssey. In a recent interview with NME for the DVD release of his second film The Double, Ayoade said of the book: “I interview myself – which is a joke.”
Ayoaded on Ayoade features “ten brilliantly insightful and often erotic interviews” during which the filmmaker “examines himself fully and without mercy, leading a breathless investigation into this once-in-a-generation visionary”.
Watch Ayoade take on Guru-Murthy on Channel 4 News in the video below.