Museum Of The Moving Image Pinewood Dialogues

Errol Morris's film Tabloid is an entertaining and provocative compendium of some of his favorite themes, including crime, obsession, truth, and the nature of self-presentation. It digs deeply into a sensational and salacious news story about Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen whose alleged kidnapping and rape of a Mormon in England in 1977 made her a pop culture sensation. This conversation between Morris and Chief Curator David Schwartz at Museum of the Moving Image included a lively exchange with the audience about Morris's attitude towards his subject, and whether the film encourages us to admire her or laugh at her...or both.

As part of the Fashion in Film Festival series "Birds of Paradise," curated by Marketa Uhlirova, this panel discussion with Ronald Gregg, Stuart Comer, Agosto Machado, and Ela Troyano offered a lively conversation about the legacy of the queer aesthetic in which the spectacle of fashion plays a dominant role, from the shimmering dresses in Kenneth Anger's Puce Moment to Jack Smith's reimagining of 1940s Hollywood Orientalism to the stunning, surreal imagery of Steven Arnold. At the Museum of the Moving Image, the panel moderated by Stuart Comer (curator of film at Tate Modern, London) focused on the important role of costume in the avant-garde aesthetic.

Director Duncan Jones followed his acclaimed feature debut Moon with the expertly crafted and provocative thriller Source Code, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a soldier who wakes up in the body of a different man and finds that he is part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In this conversation at the Museum of the Moving Image, Jones discusses how Moon impacted his career, what it was like to work with editor Paul Hirsch (Star Wars), and how Source Code compared to a Hitchcock movie. The conversation was followed by a lively dialogue with audience members.

In 2005, Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King co-created The Comeback, a penetrating and often brutal satire of reality TV, sitcoms, and show business in general. The series was cancelled, but quickly developed a cult following. After a screening of the first episode, Kudrow and Dan Bucatinsky (executive producer and actor on The Comeback) discuss the conception, execution, and untimely demise of the series with Tod Lippy, editor of Esopus, the innovative magazine that had an interview about The Comeback in its special issue about television. The conversation examines how the show foresaw the trajectory of the reality TV phenomenon and how it suffered in ratings for being ahead of its time.

Bill Cosby is one of the most influential and successful creative figures in television history. I Spy, the first network series starring a black actor, made Cosby one of the most popular actors in television. Cosby then starred as gym teacher Chet Kincaid in The Bill Cosby Show (1969-1971). The Cosby Show (1984-1992), about the Huxtables, an affluent Brooklyn family, was the top-rated show for five consecutive years. In one of the first special programs in the Museum's new theater, Cosby spoke with chief curator David Schwartz, and Museum chair Herbert S. Schlosser, former president of NBC.

On the opening night of his retrospective at Museum of the Moving Image, director David O. Russell (The Fighter, Spanking the Monkey, Flirting With Disaster, Three Kings, and I Heart Huckabees) was interviewed by his friend, director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich), following a special screening of The Fighter. The conversation, like their films, was unpredictable and unforgettable, and filled with surprises. It was part of the opening programs at the Museum's expanded and transformed building.

Tom Hooper won the Academy Award for Best Director for The King's Speech, which also won Best Picture and two other Oscars. Hooper, and cast members Claire Bloom and Jennifer Ehle, were the first guest speakers in the Museum of the Moving Image's brand new theater, which opened to the public on January 15, 2011. Hooper had taken an overnight flight from Los Angeles after the Golden Globe Awards, where Colin Firth won Best Actor for his performance in The King's Speech. When entering the Museum's strikingly modern theater, Hooper exclaimed "what a magnificent cinema."

Amy Ryan's Oscar-nominated performance as Helene McCready, a working-class drug-addicted mother in Gone Baby Gone, established her as one of America's leading screen actresses. Her vivid, wide-ranging performances on film and television include her roles in movies directed by Paul Greengrass (Green Zone), Clint Eastwood (The Changeling), and Sidney Lumet (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead), and on TV as Officer "Beadie" Russell on The Wire, Holly (Steve Carrell's girlfriend) on The Office. In a special Museum of the Moving Image event, Ryan spoke about her career before a screening of her Jack Goes Boating, the directorial debut of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Michael Caine, who was born Maurice Micklewhite, reveals that he chose his new surname when he saw a poster for Humphrey Bogart's movie The Caine Mutiny. Growing up in a working-class London neighborhood, Caine watched movies seven days a week; Bogart was his favorite actor. In more than 100 films, Caine has maintained a distinctly British persona but inflected it with a hardboiled, laconic style. In this discussion, presented in collaboration with BAFTA East Coast, Caine focused on his tough-guy roles, in films including Zulu, The Italian Job, Get Carter, and his latest, Harry Brown.

Michael Fassbender, the German-born Irish actor who received international acclaim for his performance as Bobby Sands in Hunger (2008) gives a pivotal performance in Andrea Arnold's film Fish Tank. He plays the charismatic, irresponsible Connor, a man who starts a flirtatious relationship with a teenager, Mia, while he is dating Mia's mother. Set in the projects in a bleak neighborhood on the outskirts of London, this emotionally complex, dynamic film has a cast that included nonactors, most notably its young star, Katie Jarvis. Fassbender spoke about the unique process behind the film at a Museum of Moving Image preview screening.

Four-time Academy Award nominee Jeff Bridges has received tremendous acclaim for his deeply felt and richly detailed performance as Bad Blake, a broken-down, hard-living country music singer in writer-director Scott Cooper's debut feature Crazy Heart. Bridges has appeared in more than 70 films, including Fat City, The Fisher King, and The Big Lebowski. As Bad Blake, who has had too many drinks, too many marriages, and too many years on the road, Bridges not only gives a powerful dramatic performance, but also performs songs by T-Bone Burnett. Bridges and Cooper spoke after a special Museum of the Moving Image screening. (Note: the audio quality is poor).

The 2009 film The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, based on an unproduced screenplay written by Tennessee Williams in the late 1950s, is the latest example of the enduring importance of Williams's artistic legacy. Two of the film's stars, Bryce Dallas Howard and Ellen Burstyn, and its director, Jodie Markell, participated in a panel discussion, along with legendary actors Eli Wallach and Elaine Stritch, moderated by The New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood. The lively discussion, "Tennessee Williams on Screen and Stage" focused largely on the qualities of Williams' work that inspired so many great performances over the years.

The unfettered imagination of Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Twelve Monkeys) is on full display in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, an endlessly playful movie that contains Heath Ledger's final performance. (Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell were brought in after Ledger's death to complete and amplify his role). Christopher Plummer is Dr. Parnassus, a trickster showman who travels through contemporary England, with a seemingly ramshackle show in which audience members step through a magical mirror into a surreal other world. Gilliam discussed the unique adventure of making this movie, following a Museum of the Moving Image preview screening.

Henry Selick, who directed the animated features Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and James and the Giant Peach, offered an in-depth, intimate look at his early days and his career as an animator, in two programs presented by Museum of the Moving Image. On November 18, he discussed his work and his creative process in a conversation with the Museum's Senior Deputy Director Carl Goodman, On November 19, he spoke with Chief Curator David Schwartz after a screening of Coraline. The rich texture of Selick's work comes from its adherence to the physicality and hand-made quality of stop-motion animation.

Jane Campion's Bright Star is a romantic drama about the final years of 19th-century romantic poet John Keats, seen through the eyes of his lover, Fanny Brawne. As in her best films, Campion creates a strong female character, depicting layers of desire and emotion that churn beneath the surface, and using imagery, music, and performance to create a tactile, sensual cinematic experience. Campion spoke after a preview screening for the Museum of the Moving Image.

Judd Apatow, the writer/director of Funny People, Knocked Up, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin is the most prolific and influential figure in contemporary screen comedy. His work combines emotional honesty and insight with unabashed, frequently vulgar comedy, as he explores the most fundamental life experiences, including coming of age, losing virginity, dealing with pregnancy, getting married, and confronting mortality. In this Museum of the Moving Image program, Apatow talked about his career, from his early days hosting a radio show at Syosset High School to Funny People, a loosely autobiographical film starring Apatow's former roommate Adam Sandler as a famous comedian who has a near-death experience.

Harold Ramis, who directed and co-wrote Year One, is the man behind some of the funniest Hollywood movies of the past thirty years. He wrote Animal House, whose raunchy humor revitalized screen comedy. He also wrote Ghostbusters and starred in the film with Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray. His many credits include Caddyshack, Groundhog Day, Analyze This, and The Ice Harvest. In this special Museum of the Moving Image program, Ramis talked about his career, starting with his days as head writer of the series Second City TV. Comedian and actor David Cross, who co-stars in Year One, introduced Ramis.

The documentary Food, Inc., which lifts the veil on America's food industry, is a muckraking film that is elegantly made and entertaining. The Museum of the Moving Image presented the New York premiere, followed by a discussion with: Eric Schlosser, whose best-seller Fast Food Nation inspired the film; Robert Kenner, the director; Alice Waters, the renowned chef of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California; Gary Hirshberg, the president of Stonyfield Farm, the world's leading organic yogurt producer; and Marcel Van Ooyen, the executive director of the Council on the Environment of New York City, which runs nearly fifty greenmarkets.

Sam Mendes, the Academy Award-winning director of American Beauty and Road to Perdition, was putting the finishing touches on the intensely dramatic Revolutionary Road when he started working on Away We Go, a whimsical and heartfelt movie about an expectant couple on a cross-country odyssey in search of a place to set down roots. The films are companion pieces: two very different movies about couples trying to find their place. Mendes and the film's co-star, John Krasinski, best known for his role on The Office, discussed their collaboration at a special screening for the Museum of the Moving Image.