In 1987, a young Nikki Finke profiled the “Literary Brat Pack” (choice Brat Pack members included Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney, of Less Than Zero and Bright Lights, Big City fame, respectively) for The Los Angeles Times.
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Stereotyping in 170 Milliseconds
During a Skype conversation, Quadflieg explained that MRI-based brain studies show stereotypes are activated in about 170 milliseconds. No matter how open-minded we fancy ourselves, these biases kick in without our realizing it, she says. In a 2011 study in the journal Neuroimage, Quadflieg reported that the areas of the brain associated with body recognition had […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Brothers Behind the California Bungalow
Although they had no way of knowing it, the Hartwigs had bought a remnant of the Cora C. Hollister House, a Craftsman-style bungalow built in 1904 by Charles and Henry Greene, two of Southern California’s most admired and transformational residential architects. “In their 20 years of practice,” wrote the late Greene & Greene historian Randell […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘I Started to Think About the Prospect of Documenting a Culture That I Understood.’
After my internship, my first assignment for National Geographic was a story about the Zinacenteco Indians in the highlands of Chiapas. The subject was interesting but very challenging. As a woman, my access was mostly limited to other women who only spoke the Maya language I was struggling to learn. Once I traversed the language barrier, it […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The 1944 Court Decision That Changed Hollywood
The showbiz press has been abuzz all day with news of a surprise shake-up (a group of high-powered talent agents defected en masse from one top agency to another). Most of the coverage has been inside baseball, but an analysis in The Hollywood Reporter by Matthew Belloni provides some interesting insight into Hollywood history: Consider the case of the late legendary agent, who […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Inside Scientology: A Reading List
Alex Gibney’s much-talked about new documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief—based on Lawrence Wright’s similarly titled 2013 exposé—has been making headlines since it made its Sundance debut in January. It opened on limited screens across the country last Friday and will premiere on HBO in two weeks. In the meantime, the Church of […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Inside Scientology: A Reading List
Alex Gibney’s much-talked about new documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief—based on Lawrence Wright’s similarly titled 2013 exposé—has been making headlines since it made its Sundance debut in January. It opened on limited screens across the country last Friday and will premiere on HBO in two weeks. In the meantime, the Church of […]
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
How Karina Longworth Is Reimagining Classic Hollywood—and the Podcast—in ‘You Must Remember This’
“I have consciously tried to refocus my attention away from being a film critic and toward being a film historian.”
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
How Karina Longworth Is Reimagining Classic Hollywood—and the Podcast—in ‘You Must Remember This’
“I have consciously tried to refocus my attention away from being a film critic and toward being a film historian.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Raymond Chandler on the Oscar Voting Process, Circa 1948
It doesn’t really seem to make much difference how the voting is done. The quality of the work is still only recognized in the context of success. A superb job in a flop picture would get you nothing, a routine job in a winner will be voted in. It is against this background of success-worship that the voting is done, with the incidental music supplied by a stream of advertising in the trade papers (which even intelligent people read in Hollywood) designed to put all other pictures than those advertised out of your head at balloting time.