Double-Entendres, Secret Histories, and Marilyn Monroe: Helene Stapinski on “The American Way”

Helene Stapinski

On a rainy morning in New York’s Greenwich Village I meet up with journalist and memoirist Helene Stapinski to talk about her new book, The American Way. We’re sitting at a small window table in Caffé Reggio and together we imagine how its old-world atmosphere would have reminded Jules Schulback – her story’s hero – of the coffee houses he frequented as a young man in his native Berlin, the city he loved and didn’t want to leave. Stapinski muses that it’s quite possible Schulback had been to Caffé Reggio after having fled the Nazis to settle in New York City. Stapinski is her usual voluble self, eager to expound on her protagonist’s inspiring life, while recalling anecdotes about her research and collaboration with his grand-daughter, graphic artist Bonnie Siegler, with whom she wrote the book. 

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Shaping Horror on the Screen: Paul G. Tremblay on Film and Fiction

Paul Tremblay

A couple of years ago, while on a trip to a city I’d wanted to visit in ages, I ended up with an extra night there due to a canceled flight. At least, I nominally had an extra night in town — but instead, I stayed in my hotel room because I’d just started reading Paul G. Tremblay‘s The Cabin at the End of the World — and there was no way I was going to put it down before I knew how it ended. Since then, I’ve sought out more of his work, impressed by both his command of dread and his ability to sustain narrative ambiguity across the space of a novel. Knock at the Cabin, an adaptation of the novel that first drew me to Tremblay’s work, is now in theaters, and provided the perfect backdrop to talk to him about his work, the movies, and the places they intersect.

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A Prince in his Native Land (On Cronenberg’s “Transfer”): Chris Kelso In Conversation With Stephen Bissette

transfer by Bruce MacDonald

I can observe my own body cut open, without suffering!… I see myself all the way down to my entrails; a new mirror stage… I can see to the heart of my lover; his splendid design has nothing to do with sickly sentimentalities… Darling, I love your spleen; I love your liver; I adore your pancreas, and the line of your femur excites me.”
(from Orlan’s Carnal Art manifesto)

Fresh off the heels of selling his own kidney stones in a 24-hour auction, David Cronenberg teased fans with a tantalising soundbite regarding his upcoming film, Crimes of the Future:

I cannot say much, obviously, but if people thought Crash was divisive back in 1996, this is going to create way more chaos and controversy for sure.” 

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Did William Friedkin Direct 2021’s Most Urgent Movie in 2006?

"Bug" scene

The other night, I did something I’d been meaning to do for years: watch William Friedkin’s 2006 adaptation of Tracy Letts’s 1996 play Bug. That it had taken me so long remains a mystery to me: Friedkin is, after all, the director of The Exorcist. I’d seen Letts’s play August: Osage County on Broadway and loved it. And the film’s two leads were the always reliable Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon. It took me over a decade to watch the film, but in the end it might be that I saw it at exactly the right time.

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Strange at Home: An Interview with Greg Brownderville

Fire Bones

A Lebanese-American ferry pilot. A Chinese-American grocer. A Midwestern-born misfit with a gift for gab. A self-styled provocateur and his salon of associates.

They are among the many small-town eccentrics you meet in Fire Bones, a new multimedia series from the mind of poet Greg Brownderville. He describes the format of the series as “the world’s first-ever go-show.” Part film, part podcast, part musical performance, it’s a daring, genre-defying work of fiction designed specifically for your smartphone. If all this sounds overly conceptual, the story itself is anything but. Imagine a formally inventive take on Twin Peaks or True Detective, and you start to get the picture.

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A New Documentary Explores the Lasting Appeal of the LP: Inside “Vinyl Nation”

"Vinyl Nation" art

Few musical formats have had the comeback narrative that vinyl has in the last decade or so. A new documentary film, Vinyl Nation, explores the enduring appeal of LPs and the subculture that’s grown around them recently — including the rise of Record Store Day. I talked with directors Kevin Smokler and Christopher Boone to learn more about the film’s origins and how the project came to fruition.

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Here’s the Unnerving Trailer For Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley’s “Permanent Green Light”

Around these parts, we are huge admirers of the works of Dennis Cooper, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, novels told in GIFs or his comprehensive blogging. Recently, Cooper has been working on a film, Permanent Green Light, in collaboration with Zac Farley. Later this month, it will be shown at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and a trailer has been released–which uses minimal music and one image that’s beyond unsettling to powerful effect.

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