About Joe Leydon

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December 1, 2010
Like many (if not most) moviemakers before her, Shana Feste—writer-director of The Greatest and the forthcoming Country Strong—relied heavily on…
December 1, 2010
So what’s it all about? Well, like Pi, his 1998 breakthrough indie feature, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a drama…
September 15, 2009
Please don’t misunderstand: Patrick Swayze and I weren’t bowling buddies or anything like that, and I don’t want to sound…
August 7, 2009
I can't say I was a big fan of John Hughes' Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club—though, to be fair,…
June 25, 2009
My condolences to the family and friends of Farrah Fawcett, who lost her long battle to cancer today.
June 4, 2009
David Carradine worked with everyone from Ingmar Bergman to Quentin Tarantino, Charlton Heston to Chuck Norris, Paul Bartel to Martin…
March 30, 2009
Seventeen years ago, while dining with movie score composer Maurice Jarre at the Montreal World Film Festival, I told him…
February 10, 2009
Character actor par excellence James Whitmore had dozens upon dozens of film and TV credits on his lengthy resume—everything from…
January 29, 2009
In 1985 a spec freelance article on John Cassavetes was shelved. It has since been unearthed and updated to mark…
January 15, 2009
Way back before he found honest work as a moviemaker (The Contender, Resurrecting the Champ) and television producer (“Commander in…
September 27, 2008
Back somewhere in 1975, just before Paul Newman started filming The Drowning Pool in and around my hometown of New…
May 30, 2008
Some movie buffs and film historians will tell you that no actor—at any point at any time in the history…
May 27, 2008
This is my favorite Sydney Pollack memory: It’s December 1982 in New York, during a press junket for Tootsie. Pollack…
April 7, 2008
Back in the early 1980s, at the time when he and Ed Asner were very publicly clashing over matters concerning…
March 28, 2008
Forty-one years after the fact, it’s difficult, maybe impossible, to fully appreciate the impact Bonnie and Clyde had on moviegoers…
March 27, 2008
Richard Widmark ensured his immortality as a giggling psycho killer (Kiss of Death), a cynical pickpocket (Pickup on South Street),…
January 17, 2008
Don’t misunderstand: It’s not like Ellen Page is hiding out or lying low. But even as the Oscar-hype machinery is…
January 11, 2008
Can the rising son of a Hollywood heavyweight find true happiness —as a professional collaborator—with a loquacious ex-stripper from the…
March 23, 2007
John Wayne was American movies. His gritty, gruff demeanor and that this-is-a-man-coming-through swagger defined not only the Western for decades…
February 3, 2007
ACTING Kevin Costner Goes Psycho Hollywood’s golden boy gets dark in Mr. Brooks by Joe Leydon Earl Brooks (Kevin Costner)…