Writers on Film

I talk to writer, film producer and academic about screenwriters and screenwriting.

Here's some information from Neil's own webpage:

My award-winning film work includes the short film It’s Natural To Be Afraid (2011), viewable here, and the feature film ‘Wilderness’ (2017), currently out for sale following a successful festival run. You can find my filmmaking site here.

I am the co-founder and co-host of the renowned film podcast The Cinematologists.

I write about music documentaries for The Quietus, and about film more broadly for Beneficial Shock, Directors Notes and others.

I am a contributing editor to MAI: Journal of Feminism and Visual Culture, and have conducted long-form interviews with filmmakers Hope Dickson Leach and Lynn Shelton.

On this site you will find details of current projects and articles alongside links to where you can find evidence of my bold claims.

My research interests include Film Education, Music Documentaries and Concert Films, and Podcasting.

By day I am a senior lecturer in Film at the School of Film & Television, Falmouth University, where I also lead a research and innovation programme on pedagogy. I teach screenwriting and filmmaking on the BA Film and MA Film & Television courses.

I have a beautiful wife and a daughter, Beth and Tessa, a cheeky dog called Bailey (aka Chaos Dog) and we all live in Cornwall, UK.

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John Bleasdale talks to actor, producer, director and author Gabriel Byrne about his autobiography.

Walking with Ghosts is the stunningly evocative memoir by Irish actor and Hollywood star, Gabriel Byrne.

'Dreamy, lyrical and utterly unvarnished' – Colm Tóibín

As a young boy growing up in the outskirts of Dublin, Gabriel Byrne sought refuge in a world of imagination among the fields and hills near his home, at the edge of a rapidly encroaching city. Born to working-class parents and the eldest of six children, he harboured a childhood desire to become a priest. When he was eleven years old, Byrne found himself crossing the Irish Sea to join a seminary in England. Four years later, Byrne had been expelled and he quickly returned to his native city. There he took odd jobs as a messenger boy and a factory labourer to get by. In his spare time he visited the cinema, where he could be alone and yet part of a crowd. It was here that he could begin to imagine a life beyond the grey world of ’60s Ireland.

He revelled in the theatre and poetry of Dublin’s streets, populated by characters as eccentric and remarkable as any in fiction, those who spin a yarn with acuity and wit. It was a friend who suggested Byrne join an amateur drama group, a decision that would change his life forever and launch him on an extraordinary forty-year career in film and theatre. Moving between sensual recollection of childhood in a now almost vanished Ireland and reflections on stardom in Hollywood and on Broadway, Byrne also courageously recounts his battle with addiction and the ambivalence of fame.

Walking with Ghosts is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking as well as a lyrical homage to the people and landscapes that ultimately shape our destinies.

‘Make no mistake about it: this is a masterpiece . . . poetic, moving and very funny’ – Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin

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Writer, bookseller, and Malick fanatic, Matt Zoller Seitz joins me to talk A Hidden Life.

Visit Matt's online shop here.

The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick is now available from all good book shops and online sources, including here.

Camille Saint-Saëns: Le Carnaval des Animaux

Performers

Pianos: Neil and Nancy O'Doan

Orchestra: Seattle Youth Symphony, conducted by Vilem Sokol.

Composed 1886; recorded c. 1980.

Source The Al Goldstein collection in the Pandora Music repository at ibiblio.org.

Used under the license.

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David Thomson is the author of many books on film and television, including a biography of Orson Welles, a book of appreciation on Nicole Kidman, his legendary Biographical Dictionary of Film, The Big Screen, How to Watch a Movie, and his trilogy of books of movie universe short stories Suspects, Silver Light and Connecticut. He is also a documentarian

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Buy the book here.

In this genre-defying work of cultural history, the chief film critic of Slate places comedy legend and acclaimed filmmaker Buster Keaton’s unique creative genius in the context of his time.

Born the same year as the film industry in 1895, Buster Keaton began his career as the child star of a family slapstick act reputed to be the most violent in vaudeville. Beginning in his early twenties, he enjoyed a decade-long stretch as the director, star, stuntman, editor, and all-around mastermind of some of the greatest silent comedies ever made, including Sherlock Jr., The General, and The Cameraman.

Even through his dark middle years as a severely depressed alcoholic finding work on the margins of show business, Keaton’s life had a way of reflecting the changes going on in the world around him. He found success in three different mediums at their creative peak: first vaudeville, then silent film, and finally the experimental early years of television. Over the course of his action-packed seventy years on earth, his life trajectory intersected with those of such influential figures as the escape artist Harry Houdini, the pioneering Black stage comedian Bert Williams, the television legend Lucille Ball, and literary innovators like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Samuel Beckett.

In Camera Man, film critic Dana Stevens pulls the lens out from Keaton’s life and work to look at concurrent developments in entertainment, journalism, law, technology, the political and social status of women, and the popular understanding of addiction. With erudition and sparkling humor, Stevens hopscotches among disciplines to bring us up to the present day, when Keaton’s breathtaking (and sometimes life-threatening) stunts remain more popular than ever as they circulate on the internet in the form of viral gifs. Far more than a biography or a work of film history, Camera Man is a wide-ranging meditation on modernity that paints a complex portrait of a one-of-a-kind artist.

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