Interview
“I don’t work the system anymore, except as a last resort: I aim instead to bypass it. The better I have gotten at circumventing gatekeepers, the more successful my writing career has been.”
In his new book on film directors, critic David Thomson gives us plenty to think about and plenty more to argue about.
“I really thought that I could sustain a life in music, but perhaps I’d end up in Las Vegas backing Tom Jones or something.”
Miss Pat, reggae’s Chinese-Jamaican matriarch, reflects on a life in riddim.
“Arts journalism should meet the same high standard as other forms of writing but rarely does, even in the good old days.”
The real culture war in 1980s America was waged by young people who were trying to create their own culture and jealously rejected corporate culture along the way.
“‘Rightsism’ gives judges much more power than they deserve in a democracy,” Jamal Greene writes. “When U.S. judges face a conflict of rights, they cancel one right or the other.”
The life of a working musician is not a second-class life, and Mimi Rabson’s is Exhibit A: “I try to get past the limits of the definitions and get to the joy.”
An interview with Brookline’s own Leslie Epstein on his new novel, the inexhaustible freshness of Casablanca, and the need for truth in historical fiction.

Film Interview: Bertrand Tavernier (1941-2021) Talks About – What Else? – French Cinema
We mourn the loss of an affable generous man, a bridge to a vast history, who also knew and loved American culture.
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