The Cinema Lounge
The Cinema Lounge meets ONLINE via ZOOM on Monday, May 24, 2021 at 7:00pm. Our topic is Shooting Midnight Cowboy with author Glenn Frankel.
Calling Midnight Cowboy an unlikely hit doesn't do the film justice. A British director, John Schlesinger, coming off a massive flop. One lead, Dustin Hoffman, warned by Mike Nichols that the film might destroy his career. The other lead, Jon Voight, a complete unknown. A story featuring hustling, homosexuality, prostitution, and the dirty New York streets. Yet Midnight Cowboy became a commercial success, won the Best Picture Oscar, and remains a classic to this day. How did the film succeed despite the overwhelming odds? Glenn Frankel examines these and other questions in his new book Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic. Mr. Frankel will join the Cinema Lounge to discuss his book and the legacy of Midnight Cowboy. The book is available for purchase at many retailers, including Politics and Prose.
We are honored to have Mr. Frankel back three years after he spoke to the Cinema Lounge about his book High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic. Earlier he wrote The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend. He was a longtime Washington Post reporter, editor and bureau chief in London, Southern Africa and Jerusalem, where he won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for “balanced and sensitive reporting” of Israel and the first Palestinian uprising. He later served as editor of the Washington Post Magazine. He has been a Professional Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and an Alicia Patterson Fellow, and was a 2018 Motion Picture Academy Film Scholar. Mr. Frankel was director of the School of Journalism and G.B. Dealey Regents Professor at the University of Texas at Austin from 2010 to 2014; and he also spent four years as a visiting journalism professor at Stanford University.
Please RSVP to atspector@hotmail.com and you'll get the Zoom link 1-2 days before the discussion.
The Cinema Lounge, a film discussion group, meets the third Monday of every month (unless otherwise noted) at 7:00pm at Teaism in Penn Quarter, 400 8th St., NW in Washington, DC (closest Metro stop is Archives, also near Metro Center and Gallery Place). NOTE: We will meet in the downstairs area. WE ARE MEETING ONLINE THIS MONTH. You do not need to be a member of the Washington DC Film Society to attend. Cinema Lounge is moderated by Adam Spector, author of the DC Film Society's Adam's Rib column.
We Need to Hear From YOU
We are always looking for film-related material for the Storyboard. Our enthusiastic and well-traveled members have written about their trips to the Cannes Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, London Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the Palm Springs Film Festival, the Reykjavik Film Festival, the Munich Film Festival, and the Locarno Film Festival. We also heard about what it's like being an extra in the movies. Have you gone to an interesting film festival? Have a favorite place to see movies that we aren't covering in the Calendar of Events? Seen a movie that blew you away? Read a film-related book? Gone to a film seminar? Interviewed a director? Taken notes at a Q&A? Read an article about something that didn't make our local news media? Send your contributions to Storyboard and share your stories with the membership. And we sincerely thank all our contributors for this issue of Storyboard.
