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Spike Lee Got Game: A Mid-Career Conversation
In 1989, I was happy to see my name in newspaper ads proclaiming Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing as the best picture of the year. A modern classic set in my home borough of Brooklyn, it’s one of the most dazzling, vibrant and provocative films of the 1980s. Nine years later, I got the chance to…
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Meet The Beatles…Again: Richard Lester Revisits ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
Meeting Richard Lester in 2000 was a once-in-a-lifetime experience—after all, this now meant I was one degree of separation from The Beatles. But apart from my admiration for A Hard Day’s Night and his many fine films, I was in awe of his stamina: He gave me a wonderful interview after six hours of nearly nonstop sessions.…
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Kathryn Bigelow Breaks Through with a Genre Mashup
I first met Kathryn Bigelow in 1987, 23 years before she would become the first woman to win an Oscar as best director for The Hurt Locker, also named best picture. I was a big fan of her second feature, Near Dark, a unique blend of the vampire and western genres that was moody, violent…
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Robert Altman: ‘I’ve Not Had Any Bad Times’
One of my personal pleasures during these pandemic years was revisiting the late Robert Altman’s string of ’70s masterpieces with my good friend Frank de Falco. (Frank’s favorite is The Long Goodbye.) It was a thrill to speak with this great American director in 2000, even if the subject was one of his less celebrated films.…
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Comedy Legend Carl Reiner Goes to ‘Summer School’
Comedy legend Carl Reiner died in June 2020 at the age of 98, after a career spanning seven decades. He first achieved stardom in the earliest days of television, as writer and performer on the landmark “Your Show of Shows” sketch-comedy series. He later teamed with fellow “Your Show of Shows” writer and best friend…
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Jim Henson Enters ‘Labyrinth’ Alongside George Lucas
How lucky was I to visit Jim Henson’s whimsical headquarters in Manhattan in the summer of 1986. But this wasn’t my first encounter with The Muppets. Eleven years earlier, I was working a summer job as a doorman in a building off Riverside Drive whose residents included Shelley Winters and the voice and soul of…
Kevin Lally on Film
Interviews and more from the former executive editor of Film Journal International and Boxoffice Pro
- Film Appreciation
- Filmmakers
- Altman, Robert
- Baker, Sean
- Bass, Saul
- Benton, Robert
- Bigelow, Kathryn
- Coen, Joel and Ethan
- Costa-Gavras, Constantin
- Davies, Terence
- de Angelis, Edoardo
- Docter, Pete
- Duvall, Robert
- Eastwood, Clint
- Foley, James
- Freeman, Morgan
- Gondry, Michel
- Gordon, Emily V.
- Henson, Jim
- Ivory, James
- Jewison, Norman
- Johnson, Rian
- Jones, Chuck
- Kelly, Gene
- Lee, Spike
- Lemmon, Jack
- Lester, Richard
- Lord, Peter
- Lumet, Sidney
- Lynch, David
- Maddin, Guy
- Malle, Louis
- Martin, Steve
- Nair, Mira
- Nanjiani, Kumail
- Oz, Frank
- Park, Nick
- Polanski, Roman
- Ponti, Edoardo
- Reiner, Carl
- Resnais, Alain
- Russell, Ken
- Schoonmaker, Thelma
- Schrader, Paul
- Showalter, Michael
- Shyamalan, M. Night
- Ullmann, Liv
- Van Sant, Gus
- Wajda, Andrzej
- Waters, John
- Wilder, Billy
- Woo, John
- Uncategorized
Kevin Lally on Film 