Tag Archives: Alan Ladd

“It’s a situation I’ve never been able to fathom. One minute, it seemed I had more movie offers than I could handle, the next — no one wanted me.” — Sal Mineo

It’s his birthday today. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to be a gay kid in the 1950s and see Rebel Without a Cause, particularly Sal Mineo’s performance as “Plato,” the lonely teenage boy, with a picture … Continue reading

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November 2022 Viewing Diary

Something in the Dirt (2022; d. Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson) I really liked this. If you like losing yourself in conspiracy theories – without being, like, a QAnon-type ready to shoot up a pizza parlor – then this is super … Continue reading

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Back-ting

Veronica Lake, Alan Ladd, The Blue Dahlia

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For Film Comment: Shane & Everybody Wants Some!!

There’s a new column on Film Comment called “Seeing Double”, where writers explore connections between different movies, potential double bills. So I wrote about Shane and Everybody Wants Some!!, a piece I’d been wanting to write for a couple of … Continue reading

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September 2020 Viewing Diary

September was the longest month of my life. I started out putting my cat to sleep. I was in Rhode Island and had been so for a month. I came home, and everything had changed. And everything will keep changing. … Continue reading

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September 2015 Viewing Diary

I got a pretty big writing assignment this past month, with a deadline of October 5. So I’ve been working hard, researching, as the below list will probably show. Not ready to talk about it yet, still working on the … Continue reading

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Tough Guys With Pets

Alan Ladd, ‘This Gun for Hire’ (1942) Alain Delon, ‘Le Samourai’ (1967) Charles Bronson, “Hard Times” (1975) Marlon Brando, “The Godfather” (1972)

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Jef Costello in Le Samourai: What You See Is What You Get, But What Is That Exactly?

Let’s talk about Jef Costello, the lead character in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai, played by Alain Delon. Let’s talk about what we know, which is just the information we get from the screen. (That’s pretty much all we get, anyway: … Continue reading

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