Originally posted by The Nature Boy
I'd recommend Henry Fool as a starter, it's probably his most user friendly introduction. If you don't like that, you probably won't like the other stuff. But Trust is not a bad starter film either. The only one I'd recommend to avoid at all costs is No Such Thing. Decidely unHartleyesque, and not a strong film overall. Let it be the last one you see, if at all.

Originally posted by scott shelton
It begins and ends with TRUST.

Joseph Fulton, a well-regarded fifty-eight year-old director of romantic comedies, wants to become assistant groundskeeper at a local cemetery. He wants to work outdoors and be close to nature. Meanwhile, he thinks it’s important to have his last will and testament drawn up. But his highly dramatic actress girlfriend thinks he must be dying and that he is just too brave to tell anyone. The rumor spreads and soon everyone he knows—and some he doesn’t—are crowded in to his small apartment to say their last farewells.

During my Kickstarter campaign for the Henry Fool Trilogy in 2017 I suggested I would also include in that boxed-set edition a documentary film reflecting on my life and career. This was to be called, Where To Land.

But I could not do it. I am not a gifted documentary filmmaker and I'm not crazy about writing my autobiography either.

However, I am not bad at making up stories! So I started making up a story about a guy, kind of like me, and what he thinks about. Specifically—what he thinks he should do with the rest of his life.

I'm sixty-years-old now and have been making films professionally for thirty of those years. I do sometimes wonder if I want to continue—even though I know it’s the only thing I can do halfway well. But might there not be other ways of engaging with the world and continuing to learn—even new ways of supporting myself? The unbelievable truth of it all is: one keeps changing. I'm asking myself the same questions I asked at twenty: What do I want to be? How do I want to achieve that? When—if ever—will I know I've arrived? Where will I land?

As I thought about these things, the story became a series of portraits of the different people our hero, Joseph Fulton, knows and loves: his girlfriend, Muriel, who is a famous television actress eager for some deeper artistic commitment; his friend Eric who is an aging rocker concerned with putting his daughter through graduate school; his college age niece, Veronica; his ex-wife, Clara, who is still his best friend; his lawyer, Laura; his 100-year-old friend, the philosopher, Elizabeth; and others…

I think it’s the best thing I’ve written.