Venus Personified
Courtney Gardner reviews Ty Hodges’ new film, Venus as a Boy. The film challenges our assumed stereotypes as it follows a small groups of friends as they navigate adulthood in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles
Will Smith, Antoine Fuqua Pull Apple TV Production Out of Georgia
Will Smith and director Antoine Fuqua announced Monday that their production scheduled to start shooting in Georgia this summer will…
Film Independent Spirit Awards Moves Ceremony
The Film Independent Spirit Awards just announced that their awards show would be breaking the current award show trend of…
One Giant Leap for Mankind
For the last 13 years, Scott Turner Schofield has been touring his live one-man show entitled “Becoming a Man in…
“Making Waves” with Director Midge Costin
The Independent’s Mike Sullivan talks to director Midge Costin about how she became a Hollywood sound editor and about her long-awaited documentary Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound.
Leave Your Hat On: An Interview with Producer Ed Polgardy
“What exactly does a producer do?” People outside the movie industry always want to know. So The Independent’s Rebecca Reynolds finds out from one the most prolific producers she knows: Ed Polgardy, the quintessential indie producer who has independently financed large and small films outside the studio system in a plethora of genres, all while wearing his signature black hat.
“What Would Happen If ‘The Goods’ Got Together?”
In this final installment of Bette, Marilyn, and #MeToo, Kerry McElroy brings her timely and informative series to a close. But not before considering what today’s feminists and Hollywood insiders have to say about the relevance of studio-era actresses on this contemporary moment.
“There Were No Laws Against It Then”
As the world opened up to women’s liberation, civil rights, and new social movements, Hollywood of the 1960s doubled down on the exploitative practices that had made the industry so harmful to women. In this sixth series installment, Kerry McElroy argues that the sexual revolution stirring the larger culture, epitomized in the rise of Hugh Hefner, fanned the flames of an already misogynist, violent industry culture. As seen through the lives of Tippi Hedren and Marilyn Monroe, this article shows that the commodification of women only increased, even as the old studio system was dying. Few stars experienced the exception; read on about a compelling example: Elizabeth Taylor.
“Scores of ‘Starlets’ Like Me… Fifty Bucks a Week’’
In the 1940s, two female intellectuals, coming from very different positions, began to theorize gender and economy in studio Hollywood. In this fourth series installment, Kerry McElroy delves into the changing and ironic state of affairs for actresses in the 1940s— unexpected autonomy and worsening exploitation. Food restriction, forced cosmetic surgery, suspensions, and poverty were largely the order of the tyrannical day. McElroy also looks at the last living Golden-Age star, Olivia de Havilland, and her landmark 1943 court case on contracts and suspensions.