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Tyler Perry: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Janice D. Hamlet. 2019
A career-spanning volume, Tyler Perry: Interviews collects sixteen interviews, ranging from the early 2000s to 2018. Once a destitute and…
struggling playwright, Tyler Perry (b. 1969) is now a multimedia phenomenon and one of the most lucrative auteurs in Hollywood. Known for his unwavering and audacious rhetorical style, Perry has produced an impressive body of work by rejecting Hollywood’s procedures and following his personal template. Featuring mostly African American actors and centering primarily on women, Perry’s films lace drama and comedy with Christianity. Despite the skepticism of Hollywood executives who claimed that church-going black people do not go to the movies, Perry achieved critical success with the release of his first film, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, which became the US’s highest-grossing movie of 2005. With his movies, Perry has discovered an untapped audience for the stories he has to offer—stories about adversity, faith, family, and redemption. Critics, including African American filmmaker Spike Lee, have censured Perry’s work for being repetitive and reinforcing negative stereotypes that have long plagued the African American community. Supporters, however, praise Perry for creating films that allow his audience to see themselves onscreen. Regardless of how his films are received, Perry’s accomplishments—establishing the Tyler Perry brand, building one of the largest movie studios in the country, employing more African Americans in front of and behind the camera than any other studio, and creating cinematic content for audiences other filmmakers have ignored—undeniably establish him as one of the most powerful multimedia moguls in the country.Jafar Panahi: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Drew Todd. 2019
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi (b. 1960) is as famous for his remarkable films as for his courageous defiance of Iran’s…
state censorship. Panahi achieved international recognition with his feature film debut, The White Balloon, the first Iranian film to receive an award at the Cannes Film Festival. His subsequent films—The Mirror, The Circle, and Offside—continue to receive acclaim throughout the world, yet they remain largely unseen in his own country due to years of conflict with the Iranian government. In spite of multiple arrests, a brief imprisonment, and a ban on making movies and giving interviews, Panahi speaks openly and passionately in this unique, invaluable collection of twenty-five interviews, open letters, and his own court statement, in which he makes a compelling case for artistic freedom and humanism. Many of these documents have been translated from Persian and appear in English for the first time, including an interview done exclusively for this volume. In sparkling, lively interviews, Panahi reveals his influences, politics, and filmmaking practices. He explains the challenges he faces while working within (and often around) Iran’s heavily restricted film industry, providing the reader a unique vantage point from which to consider Iranian cinema and society.Stuart Gordon: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Michael Doyle. 2022
Animated by a singularly subversive spirit, the fiendishly intelligent works of Stuart Gordon (1947–2020) are distinguished by their arrant boldness…
and scab-picking wit. Provocative gems such as Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dolls, The Pit and the Pendulum, and Dagon consolidated his fearsome reputation as one of the masters of the contemporary horror film, bringing an unfamiliar archness, political complexity, and critical respect to a genre so often bereft of these virtues. A versatile filmmaker, one who resolutely refused to mellow with age, Gordon proved equally adept at crafting pointed science fiction (Robot Jox, Fortress, Space Truckers), sweet-tempered fantasy (The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit), and nihilistic thrillers (King of the Ants, Edmond, Stuck), customarily scrubbing the sharply drawn lines between exploitation and arthouse cinema.The first collection of interviews ever to be published on the director, Stuart Gordon: Interviews contains thirty-six articles spanning a period of fifty years. Bountiful in anecdote and information, these candid conversations chronicle the trajectory of a fascinating career—one that courted controversy from its very beginning. Among the topics Gordon discusses are his youth and early influences, his founding of Chicago’s legendary Organic Theatre (where he collaborated with such luminaries as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Mamet), and his transition into filmmaking where he created a body of work that injected fresh blood into several ailing staples of American cinema. He also reveals details of his working methods, his steadfast relationships with frequent collaborators, his great love for the works of Lovecraft and Poe, and how horror stories can masquerade as sociopolitical commentaries.She Damn Near Ran the Studio: The Extraordinary Lives of Ida R. Koverman (Hollywood Legends Series)
Par Jacqueline R. Braitman. 2020
Best known as the woman who “ran MGM,” Ida R. Koverman (1876–1954) served as talent scout, mentor, executive secretary, and…
confidant to American movie mogul Louis B. Mayer for twenty-five years. She Damn Near Ran the Studio: The Extraordinary Lives of Ida R. Koverman is the first full account of Koverman’s life and the true story of how she became a formidable politico and a creative powerhouse during Hollywood’s Golden Era. For nearly a century, Koverman’s legacy has largely rested on a mythical narrative while her more fascinating true-life story has remained an enduring mystery—until now. This story begins with Koverman’s early years in Ohio and the sensational national scandal that forced her escape to New York where she created a new identity and became a leader among a community of women. Her second incarnation came in California where she established herself as a hardcore political operative challenging the state’s progressive impulse. During the Roaring Twenties, she was a key architect of the Southland’s conservative female-centric partisan network that refashioned the course of state and national politics and put Herbert Hoover in the White House. As “the political boss of Los Angeles County,” she was the premiere matchmaker in the courtship between Hollywood and national partisan politics, which, as Mayer’s executive secretary, was epitomized by her third incarnation as “one of the most formidable women in Hollywood,” whose unparalleled power emanated from her unique perch inside the executive suite of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Free to adapt her managerial skills and political know-how on behalf of the studio, she quickly drew upon her artistic sensibilities as a talent scout, expanding MGM’s catalog of stars and her own influence on American popular culture. Recognized as “one of the invisible power centers in both MGM and the city of Los Angeles,” she nurtured the city’s burgeoning performing arts by fostering music and musicians and the public financing of them. As the “lioness” of MGM royalty, Ida Koverman was not just a naturalized citizen of the Hollywood kingdom; at times during her long reign, she “damn near ran the studio.”The Savvy Sphinx: How Garbo Conquered Hollywood
Par Robert Dance. 2021
Named a 2022 Richard Wall Award Finalist by the Theatre Library AssociationFrom the late 1920s through the thirties, Greta Garbo…
(1905–1990) was the biggest star in Hollywood. She stopped making films in 1941, at only thirty-six, and thereafter sought a discreet private life. Still, her fame only increased as the public and press clamored for news of the former actress. At the time of her death, forty-nine years later, photographers continued to stalk her, and her death was reported on the front pages of newspapers worldwide. In The Savvy Sphinx: How Garbo Conquered Hollywood, Robert Dance traces the strategy a working-class Swedish teenager employed to enter motion pictures, find her way to America, and ultimately become Hollywood’s most glorious product. Brilliant tactics allowed her to reach Hollywood’s upper-most echelon and made her one of the last century’s most famous people. Garbo was discovered by director Mauritz Stiller, who saw promise in her nascent talent and insisted that she accompany him when he was lured to America by an MGM contract. By twenty she was a movie star and the epitome of glamour. Soon Garbo was among the highest-paid performers, and in many years she occupied the number one position. Unique among studio players, she quickly insisted on and was granted final authority over her scripts, costars, and directors. But Garbo never played the Hollywood game, and by the late twenties her unwillingness to grant interviews, attend premieres, or meet visiting dignitaries won her the sobriquet the Swedish Sphinx. The Savvy Sphinx, which includes over a hundred beautiful images, charts her rise and her long self-imposed exile as the queen who abdicated her Hollywood throne. Garbo was the paramount star produced by the Hollywood studio system, and by the time of her death her legendary status was assured.Alain Resnais: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par T. Jefferson Kline. 2021
Among the most innovative and influential filmmakers of the twentieth century, Alain Resnais (1922–2014) did not originally set out to…
become a director. He trained as an actor and film editor and, during the sixty-eight years of his working life, delved into virtually every corner of filmmaking, working at one time or another as screenwriter, assistant director, camera operator and cinematographer, special effects coordinator, technical consultant, and even author of source material. From such award-winning documentaries as Van Gogh and Night and Fog to the groundbreaking dramas Hiroshima mon amour, Last Year at Marienbad, and Muriel, Resnais’s films experiment with such themes as consciousness, memory, and the imagination. Distinguishing himself from associations with the French New Wave movement, Resnais considered his films to be “anti-illusionist,” never allowing his spectators to forget they were watching a work of art. In Alain Resnais: Interviews, editor Lynn A. Higgins collects twenty-one interviews with the filmmaker, twelve of which are translated into English for the first time. Spanning his entire career from his early short subjects to his final feature film, the volume highlights Resnais’s creative strategies and principles, illuminates his place in world cinema history, and situates his work relative to the New Wave, American film, and experimental filmmaking more broadly. Like his films, the interviews collected here reveal a creator who is at once an intellectual, a philosopher, an entertainer, a craftsman, and an artist.Part of the Magic: A Collection of Disney-Inspired Brushes with Greatness
Par Bambi Moé. 2023
Part of the Magic: A Collection of Disney-Inspired Brushes with Greatness is a book of remarkable and wildly entertaining anecdotal…
stories told through the lens of an entertainment industry insider. Author Bambi Moé enjoyed a twenty-year career at The Walt Disney Company in charge of all aspects of music for Walt Disney Television Animation. Her name, vocation, and background gave her exceptional access to pop culture and entertainment giants. The book takes readers on a nonstop ride and keeps them riveted throughout extremely candid encounters shared here for the first time. Moé’s fascinating true stories provide a rare insight into the creative process associated with music in animation and give readers a historical reference to The Walt Disney Company’s burgeoning direct-to-video empire. Her career exemplifies the rewards often associated with hard work, perseverance, integrity, and the ability to recognize potential in others. Often the only woman in a male-dominated work environment, Moé’s success will inspire young readers interested in pursuing a career in entertainment. Part of the Magic invites readers to consider their own stories and recognize their own universality. Like a photo that captures life’s moments and teaches us lessons, each of Moé’s brushes with greatness serves as a reminder that we are all connected by reason of our own humanity. Her joy extends far beyond the original encounter and multiplies in the retelling of these stories.Abbas Kiarostami: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Monika Raesch. 2023
The cinephile community knows Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) as one of the most important filmmakers of the previous decades. This volume…
illustrates why the Iranian filmmaker achieved critical acclaim around the globe and details his many contributions to the art of filmmaking. Kiarostami began his illustrious career in his native Iran in the 1970s, although European and American audiences did not begin to take notice until he released his 1987 feature Where’s the Friend’s House? His films defy established conventions, placing audiences as active viewers who must make decisions about actions and characters while watching the narratives unfold. He asks viewers to question the genre construct (Close-Up) and challenges them to determine how to watch and imagine a narrative (Ten and Shirin). In recognition for his approach to the craft, Kiarostami was awarded many honors during his lifetime, including the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 for Taste of Cherry. In Abbas Kiarostami: Interviews, editor Monika Raesch collects eighteen interviews (several translated into English for the first time), lectures, and other materials that span Kiarostami’s career in the film industry. In addition to exploring his expertise, the texts provide insight into his life philosophy. This volume offers a well-rounded picture of the filmmaker through his conversations with journalists, film scholars, critics, students, and audience members.Albert Brooks: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Alexander Greenhough. 2024
Albert Brooks: Interviews brings together fourteen profiles of and conversations with Brooks (b. 1947), in which he contemplates, expounds upon,…
and hilariously jokes about the connections between his show business upbringing, an ambivalence about the film industry, the nature of fame and success, and the meaning and purpose of comedy. Throughout all these encounters, Brooks expresses an unwavering commitment to his own artistic expression as a filmmaker and a rejection of mainstream conventions. With his questioning and critical disposition, nothing seems certain for Albert Brooks except for the integrity of art and the necessity for a wry skepticism about the incongruities of everyday life in corporate America. Brooks is neither a Hollywood insider nor an outsider. He’s somewhere in-between. Since the early 1970s, this inimitable actor-writer-director has incisively satirized the mass media system from within. After initial work as an inventive comedian, both live and on network television, Brooks contributed six shorts to the first season of Saturday Night Live, which earned him a cult following for their avant-garde form and sensibility. These were followed by his feature debut, Real Life, the first of only seven films—including Modern Romance, Lost in America, and Defending Your Life—that Brooks has directed to date. His limited output reflects not only the difficulty in financing idiosyncratic films, but equally the exacting seriousness which Brooks has in making audiences laugh and think at the same time.David O. Selznick (1902–1965) was one of the most prominent film producers of the Hollywood studio era, responsible for such…
artistic and commercial triumphs as King Kong, David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, A Star Is Born, Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Spellbound, and The Third Man. However, film production was not his only domain. Starting in the late 1930s, he built an impressive stable of stars within his own independent company, including Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh, Joan Fontaine, Jennifer Jones, and Gregory Peck. In Starmaker: David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System, author Milan Hain reveals the mechanisms by which Selznick and his collaborators discovered and promoted new stars and describes how these personalities were marketed, whether for financial gain or symbolic recognition and prestige. Using a wide range of archival materials, the book significantly complements and reshapes our understanding of Selznick’s celebrated career by focusing on heretofore neglected aspects of his creative and business activities. It also sheds light on the US film industry during the Golden Age of Hollywood studios and in the postwar period when the established order began to break down. By structuring the book around Selznick and his role as a starmaker, Hain demonstrates that star production and development in the Hollywood studio system was a highly organized and systematic activity, though the respective strategies and procedures were often hidden from the public eye.Woody Allen: Interviews, Revised and Updated (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Robert E. Kapsis. 2016
This revised and updated edition gathers interviews and profiles covering the entire forty-five-year span of Woody Allen's career as a…
filmmaker, including detailed discussions of his most popular as well as his most critically acclaimed works. The present collection is a complete update of the volume that first appeared in 2006. In the years since, Allen has continued making movies, including Midnight in Paris and the Oscar-winning Blue Jasmine. While many interviews from the original edition have been retained in the present volume, nine new entries extend the coverage of Allen's directorial career through 2015. In addition, there is a new, in-depth interview from the period covered in the first edition. Most of the interviews included in the original volume first appeared in such widely known publications and venues as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Playboy. A number of smaller and lesser-known venues are also represented, especially in the new volume. Several interviews from non-American sources add an international perspective on Allen's work. Materials for the new volume include pieces focusing primarily on Allen's films as well as broader profiles and interviews that also concentrate on his literary talent. Perhaps Stephen Mamber best describes Allen's distinctiveness, especially early in his career: “Woody Allen is not the best new American comedy director or the best comedy writer or the best comedy actor, he's simply the finest combination of all three.”George A. Romero: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Tony Williams. 2011
George A. Romero (b. 1940) has achieved a surprising longevity as director since his first film, Night of the Living…
Dead (1968). After relocating to Canada, he shows no signs of slowing up: his recent film, Survival of the Dead (2009), is discussed in a new interview conducted by Tony Williams for this volume, and still other films are awaiting release. Although commonly known as a director of zombie films, a genre he himself launched, Romero's films often transcend easy labels. His films are best understood as allegorical commentaries on American life that just happen to appropriate horror as a convenient vehicle. Romero's films encompass works as different as The Crazies, Hungry Wives, Knightriders, and Bruiser. The interviews in this collection cover a period of over forty years. In whatever format they originally appeared—the printed page, the internet, or the video interview—these discussions illustrate both the evolution of Romero's chosen forms of technology and the development of his thinking about the relationship between cinema and society. They present Romero as an independent director in every sense of the word.Searching for John Ford
Par Joseph McBride. 2011
John Ford's classic films—such as Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, The Quiet Man, and The…
Searchers—have earned him worldwide admiration as America's foremost filmmaker, a director whose rich visual imagination conjures up indelible, deeply moving images of our collective past. Joseph McBride's Searching for John Ford, described as definitive by both the New York Times and the Irish Times, surpasses all other biographies of the filmmaker in its depth, originality, and insight. Encompassing and illuminating Ford's myriad complexities and contradictions, McBride traces the trajectory of Ford's life from his beginnings as “Bull” Feeney, the nearsighted, football-playing son of Irish immigrants in Portland, Maine, to his recognition, after a long, controversial, and much-honored career, as America's national mythmaker. Blending lively and penetrating analyses of Ford's films with an impeccably documented narrative of the historical and psychological contexts in which those films were created, McBride has at long last given John Ford the biography his stature demands.Mary Wickes: I Know I've Seen That Face Before (Hollywood Legends Series)
Par Steve Taravella. 2013
Moviegoers know her as the housekeeper in White Christmas, the nurse in Now, Voyager, and the crotchety choir director in…
Sister Act. This book, filled with never-published behind-the-scenes stories from Broadway and Hollywood, chronicles the life of a complicated woman who brought an assortment of unforgettable nurses, nuns, and housekeepers to life on screen and stage. Wickes (1910–1995) was part of some of the most significant moments in film, television, theatre, and radio history. On that frightening night in 1938 when Orson Welles recorded his earth-shattering “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast, Wickes was waiting on another soundstage for him for a rehearsal of Danton's Death, oblivious to the havoc taking place outside. When silent film star Gloria Swanson decided to host a live talk show on this new thing called television, Wickes was one of her first guests. When Lucille Ball made one of her first TV appearances, Wickes appeared with her—and became Lucy's closest friend for more than thirty years. Wickes was the original Mary Poppins, long before an umbrella carried Julie Andrews across the rooftops of London. And when Disney began creating 101 Dalmatians, Wickes was asked to pose for animators trying to capture the evil of Cruella De Vil. The pinched-face actress who cracked wise by day became a confidante to some of the day's biggest stars by night, including Bette Davis and Doris Day. Bolstered by interviews with almost three hundred people, and by private correspondence from Ball, Davis, Day, and others, Mary Wickes: I Know I've Seen That Face Before includes scores of never-before-shared anecdotes about Hollywood and Broadway. In the process, it introduces readers to a complex woman who sustained a remarkable career for sixty years.David O. Russell: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Holly Willis. 2018
David O. Russell (b. 1958) boasts a diverse body of work as a writer and director, spanning multiple genres and…
featuring radically differing aesthetic styles. While his early work comically explored taboo subjects with unerring directness, he has also investigated politics with explosive satire. In his most recent films, including American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook, Russell examines characters and situations that are at once everyday and also extraordinary. Whatever the project, Russell is driven to explore the idiosyncrasies that make each character human, and he extends that curiosity to explore what makes each actor unique. His attentiveness to his cast members has earned him the label of "actor's director," due in no small part to the many nominations and awards earned by a long list of Hollywood stars in his movies.Russell has also become one of our era's most interesting formal stylists as he adopts a visual design appropriate to each of his film's thematic concerns. The result may be a color palette resembling the washed-out pages of a newspaper achieved by manipulating the film stock for Three Kings or the tumultuous opening of The Fighter when an audacious, roving camera plunges viewers straight into the story from the very first shots of the film. Rather than building a signature style, Russell has instead tested the varied possibilities of cinematic expression.This career-spanning volume features conversations with scholars and journalists as well as filmmakers. Speaking to directors like Alexander Payne and Spike Jonze, Russell contextualizes each of his films, offers an intimate account of his evolving writing and directing process, and opens his life to reveal how a remarkable body of work has come to be.Harmony Korine: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Eric Kohn. 2014
Harmony Korine: Interviews tracks filmmaker Korine's stunning rise, fall, and rise again through his own evolving voice. Bringing together interviews…
collected from over two decades, this unique chronicle includes rare interviews unavailable in print for years and an extensive, new conversation recorded at the filmmaker's home in Nashville.After more than twenty years, Harmony Korine (b. 1973) remains one of the most prominent and yet subversive filmmakers in America. Ever since his entry into the independent film scene as the irrepressible prodigy who wrote the screenplay for Larry Clark's Kids in 1992, Korine has retained his stature as the ultimate cinematic provocateur. He both intelligently observes modern social milieus and simultaneously thumbs his nose at them. Now approaching middle age, and more influential than ever, Korine remains intentionally sensationalistic and ceaselessly creative.He parlayed the success of Kids into directing the dreamy portrait of neglect, Gummo, two years later. With his audacious 1999 digital video drama Julien Donkey-Boy, Korine continued to demonstrate a penchant for fusing experimental, subversive interests with lyrical narrative techniques. Surviving an early career burnout, he resurfaced with a trifecta of insightful works that built on his earlier aesthetic leanings: a surprisingly delicate rumination on identity (Mister Lonely), a gritty quasi-diary film (Trash Humpers), and a blistering portrait of American hedonism (Spring Breakers), which yielded significant commercial success. Throughout his career he has also continued as a mixed-media artist whose fields included music videos, paintings, photography, publishing, songwriting, and performance art.John Cassavetes: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Gabriella Oldham. 2016
American filmmaker John Cassavetes (1929-1989) made only nine independent films during a quarter century, but those films affected the cinema…
culture of the 1960s to the 1980s in unprecedented ways. With a close nucleus of actors and crew members on his team, including his wife Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk, and Ben Gazzara, Cassavetes created films that explored the gritty side of human relationships. He staunchly advocated the right of actors and filmmakers to full artistic freedom over their work. Attracting both fervent admirers and harsh critics, Cassavetes's films have garnered prestigious awards in the US and Europe and continue to evoke strong reactions.Starting in New York with his first film Shadows (1959), Cassavetes moved on to the West Coast with Faces (1968), Husbands (1970), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980), and Love Streams (1984). He also directed several studio films, which often rankled his independent streak that rebelled against a loss of artistic freedom. Cassavetes's work in the theater and his performances in numerous television programs and films, including The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Rosemary's Baby (1968), made him, as a director, fiercely protective of his actors' right to self-expression.Cassavetes's contributions to film as actor, writer, director, producer, and cinematographer at a time of radical changes in cinema history continue to inspire independent filmmakers to challenge creative restrictions and celebrate actors' artistic contributions. John Cassavetes: Interviews captures this "maverick" streak of an intensely personal filmmaker who was passionate about his art.Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell (Hollywood Legends Series)
Par Bernard F. Dick. 2006
When it comes to living life to its fullest, Rosalind Russell's character Auntie Mame is still the silver screen's exemplar.…
And Mame, the role Russell (1907–1976) would always be remembered for, embodies the rich and rewarding life Bernard F. Dick reveals in the first biography of this Golden Age star, Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell. Drawing on personal interviews and information from the archives of Russell and her producer-husband Frederick Brisson, Dick begins with Russell's childhood in Waterbury, Connecticut, and chronicles her early attempts to achieve recognition after graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Frustrated by her inability to land a lead in a Broadway show, she headed for Hollywood in 1934 and two years later played her first starring role, the title character in Craig’s Wife. Dick discusses all of her films along with her triumphal return to Broadway, first in the musical Wonderful Town and later in Auntie Mame. Forever Mame details Russell's social circle of such stars as Loretta Young, Cary Grant, and Frank Sinatra. It traces an extraordinary career, ending with Russell's courageous battle against the two diseases that eventually caused her death: rheumatoid arthritis and cancer. Russell devoted her last years to campaigning for arthritis research. So successful was she in her efforts to alert lawmakers to this crippling disease that a leading San Francisco research center is named after her.Paul Verhoeven: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Margaret Barton-Fumo. 2017
After a robust career in the Netherlands as the country's most successful director, Paul Verhoeven (b. 1938) built an impressive…
career in the United States with such controversial blockbusters as RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers, and Showgirls before returning home to direct 2006's Black Book. After a recent stint as a reality television judge in the Netherlands, Verhoeven returned to the big screen with his first feature film in a decade, a highly anticipated French-language production, Elle, starring Isabelle Huppert.Verhoeven, who holds an advanced degree in mathematics and physics, boasts a fascinating background. Traversing Hollywood, the Dutch film industry, and now French filmmaking, the interviews in this volume reveal a complex, often ambiguous figure, as well as a director of immense talent.Paul Verhoeven: Interviews covers every phase of the director's career, beginning with six newly translated Dutch newspaper interviews dating back to 1968 and ending with a set of previously unpublished interviews dedicated to his most recent work. He experimented with crowd-sourced filmmaking for the television show The Entertainment Experience, which resulted in the film Tricked, as well as his latest feature Elle. Editor Margaret Barton-Fumo includes "Sex, Cinema and Showgirls," a long out-of-print essay by Verhoeven on his most controversial film, accompanied by pages of original storyboards from this and some of Verhoeven's other films. Finally, Barton-Fumo allots due attention to the director's little-known lifelong fascination with the historical Jesus Christ. Verhoeven is the only non-theologian member of the exclusive Westar Institute and author of the book Jesus of Nazareth.Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century
Par John C. Tibbetts, James M. Welsh. 2014
Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century brings to life the most popular movie star of his day, the personification of…
the Golden Age of Hollywood. At his peak, in the teens and twenties, the swashbuckling adventurer embodied the new American Century of speed, opportunity, and aggressive optimism. The essays and interviews in this volume bring fresh perspectives to his life and work, including analyses of films never before examined. Also published here for the first time in English is a first-hand production account of the making of Fairbanks's last silent film, The Iron Mask,/i>. Fairbanks (1883-1939) was the most vivid and strenuous exponent of the American Century, whose dominant mode after 1900 was the mass marketing of a burgeoning democratic optimism, at home and abroad. During those first decades of the twentieth century, his satiric comedy adventures shadow-boxed with the illusions of class and custom. His characters managed to combine the American Easterner's experience and pretension and the Westerner's promise and expansion. As the masculine personification of the Old World aristocrat and the New World self-made man--tied to tradition yet emancipated from history--he constructed a uniquely American aristocrat striding into a new age and sensibility. This is the most complete account yet written of the film career of Douglas Fairbanks, one of the first great stars of the silent American cinema and one of the original United Artists (comprising Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith). John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh's text is especially rich in its coverage of the early years of the star's career from 1915 to 1920 and covers in detail several films previously considered lost.