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Woody Allen: A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham
by Patrick McGilliganWoody Allen was once made a knight commander by France, but he didn’t know because the paperwork got lost in the mail.A decade later, he found out about the award by reading about it in the New York Times.Across nearly nine eventful decades, Allen’s life has been full of surprises. Writing jokes got him a gig as the youngest writer of Sid Caesar’s television dream team. As a rising comic, he boxed a kangaroo on TV. He made a blank-check deal with a major studio for terms unmatched in Hollywood apart from early titans like Chaplin and Welles. All before Annie Hall.Yet despite once being one of the most consequential American cultural figures, Allen is now persona non grata. In this judicious biography, acclaimed biographer Patrick McGilligan charts the meteoric rise and fall of the comedian whose nonconformity proved both his secret genius and Achilles’ heel.Drawing on meticulous research, McGilligan reconstructs Allen’s Brooklyn boyhood, his salad days as a television comedy writer, his rise to stand-up, and the thoughtful, award-winning filmmaking of his golden years in the 1970s and ’80s. His messy relationships with wives and girlfriends, including Annie Hall costar Diane Keaton, were essential to his artistic development and undoing. Yet no one could have predicted his tumultuous personal and professional relationship with actress Mia Farrow, his alleged abuse of their adopted daughter Dylan, and his subsequent marriage to Mia’s daughter Soon-Yi Previn.In this comprehensive, sweeping, and rigorous account of Allen’s life and career, McGilligan astutely reveals the writer’s writer beyond the smoke and controversy, and paints a compelling portrait of the most creative, productive, and influential filmmaker of his time.
Woody Allen: Interviews, Revised and Updated (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
by Robert E. KapsisThis revised and updated edition gathers interviews and profiles covering the entire forty-five-year span of Woody Allen's career as a filmmaker, including detailed discussions of his most popular as well as his most critically acclaimed works. The present collection is a complete update of the volume that first appeared in 2006. In the years since, Allen has continued making movies, including Midnight in Paris and the Oscar-winning Blue Jasmine. While many interviews from the original edition have been retained in the present volume, nine new entries extend the coverage of Allen's directorial career through 2015. In addition, there is a new, in-depth interview from the period covered in the first edition. Most of the interviews included in the original volume first appeared in such widely known publications and venues as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Playboy. A number of smaller and lesser-known venues are also represented, especially in the new volume. Several interviews from non-American sources add an international perspective on Allen's work. Materials for the new volume include pieces focusing primarily on Allen's films as well as broader profiles and interviews that also concentrate on his literary talent. Perhaps Stephen Mamber best describes Allen's distinctiveness, especially early in his career: “Woody Allen is not the best new American comedy director or the best comedy writer or the best comedy actor, he's simply the finest combination of all three.”
Woody Guthrie: A Life
by Joe KleinBiography of the singer, songmaker and restless spirit who defined the American character for a generation.
Woody, Cisco, and Me: Seamen Three in the Merchant Marine
by Jim LonghiIn his 1997 memoir, Jim Longhi, who passed away on November 22, 2006, gives the reader a first-hand account of Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston during those crucial years with anecdotes that no other living person could tell; his action-packed account of their ship's dangerous journeys through mine-infested waters, his memories of their ships being torpedoed, his description of their shore leaves throughout North Africa, Italy, Scotland, England and France, his hilarious "on-board" stories of Woody as the ship's dishwasher, menu artist, totem builder, and impromptu entertainer for the troops. Here we have yet another side of Woody, described as only Jimmy could. Jimmy's more personal observations of Woody as a "bunk-mate" and friend are perhaps even more revealing. He describes one incident where Woody saved his life after a torpedo hit their ship. He also tells us of the day after Woody's four year-old daughter Cathy died in a house fire and Woody's response. The memories go on and on... His writing is so eloquent and descriptive one can't help but think... "what a great movie this would make!" Jim Longhi, has been a prizefighter, ladies' stocking salesman, merchant seaman, lawyer and politician as well as a playwright. During World War II he and Woody, shipped out in the Merchant Marine. Guthrie taught him to sing, play the guitar, and "to be brave." They entertained troops under fire and were torpedoed twice off Italy and Normandy. After the war, Longhi became a lawyer, representing Brooklyn's rank-and-file longshoremen against the gangsters. With three longshoremen murdered, Longhi became the spokesman for the movement. People from all walks of life came to help, Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan among others. Longhi urged them to make the movie "On the Waterfront" for which Longhi conceived the original idea. Thereafter, Longhi wrote his own play about the waterfront called "Two Fingers of Pride," and gave Steve McQueen his first job. Longhi's second play, "Climb the Greased Pole," was produced in London's Mermaid Theater, starring Sir Bernard Miles. "The Lincoln Mask," which was performed this year off Broadway. His latest play "The Lantern," a play about Lincoln, was just finished.
Woody: The Biography
by David EvanierIn this first biography of Woody Allen in over a decade, David Evanier discusses key movies, plays and prose as well as Allen's personal life. Evanier tackles the themes that Allen has spent a lifetime sorting through in art: morality, sexuality, Judaism, the eternal struggle of head and heart. Woody will be the definitive word on a major American talent as he begins his ninth decade, and his sixth decade of making movies.
Woof, There It Is: Woof, There It Is (The Cheetah Girls #5)
by Deborah GregoryThe hip, contemporary paperback series for black girls continues, featuring a singing group of five feisty teens.
Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art: The Relationship Between the Vocal and the Instrumental in Different Arts
by Hanns-Werner Heister Hanjo Polk Bernhard RusamThis book offers a truly interdisciplinary discussion on the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental in music and other arts and in everyday communication alike. Presenting an in-depth systematical and historical analysis of the evolution of word and gesture art, it gives extensive information on the anthropological, biological, and physiological influences and interactions in music and beyond. The book gives a unique definition of the genuinely vocal and instrumental from their generative deep structure: They derive from and are determined in their production by the duality of voice and hands, and in terms of product as the tone or ‘tonal’ on the one hand, and the percussive, that is noise plus rhythm, on the other. This book succeeds in bringing together perspectives from art, and from natural and social sciences, merging them to offer new explanations about the relationship between the vocal and instrumental, and eventually about the origins of music, arts, and language. It offers new perspectives on the intertwining between the vocal and the instrumental, specifically in the context of the expressions of human languages. At the same time, this book aims at clarifying and explaining the role of words and gestures in different contexts, such as society and communication, education, and arts.
Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players
by Stefan FatsisStefan Fatsis first became intrigued with Scrabble as he watched serious players in New York's Washington Square. As he delved deeper, he found that professional players approached the game with obsessive zeal, memorizing word lists, comparing ratings, and calculating mathematical odds of drawing a winning rack of tiles. Fatsis himself became fascinated with the game and honed his own skills until he was able to enter tournaments with the pros. In this book Fatsis introduces many of the eccentrics who make Scrabble their life, and traces the history of the game from its origins in the 1930s.
Word is Out: A Queer Film Classic
by Greg YoumansA Queer Film Classic on the groundbreaking 1977 documentary that profiles the lives of ordinary gay men and lesbians of different ages, races, and backgrounds; it was the first of its kind to do so, and played a role in the then-nascent struggle for gay rights (being released at the same time as Anita Bryant waged her anti-gay campaign in Florida). Greg Youmans is a scholar, maker, and programmer of queer film and video. Arsenal's Queer Film Classics series cover some of the most important and influential films about and by LGBTQ people.
Word-of-Mouth in Contemporary Hollywood (Routledge Studies in Media and Cultural Industries)
by Simon HewittWord-of-Mouth in Contemporary Hollywood provides a unique insight into the potential for online communication to enable audiences to exert a greater impact on film industrial practices than ever before. In an overarching analysis of contemporary Hollywood film financing, marketing, distribution, and exhibition practices, Simon Hewitt recontextualises word-of-mouth in light of social media and examines the growing impact of audience participation. Using a ‘Bourdieuconomic’ approach, he applies qualitative research methods to better understand the contemporary Hollywood film audience, the contemporary Hollywood film industry, and the mechanisms that connect the two. The book explores new film financing mechanisms that incorporate fans into the packages used to secure production funds. It assesses the role of ‘Grassroots Intermediaries’ in contemporary film marketing campaigns. It critiques ‘democratic’ crowdsourced methods of film distribution, and finally, it considers the possible future of Hollywood film exhibition. By helping to bridge the gap between the gift economy and commodity culture, this book will appeal to students and scholars of media industry studies, media finance and economics, fan and audience studies, film studies, film history, and media marketing.
Words at War: World War II Era Radio Drama and the Postwar Broadcasting Industry Blacklist
by Howard BlueThe history of radio broadcasting in the US, with an emphasis on World War II and the blacklisting during the 1950s.
Words for the Theatre: Four Essays on the Dramatic Text (Focus on Dramaturgy)
by David ColeIn Words for the Theatre, playwright David Cole pursues a course of dramaturgical self-questioning on the part of a playwright, centred on the act of playwriting. The book’s four essays each offer a dramaturgical perspective on a different aspect of the playwright’s practice: How does the playwright juggle the transcriptive and prescriptive aspects of their activity? Does the ultimate performance of a playtext in fact represent something to which all writing aspires? Does the playwright’s process of withdrawing to create their text echo a similar process in the theatre more widely? Finally, how can the playwright counter theatre’s pervasive leaning towards the ‘mistake’ of realism? Suited to playwrights, teachers, and higher-level students, this volume of essays offers reflections on the questions that confront every playwright, from an author well-versed in supplying words for the theatre.
Words of Wisdom: Daily Affirmations of Faith
by Rev RunFocus, Focus, Focus! You will only have significant success with something that is an obsession. Success comes from having passion and having fun creating your objective!Words of Wisdom is a collection of inspirational aphorisms, which Rev Run sends out to his closest friends each day and which were made suddenly popular when his television show zoomed to the top of the MTV charts. Rev Run (an ordained minister) closes each episode of Run's House by reading philosophical, Christian, and inspirational books in the bathtub before penning words that inspire, encourage, and motivate. Here, available for the first time to the public, are Run's Words of Wisdom published in a gifty yet affordable format just in time for the show's second season. All great blessings come from being at peace. When the day is over, go to sleep. Never sit up worrying about tomorrow. Work hard and let God do the rest. I always say these words at night: "I can sleep tonight because God is awake!" Relax. Rest easy.
Words of the Dragon
by Bruce LeeThis collection of newspaper and magazine interviews with Bruce Lee follows his acting career from his debut in The Green Hornet to international stardom in The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon and Enter the Dragon.
Words on Screen
by Michel Chion Claudia GorbmanMichel Chion is well known in contemporary film studies for his innovative investigations into aspects of cinema that scholars have traditionally overlooked. Following his work on sound in film in Audio-Vision and Film, a Sound Art, Words on Screen is Chion’s survey of everything the seventh art gives us to read on screen. He analyzes titles, credits, and intertitles, but also less obvious forms of writing that appear on screen, from the tear-stained letter in a character’s hand to reversed writing seen in mirrors. Through this examination, Chion delves into the multitude of roles that words on screen play: how they can generate narrative, be torn up or consumed but still remain in the viewer’s consciousness, take on symbolic dimensions, and bear every possible relation to cinematic space.With his characteristic originality, Chion performs a poetic inventory of the possibilities of written text in the film image. Taking examples from hundreds of films spanning years and genres, from the silents to the present, he probes the ways that words on screen are used and their implications for film analysis and theory. In the process, he opens up and unearths the specific poetry of visual text in film. Exhaustively researched and illustrated with hundreds of examples, Words on Screen is a stunning demonstration of a creative scholar’s ability to achieve a radically new understanding of cinema.
Words on Screen (Film and Culture Series)
by Michel ChionMichel Chion is well known in contemporary film studies for his innovative investigations into aspects of cinema that scholars have traditionally overlooked. Following his work on sound in film in Audio-Vision and Film, a Sound Art, Words on Screen is Chion's survey of everything the seventh art gives us to read on screen. He analyzes titles, credits, and intertitles, but also less obvious forms of writing that appear on screen, from the tear-stained letter in a character's hand to reversed writing seen in mirrors. Through this examination, Chion delves into the multitude of roles that words on screen play: how they can generate narrative, be torn up or consumed but still remain in the viewer's consciousness, take on symbolic dimensions, and bear every possible relation to cinematic space.With his characteristic originality, Chion performs a poetic inventory of the possibilities of written text in the film image. Taking examples from hundreds of films spanning years and genres, from the silents to the present, he probes the ways that words on screen are used and their implications for film analysis and theory. In the process, he opens up and unearths the specific poetry of visual text in film. Exhaustively researched and illustrated with hundreds of examples, Words on Screen is a stunning demonstration of a creative scholar's ability to achieve a radically new understanding of cinema.
Workers at Play: A Social and Economic History of Leisure, 1918-1939 (Routledge Library Editions: The Labour Movement #17)
by Stephen G. JonesFirst published in 1986. This book explores developments in the cinema, sport, holidays, gambling, drinking and many more recreational activities, and situates working-class leisure within the determining economic and social context. In particular, the inventiveness of working people ‘at play’ is highlighted. Drawing on an extensive range of source material, the book has a wide general appeal, and will be useful to those professionally concerned with leisure, as well as teachers and students of social history, and all those interested in the patterns of working-class life in the past.
Workhorse: My Sublime and Absurd Years in New York City's Restaurant Scene
by Kim ReedA razor-sharp look at one woman&’s nearly two decades in the New York City restaurant, including her time working with Joe Bastianich, and what happens when your job consumes your life.By day, Kim Reed was a social worker to the homebound elderly in Brooklyn Heights. By night, she scrambled into Manhattan to hostess at Babbo, where even the Pope would have had trouble scoring a reservation, and A-list celebrities squeezed through the jam-packed entryway like everyone else. Despite her whirlwind fifteen-hour workdays, Kim remained up to her eyeballs in grad school debt. Her training—problem solving, crisis intervention, dealing with unpredictable people and random situations—made her the ideal assistant for the volatile Joe Bastianich, a hard-partying, &“What's next?&” food and wine entrepreneur. He rose to fame in Italy as a TV star while Kim planned parties, fielded calls, and negotiated deals from two phones on the go. Decadent food, summers in Milan, and a reservation racket that paid in designer bags and champagne were fun only inasmuch as they filled the void left by being always on call and on edge. In a blink, the years passed, and one day Kim looked up and realized that everything she wanted beyond her job—friends, a relationship, a family, a weekend without twenty ominous emails dropping into her inbox—was out of reach. Workhorse is a deep-dive into coming of age in the chaos of New York City&’s foodie craze and an all-too-relatable look at what happens when your job takes over your identity, and when a scandal upends your understanding of where you work and what you do.. After spending years making the impossible possible for someone else, Kim realized she had to do the same for herself.
Working Actor: Breaking in, Making a Living, and Making a Life in the Fabulous Trenches of Show Business
by David Dean BottrellVeteran character actor David Dean Bottrell draws on his 35+ tumultuous years of work in the entertainment industry to offer a guide to breaking in, making a living, and making a life in the fabulous trenches of show business. Covers every facet of the business, including: - Capturing the perfect headshot - Starting (and maintaining) your network - Picking an agent - Audition do’s and don’ts - Joining the union(s): SAG-AFTRA and Actors Equity Association (AEA) - On stage vs on screen - Paying the bills - Self-promotion - Late bloomers - When to get out David Dean Bottrell has worn many different hats during his decades in showbiz: television actor with appearances on Boston Legal, Modern Family, The Blacklist, Mad Men, True Blood, NCIS, and Days of Our Lives; screenwriter for Paramount and Disney; respected acting teacher at UCLA and AADA; and regular expert columnist for esteemed acting site Backstage. In Working Actor, Bottrell offers a how-to manual jammed with practical information and insider advice, essential reading for any artist (aspiring or established) in need of insight or inspiration. Mixing prescriptive advice ("Getting Started," "Learning Your Craft," "Finding an Agent") with wisdom drawn from Bottrell's own professional highs and lows and those of his acting compatriots, this book's humorous, tell-it-like-it-is tone is a must-have guide for anyone hoping to successfully navigate show business.
Working Backstage: A Cultural History and Ethnography of Technical Theater Labor
by Christin EssinWorking Backstage illuminates the work of New York City’s theater technicians, shining a light on the essential contributions of unionized stagehands, carpenters, electricians, sound engineers, properties artisans, wardrobe crews, makeup artists, and child guardians. Too-often dismissed or misunderstood as mere functionaries, these technicians are deeply engaged in creative problem-solving and perform collaborative, intricate choreographed work that parallels the performances of actors, singers, and dancers onstage. Although their contributions have fueled the Broadway machine, their contributions have been left out of most theater histories. Theater historian Christin Essin offers clear and evocative descriptions of this invaluable labor, based on her archival research and interviews with more than 100 backstage technicians, members of the New York locals of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. A former theater technician herself, Essin provides readers with an insider’s view of the Broadway stage, from the suspended lighting bridge of electricians operating followspots for A Chorus Line; the automation deck where carpenters move the massive scenic towers for Newsies; the makeup process in the dressing room for The Lion King; the offstage wings of Matilda the Musical, where guardians guide child actors to entrances and exits. Working Backstage makes an significant contribution to theater studies and also to labor studies, exploring the politics of the unions that serve backstage professionals, protecting their rights and insuring safe working conditions. Illuminating the history of this typically hidden workforce, the book provides uncommon insights into the business of Broadway and its backstage working relationships among cast and crew members.
Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema
by Yvonne TaskerWorking Girls investigates the thematic concerns of contemporary Hollywood cinema, and its ambivalent articulation of women as both active, and defined by sexual performance, asking whether new Hollywood cinema has responded to feminism and contemporary sexual identities. Whether analysing the rise of films centred around female friendships, or the entrance of pop stars such as Whitney Houston and Madonna into film, Working Girls is an authoritative investigation of the presence of women both as film makers and actors in contemporary mainstream cinema.
Working Like a Homosexual: Camp, Capital, Cinema
by Matthew TinkcomWhat does camp have to do with capitalism? How have queer men created a philosophy of commodity culture? Why is cinema central to camp? With chapters on the films of Vincente Minnelli, Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, and John Waters, Working Like a Homosexual responds to these questions by arguing that post-World War II gay male subcultures have fostered their own ways not only of consuming mass culture but of producing it as well. With a special emphasis on the tensions between high and low forms of culture and between good and bad taste, Matthew Tinkcom offers a new vision of queer politics and aesthetics that is critically engaged with Marxist theories of capitalist production. He argues that camp--while embracing the cheap, the scorned, the gaudy, the tasteless, and what Warhol called "the leftovers" of artistic production--is a mode of intellectual production and a critical philosophy of modernity as much as it is an expression of a dissident sex/gender difference. From Minnelli's musicals and the "everyday glamour" of Warhol's films to Anger's experimental films and Waters's "trash aesthetic," Tinkcom demonstrates how camp allowed these gay men to design their own relationship to labor and to history in a way that protected them from censure even as they struggled to forge a role for themselves within a system of "value" that failed to recognize them.
Working Musicians: Labor and Creativity in Film and Television Production
by Timothy D. TaylorIn Working Musicians Timothy D. Taylor offers a behind-the-scenes look at the labor of the mostly unknown composers, music editors, orchestrators, recording engineers, and other workers involved in producing music for films, television, and video games. Drawing on dozens of interviews with music workers in Los Angeles, Taylor explores the nature of their work and how they understand their roles in the entertainment business. Taylor traces how these cultural laborers have adapted to and cope with the conditions of neoliberalism as, over the last decade, their working conditions have become increasingly precarious. Digital technologies have accelerated production timelines and changed how content is delivered, while new pay schemes have emerged that have transformed composers from artists into managers and paymasters. Taylor demonstrates that as bureaucratization and commercialization affect every aspect of media, the composers, musicians, music editors, engineers, and others whose soundtracks excite, inspire, and touch millions face the same structural economic challenges that have transformed American society, concentrating wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands.
Working Women on Screen: Paid Labour and Fourth Wave Feminism (Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender)
by Ellie Tomsett Poppy Wilde Nathalie WeidhaseWorking Women on Screen: Paid Labour and Fourth Wave Feminism critically examines screen media representations of women’s participation in the contemporary labour market. The edited collection brings together contributions on Aesthetic Labour; Power, Politics, and Neoliberal Industries; and Sex, Sexuality, and Relationships.Within the context of fourth wave feminism, there has been a new proliferation in the global media landscape of representations of women’s paid labour. This has coincided with the development of critical and ideological issues surrounding intersectionality and culture wars, as well as the impacts of recessions, political upheavals, and pandemics. Workplace dynamics and post-#MeToo politics have led to the complexification of structures, oppressions and relationships that impact what women can do for money. As a result, the “working woman” is now a constant presence on our screens, though articulated in widely divergent ways. The chapters within this collection critique issues that are deeply embedded in neoliberal conceptions of contemporary feminism, such as aspects of “lean-in” culture, structural oppression, and women’s experiences of the “glass ceiling” and “glass cliff”.The volume as a whole will analyse representations related to the intersecting dynamics of gender, race, class, sexuality, and disability in television, film, social media and video games. It will be key reading for students and scholars in media, gender, and cultural studies.
Working with Children in Contemporary Performance: Ethics, Agency and Affect
by Sarah AustinThis book outlines how an innovative ‘rights-based’ model of contemporary performance practice can be used when working with children and young people.This model, framed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), challenges the idea of children as vulnerable and in need of protection, argues for the recognition of the child’s voice, and champions the creativity of children in performance. Sarah Austin draws on rich research and practitioner experience to analyse Youth Arts pedagogies, inclusive theatre practice, models of participation, the symbolic potential of the child in performance, and the work of contemporary theatre practitioners making work with children for adult audiences. The combined practical and written research reflected in this book offers a new, nuanced understanding of children as cultural agents, raising the prospect of a creative process that foregrounds deeper considerations of the strengths and capacities of children.This book would primarily appeal to scholars of theatre and performance studies, specifically those working in the field of applied theatre and theatre for children and young people. Additionally, the practice-based elements of the book are likely to appeal to theatre professionals working in youth arts or theatre for young audiences or associated fields.