Don't Say "Fuck 'Twilight.'" It's Good.
'Trip to the Moon' In Color
Harold & Kumar & Sonic.
Brief Thoughts On 'Contagion.'
How I Met My 'Doppelganger' at 'Twilight ...
Revisiting 'Martha Marcy May Marlene'
In Praise of Woody Allen.Budd Schulberg.
I became a fan of Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? after reading it in college. Here was a fast-paced story about of the big-time movie mogul archetype rooted in a poor Jewish upbringing in the Lower East Side. The Sammy Glick persona got to the root of the pratfalls involved in a relentless drive to succeed at all costs. Glick represented the danger of the movie business in its vastly seperate goals from the ones of those who seek to make movies as art. I grew obsessed with the numerous failed attempts to turn Sammy into a modern feature. Ben Stiller would have done a fine job; ditto Sidney Lumet. Alas, the only screen interpretation of Sammy was a not-bad TV movie that just hit DVD this year. At any rate, I did write a story about the Sammy saga for The Forward in 2007, and managed to reach Budd at his home office (his son Benn was kind enough to make that happen). Budd was funny, thoughtful and eloquent, though a bit hard to hear. He was 92 and had clear memories of watching silent movies in the twenties. With his death this week at 95, we lose another showbiz veteran with a full head of memories surveying Hollywood's ups and downs. "Nice work," he told me at the conclusion of our interview, but he might have been talking to himself.
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