Posted by Dallas VideoFest

1930s Hollywood is reevaluated through the eyes of scathing wit and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish "Citizen Kane." Distinguished Guest Authors Thomas Schatz has written four books about Hollywood films and filmmaking. These include HOLLYWOOD GENRES, now widely considered the standard academic text on that subject; THE GENIUS OF THE SYSTEM, a highly acclaimed book about the "studio system" during Hollywood's so-called classical era; and most recently BOOM AND BUST: AMERICAN CINEMA IN THE 1940s. His writing on film has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and academic journals, including the New York Times, Premiere, The Nation, and Film Comment. Schatz also lectures widely both in the US and abroad on American film and television, and he has conducted seminars for academics and industry professionals in over a half-dozen European countries. He has lectured for the Motion Picture Academy and the Directors Guild; he has taught for the American Film Institute, and he currently lectures and serves on the Advisory Board of the Los Angeles Film School. In media production, Schatz has provided his expertise (and on-screen interviews) for many film and television documentaries -- including the recent PBS "American Cinema" series and the "American Masters" documentary on David O. Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock. In April 2000, Schatz began hosting 'Final Cut,' a weekly live Webcast featuring interviews with leading Hollywood directors, which appears on HollywoodBroadcasting.com. find his books at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Thomas+Schatz&ref=nb_sb_noss Joseph McBride is an internationally renowned film historian, the author of twenty-one books, including the acclaimed biographies Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, Steven Spielberg: A Biography, and Searching for John Ford, as well as a 2019 book about the research and writing of his Capra biography and his four-year legal battle to publish it, Frankly: Unmasking Frank Capra. McBride has published three critical studies of Orson Welles, most recently What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career (2006). He plays a film critic in Welles’s 1970-2018 feature "The Other Side of the Wind." McBride’s other books include Hawks on Hawks; Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit; The Broken Places: A Memoir; How Did Lubitsch Do It?; and Writing in Pictures: Screenwriting Made (Mostly) Painless. McBride’s screenwriting credits include co-writing Rock 'n’ Roll High School and five American Film Institute Life Achievement Award specials on CBS-TV, which brought him a Writers Guild of America Award and two Emmy Award nominations. McBride is a professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University and has written a forthcoming critical study of Billy Wilder. Mr. McBrides Books can be found at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Joseph+McBride&ref=nb_sb_noss Disclaimer. The opinions expressed in this recording are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Video Association of Dallas