WALTER HILL
The heroes of Walter Hill’s films (The Getaway as a writer, Hard Times, The Driver, and The Warriors as a writer-director) are outlaws, outsiders, urban cowboys carving out their own space and morality. Now, with The Long Riders, Hill turns to the real West of the James gang. Hill talks with Mike Greco about his style, his stories, and his role as a privileged outsider in the New Hollywood.
SPECIAL MIDSECTION: JOHN HUSTON
John Huston—bad boy, tough guy, renegade, gadabout, and now, assuredly, Old Master—is the recipient of this year’s tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center. We pay tribute, too, with Richard T. Jameson’s monograph on Huston and his films. As the director’s adventurers searched for a black bird or a white whale, for gold or uranium or just a piece of the action, so Jameson mines the deepest and most provocative meanings from Huston’s stories and his deceptively “realistic” visual style. This is auteur criticism at its best—inspired by the work of one of the best auteurs.
Introduction
The Maltese Falcon
San Pietro and Let There Be Light
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Asphalt Jungle
The African Queen
Beat the Devil
Moby Dick
The Misfits
Freud
Reflections in a Golden Eye
Fat City
The Man Who Would Be King
FILM INDIA
We sent our ace correspondent Elliott Stein to India to cover the Bangalore Film Festival, and he returned with a suitcase full of fresh memories—of a movie-mad country whose top actors may appear in 120 films a year, or serve as chief of state; of the “boredom riots” that erupted during the showing of foreign films; of elephants on the screen and cows in the streets of a very special city.
JOURNALS
Albert Johnson invades Cuba. David Overbey on new French films. Gilbert Adair talks with Kevin Brownlow
DECORATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Independent filmmakers try to make it on their own—i.e., with a government grant. By Mitch Tuchman.
GO WEST, OLD MAE
At 86, Mae West made a “new” movie called Sextette. To Gilbert Adair, it seems like very old times.
THE BRITISH ARE COMING
And about time, too: directors from TV and the avant-garde, from cartoons and commercials, are bringing the moribund British cinema back to life. Anyway, Harlan Kennedy thinks so.
INDUSTRY
The ad campaign can make or break a movie, whether it’s “10” or American Gigolo. Dan Yakir reports.
TELEVISION
Dan Rather moves up at CBS; Dan Menaker thinks it’s a smart, bad move.
BULLETIN BOARD
