Enjoy recent author events, interviews, and bookseller series. Visit our website to learn more: www.skylightbooks.com
Episodes
Friday Jul 01, 2022
SKYLIT: Ross Melnick, ”HOLLYWOOD’S EMBASSIES”
Friday Jul 01, 2022
Friday Jul 01, 2022
In Hollywood's Embassies, a history that stretches from Buenos Aires and Tokyo to Johannesburg and Cairo, Ross Melnick considers these movie houses as cultural embassies. He examines how the exhibition of Hollywood films became a constant flow of political and consumerist messaging, selling American ideas, products, and power, especially during fractious eras. Melnick demonstrates that while Hollywood's marketing of luxury and consumption often struck a chord with local audiences, it was also frequently tone-deaf to new social, cultural, racial, and political movements. He argues that the story of Hollywood's global cinemas is not a simple narrative of cultural and industrial indoctrination and colonization. Instead, it is one of negotiation, booms and busts, successes and failures, adoptions and rejections, and a precursor to later conflicts over the spread of American consumer culture. A truly global account, Hollywood's Embassies shows how the entanglement of worldwide movie theaters with American empire offers a new way of understanding film history and the history of U.S. soft power.
Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tommy Pico
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Friday Feb 11, 2022
SKYLIT: Scott Meslow, ”FROM HOLLYWOOD WITH LOVE”
Friday Feb 11, 2022
Friday Feb 11, 2022
Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.
Friday Jan 21, 2022
SKYLIT: Melissa Anderson, ”INLAND EMPIRE” & Erika Balsom, ”TEN SKIES”
Friday Jan 21, 2022
Friday Jan 21, 2022
Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.
Monday Jan 10, 2022
SKYLIT: Brooks Hefner, ”BLACK PULP”
Monday Jan 10, 2022
Monday Jan 10, 2022
In recent years, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Marvel’s Black Panther, and HBO’s Watchmen have been lauded for the innovative ways they repurpose genre conventions to criticize white supremacy, celebrate Black resistance, and imagine a more racially just world—important progressive messages widely spread precisely because they are packaged in popular genres. But it turns out, such generic retooling for antiracist purposes is nothing new.
As Brooks E. Hefner’s Black Pulp shows, this tradition of antiracist genre revision begins even earlier than recent studies of Black superhero comics of the 1960s have revealed. Hefner traces it back to a phenomenon that began in the 1920s, to serialized (and sometimes syndicated) genre stories written by Black authors in Black newspapers with large circulations among middle- and working-class Black readers. From the pages of the Pittsburgh Courier and the Baltimore Afro-American, Hefner recovers a rich archive of African American genre fiction from the 1920s through the mid-1950s—spanning everything from romance, hero-adventure, and crime stories to westerns and science fiction. Reading these stories, Hefner explores how their authors deployed, critiqued, and reassembled genre formulas—and the pleasures they offer to readers—in the service of racial justice: to criticize Jim Crow segregation, racial capitalism, and the sexual exploitation of Black women; to imagine successful interracial romance and collective sociopolitical progress; and to cheer Black agency, even retributive violence in the face of white supremacy.
Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.
Wednesday Jun 09, 2021
SKYLIT: Dahlia Schweitzer, "HAUNTED HOMES"
Wednesday Jun 09, 2021
Wednesday Jun 09, 2021
Haunted Homes is a short but groundbreaking study of homes in horror film and television. While haunted houses can be fun and thrilling, Hollywood horror tends to focus on haunted homes, places where the suburban American dream of safety and comfort has turned into a nightmare. From classic movies like The Old Dark House to contemporary works like Hereditary and the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House, Dahlia Schweitzer explores why haunted homes have become a prime stage for dramatizing anxieties about family, gender, race, and economic collapse. She traces how the haunted home film was intertwined with the expansion of American suburbia, but also explores works like The Witch and The Babadook, which transport the genre to different times and places. This lively and readable study reveals how and why an increasing number of films imagine that home is where the horror is.
Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.
Sunday Oct 11, 2020
Handsell, Ep. 17: "Dynasty Typewriter"
Sunday Oct 11, 2020
Sunday Oct 11, 2020
Mick and Maddie have a spook szn reunion to talk about Halloween costumes and Skylight's new Indiegogo campaign with Punk Rock Martha's! Then, Maddie sits down with the folks at Hayworth Theater's Dynasty Typewriter to talk about marketing and events for independent venues.
Indiegogo: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/la-public-school-virtual-book-fair#/
Dynasty Typewriter: www.dynastytypewriter.com
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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.
Wednesday Oct 07, 2020
SKYLIT: Ken Kwapis, "BUT WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO IS DIRECT" w/ David Ulin
Wednesday Oct 07, 2020
Wednesday Oct 07, 2020
He is among the most respected directors in show business, but getting there wasn’t easy. He struggled just like everyone else. With each triumph came the occasional faceplant. Using his background and inside knowledge, But What I Really Want To Do is Direct tackles Hollywood myths through Ken Kwapis’s highly entertaining experiences. It’s a rollercoaster ride fueled by brawls with the top brass, clashes over budgets, and the passion that makes it all worthwhile.
This humorous and refreshingly personal memoir is filled with inspiring instruction, behind-the-scenes hilarity, and unabashed joy. It’s a celebration of the director’s craft, and what it takes to succeed in show business on your own terms.
Kwapis is in conversation with critic David Ulin.
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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.
Monday Oct 05, 2020
SKYLIT: David Lazar, "CELESTE HOLM SYNDROME" w/ A.S. Hamrah
Monday Oct 05, 2020
Monday Oct 05, 2020
In Celeste Holm Syndrome, David Lazar looks to our intimate relationships with characters, both well-known and lesser known, from Hollywood’s Golden Age. Veering through considerations of melancholy and wit, sexuality and gender, and the surrealism of comedies of the self in an uncanny world, mixed with his own autobiographical reflections of cinephilia, Lazar creates an alluring hybrid of essay forms as he moves through the movies in his mind. Character actors from the classical era of the 1930s through the 1950s including Thelma Ritter, Oscar Levant, Martin Balsam, Nina Foch, Elizabeth Wilson, Eric Blore, Edward Everett Horton, and the eponymous Celeste Holm all make appearances in these considerations of how essential character actors were, and remain, to cinema.
Lazar is in conversation with film critic A.S. Hamrah.
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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.
Wednesday Oct 23, 2019
Shea Serrano w/ Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion
Wednesday Oct 23, 2019
Wednesday Oct 23, 2019
Movies (And Other Things) is a book about, quite frankly, movies (and other things).
One of the chapters, for example, answers which race Kevin Costner was able to white savior the best, because did you know that he white saviors Mexicans in McFarland, USA, and white saviors Native Americans in Dances with Wolves, and white saviors Black people in Black or White, and white saviors the Cleveland Browns in Draft Day?
Another of the chapters, for a second example, answers what other high school movie characters would be in Regina George's circle of friends if we opened up the Mean Girls universe to include other movies (Johnny Lawrence is temporarily in, Claire from The Breakfast Club is in, Ferris Bueller is out, Isis from Bring It On is out...). Another of the chapters, for a third example, creates a special version of the Academy Awards specifically for rom-coms, the most underrated movie genre of all. And another of the chapters, for a final example, is actually a triple chapter that serves as an NBA-style draft of the very best and most memorable moments in gangster movies.
Many, many things happen in Movies (And Other Things), some of which funny, others of which are sad, a few of which are insightful, and all of which are handled with the type of care and dedication to the smallest details and pockets of pop culture that only a book by Shea Serrano can provide.
Serrano is joined in conversation by his Ringer colleagues Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion.
Wednesday Aug 28, 2019
Alan Sepinwall, "THE SOPRANOS SESSIONS" w/ Justin Halpern
Wednesday Aug 28, 2019
Wednesday Aug 28, 2019
On January 10, 1999, a mobster walked into a psychiatrist’s office and changed TV history. By shattering preconceptions about the kinds of stories the medium should tell, The Sopranos launched our current age of prestige television, paving the way for such giants as Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. As TV critics for Tony Soprano’s hometown paper, New Jersey’s The Star-Ledger, Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz were among the first to write about the series before it became a cultural phenomenon.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the show’s debut, Sepinwall and Seitz have reunited to produce The Sopranos Sessions, a collection of recaps, conversations, and critical essays covering every episode. Featuring a series of new long-form interviews with series creator David Chase, as well as selections from the authors’ archival writing on the series, The Sopranos Sessions explores the show’s artistry, themes, and legacy, examining its portrayal of Italian Americans, its graphic depictions of violence, and its deep connections to other cinematic and television classics.
Sepinwall is joined in conversation by Justin Halpern, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Sh*t My Dad Says, inspired by his massively popular Twitter feed.
Monday Aug 12, 2019
Clark Allen, "MY MOVIE IDEAS"
Monday Aug 12, 2019
Monday Aug 12, 2019
A handful of years ago Clark Allen had an idea for a movie. Shortly after the first idea he had a second idea. The second was followed by a third, and then fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and so on. Having little interest in the silver screen himself, he never bothered to write any scripts or take any steps toward the actual filmmaking process. He did, however, continue to add to his catalog thinking that perhaps one day a hopeful screenwriter or director in need may cross his path, that he might pass along a few of his concepts, and then maybe in time he'd be able to trot down to the local cinematheque and check one out. His new book, My Movie Ideas, collects six hundred and ninety-one top notch, copyright free, suggestions prime for development at any time.
Thursday Mar 14, 2019
Geoff Dyer, "BROADSWORD CALLING DANNY BOY"
Thursday Mar 14, 2019
Thursday Mar 14, 2019
Geoff Dyer has loved Where Eagles Dare since childhood. It is both a thrillingly realized Alpine World War II adventure with tough, compelling acting from its two great stars, Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, and a flippant travesty, reducing the central disaster in Europe’s modern history to a series of huge explosions and peopled by campy SS officers.
As he did in Zona–which took on Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker–in Broadsword Calling Danny Boy, Dyer gives us a scene-by-scene reaction to and reading of the film. And perhaps as only he can, the author both extols and denigrates–lovingly and entertainingly no matter which way he falls–this acme of the late ’60s action movie.
Dyer is in discussion with Joanathan Lethem, author of eleven novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and Girl in Landscape.
Wednesday Nov 28, 2018
Karina Longworth, "SEDUCTION" w/ Mark Olsen
Wednesday Nov 28, 2018
Wednesday Nov 28, 2018
In recent months, the media has reported on scores of entertainment figures who used their power and money in Hollywood to sexually harass and coerce some of the most talented women in cinema and television. But as Karina Longworth reminds us, long before the Harvey Weinsteins there was Howard Hughes--the Texas millionaire, pilot, and filmmaker whose reputation as a cinematic provocateur was matched only by that as a prolific womanizer.
His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late 1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of Hollywood's most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes--perhaps more than any other filmmaker of his era--commoditized male desire as he objectified and sexualized women. Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes's grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these actresses would not escape his clutches.
Vivid, perceptive, timely, and ridiculously entertaining, Seduction is a landmark work that examines women, sex, and male power in Hollywood during its golden age--a legacy that endures nearly a century later.
Longworth is in conversation with Mark Olsen, who writes about all kinds of movies for the Los Angeles Times.
Thursday Oct 18, 2018
WNBA/LA: National Reading Group Month
Thursday Oct 18, 2018
Thursday Oct 18, 2018
WNBA/LA celebrates National Reading Group Month with a special Women in Media panel, featuring Gretchen Bonaduce (Surviving Agent Orange), Laura Dave (Hello Sunshin), and Robinne Lee (The Idea of You), with moderator Ezina Le Blanc.