Back in 1998 there was only one version of The Exorcist … For the first time missing scenes that have been spoken of but never seen before. Mark Kermode, The Fear of God: 25 Years of The Exorcist, BBC 2023
I don’t think the film has lost any of its power to amaze and dazzle. ibid.
25 years ago an extraordinary movie changed the face of modern cinema. ibid.
Over the past few years black film-makers and actors have featured heavily in the annual awards ceremonies. Breaking box office records along the way. Black Hollywood: They’ve Gotta Have Us I , BBC 2018
These are artists revolutionizing cinema in ways that really matter to us all. ibid.
Black film-makers finally won themselves the space to speak. ibid.
Gone With the Wind: Many actors were straitjacketed by the writing of the time. But Hattie McDaniel stood out. ibid.
‘My name is Harry Belafonte and I’ve been around a long time.’ ibid.
The ‘Hays Code’ explicitly forbade the depiction of sexual relationships between ‘the white and black races’. ibid.
‘My name is Earl Cameron and I’ve been an actor from the age of … it’s a long time ago.’ ibid.
Carmen Jones: Budget: $750,000; Box Office $9.8 million; Equivalent Today: $87.5 million. ibid.
Five decades ago, at the height of the civil rights movement, America’s most beloved actor was a black man. His name is Sidney Poitier … To Sir With Love (1967). ibid.
Spike Lee: nothing has ever been the same since. ibid.
Black Panther [2010] has shown that a film can be both all-black and all-successful. Black Hollywood: They’ve Gotta Have Us II: Black Film is Not a Genre
Do the Right Thing (1989): hip-hop score was in itself revolutionary but the movie was much more than a soundtrack. ibid.
Stereotypical Casting: ‘I was auditioning, auditioning, auditioning, and now suddenly it’s like Thug #1.’ ibid. Laurence Fishburne
Pam Grier: Foxy Brown (1974) … ‘And I got my black belt in bar stool.’ ibid.
Even white directors came up against age-old obstacles when attempting to tell the black story. ibid.
Ray: Budget $40 million; Box Office $124.7 million. ibid.
Most black actors found themselves as the only non-white person on set playing a very minor roll. ibid.
The game changer: True star power is found in Denzel Washington. ibid.
Black Panther (2018): The biggest entertainment franchise of recent times. ibid.
The next generation of black British actors bagged leading roles in a succession of Hollywood blockbusters. Black Hollywood: They’ve Got to Have Us III: Have Us
The exodus of black British talent to the US began in the ’90s. ibid.
It wouldn’t be until 1989 that a black women would direct a Hollywood movie. ibid.
Get Out raked in over $250 million worldwide, making it one of the biggest selling horror movies of all time. ibid.
Sometimes you find that a film is looked at solely for its content without any regard to the style or manner in which the story is told. What is Cinema? Hitchcock, 2013
When we experience a film, we prime ourselves for illusion. We make way for it in our imagination. ibid. Ingmar Bergman
The screen must speak its own language, freshly coined. ibid. Hitchcock
Great films tell a story, a surface story, but the great cinema goes deep into the psyche and these undercurrents are caught on deeper levels. ibid. David Lynch
Make visible what, without you, might never have been seen. ibid. Robert Bresson
I didn’t go to film school. I went to films. I steal from every movie ever made. ibid. Quentin Tarantino
Cinema is an old whore, like circus and variety, who knows how to give many kinds of pleasure. ibid. Frederico Fellini
Melodrama does to cinema what syphilis does to your privates. Getting it might be pleasurable, but from then on it’s all downhill. ibid. Lillian Hellman
All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. ibid. Jean-Luc Godard
Cinema makes us aware of what it is to be a human being. Take a close look at the world. It will lay bare for you all its reality. ibid. Andre Bazin
A film is not ready-made. It makes itself as it goes along. ibid. Robert Breson
There are films that nail you to your seat and overwhelm you to the point that you forget everything. ibid. Abbas Kiarostami
Movies are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen without hearing. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light. ibid. Stanley Kubrick
Real cinema sings the truth of our lives today. And with every image, eerie sound, of true cinema, the old is shaken. ibid. Jonas Mekas
So where’s the Cannes Film Festival being held this year? ibid. Christine Aguilera
If anyone tells you there is only one way to make cinema, their way, get away from those fuckers as soon as possible. ibid. Jim Jarmusch
I really don’t want to be in another one of J-Roc’s Grease films. Trailer Park Boys s5e6: Don’t Cross the Shitline, Bubbles
In December 1992 my friends and I shot a road movie on the streets of Singapore that was to become a kind of urban legend – that move was called Shirkers. Shirkers, opening commentary, 2018
The film was a time capsule of a Singapore that was both real and imaginary. ibid.
Our teacher was George Cardona – a man of unplaceable age and origin. ibid.
I ran away to a strange cold place – England. ibid.
We had pulled off the impossible – we made a movie. ibid.
He [George] was gone and so was Shirkers … George took everything. ibid.
She [wife] said George was dead. She also told me she had found 70 cans of film labelled Shirkers and that they were all in perfect condition. ibid.
Why would George keep everything from Shirkers? ibid.
This is the story of Orson Welles’ last movie – The Other Side of the Wind. They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, Netflix 2018
And they did go horribly wrong. ibid.
‘Whatever happened to Orson Welles?’ ibid. dude
‘Orson had lost his ability to finance his own work in America.’ ibid. observer
It was the sirens’ call that drew Orson back to Hollywood. ibid.
‘The Other Side of the Wind is entirely masked.’ ibid. Welles
They were something completely different. As unexpected as the Spanish Inquisition to the ripping up of the rule book of television comedy, and creating a surreal … world of silly walks, dead parrots, fish slapping, cross-dressing lumberjacks, pepper pots, gumbies and a whole host of other sketches. Python at 50: Silly Talks & Holy Grails, BBC 2019
The peak of their power and that many including John Cleese have called their masterpiece – In 1979 there are on location in Tunisia for The Life of Brian … fun times. ibid.
Michael is I think probably the funniest really … spells of … a creative genius … he just creates material. ibid.
The famous titles: designed by the group’s lone American author – Terry Gilliam. ibid.
‘We’re not about the allow this sort of smut to be shown on screen. ibid. cartoon of head between legs
‘I think I had a mini nervous breakdown … I’ve got to get out. I need space … A great deal of resentment …’ ibid. John Cleese
Fawlty Towers: they surely deserve some credit. ibid.
They still got on and worked well together … Monty Python & the Holy Grail. ibid.
‘It’s about a search for a Holy Grail which is a large creature albeit like a dodo with a beak. And people are trying to find this Grail. No. It’s a big let down. The whole film is a great anti-climax.’ ibid. Graham Chapman
‘Four pints of gin a day.’ ibid. Chapman on Parkinson
The Life of Brian: The film was banned in countries around the world. ibid.
‘This is such a tenth rate film.’ ibid. Malcolm Muggeridge, Parkinson, re Life of Brian
Their final film: The Meaning of Life … The best of Python and as challenging as ever. ibid.