Author: Jonathan Eig
Employee’s Entrance: Pre-Code Hollywood and the American Dream
Pre-Code Hollywood – roughly 1929-1934 – has become a popular subject in recent years. The movies made during these years, before meaningful enforcement of the Production Code, featured all manner of salacious material. You can buy collections of them on DVD and see what all the fuss was about. When we talk about them today,…
Jason Reitman’s Labor Day: A look at the directorial misstep
I began teaching film around the same time that Steven Spielberg released Hook (1991). When students asked me why the movie had failed, I told them that it was because it took way too long to get to Neverland. In screenwriting terms, the first act was far too long. Then they would ask how someone…
Remembering Judy Holliday: The shameless self-promotion of Gladys Glover
The sad loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman has me thinking about other actors who have died too soon. From Wallace Reid and Rudolph Valentino through Carole Lombard and Marilyn Monroe. John Cazale and Heath Ledger. There is a litany. And somewhere on that list is Judy Holliday, who died in 1965, at the age of…