BearManor Media News — q&a

Interview with James Stratton, author of A Century in the Telling: Must-See Genre Films (Q) You have written books about individual films, individual stars, and individual directors. What motivated you to write about such a wide variety of genre films and to use the hundred year perspective?(A) Genre is the mainstay of American filmmaking. For over a century now, Hollywood movies have centered around distinct archetypes that have remained remarkably resilient. To understand those structures is to understand a great deal about the grammar, themes, and economic realities of classic American cinema. This book gave me the opportunity to discuss...

Q & A for BearManor Media: Lawrence Schulman, author of the 2 volumes of Garland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZWVoYifRxY 1. How did your passion for Judy Garland begin?Surprisingly, there was no single moment. I was too young to attend her 1961 Carnegie Hall concerts, but I do remember buying the double-LP of it when it came out that same year. But, well before that I was captivated enough by her – and this even before I was a teenager – to get up at ungodly hours of the night to watch her old films on T.V. I suppose this was from seeing The...

Q & A with Matthew Hahn, author of The Animated Universal Classic Monsters What is the book about?I have attempted to catalogue every cartoon featuring an animated caricature of a Universal Classic Monster. There are seven main monsters—Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Wolfman, the 1943 Phantom of the Opera, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon—plus the Bride. There was a total of approximately forty classic monsters, and we cover about a dozen of them in animation.What do you mean by “animated caricatures”?In the 1930s-50s, no movie show was complete without a cartoon, and exhibitors preferred...

Q&A with Hans-Åke Lilja, author of Stephen King: Not Just Horror Why did you write Stephen King: Not Just Horror?- My Swedish publisher wanted me to write a book about Stephen King and I agreed but at first I couldn’t find a good topic. There are a ton of books about King and I didn’t just want to write about something that had already been written about but then I remembered that when I give lectures about King the biggest reaction I get is when I tell people that he is the author that has written the books that the...

Q&A for Chris “Sampo” Cornell, author of MSTiepedia - One Man’s Journey Through 30+ Years Of The Best TV Show Ever1. What was your first experience with MST3K?Like most people, I found it channel surfing. But there’s a backstory. Many years before, when the woman who became my wife and I were still dating, we were hanging out in my wife’s apartment with a couple of friends. On our little portable black-and-white TV was a movie called “Women of the Prehistoric Planet.” We got high, settled into the sofa and watched, and essentially did what MST3K does, cracking each other...