Tag: john damico

An Interview with Director and Actress Joan Darling, Pioneer of the 70’s

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Joan Darling (bottom left), part of the cast of Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law (1971-1973)

Joan Darling entered show business as an actress on the New York theater scene in the 1960s, then became a fixture of early 70’s television. In 1974, she made the leap from acting to directing and quickly made history as one of the first and most successful women directors in television. She had an instant knack for it—her debut, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a soap opera parody, has become an enduring cult classic for its dark-edged humor and deep understanding of the desperation and sadness of the American home.

Highlights of her career include a Mary Tyler Moore episode, Chuckles Bites the Dust, which, for its deft tightrope-walk between comedy and pathos, TV Guide calls the greatest television episode ever; a classic M*A*S*H episode, The Nurses, which  revolutionized the way the show portrayed women; and a leading role in an episode of The Psychiatrist, directed by a pre-Jaws, pre-Duel Spielberg.

These days, Joan teaches acting and directing classes at the Sundance Filmmakers Lab. She agreed to a phone interview, and in about an hour, I learned more about the arts of acting and directing than I ever thought possible:
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Smug Film Podcast Episode #1 – Writing About Film (4/7/14)

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1:07:12 | View on iTunes | Download Mp3

This is the very first episode of the Smug Film podcast! On this episode, I am joined by fellow Smug Film contributors John D’Amico and Jenna Ipcar. We discuss Matt Zoller Seitz’ article, Please, Critics, Write About the Filmmaking, and what we believe the duties of a film reviewer are. We also go on tangents—from Russian cinema to the ideal usage of DSLR cameras—and to close, we answer questions from our mailbag. Be sure to listen to the very end of the episode for a movie joke by comedian Anthony Kapfer!

If you have a question for the show, leave it in the comments or email us at Podcast@SmugFilm.com.

If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, and leave a rating and a comment on there as well. Doing this helps us immensely as far as our ranking on there, which is what allows people to be able to discover us. Word of mouth is always best of all though, so spread the word!

Movie Stuff Referenced in this Episode:
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An Interview with Matt Rager, writer of ‘As I Lay Dying’ and the upcoming ‘The Sound and The Fury’

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Matt Rager is the co-writer, alongside James Franco, of Franco’s As I Lay Dying, an adaptation of the Faulkner novel. [Ed. note: you can read John D’Amico’s review of the film here.] He’s also the sole writer of the pair’s upcoming The Sound and the Fury, also based on the Faulkner book. Recently, we sat down over banana bread and talked about filmmaking:
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Robocop: Times Change

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Robocop (2014)
Directed by José Padilha
Screenplay by Joshua Zetumer
117 min.

Very minor spoilers ahead.

When they rolled that screen open to 2.35:1, I knew it wasn’t going to be like Verhoeven’s. The original Robocop is a minor masterpiece, one of the most cutting satires of the 20th century. It’s dingy, clunky, sarcastic, and howling—just like the ‘80s that spawned it. Our new Robocop—which is, for all practical purposes, the second Robocop remake in recent memory, counting the spectacular Dredd—is none of those things. It’s shiny, sleek, and “tactical,” as Michael Keaton’s character says.

The memorable ultra-violence of the original is gone. In its place, there’s a smooth, sanitized finish over everything, which gives it all a sort of uncanny creepiness—a quality best exploited in one of the film’s high points, in which we learn just where Alex Murphy ends and Robocop begins.
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An Interview with Lawrence Gordon Clark, Master of Ghostly Horror

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Lawrence Gordon Clark, with one of his monsters from The Ash Tree.

Y’all ever see that movie The Signalman? About the British railwayman who sees a ghost? It’s part of a series the BBC did from 1971-1978, called A Ghost Story for Christmas. All but a handful of these films were adaptations of M. R. James stories, and all but one were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, who’s directed dozens of programs and telefilms for British television from the 1970s to his retirement in the early 2000s.

Mr. Clark wrote a book called The Christmas Ghost Stories of Lawrence Gordon Clark, a collection of the original M. R. James and Charles Dickens source material alongside recollections of the productions. He also has a short story collection, Telling Stories, due out soon.

Mr. Clark was kind enough to speak to me about M. R. James, Alfred Hitchcock, and his long and fascinating career:
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