BearManor Media News — q&a

W. Paul Apel on The Valley Obscured by Smog 1.) Where did your obsession with Ed Wood begin? Even though I'd heard of Ed Wood in passing before, my obsession really began with the Tim Burton film. Roger Ebert said that if you go to the movies enough, eventually you'll see yourself on screen. That's how I felt watching it. I'm not a cross-dressing B-movie filmmaker, but I identified with someone who had the drive to make movies with his gang of misfits while also having the weakness of saying "good enough" and moving on. I'd never seen that combination portrayed...

Q&A on the Movie Girls book Bear Manor Media: What exactly is Movie Girls: Lillian and Dorothy? Ben Urish: Well, it’s a picture book about The Gish Sisters, and how they met future star Mary Pickford, the great director D.W. Griffith, and got involved in the early days of movies.   Bear Manor Media: So, it’s a children’s book, then? Ben Urish: Partly, I suppose. It is geared for young readers, but anyone interested in films would enjoy it. It is great story of family bonding, discovering your talents, and the development of technology, an artform, and a business.  ...

          Girls Just Want to Have Funny: Female Film Comedies of the 1980’s                                     Short Interview with Author Dan Lalande   What first got you interested in the subject? My previous book, Heroes of The New Hollywood: Hoffman, Hackman, Nicholson, Pacino, Duvall and De Niro in the 70’s, was about the greatest generation of male actors the screen has ever seen, covering their peak period. But while the 70’s, on screen, was a great decade for men, it was a terrible time for women. Despite the fact that feminism was nearing full stride, there were few vehicles for women....

Q&A with Henry Nicolella, author of You Have to Run Fast - The Feature Films of Edward L. Cahn   1. What drew you to Edward L. Cahn and his work?   Years ago I saw his 1932 film “Afraid to Talk”. It was a stylish kind of proto-noir and startling in its cynicism about civic corruption.  They did change the play it was based on to allow the hapless hero to survive and a couple of the villains to get their just desserts but in the end the bad guys are still in charge with no indication anything will...

Q&A with David Da Silva, Author of Martial Arts in Cinema Volume 2: The Golden Era (1988-1997) 1. What made you decide to focus specifically on the 1988-1997 period for this second volume? That decade represents the absolute explosion of martial arts into mainstream Hollywood. After the groundwork laid by Bruce Lee in the 1970s and the Hong Kong wave, you suddenly had Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme becoming genuine box office titans. But more importantly, this era saw martial arts infiltrate every action film: whether it was Sylvester Stallone in Rambo III, Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, or...