Roland Joffé: “I try to take the audience to an emotional place where suddenly something happens and they’re stuck”
Often referred to as the man who made “The Killing Fields” (1984) and “The Mission” (1986), some of the most poignant dramas of the mid-1980s, two-time Academy Award nominee and filmmaker Roland Jo…
Mamie Van Doren: “Talking about Marilyn Monroe is strange. To me, she’s a person; to most people, she’s an idea”
In the 1950s and 1960s, former screen actress Mamie Van Doren (b. 1931) was, along with Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, the personification of glamour and beauty. While Marilyn Monroe and Jayne…
Agnès Varda on “Visages Villages”: “Nothing was staged or rehearsed, it was all very spontaneous”
She has been praised and hailed as the grandmother of the French New Wave cinema. Now, at age 89, Agnès Varda, the illustrious Belgian-born filmmaker from Elsene [Ixelles, near Brussels] where she …
“Back to Burgundy” with Cédric Klapisch: “I always like to discover and rediscover the characters in my films”
French filmmaker and screenwriter Cédric Klapisch (b. 1961), who made his first feature “Rien du tout” (a.k.a. “Little Nothings”) a quarter of a century ago, has been going …
Bela Lugosi, Jr.: “My father was very urbane and cultured, and he always tried to teach me something”
In Robert Cremer’s 1976 publication “Lugosi: The Man Behind the Cape” (Henry Regnery Company, Chicago), Lugosi’s son Bela Lugosi, Jr., writes in his introduction: ‘It is difficult for me to believe…
Étienne Comar: “In ‘Django’ we have this character who captures his musical fantasy in a world gone mad”
When Martin Scorsese was a guest of honor at the Cinémathèque française in Paris, late 2015, he said at the press conference: “When I grew up, I was listening to the 78 rpm records my father had, m…
Betty Lasky: “My father [Jesse L. Lasky] was co-founder of Paramount, yet now he’s a forgotten film mogul”
This old black and white still from Betty Lasky’s family album was taken by her mother Bessie, ca. 1930, Santa Monica beach, near their beach home. Jesse L. Lasky and his three children, Jess…
“Blackboard Jungle”: how Glenn Ford’s son Peter launched Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’
“One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock rock. Five, six, seven o’clock, eight o’clock rock…” Remember this intro from Bill Haley’s rock ‘n’…
Mylène Demongeot: “I haven’t achieved my ultimate goal yet, which is absolute perfection. But I’m still working on it”
French screen idol Brigitte Bardot was her contemporary in the 1950s and 1960s. Still, to this day, Mylène Demongeot (b. 1935 in Nice, France), now a highly acclaimed character actress, is still wo…
“Lost in Paris” with Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon: “Emmanuelle Riva nourished her character”
Without ever losing or ignoring their own cinematic origins, charisma, and integrity, renowned slapstick artists and geniuses Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon (a.k.a. Abel and Gordon) bring their la…
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