More from Thomas Doherty
Folk, Pop and Agit-Prop: Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger After ‘A Complete Unknown’
Seeger was shaped by the 1930s, Baez by the 1960s, and both, like Dylan, had a moment of decision that defined their allegiances.
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A Year of Losing the Plot (and Peak Top 10 Lists)
In cueing up a montage from 2024, it's not difficult to see a zeitgeist shift as well as echoes of moviegoing's past.
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The Blacklisting of a Great Artist: Paul Robeson’s Exile From Hollywood
A preeminent artist-activist of the mid-twentieth century, his banishment by the studios lasted longer than any other performer of the blacklist era — twenty-five years, ending only with his death.
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100 Years Later, Revisiting Buster Keaton in the Multiverse
The comedian-auteur labored over his fifth and shortest feature film for five months before unveiling what would become a prescient Jazz Age meditation on the relationship of audiences to screens.
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Shut Up and Entertain: The Long Push to Keep Politics Out of Hollywood
For decades, studios veered between "make-no-waves" and occasional preachiness, but for most of Hollywood history what helped filmmakers gauge the political temperature of moviegoers was that the two sides shared the same basic value system.
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For Francis Ford Coppola’s Go-for-Broke Movies, All Roads Lead to Cannes
The director readies his self-funded epic 'Megalopolis' for the Croisette, with echoes of his 'Apocalypse Now' journey 45 years ago accompanying him.
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The Ruthless Rise and Fall of Paramount Pictures During Hollywood’s Golden Age
The venerable movie studio, now up for grabs, once defined the industry's zeal for consolidation, pioneering vertical integration and serving as the model for each of its major rivals.
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‘Dr. Strangelove’ Was a Nightmare Comedy. Time Forgot the Nightmare Part
Stanley Kubrick's feature is such a sidesplitting laugh riot that, sixty years later, the radioactive level of fear and trembling in the atmosphere may have dissipated — unless you were there at the time.
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Was This Hollywood’s Worst Year Ever?
At the very least, between a box office that hasn't yet recovered, the end of Peak TV, layoffs everywhere, the threat of AI to creative work and production halts, 2023 wasn't great.
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The Pictures Not Seen in ‘Oppenheimer’
After the public got a newsreel glimpse of what the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did to the Japanese, the footage lay dormant for more than two decades — shaping how the U.S. population processed the use of the weapon.
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When Will the Strikes End? Lessons From 1960
History is a rough guide — and AI is the major wild card — but there’s much to glean from that decades ago walkout in how to make a deal.
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The Last Time Actors and Writers Both Went on Strike: How Hollywood Ended the 1960 Crisis
As in 2023, a key issue for both the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild then was residuals — artists wanted a bigger cut of the feature films that had been sold to TV along with health benefits and better working conditions.
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