Preface

Summary

I put this book together because I thought people should have a chance to read these articles and reviews, most of which are out of print and not available online, as well as the unpublished interviews with Lillian Gish (1978) and Howard Hawks (1976). Some of what is in the interviews is old news, but much is not.

The pieces have been grouped by topic and type. “Violence and Politics” considers the uses of violence in American film and its relation to sexual politics as well as national and international politics; the section also takes up academic politics. “Horror and Science Fiction” looks at the two genres, sometimes in relation to each other, and offers both a close reading of La Jetée and an overview of horror based largely on the Mummy films. “Reviews” includes four early reviews, but not the review of Full Metal Jacket, which is more a political essay and appears in “Violence and Politics” as “The Whole World Is Watching.” “Interviews” contains the complete transcriptions of my interviews with Gish and Hawks. All that's missing is the last half hour of the four-hour Hawks interview, when the tape recorder seized up. “Literature and Narration” covers the relations between literature and film, the art of screenwriting, and the uses of first-, second-, and third-person narration in cinema; it ends with a close reading of the beginning of the dream sequence in The Wizard of Oz.