On Sunday, November 23 at 3 pm we will be having a return appearance for a Casual Conversation of Foster Hirsch, Professor of Film at Brooklyn College and board member of the Film Noir Foundation. He was last with us on September 15 to discuss his new book on the movies of the 50s. The announcement for that Casual Conversation may be found here: https://www.dartmouth69.org/node/592 . He is a terrific guest, and we all had a great time.
Foster is a delight to speak with. He knows a tremendous amount about film, and he is writing a book on the films of the 60s, the decade when, during its latter period, we mis-spent time at the Nugget watching all sorts of movies from intimate films (The Sterile Cuckoo) to budget-busting epics (Cleopatra, How the West Was Won, everything by David Lean); from foreign films (Viridiana anyone? Nobody Waved Goodbye? Modesty Blaise) to movies by and with the emerging new generation of American directors and actors. And he wants to pick our brains for ideas about films that we cared about then and that continue to matter to us. And, importantly, why we did and do.
Foster is a prolific writer with books about, inter alia, Otto Preminger, Hal Prince, Kurt Weill, Joseph Losey (cue Dartmouth), the theater-empire-building Shuberts, the Actors Studio, Laurence Olivier, film noir, neo-noir, and The Hollywood Epic. Here is his web page: https://fosterhirsch.ink/ . It is well worth a visit.
I have already sent him a short list of movies that may be less well known, such as Lord Love a Duck and John Korty’s Crazy Quilt. You each have your own list of movies in your memory bank, good and bad, over-praised and under-appreciated, sublime and dreck.
Now is your time to speak up, and to contribute to Foster’s new book. Make all those hours wasted in the dark with a hundred or so of your fellow students (and later with complete strangers in theaters when they existed in profusion before streaming video), actually MEAN SOMETHING! A true discussion which you can be part of, but only if you are there. Biases welcome, prejudices encouraged, passions invited.
The same rules apply. Email me by close-of-business on the Friday before, November 21, if you want to attend: arthur.fergenson@ansalaw.com .
See you in the dark.
Arthur Fergenson