Tag Archives: writer

From Skip and Setter’s Creator: Me and My Interview … in the ‘Times of Israel’

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Blog Sketch of Me 092213Well, this is my first post in months, and it has nothing to do with cinema. It does, however, concern a very important thing that happened to me after an interview I conducted 30 years ago (when I was in seventh grade) with two Auschwitz survivors was accepted to the permanent collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: The Times of Israel interviewed me for a feature story, which you can read here. The full link:

http://www.timesofisrael.com/how-a-rediscovered-7th-grade-history-project-ended-up-in-a-museum/

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions or comments. I think the writer of this story did a wonderful job.

Skip’s Quips: Pynchon, ‘Inherent Vice’ and Sloppy Moviemaking

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Blog Sketch 082813Paul Thomas Anderson is a good director. Thomas Pynchon is a good writer. But will the film based on his novel Inherent Vice be any good?

That’s what I’m wondering some days after seeing the trailer to the picture, which made the flick look like a bit of a mess. Possibly an amusing mess, but a mess all the same.

I’m not totally happy with those prospects.

I like my movies tight, not sprawling. Frankly, I’m a bit worried that “sprawling” will be a euphemistic description of this film. Other movies in this director’s canon, including Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, were sprawling in an interesting way, meandering with purpose, getting audiences to wonder what would happen next. What I’m concerned about with Inherent Vice is that it will be directionless, muddled – that we’ll be sick of predicting where it’s going by the time we get halfway through it. And that could be a cinematic problem.

Sure, it might be on a par with Anderson’s other projects, in which case I’ll be more than pleased. But I’m cautiously pessimistic here. Not sure that’ll be the case.

We’ll see.