------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wed 6-9 State
Hall
This advanced
seminar examines the historical, technological and economic changes that
Hollywood has undergone by focusing on what has become the dominant genre
of contemporary Hollywood: the big budget special effects blockbuster.
Films include Cabiria, Spartacus, Jaws, Star Wars, The Godfather,
Aliens, Terminator 2, Titanic, Jurassic Park, and Gladiator. We will examine
film genres including science, fiction, disaster, and the Roman epic and
examine developments in special effects technology and the institutional
changes in the Hollywood studio system. Previous film classes strongly
recommended.
PROFESSOR:
Dr. Kirsten Thompson, kirsten_thompson@wayne.edu, (313)577-3358 (office);
(313) 577-2450 (English Dept.)
Office Hours:
Wed 4.15-5.15 or by appointment, Room 1252, Ground Floor English Department
51 W. Warren
Website:
http://www.wayne.edu/english/~thompson/index.html
CLASS TEXTS
These texts
are available at the Campus Barnes & Noble bookstore (Gullen
Mall) NOT Marwills
Required Texts:
Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, (eds) Steve Neale and Murray Smith (Routledge,
NY) 1995 (CHC)
Geoff King
Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster (IB Tauris,
NY) 2000 (GK)
Recommended:
Select one or more depending on your general or research interests and
read in toto.
Science Fiction
Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace: Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska
(Wallflower: London) 2000
Disaster Movies:
the Cinema of Catastrophe Stephen Keane (Wallflower: London) 1999
In addition
there are REQUIRED readings on certain weeks that have been placed on reserve
at the Purdy Library online at http://reserves.lib.wayne.edu/courseindex.asp
signified as LIB texts in the syllabus). You may take these out for
one hour only or download them from the internet. You should
print them out and bring them to class in the relevant weeks for
discussion. There will also be periodic class handouts for supplementary
readings. There are many additional articles which will be useful
for further directed reading for your final research paper. These appear
in the bibliography.
Screenings:
due to the length of many of the class films, it is recommended that you
rent the films preceding the class, as sometimes we cannot watch the complete
film and discuss the readings in one class session
Many of the
class films have also been placed on reserve for the duration of the semester
at Ademany Library. These may only be screened in the library on
VHS, laser disc or DVD.
These include
Spartacus,The Godfather, Star Wars, Ben Hur (1925 & 1959) and Terminator
2. Other DVD titles of more recent release dates (Lawrence of Arabia,
Cleopatra, Independence Day, Titanic) are available at most commercial
video rental stores for reviewing and research purposes. You can also rent
films on VHS or DVD from the Detroit Public library for $1 each. You should
always watch the films in the correct ASPECT RATIO (i.e. Widescreen letterboxed)
and where possible on Laserdisc or DVD. These formats usually offer
supplementary materials useful for research purposes.
COURSEWORK
Presentations(class readings) : 25%, Midterm: 25% final research
paper 50%
Students may
focus on specific aspects of the action, science fiction or
horror genres, and investigate ideological, technological and economic
aspects of these genres in the Hollywood marketplace.
Please note
that I will not sign class withdrawals after Feb. 28 except in extraordinary
circumstances.
I Jan 9 HISTORICAL
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
to class/overview of blockbusters and class themes
Clips: Intolerance
(D.W. Griffith, 1916) US, Ben Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925); Lawrence of Arabia
(David Lean, 1962), Cleopatra (Joseph Mankiewicz, 1963), Dr Zhivago (David
Lean, 1965)
Readings:
Steve Neale & Murray Smith, Introduction xv-xxii, CHC; Introduction
1-16 GK
II Jan 16 ROMAN
EPICS
Screenings:
The Robe (Henry Koster, 1953), Cleopatra, Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony
Mann, 1964), Ben Hur (William Wyler, 1959); Quo Vadis (Mervyn LeRoy, 1951)
Readings:
Maria Wyke ‘Projecting Ancient Rome” LIB; Maria Wyke “Spartacus: Testing
the Body Politic” LIB
Further Recommended
Readings (online): Jeffrey P. Smith “A Good Business ‘Proposition’: Dalton
Trumbo, Spartacus and the end of the Blacklist; Leon Hunt ‘What Are
Big Boys Made of?: Spartacus, El Cid and the Male Epic”; Jon Solomon The
Ancient World in Cinema
January 21 Martin Luther King Holiday/No classes
III Jan 23
ROMAN EPICS
Screening:
Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960) US
Readings;
Thomas Schatz “The New Hollywood” LIB; Murray Smith ‘Theses on the philosophy
of Hollywood History” CHC; Richard Maltby ‘Nobody Knows Everything” CHC;
Justin Wyatt “From Roadshowing to Saturation Release” LIB
Recommended:
David Kamp “When Liz Met Dick” LIB
IV DISASTER
MOVIES IN THE SEVENTIES
Jan 30 Screening:
(selection) Poseidon Adventure (Ronald Neame, 1972) 117 m
Readings:
Special section “Dreams of Doom; the World of Disaster Movies” Village
Voice Selection LIB; James Spellerberg “CinemaScope and Ideology” LIB
Recommended:
Disaster Movies; the Cinema of Catastrophe
V Feb.
6 & 13 CAPITALISM, HOLLYWOOD AND THE MAFIA
Screening:
The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) 175m; excerpts Godfather II
(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) & Godfather III (Coppola, 1990)
Readings:
Peter Biskind “Making Crime Pay” Premiere, August, 1997 LIB; David Cook
“Auteur Cinema and the Film Generation in 1970’s Hollywood” LIB ; Timothy
Corrigan “Auteurs and the New Hollywood” LIB
Recommended
Reading: Peter Biskind “Raging Days, Boogie Nights” LIB
VI Feb. 20
& 27 SPIELBERG AND MARKETING
Screening:
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1977) 124 m; Jurassic Park (Steven
Spielberg, 1993) US 126m
Readings:
GK 17-68; James Schamus “To the Rear of the Back End...” chap 6, CHC ;
Douglas Gomery “Hollywood’s Corporate Business Practice and Periodising
Contemporary Film History”, chap 3, CHC
Recommended:
Warren Buckland “A Close Encounter with Raiders...” chap 11, CHC; Peter
Biskind “Blockbuster; the last Crusade” LIB; Peter Kramer “Would you Take
Your Child to see this Movie?” CHC
VII Mar 6 LUCAS
AND MARKETING
Screening:
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) 121 m; Clips 2001 Space Odyssey (Stanley
Kubrick, 1968)
Readings:
GK ‘the Final Frontier” 69-90; Michael Allen “From Bwana Devil to Batman
Forever: Technology in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema: chap 7, CHC; Tino
Balio “A Major Presence...the Globalization of Hollywood in the Nineties”
chap 4, CHC
Recommended
Reading: Geoff King Science Fiction Cinema
March 11-16 Spring Break No class
VIII March
20 SCIENCE FICTION MEETS HORROR
Screening:
Aliens (James Cameron, 1986) 137 m
Readings:
Thomas Doherty “Gender, Genre and the Aliens Trilogy” LIB; Scott
Bukatman “Zooming Out: The End of Offscreen Space” LIB
MIDTERM (30-45
mins.)
IX March 27
APOCALYPSE NOW
Terminator
2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1984) 131m US; selections Independence
Day (Roland Emmerich, 1997)
Reading:GK
“Apocalypse Maybe” 143-174; Janice Hocker Rushing & Thomas Frentz
"Terminator 2:Judgment Day; Effacing the Shadow" LIB; Doran Larson, “Machine
as Messiah: Cyborgs, Morphs and the American Body Politic” LIB
X April 10
THE ACTION FILM AND MASCULINITY
Die Hard (John
McTiernan, 1988) US 131m
Readings:
Stephen Farber “Writing in Action” LIB; GK “Maximum Impact” 91-116
XI April 17
THE RETURN OF THE ROMAN EPIC
Final Class
Screening
& Discussion: Gladiator (2000, Ridley Scott) 2000
Reading: GK
117-142 & Conclusion 175-192
(Classes end
April 22)
Bibliography
This list
assumes all readings listed in the syllabus, as well as the following:
A good introduction
to the study of film, for students who have no prior film knowledge is
Louis Giannetti's Understanding Movies (Prentice Hall, NY 1993) or Bordwell
& Thompson’s Film Art any edition) (McGraw Hill) 2000
Asterixed
texts are recommended *
Ansen, David
“Star Wars: the Phantom Movie” Newsweek Special Issue on the Hyping of
Star Wars, May 17, 1999: 56-59
----------------
“Odd Squad” (Cover Issue on Men In Black) Newsweek July 7, 1997 58-62
Balio, Tino
The American Film Industry (U Wisconsin P, 1983)
Biskind, Peter
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls; How the Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll Generation
Saved Hollywood (Simon & Schuster, NY) 1998
---------------
“Making Crime Pay” Premiere, August 1997, 80-109
---------------
“The Last Crusade” in Mark Crispin Miller, Seeing Through Movies (Pantheon,
NY) 1990, 112-149
--------------
“Francis Ford Coppola” Premiere, Sept. 1996: 53-61
-------------
“Sympathy for the Devil” (on The Exorcist) Premiere May 1998: 85-93, 102
Bogdanovich,
Peter “Stanley Kubrick: An Oral History” NY Times Magazine Special
Issue, July 4, 1999: 18-48
Britton, Andrew
“Blissing Out; the Politics of Reaganite Entertainment” Movie 31/32 (1984)
Brodie, Douglas
The Films of the Eighties (Citadel Press, NY) 1990
Brosnan, John
Movie Magic; The story of Special Effects (NAL, NY) 1976
Bukatman,
Scott Terminal Identity; The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction
(Duke UP, Durham) 1993 *
Cagin, Seth
& Dray, Phillip Hollywood Films of the Seventies; Sex Drugs ,Violence,
Rock and Roll and Politics (Harper & Row: NY) 1984
Carroll, Noel
“The Future of an Illusion; Hollywood in the seventies (and beyond)”
October 20 (Spring 1982): 51-81 *
Chase, Chris
“Mob Movies, An Offer We Can’t Refuse” NY Times, Oct. 7, 1990 15-17
---------------,
“For Movie Molls, It’s Still Dirty Work” NY Times, Oct. 7, 1990 1
Cinaeste Special
Issue on Spartacus Vol XVIII, No.3, 1991Collins, J et al (eds.) Film Theory
Goes to The Movies (Routledge: NY) 1993 *
Cotta Vaz,
Mark & Duigan, Patricia Rose Industrial Light and Magic: Into the Digital
(Ballantine: NY) 1996 *
Donald, William
M, Dazzled or Dazed? The Wide Impact of Special Effects” New York
Times, May 3, 1998, 1, 42-43
Doherty, Tom
“Gender, Genre and the Aliens Trilogy” in Barry Keith Grant , (ed) The
Dread of Difference; Gender and the Modern Horror Film” (U
Texas P: Austin) 1996, 181-199
Dyer, Richard
Stars (BFI; London) 1979 *
Farber, Stephen
“Writing In Action” Movieline August 1988, 74-87
Fleming, Michael
“Fantastic Voyage” (on Titanic) Movieline, Nov. 1998 66-66-71, 102-103
Gledhill,
Christine Stardom; Industry of Desire (Routledge: NY ) 1991 *
Gleick, James
“Addicted to Speed” NY Times Special Issue “What Technology is Doing to
Us” Sept. 1997, Sec 6: 54-61 *
Goscilo, Margaret
“Deconstructing the Terminator” Film Criticism 12, No. 2 (1988):37-52
Grover, Ronald
“The Storyteller: How Steven Spielberg Sustains His Creative Empire”
Business Week, July 13, 1998: 96-102
Hayes, R.
M Trick Cinematography: The Oscar Special Effects Movies (McFarland:
Jefferson) 1997
Hayward, Philip
& Wollen, Tana Future Visions; New Technologies of the Screen (British
Film Institute: London) 1993 *
Hoberman,
J “Apocalypse Now and Then, A Short History of the Cinema of Catastrophe”
Village Voice May 19, 1998, 70-75
Hodson, Joel
“Who Wrote Lawrence of Arabia?: Sam Spiegel and David Lean’s Denial of
Credit to a Blacklisted” Cinéaste 20 No. 4 (1994)
Hollows, Joanne
& Jancovich, Mark Approaches To Popular Film Manchester UP: NY)
1995
Holmland,
Christine “New Cold War Sequels and Remakes” Jump Cut 35 (April 1990)
85-96
Honan, William
H “Can the Cold War Be a Hot Topic for a Movie?” NY Times Feb. 25, 1990:
15, 18
Horn, John
“The Outer Limits” (on ILM) Premiere Feb. 1999: 82-88
Horn, John
& Spines, Christine: Actors Rule” Premiere, August 1999: 59-67
Hunt, Leon
"What are Big Boys Made of: Spartacus, El Cid and the Male Epic" in You
Tarzan, Masculinity, Movies and Men, Peter Kirkham and Janet Thurmin,
eds. (Lawrence & Wishart: London) 1993 *
Jameson, Frederic
“Postmodernism and Consumer Society” in Hal Foster (ed), The Anti-Aesthetic
(Bay Press:
Seattle) 1983 *
Johnson, Robert
K. Francis Ford Coppola (Twayne: NY) 1977
Kamp, David
“When Liz Met Dick” Vanity Fair, April 1998, 366-
394
----------------,
“The Force Be With You” Vanity Fair, Feb. 1999: 118-131
Kaplan, David,
A. “The Selling of Star Wars” Newsweek, May 17, 1999, 61-64
Kelly, Kevin
& Parisi, Paula “So What’s Next for George Lucas?; The Wired Interview”
Wired , February 1997: 160-166, 210-212, 216-217
Kilday, Gregg
“Blueprint for a Blockbuster” Premiere, July 1998: 76-80 *
Kolker, RP
A Cinema of Loneliness; Penn, Kubrick, Coppola, Scorsese, Altman (Oxford
University Press: NY) 1980 *
Kuhn, Annette
Alien Zone; Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema (Verso:
London) 1990 *
Landler, Mark
“From Gurus To Sitting Ducks: Media Executives Lose their Edge” NY
Times Jan. 11, 1998, Sec 3, 1, 9.
Lebo, Harlan
The Godfather Legacy (Simon & Schuster: NY) 1997 *
Lehman, Peter
& Daso, Don “Special Effects in Star Wars” Wide Angle 1: 1 (1978) 72-77
Lewis, Jon
Those Whom God Wishes To Destroy... Francis Coppola and the New Hollywood
(Duke UP: Durham) 1995 *
--------,
The New American Cinema (Duke UP: Durham) 1998 *
Lim, Dennis
“The Object of My Infection: Tracking Fear, Loathing and Raging Metaphors
in Virus Movies”, Village Voice, May 19, 1998: 78-79
Marshall,
P. David Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (Minnesota
UP: Minneapolis) 1997
Maas, Peter
“Why We Love the Mafia in the Movies” NY Times, Sep1 9, 1990: 23,45
Masters, Kim
“Aging Bulls” (on Hollywood’s Blockbuster Feuds) Vanity Fair April
1998: 160-
McCarthy,
Robert B. Secrets of Hollywood Special Effects (Focal: NY) 1992
Millar, Dan
Special Effects (Chartwell; NJ) 1990
Miller, Mark
Crispin Seeing Through Movies (Pantheon: NY) 1990
Miller, Stephen
Paul The Seventies Now; Culture as Surveillance (Duke UP: Durham)
1999
Mob Movies:
An Offer We Can't Refuse" New York Times Oct 7, 1990,
Monaco, James
American Film Now (Oxford UP: NY) 1990 *
Muson, Chris
The Marketing of Motion Pictures (AFI: LA) 1969
Naremore,
James Acting in the Cinema (California UP: Berkeley) 1988 *
Newman, Bruce
“Computers Now, Apocalypse Coming Right Up” NY Times June 30, 1996:
11-13
New York Times
Magazine, Special Issue on The Two Hollywoods, Nov. 16, 1997, 75-164
Pollock, Dale
Skywalking, The Life and Films of George Lucas (French: NY) 1983, 1990
Prince, Stephen
Visions of Empire; Political Imagery in Contemporary American Film
(Praeger: NY) 1992 *
Pye, Michael
and Lynda Myles The Movie Brats; How the Film Generation took over Hollywood
(Holt: NY) 1979 *
Roddick, Nick
"Only the Stars Survive: Disaster Movies in the Seventies" in Performance
and Politics in Popular Drama, David Bradby, Louis James and Bernard
Sharratt, eds. (Cambridge UP: Cambridge) 1980
Rogers, Pauline
B. The Arts of Visual Effects: Interviews on the Tools of the Trade (Focal:
NY) 1999
Ryan, James
“”Look Ma, No Pixels: Plastic Trumps on the Set” NY Times, May 4,
1997: 5, 25
Rushing, Janice
Hocker & Frentz, Thomas Projecting the Shadow; The Cyborg in American
Film (U Chicago P: Chicago) 1995
------------------
“Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Effacing the Shadow” in Projecting the Shadow,
op.cit
Russo, Tom
“Star Struck” (on Star Wars) Premiere, February 1997: 81-87
Ryan, Michael
& Kellner, Douglas Camera Politica; the Politics and Ideology
of Contemporary Hollywood Film (Indiana UP: Bloomington) 1988
Schatz, Thomas
Hollywood Genres; Formulas, Filmmaking and the studio system (Random
House: NY) 1981
--------------------
Old Hollywood/New Hollywood (UMI Press: Michigan) 1983
-------------------
“The New Hollywood” in Film Theory Goes to the Movies (ed) Jim Collins,
Hilary Radner and Ava Preacher Collins (AFI: LA) 1993, 8-36
Schumacher,
Michael Francis Ford Coppola; A Filmmaker's Life (Crown: NY) 1999
Sharrett,
Christopher Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (Wayne State
U P: Detroit) 1999
Sheehan, Harry
“The Fall and Rise of Spartacus” Film Comment, March/April 1991, 57- 63
Short, Martin
“Being Kubrick” Vanity Fair, April 1996: 178-185
Silberman,
Steve “G Force: George Lucas Fires Up the Next Generation of Star
Warriors” Wired Special Issue May 1999: 128-138
Smith, Thomas,
G. Industrial Light and Magic: The Art of Special Effects (Ballantine:
NY ) 1986
Sobchack,
Vivian Screening Space; The American Science Fiction Film (Ungar: NY)
1988 *
Solomon, Jon
The Ancient World in Cinema (Yale University Press; New Haven) 20000 *
Studlar, Gaylyn
and Kevin Sandler,eds, Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster (Rutgers: NJ)
1999
Strick, Philip
Science Fiction Movies (Octopus: London) 1976
Stern, Lesley
The Scorsese Connection (British Film Institute: London) 1995
Tasker, Yvonne
Spectacular Bodies; Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema (Routledge:
NY) 1993 *
Taylor, Phillip
Steven Spielberg; The Man, the Movies, their Meanings (Continuum: NY) 1992
Telotte, J.P.
Replications; A Robotic History of the Science Fiction Film
(University
Of Illinois; Urbana & Chicago) 1995
Thompson,
Anne “The Territory Ahead” (on James Cameron) Premiere, February
1999: 76-80, 100
Timpone, Anthony
Men, Makeup and Monsters: Hollywood’s Masters of Illusions and FX
(St
Martin’s Press: NY) 1996
Traube, Elizabeth
Dreaming Identities; Class, Gender and Generation in 1980's Hollywood
Movies (Westview: NJ) 1992
Von Gunde,
Kenneth Postmodern Auteurs; Coppola, Lucas, De Palma, Spielberg
and Scorsese (McFarland: Jefferson) 1991
Wasko, Janet
Hollywood in the Information Age (U Texas P: Austin) 1994
Weinraub,
Bernard and Fabrikant, Geraldine “The Revenge of the Bean Counters:
Studios Yell “Cut!” As Costs Spiral for Filmmaking” NY Times
June 13, 1999, Sec 3, 1; 15
-----------------------,
“How One Man Changed Hollywood” (on Michael Ovitz) NY Times, May 8, 1996:
C1, 15
----------------------.
“The Oscar Chase: Power and Dollars” NY Times, Mar.6, 1998: E1, 18
---------------------,
“Hollywood’s Newest Boys of Summer”, NY Times, May 12, 1996:
27, 34
Wood, Denis
“The Empire’s New Clothes” Film Quarterly, 34:3 (Spring 1981):10-16
Wood, Robin
Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (Columbia UP: NY) 1988
Wright, Will
“The Empire Bites the Dust” Social Text 6 (Fall 1982) 120-125
Wyatt, Justin
High Concept; Movies and Marketing in Hollywood (U of Texas P: Austin)
1994 *
Wyke, Maria
Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History (Routledge: NY)1997
*
Zimmerman,
Patricia “Soldiers of Fortune: Lucas, Spielberg, Indiana Jones and Raiders
of the Lost Ark” Wide Angle 6:2 (1984): 34-39