Welcome!

I am a film industry researcher  based in Santa Monica, CA. I hold a PhD from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts/Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies.

I’ve taught television and film courses at New York University, Seton Hall University, Brooklyn College, and CUNY Hunter. I’m also a video editor (Avid, Premiere). Prior to relocating to the US I worked as a project manager in the video games industry.

When I’m not watching or writing about movies, I like to read film industry trade journals, novels, and historical non-fiction. I love cats and travel. 

You can reach me here: LinkedIn. Please feel free to connect.

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The “Cover Girl” Issue

Publicity for Cover Girl

Publicity for Cover Girl

Oh, cruel irony!

I’m excited to be presenting a paper this Friday in Wisconsin on Columbia Pictures Technicolor musical, Cover Girl (1944) starring Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, and Lee Bowman. However, I just found out that MoMA will be screening the restored version of this movie at exactly the same time. The movie will be introduced by Grover Crisp, Executive Vice President of Asset Management, Film Restoration and Digital Mastering, Sony Pictures Entertainment.

At least I’ll get back to New York in time to catch the second screening of the film on Monday, but I’m terribly disappointed to miss Crisp’s talk.

The restoration was screened this summer at the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Italy and by all accounts it is magnificent. David Bordwell described it as the best DCP rendering of Technicolor that he has ever seen.

For my presentation I’ll be employing the teletypes and story conference notes to discuss the movie’s unique production history and elaborate nationwide exploitation campaign. I address the campaign further in a chapter from my dissertation.

 

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Direct to Your TV: NYU’s “University Broadcast Lab” (1969 -1983)

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For the 50th Anniversary of NYU Tisch School of the Arts my colleague and I have been commissioned to research the history of the School. We’re primarily focusing on locating and preserving audio-visual materials that record early faculty and student contributions. So far we’ve made some pretty exciting discoveries!

One portion of the School’s history that is proving particularly intriguing pertains to a series of programs made for a long-term project entitled “University Broadcast Lab.”

Between 1969-81 an extremely productive collaboration existed between the non-commercial, local station WNYC-TV and a 26-week color television course taught by Professors Richard Goggin and Irving Falk. For a number of months a year WNYC-TV would twice-weekly broadcast on Channel 31 the original and imaginative output made by students of this class. The first episode to air was entitled “Feiffer and Friends,” written and featuring -then student – Billy Crystal.

To exemplify the scope, innovation, and ambition of these television programs I’ve included below a random sampling of titles along with their descriptions:

  • Chase Newhart’s Beat the Draft (taping date: Jan 14 1970, air date: 10:30 pm, Jan 25 1970). This satiric program is a take-off on the game show format  – the winner gets a deferment, the loser is drafted to fight in Vietnam.
  • Bob Ackerman and Don Brockway’s Inside Television (air date: Feb 22 1971). This comedy-satire takes the viewer on a tour of the inside of his television set where he will learn about the work of dedicated people (called “Nurns”) who make their homes inside electronic devices. The Nurns explain the gadgets inside the TV set and give their opinions on some of the shows viewers watch.
  • Sheva Farkas’s We the People (air date: Mar 15 1971). An original drama about the confusion of ideas and the lack of ability to either compromise or listen to opposite points of view, the program revolves around the issues of racism, radicalism and the war in Vietnam.
  • Electa Brown and John Homs’s What? Your Favorite Subject is Math – The Village Charrette (May 24 1971). Brown interviews Patricia Flynn, Chairman of the Greenwich Village Charrette Steering Committee and Charles Patrick Bell, a 7-year-old first grader at P.S. 3 in the Village.

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The Long Career of Virginia Van Upp

When I’ve given presentations on movie producer Virginia Van Upp, I’ve discussed her 45+ year career in Hollywood as falling into four major phases. In my research I’m discovering that the final phase of Van Upp’s career is proving more complex and surprising than the current official narrative.

“Growing up with Hollywood” (1902-1934)

Before deciding on a career as a screenwriter, Van Upp held a variety of positions within the burgeoning movie industry of Los Angeles. These roles included: child star, director’s assistant, editor, script reader, casting agent, actor’s representative, and secretary to Horace Jackson. The knowledge she gained from these jobs (actor’s agent in particular), would significantly help Van Upp in the next three phases of her career.

“The Paramount Years” (1934-42)

“The Columbia Years” (1942-47)

“The Wilderness Years” (1948-1970)

After leaving Columbia, Van Upp spent several years trying to launch independent movie projects and wrote and produced three documentaries in Germany for the U.S State Dept. She also worked on a number of movies for which she is uncredited. I thought this final phase would be hard to find materials on, but my research to date shows that these years were some of the most interesting, prolific, and creative of Van Upp’s career.

I’m looking forward to visiting USC, UCLA, and Margaret Herrick Library in August and discovering more about Van Upp (and her mother, Hollywood scenarist Helen Van Upp).

Van Upp Meeting Luis César Amadori in 1945

Virginia Van Upp meeting with Luis César Amadori when he visited Los Angeles in 1945. On Van Upp’s desk are the script and costumes for Gilda (1946). Sourced from archive.org

Above is Virginia Van Upp meeting with (Italian born) Argentine director Luis César Amadori in 1945 at Columbia Pictures. The two filmmakers shared an interesting discussion about Hollywood cultural stereotypes and women working in the film industry. Upon leaving Columbia, Van Upp would travel extensively in South America and Europe, associating with dignitaries and filmmakers.

You can read more about the fascinating connection between Hollywood and Argentine film during the 1930s and 1940s here.

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Columbia Pictures, Rita Hayworth, and Virginia Van Upp

In my continued search for materials relating to Hollywood screenwriter-producer Virginia Van Upp, I was last week fortunate enough to visit the American Heritage Center (AHC) in Laramie, Wyoming, where I made some exciting discoveries.

The AHC holds an extensive collection of materials concerning the day-to-day operation of Columbia Pictures (1929 -1974). Van Upp worked at Columbia between the years 1941 – 1947. Her most successful movie at the studio was Gilda (1946), which she both wrote and produced. She briefly returned to work for the studio in 1951, assisting Rita Hayworth with the production of Affair in Trinidad.

The Columbia Pictures Collection at the AHC primarily consists of daily teletypes transmitted between the New York and Los Angeles offices. In these communications studio producers discuss particular films, publicity stunts, music rights, but above all else: Rita Hayworth! Discussions about Hayworth concern her films, contracts, clothes, travel arrangements, future productions, relationships….etc.

In addition to the teletypes, the collection also contains a few “Story Conference” transcriptions in which writers and producers discuss problems with various scripts and films. Among these records I found a few pages pertaining to the making of Gilda.

A big THANK YOU to the archivists at the AHC, all of whom are amazing.

My next port of call will be the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles.

 

 

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Horror in the Amusement Park

Just back from seeing Jurassic World, which I have to admit I enjoyed – I’m a sucker for nostalgia. I was also amused by the meta-discussions about needing to create bigger monsters to impress audiences that endlessly demand greater visual stimulation. I actually don’t think this is true of movie audiences and the argument highlights the disconnect between Hollywood right now, and spectators who still appreciate good storytelling.

Movies and amusement parks share quite a history – they grew up together. In Lauren Rabinovitz’s book: Electric Dreams: Amusement Parks, Movies, and American Modernism, Rabinovitz outlines how: “Amusement parks and movies appeared simultaneously.”

Electric Dreamland

Amusement parks helped contribute to the “rise of movies as a cultural institution… [as] cinema and the amusement park both celebrated each other” (22). Early examples of movies that embraced amusement parks include:

  • Boarding School Girls Visit Coney Island (1905, Thomas Edison)
  • Speedy (1928, Ted Wilde)
  • The Crowd (1929, King Vidor)
  • Coney Island (1939, William Castle)
Speedy (1928). At Coney Island, New York.

Speedy (1928). At Coney Island, New York.

In the final chapter of her book, Rabinovitz identifies a divide between the cultural significance of amusement parks in the first half of the twentieth century, and their transformation, corporatization, or ‘disneyfication’ into the theme parks of the ‘post-war’ years (Disneyland first opened in 1955). It seems to me contemporary representations of amusement parks have taken on a sinister dimension. While early films focused on the physical and audiovisual pleasures that amusement parks offered visitors, later films have depicted amusement parks as sites for oppressive working conditions, kidnappings, murders, vampire attacks and a zombie apocalypse.

Below are just a few examples of disturbing scenes set inside amusement parks.

  • The Lady From Shanghai (1947)
  • Strangers on a Train (1951)
  • The Lost Boys (1987)
  • Fatal Attraction (1987)
  • Jurassic Park (1993)
  • Itchy and Scratchy Land (1994, The Simpsons, TV)
  • Silent Hill 3 (2003, VG)
  • Adventureland (2009)
  • Zombieland (2009)
  • Escape from Tomorrow (2013)
  • Jurassic World (2015)

My favorite of the above is the horror film Escape from Tomorrow, which was shot on location at both Disneyland and Disney World (without Disney’s knowledge!). I first saw the movie at the Crosby Hotel, NYC, where the director attended a Q&A discussion after the screening and talked about the logistics of covert, guerrilla filmmaking. Escape from Tomorrow is currently available on Amazon Prime.

Escape-From-Tomorrow-2013-Movie-Poster-1

One might posit that the prominent placing of amusement parks in recent movies demonstrates a working through or mourning as movie spectatorship and more generally entertainment become less and less an embodied, crowd experience.

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About the Documentary HARLEM THEATRE (1968)

HARLEM THEATRE (1968) is a ninety-minute documentary that was made for German television by filmmaker Klaus Wildenhahn. The movie, filmed just after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., follows Harlem’s New Lafayette Theatre members as they rehearse for their upcoming season and run politically radical workshops in the community.

Founded by actor-director Robert Macbeth, the New Lafayette Theatre was a significant institution within the Black Power Movement. Ed Bullins, the theatre’s playwright-in-residence was the Black Panther’s Minister of Culture. In addition to recording the theatre’s workshops, the movie contains street interviews with Harlem’s residents, and scenes from the Black Panther fundraising event held at Fillmore East for Eldridge Cleaver.

NLT

New Lafayette Theatre 1968, Company Members: J.E. Gaines, Beverly   , Bill Lathan, Yvette Hawkins, Roscoe Orman, George Miles, Helen Ellis, Roberta Raysor, Gary Bolling, Sam Wright, Estelle Evans, Bette Howard, Whitman Mayo, Peggy Kirkpatrick, Kris Keiser, Robert Macbeth, Ed Bullins

The movie is a powerful political and historical document that speaks to today’s concerns regarding justice for black people, police brutality, and the instrumentality of art to bring about change. Today’s renewed interest in the Black Panthers also makes the film timely. Until 2018 the film had never screened publicly outside of Central Europe. (16MM, B/W, English Language)

Here is a clip from HARLEM THEATRE in which Robert Macbeth discusses Black theatre as a subversive force.

This clip was transferred by film collector, Ira Gallen, from a print of the film that has since been lost/destroyed. The only known of surviving ninety minute, English language print of HARLEM THEATRE exists in an archive. If you would like to find out more about this film please email me.

[MAJOR UPDATE: In early 2018, on the movie’s 50th anniversary, Ira Gallen contacted me to say he had managed to locate the print within his storage unit. He generously agreed to finance the film’s digitization and it is now available for screenings].

Some of the Many Outstanding Moments From the Movie:

  • A young Ed Bullins reading for the first time to the NLT members the prologue to one of his most famous plays In the Wine Time. The theater would go on to perform the play that winter.
  • Black Panther leader Bobby Seale delivering a speech at a fundraiser held at Fillmore East.
  • Robert Macbeth’s “Method” workshops.
  • George Lee Miles, Gary Bolling and Helen Ellis rehearsing for their performance of Bullins’s play How Do You Do.
  • A humorous sequence in which Macbeth, Ellis, and Roscoe Orman appear on the Sonny Fox show and are interviewed by New York Times theater critic Stewart Klein.
  • Street interviews and scenes with people in Harlem (including Jackie Robinson, baseball player, civil rights activist, co-founder of Freedom Bank).
  • Scenes of street parties and people dancing to the Jazzmobile.
  • The theatre company led workshops held for the children in the community. Improvisation scenarios were often politically charged: Two twelve year old boys are asked to act out a scene in which they are political prisoners of the state who have been sentenced to death.

NEW LAFAYETTE THEATRE Project website!

Former New Lafayette Theatre Actor: Gary Bolling. 

Here are two snippets from an interview I conducted with former NLT actor Gary Bolling who appears in HARLEM THEATRE. In addition to his extensive theater work Gary has featured in several movies including the spectacular Losing Ground (1982, dir. Kathleen Collins) that previewed at the Lincoln Center this Spring (distributed by the wonderful Milestone Films). In the interview Gary spoke about his time at the NLT, and the rewards and dangers of acting with the Free Southern Theatre in the Sixties.

Interviewed last year, 2014.

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I Love My Radio

I’m currently curating a playlist of promotional telecommunication films for the Library of Congress. Here is a still from the animated short More Than Meets the Eye (1952) made by United Productions of America (the same company responsible for Mr. Magoo). In every domestic space someone is listening to a radio set.

Other films promoting radio sets, radio shows, and advertising airtime established the convention of presenting montages of white families enjoying domestic bliss with their radio sets. Sponsored telecommunication films 1935-1960. Continue reading

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An Evening of Stargazing

Authors Discuss How to Write and Publish in the Field of Star Studies

star

“’British Film Institute Star Studies Panel’ (from left to right) Martin Shingler, Cynthia Baron, Jacqueline Reich, Keri Walsh).” Photo courtesy of Fordham University English Department.

On the evening of Friday, September 19 at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center, I attended an engaging and productive panel discussion entitled “British Film Institute Star Studies.” The session focused on “the thorniest questions encountered in star studies” contributing to Fordham’s three-day conference “Rethinking Realist Acting,” organized to confront established notions about realism in film and theater.

The panelists, speaking from personal experience, introduced some of the challenges scholars face when writing about a screen star and suggested various methodological approaches to negotiating them. The four panel speakers were the editor and authors of books on movie stars, three speakers had written BFI series books. Continue reading

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How Americans Came to View Old Movies

Eric Hoyt’s original focus and smart approach provides a new perspective on what we may have considered familiar film history.

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Eric Hoyt, Hollywood Vault: Film Libraries Before Home Video, University of California Press, 2014, 288 pp.

As a film historian I think about movies a lot, however I’ve never been more conscious of the physical size and weight of film until a recent visit to a collector’s apartment in Manhattan. Standing in his kitchenette – one of the many rooms given over to his film collection – he explained: “I removed the stove for more space. I couldn’t use it anyway because the heat would damage the film. Now I just microwave everything.” I returned a look that expressed something of both awe and concern. The space, effort, and cost required to preserve film proves considerable so if you’re not storing it out of love it needs to have value. While individuals may be susceptible to the former, the latter motivates corporations. “When did old movies become valuable?” This is the question Eric Hoyt asks at the start of his book Hollywood Vault, which traces the changing valuation of film libraries across six decades from their emergence in the silent era through to their acquisition by conglomerates in the late sixties (2). Continue reading

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