Watching Classic Movies

Love all the classic film GIFs online? That is thanks in part to my guest, GIPHY Editor Tiffany Vazquez, who has made a career of bringing brief, but potent moving images to millions of users. While Tiffany loves sharing movie history and fun clips with the masses, there’s so much more to her work, from ways to make life easier to highlighting vibrant moments from the past. We had a great talk abo...

My guest Paula Guthat is the co-founder of Cinema Detroit  and the popular TCM Party hashtag. She came to me with a dilemma, how do you react when you learn that one of your cinematic favs has done something horrific? The answer is personal, often not definitive, and complicated, especially when you are a film programmer as Paula is. We talked about the issue as it relates to our past, presen...

This episode I went into a classic horror deep dive with my guest Miguel Rodriguez, founder and director of the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival . While talking about some great films, we discussed when the style of horror as we know it emerged, when it transitioned from the classic era to the modern age, how what scares us is so personal and how what makes a monster has changed with the times. W...

I’ve been fascinated by silent film accompanists ever since I saw an organist playing jaunty tunes for Charlie Chaplin shorts at a local pizza parlor as a kid.  Accompanist, composer and film historian Ben Model has accompanied silent films since his college years. His career has taken him around the world. In pandemic time, he’s found a new international audience from his living room, stream...

Joan Harrison was one of only three women producing films during the studio age. Also a talented screenwriter, she was instrumental in helping Alfred Hitchcock develop his style on films including Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent , in addition to his long-running television shows. She was key in molding the film noir genre with movies like the edgy for their time The Phantom Lady and They Won’t B...

From his beloved film guides, books, and tenure on Entertainment Tonight to his podcast Maltin on Movies, Leonard Maltin has been a part of my movie-watching life for as long as I can remember. He tells all in the fascinating new memoir Starstruck: My Unlikely Road to Hollywood . We talked about his life, career, and most treasured achievement. You can read my review of Mr. Maltin’s book here . Fo...

There’s no star quite like the glittering, charismatic, and forever modern Josephine Baker. In the book Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Prism my guest Terri Simone Francis explains why Baker’s movies, while a small part of a phenomenal career are an important and enduring part of her legacy. Dr. Francis has also recently introduced a collection of four restored Josephine Baker films currently streamin...

When the movies were new, Vitagraph was the most successful film studio in the world. This was a time where as much as 85% of the population was seeing movies on a regular basis; that number is now less than 10%. Vitagraph’s innovations are numerous and influential to the present day, but the impact of the company has been overlooked in accounts of the time, until now. I spoke with Andrew Erish, a...

What makes a summer movie? It’s more than sun and sand. I talked with John Malahy of TCM about his book, Summer Movies: 30 Sun-Drenched Classics and we unpacked the many ways the season of vacations and warm weather can come alive in the movies. To learn more about the book, go to <a href="https://www.runningpress.com/titles/john-malahy/summer-movies/9780762499298/">Running Press</a>....

They say never meet your heroes, but “they” never said anything about heroines. In my talk with Eve Golden, I found her to be every bit as witty, informed, and fun as I imagined her to be since I first started reading her Movieline column The Bottom Shelf in the 90s. Since then she has written two collections of film essays, and seven film and theater biographies, with an eighth on the way. We tal...

There’s more to the actress Jane Russell than those “two things” they announced in the ads for her films. Writer, librarian and archivist Christina Rice can tell you all about it. Her first biography, Ann Dvorak: Hollywood’s Forgotten Rebel was a passion project. When her publisher suggested Russell as a follow up, she had to think about whether she wanted to write about this star about whom she k...