All posts by Jeff Schwager
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Bulletproof on Broadway
“We go to the movies because a picture is playing there. Griffith knew that and said it repeatedly, but always to his cat rather than...
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The Motion Picture Association of America: Natural Born Censors?
According to a recent New Yorker profile, the door to director Oliver Stone’s office is decorated with the following legend, courtesy of the Motion Picture...
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Out of the Shadows
In Hollywood, where everyone’s, writing a screenplay, your odds of selling a script are about as good as winning the lottery. If you do manage...
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Stillman’s Wit
Early on in Barcelona, the new film from writer-producer-director Whit Stillman, Ted Boynton reveals to his cousin Fred that he has given up on beautiful...
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And The Beat Goes On
The movies been very good at capturing the spinit of rock and roll, and that’s one of the reasons that Backbeat is such a welcome...
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The Movies are Shrinking
Here I am, in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, where Hollywood has spent the last week throwing one of its biggest annual bashes,...
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Spielberg Finally Wins the Gold
The Academy Award nominations have been announced, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, they were dominated by Steven Spielberg, whose Holocaust opus, Schindler’s List, brought...
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“I Make Populist Entertainment Films:” Mike Leigh on Naked
Like his movies, British filmmaker Mike Leigh is confrontational and acerbic, with a dark wit and strong opinions. But Leigh, who first came to prominence...
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Making History Hollywood Style
For better or worse, movies are the closest thing we’ve got to a cultural Rorshak test. Like Rorshak’s inkblots, movies are infinitely interpretable, and the...
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Joy & Luck in Hollywood
Success doesn’t exactly come easy to Ron Bass, but Bass, the co-writer and co-producer of The Joy Luck Club and Significant Other, is not one...
Summer 2019
Spring 2019
Winter 2019
Guide 2019
Summer 2018
Year in MovieMaker
Inside the Issue: Acting
Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker: Richard Dreyfuss
American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stand By Me, Mr. Holland’s Opus… even while reading like a what’s what of cinema, those titles are just a handful...
1Inside the Issue: Directing
Cold Piece of Work: Richard Linklater Braves Greenland Hurricanes for Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette opens with the answer to its titular question. In an impressively executed overhead shot, the camera gazes down onto placid Antarctic waters as...
Inside the Issue: How To
How They Did It: The Farewell Writer-Director Lulu Wang Shares Secrets to Turning Your Life Story into a Memoir Movie
The week before production started on The Farewell—my sophomore feature about a young woman (Billi, played by Awkwafina) and her family’s attempts to keep their grandmother’s cancer diagnosis hidden...