Hollywood Or Don’t!

Aaaaaaand we’re back. It’s summer here and the livin’ is easy. For someone. Somewhere. It must be, right? It’s summertime and the livin’ is easy. For bears. It was also the night that the skeletons came to life! 

Will Sloan is here! Will is a journalist and author. He is the host of the podcast The Important Cinema Club (highly recommended). Will has a new book coming out called Ed Wood, Made in Hollywood USA which is a serious reappraisal of Wood’s filmography. No, it doesn’t posit that he was actually the greatest filmmaker of all time but it does make an attempt to put Wood’s work into context with regard to what stories he was trying to tell, keeping in mind the resources he had available to him at the time and, even more so, the cultural forces pushing against him. Glen Or Glenda specifically. 

Alexandra Seros is here. She has a new book out entitled Ida Lupino, Forgotten Auteur. Ida Lupino s well known as an actress, starring in several classic Hollywood films, and many of the great film noirs like High Sierra, They Drive By Night and While The City Sleeps. But she also was a great director. One of the first women directors in Hollywood. And not just a director, she directed several terrific and important films, like The Hitchhiker, Outrage and The Bigamist. Her story is fascinating, She was obviously incredibly intelligent. So intelligent, in fact, that she knew she had to pretend she was less intelligent than she was so they men that ran her exclusively all male field wouldn’t feel threatened and prevent her from working. Crazy

Speaking of directors, True Tales From Weirdsville finishes our three part story on the life and career of David Lynch, as seen through the eyes of his magnum opus, Twin peaks. It’s a little bigger than a normal segment, but he warrants it.