Writers on Film

The best horror film ever made? The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for me is certainly the most unnerving and scariest to this day. Leatherface and his family wreak terror on a group of unsuspecting teenagers as they stray onto the family farm. James Rose's monograph for Devil's Advocate is a superb introduction, explication, and an in depth history of the making and reception of the film. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steven Cohan talks about his new book: On Audrey Hepburn: an Opinionated Guide Provides an original take on fashion in her films and shows how it was key to her popularity Focuses on Hepburn's abilities and craft as an actress; Offers a substantive and critical analysis of her “Cinderella” films as a discernible cycle; Argues that her striking success and popularity as a movie star was not only due to her unique physical features but to specific factors of postwar culture in the 1950s. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I talk to Professor Jie Li, the winner of the Kraszna-Krausz Prize Moving Image Book Award. Please note she will be delivering a lecture in London later in November, details below. Friday 29th November, 6pm Venue: BLOC, ArtsOne, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road London E1 4NS Free to attend, booking essential Click here to book The Foundation is delighted to be collaborating with Queen Mary University, London to present an evening celebrating the winner of this year’s Moving Image Book Award Professor Jie Li, for her book ‘Cinematic Guerrillas Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China‘ (Columbia University Press). Featuring: Jie Li, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University and Dr. Kiki Tianqi Yu, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In all his films, Wes Anderson turns the mundane into magic by building distinctive and eccentric worlds. But how well do you know the man behind the camera? Discover the inspirations of one of our most revered auteurs with The Worlds of Wes Anderson. Anderson’s playful and vibrant aesthetic is universally admired – but how has he managed to create such a recognisable identity? From Hitchcock and Spielberg to Truffaut and Varda, there are countless homages and references scattered throughout Anderson’s filmography, while his cultural anchor points go far beyond film and into the worlds of art and literature. Evocations of place and time underpin his work, from mid-century Paris in The French Dispatch to grand pre-war Europe in The Grand Budapest Hotel, while cultural institutions – such as Jacques Cousteau and The New Yorker magazine – are other touchstones. For Wes Anderson fans and cinephiles alike, this is an essential insight into the creative process of one of the world’s most unique filmmakers. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Benjamin Halligan joins John Bleasdale to talk about Hotbeds of Licentiousness, the first substantial critical engagement with British pornography on film across the 1970s, including the “Summer of Love,” the rise and fall of the Permissive Society, the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, and beyond. By focusing on a series of colorful filmmakers whose work, while omnipresent during the 1970s, now remains critically ignored, author Benjamin Halligan discusses pornography in terms of lifestyle aspirations and opportunities which point to radical changes in British society. In this way, pornography is approached as a crucial optic with which to consider recent cultural and social history. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The first major biography of the French filmmaker hailed by Martin Scorsese as “one of the Gods of cinema.” Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnès Varda (1928–2019) wrote and directed some of the most acclaimed films of her era, from her tour de force Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), a classic of modernist cinema, to the beloved documentary The Gleaners and I (2000) four decades later. She helped to define the French New Wave, inspired an entire generation of filmmakers, and was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards. In this lively biography, former Philadelphia Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey explores the “complicated passions” that informed Varda’s charmed life and indelible work. Rickey traces Varda’s three remarkable careers―as still photographer, as filmmaker, and as installation artist. She explains how Varda was a pioneer in blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, using the latest digital technology and carving a path for women in the movie industry. She demonstrates how Varda was years ahead of her time in addressing sexism, abortion, labor exploitation, immigrant rights, and race relations with candor and incisiveness. She makes clear Varda’s impact on contemporary figures like Ava DuVernay, Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, the Safdie brothers, and Martin Scorsese, who called her one of the Gods of cinema. And she delves into Varda’s incredibly rich social life with figures such as Harrison Ford, Jean-Luc Godard, Jim Morrison, Susan Sontag, and Andy Warhol, and her nearly forty-year marriage to the celebrated director Jacques Demy. A Complicated Passion is the vibrant biography that Varda, regarded by many as the greatest female filmmaker of all time, has long deserved. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason Solomons has been a film critic, one of the first film podcasters, an author and is now moving into a new role as a film producer with his company Movie Love Productions. He's currently working on adapting and bringing the brilliant best-selling memoir A Waiter in Paris to cinemas; and on the folk horror comedy The King of the Witches, based on a true story that’s never been told. His book Woody Allen: Film by Film is available where all good books are sold. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jez Conolly is the author of the Devil's Advocate edition of his book The Thing (available here) as well as an essay in Volume 3 of Scarred for Life (see here). Consigned to the deep freeze of critical and commercial reception upon its release in 1982, The Thing has bounced back spectacularly to become one of the most highly regarded productions from the 1980s 'Body Horror' cycle of films, experiencing a wholesale and detailed reappraisal that has secured its place in the pantheon of modern cinematic horror. Thirty years on, and with a recent prequel reigniting interest, Jez Conolly looks back to the film's antecedents and to the changing nature of its reception and the work that it has influenced. The themes discussed include the significance of The Thing's subversive antipodal environment, the role that the film has played in the corruption of the onscreen monstrous form, the qualities that make it an exemplar of the director's work and the relevance of its legendary visual effects despite the advent of CGI. Topped and tailed by a full plot breakdown and an appreciation of its notoriously downbeat ending, this exploration of the events at US Outpost 31 in the winter of 1982 captures The Thing's sub-zero terror in all its gory glory. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Bleasdale talks about Paul Verhoeven, the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher and film bros with Adam Nayman, author of Paul Thomas Anderson Masterworks and The Coen Brothers. Adam talks about his beginnings as film critic in Toronto. He also tells John his thoughts on the current state of film criticism, including the impact on social media on the film discourse. Adam's recommended film book is Un-American Psycho: Brian De Palma and the Political Invisible by Chris Dumas. Buy Adam's latest book here. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Euronews journalists David Mouriquand and Amber Bryce are joined by Sarah Bradbury of the UpComing to talk the 81st Venice Film Festival with myself, John Bleasdale. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joker: Folie à Deux hits Cannes and I am joined by David Mouriquand and Amber Bryce of EuroNews to talk about Todd Phillips' sequel starring Lady Gaga and joaquin Phoenix, and if it can live up to expectations. Live from the 81st Venice Film Festival. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Day 6 or 7 of the Venice Film Festival and David Mouriquand and Amber Brice from EuroNews join me to talk about The Brutalist, The Room Next Door and Queer. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman are on the Lido with two new films which are going to put them back in the headlines. David Mouriquand from EuroNews joins me to discuss the films Maria and Babygirl in the second of our Venice reports. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Mouriquand from EuroNews and Nicholas Bell from Eye on Cinema join John Bleasdale to talk about Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the opening film of the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Calogero became a viral sensation with his videos skewering movie clichés, so I had to get him on the podcast to talk police lieutenants and filthy coroners. His new comedy album HUSKY BOY can be ordered here and all the information you want is available from his site, here. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Bleasdale talks to Michael Benson on his book Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C Clarke and the Making of a Masterpiece. Buy the Book Here. The definitive story of the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey , acclaimed today as one of the greatest films ever made, and of director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke- "a tremendous explication of a tremendous film....Breathtaking" ( The Washington Post ). Fifty years ago a strikingly original film had its premiere. Still acclaimed as one of the most remarkable and important motion pictures ever made, 2001: A Space Odyssey depicted the first contacts between humanity and extraterrestrial intelligence. The movie was the product of a singular collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and science fiction visionary Arthur C. Clarke. Fresh off the success of his cold war satire Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick wanted to make the first truly first-rate science fiction film. Drawing from Clarke's ideas and with one of the author's short stories as the initial inspiration, their bold vision benefited from pioneering special effects that still look extraordinary today, even in an age of computer-generated images. In Space Odyssey , author, artist, and award-winning filmmaker Michael Benson "delivers expert inside stuff" ( San Francisco Chronicle ) from his extensive research of Kubrick's and Clarke's archives. He has had the cooperation of Kubrick's widow, Christiane, and interviewed most of the key people still alive who worked on the film. Drawing also from other previously unpublished interviews, Space Odyssey provides a 360-degree view of the film from its genesis to its legacy, including many previously untold stories. And it features dozens of photos from the making of the film, most never previously published. "At last! The dense, intense, detailed, and authoritative saga of the making of the greatest motion picture I've ever seen ... Michael Benson has done the Cosmos a great service" (Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks). Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ehsan Khoshbakht, curator of the Retrospective: “How to tell the story of a leading Hollywood studio while both teasing out the nuances and stressing the significance of canonical titles worthy of continued celebration? This has been the main challenge for our 40-title retrospective mapping Columbia Pictures’ glorious rise from Poverty Row to major force in Hollywood. ‘Lady with the Torch’ is an unofficial history of Columbia Pictures that celebrates big names, Oscar winners, and era-defining films but pays equal attention to the B-unit and yet to be discovered masters. Think the fast-talking career women of screwball comedies or think existentialist cowboys, prophetic anti-fascist quickies or unsettling ‘problem pictures’. Sony's generosity means we will bring to Locarno new restorations of films by John Ford and Phil Karlson, among many other gems. Once upon a time there was a brilliant exchange between art and commerce, between the system and the artist, and this Retrospective will celebrate that.” Visit the site here. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lawrence Kasdan has created some of the most influential films in Hollywood history. He is the screenwriter of such beloved blockbusters as The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Bodyguard (1992), and The Force Awakens (2015). Simultaneously, he has gained critical acclaim as the director of pictures that dissect contemporary American society: Body Heat (1981), The Big Chill (1983), The Accidental Tourist (1988), and Grand Canyon (1991). Brett Davies is Associate Professor of English at Meiji University, Tokyo Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Bleasdale talks to Julie Salamon the author of The Devil's Candy, The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood. The book is available here. The book was also the basis for the podcast series The Plot Thickens which you can listen to here. “So much better, so much more fun, than the movie it is about that one must be thankful to the filmmakers for producing such a spectacle, if only so that this book could be written.”—Vogue   When film director Brian De Palma invited author Julie Salamon to follow him on the set of The Bonfire of the Vanities, he had no idea that the fifty-million-dollar movie would become one of Hollywood’s biggest flops. The Devil’s Candy is the juicy, bestselling exposé that sent Hollywood honchos running for cover. Who was responsible for the last-minute casting change that cost four million dollars? Who knew that Melanie Griffith would show up halfway through the filming with a new set of breasts? Settle down in your front-row seat for a story that has more drama, hilarity, greed, folly, and ego than the movie that eventually ended up on the screen. Expertly reported and elegantly written, The Devil’s Candy is irresistible fun, a classic insider’s look at the movie business. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Bleasdale talks to author Mark Harris about his books Pictures from the Revolution and his recent biography of Mike NIchols. Mark's recommended book is Jason Bailey's Fun City Cinema, available here. Here's the blurb to Mark's most recent book: An instant New York Times Bestseller! A magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life of dazzling highs and vertiginous plunges--some of the worst largely unknown until now--by the acclaimed author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back Mike Nichols burst onto the scene as a wunderkind: while still in his twenties, he was half of a hit improv duo with Elaine May that was the talk of the country. Next he directed four consecutive hit plays, won back-to-back Tonys, ushered in a new era of Hollywood moviemaking with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and followed it with The Graduate, which won him an Oscar and became the third-highest-grossing movie ever. At thirty-five, he lived in a three-story Central Park West penthouse, drove a Rolls-Royce, collected Arabian horses, and counted Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Leonard Bernstein, and Richard Avedon as friends. Where he arrived is even more astonishing given where he had begun: born Igor Peschkowsky to a Jewish couple in Berlin in 1931, he was sent along with his younger brother to America on a ship in 1939. The young immigrant boy caught very few breaks. He was bullied and ostracized--an allergic reaction had rendered him permanently hairless--and his father died when he was just twelve, leaving his mother alone and overwhelmed. The gulf between these two sets of facts explains a great deal about Nichols's transformation from lonely outsider to the center of more than one cultural universe--the acute powers of observation that first made him famous; the nourishment he drew from his creative partnerships, most enduringly with May; his unquenchable drive; his hunger for security and status; and the depressions and self-medications that brought him to terrible lows. It would take decades for him to come to grips with his demons. In an incomparable portrait that follows Nichols from Berlin to New York to Chicago to Hollywood, Mark Harris explores, with brilliantly vivid detail and insight, the life, work, struggle, and passion of an artist and man in constant motion. Among the 250 people Harris interviewed: Elaine May, Meryl Streep, Stephen Sondheim, Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Tom Hanks, Candice Bergen, Emma Thompson, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Lorne Michaels, and Gloria Steinem. Mark Harris gives an intimate and evenhanded accounting of success and failure alike; the portrait is not always flattering, but its ultimate impact is to present the full story of one of the most richly interesting, complicated, and consequential figures the worlds of theater and motion pictures have ever seen. It is a triumph of the biographer's art. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.