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- 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- “I don’t represent anything.” — Liz Phair
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- “Some syllables are swords.” — Metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan
- “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
- “All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.” — Charlie Chaplin
- “As a cinematographer, I was always attracted to stories that have the potential to be told with as few words as possible.” — Reed Morano
- “Even though I’m writing about very dark material, it still feels like an escape hatch.” — Olivia Laing
- “It’s just one of the mysteries of filmmaking that sometimes you do something that you don’t even think it’s important, then it turns out to be.” — Lili Horvát
- “Ballet taught me to stay close to style and tone. Literature taught me to be concerned about the moral life.” — Joan Acocella
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- Bryce on The Books: “Nine Stories”- ‘The Laughing Man’ (J.D. Salinger)
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Tag Archives: Lillian Gish
From Lillian Gish to James Dean: My Interview with Dan Callahan
I had a lot of fun interviewing Dan Callahan about his new book The Art of American Screen Acting, 1912-1960. It’s now up at Slant Magazine: Mystery of Screen Acting: An Interview with Dan Callahan.
Posted in Actors, Books, Movies
Tagged Bringing Up Baby, Cary Grant, friends, Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, Holiday, Humphrey Bogart, interviews, James Cagney, James Dean, Joan Crawford, Josef von Sternberg, Katharine Hepburn, Kim Stanley, Lillian Gish, Louise Brooks, Marlene Dietrich, Marlon Brando
6 Comments
Happy Birthday, Lillian Gish
While re-arranging my library, which meant removing many many books, I turned around and saw this tableau. Not only did Lillian Gish get her start in the earliest days of cinema, helping to basically “invent” the closeup, under the direction … Continue reading
One of the Most Exciting Action Scenes Ever Filmed
It’s from D.W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920), starring Lillian Gish and a stalwart yet passionate Richard Barthelmess. Way Down East, even with its overlay of sentimentality about womanhood (one title card reads: “Maternity – Woman’s Gethsemene”), is a very … Continue reading
Night Of the Hunter: “Chiiiiiiiiildren…”
Watched Night of the Hunter this morning, this dark rainy morning. Is there a film more packed full of arrestingly beautiful and terrifying shots? The black silhouette of the farmhouse – against the white white sky … with the two … Continue reading
Posted in Movies
Tagged Charles Laughton, Lillian Gish, Night of the Hunter, Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters
3 Comments