Paul Schrader’s Hardcore: The Film that Was and Also Wasn’t

|Penny Folger| Hardcore is an amusing fish-out-of-water story starring George C. Scott as a devout midwestern Calvinist who must plumb the depths of the California porn industry to seach for his missing teenage daughter. It’s also a film that its director, Paul Schrader, is not terribly fond of… Continue reading

This Woman’s Work: A New Leaf, Elaine May, and Editing Versus Meddling

|Courtney Kowalke| Elaine May probably wishes I wasn’t writing this piece. While May adapted, directed, and starred in her 1971 directorial debut, A New Leaf, she was less than pleased with the finished product. Against May’s wishes, her film was edited by Academy Award-winning editors Don… Continue reading

“Long Nights, Impossible Odds, Keeping My Back To the Wall”

|Lucas Hardwick| **Mild spoilers ahead*** My career as a writer is successful only in the sense that I get to do it; my work is published here and there, and maybe a few hundred people read it, chuckle, and manage to get something out of it—some of it right here on this very blog. But… Continue reading

The Abandoned and Forsaken: Prop Departments of Old Hollywood

|Zach Staads| Before I sat down to watch Notorious, before I knew it was a Hitchcock film, before I’d seen a single frame, still, or trailer, I saw the Criterion cover. It was a very simple picture: Two people embracing, one facing away, and the other, Ingrid Bergman, facing out… Continue reading