Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American black comedy film noir directed by Billy Wilder and co-written by Wilder and Charles Brackett. It was named after a major street that runs through Hollywood.
Alfred Zinnemann was an Austrian-American film director and producer. He won four Academy Awards for directing and producing films in various genres, including thrillers, westerns, film noir and play adaptations. He began his career in Europe before emigrating to the US, where he specialized in shorts before making 25 feature films during his 50-year career.
Edward Montgomery Clift was an American actor. A four-time Academy Award nominee, he was known for his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men", according to The New York Times.
The Player is a 1992 American satirical black comedy mystery film directed by Robert Altman and written by Michael Tolkin, based on his own 1988 novel of the same name. The film stars Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Gallagher, Brion James and Cynthia Stevenson, and is the story of a Hollywood film studio executive who kills an aspiring screenwriter he believes is sending him death threats.
Targets is a 1968 American crime thriller film directed by Peter Bogdanovich in his theatrical directorial debut, and starring Tim O'Kelly, Boris Karloff, Nancy Hsueh, Bogdanovich, James Brown, Arthur Peterson and Sandy Baron. The film depicts two parallel narratives which converge during the climax: one follows Bobby Thompson, a seemingly ordinary and wholesome young man who embarks on an unprovoked killing spree; the other depicts Byron Orlok, an iconic horror film actor who is disillusioned by real-life violence and is contemplating retirement.
Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh, Jr. is a best-selling American writer known for his fictional and nonfictional accounts of police work in the United States. Many of his novels are set in Los Angeles and its surroundings and feature Los Angeles police officers as protagonists. He has been nominated for four Edgar Awards, and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.
The New Hollywood, Hollywood Renaissance, American New Wave, or New American Cinema, was a movement in American film history from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when a new generation of filmmakers came to prominence. They influenced the types of film produced, their production and marketing, and the way major studios approached filmmaking. In New Hollywood films, the film director, rather than the studio, took on a key authorial role.
David Thomson is a British film critic and historian based in the United States, and the author of more than 20 books.
Jack Edward Larson was an American actor, librettist, screenwriter and producer best known for his portrayal of photographer/cub reporter Jimmy Olsen on the television series Adventures of Superman.
Stephen Michael Erickson is an American novelist. The author of influential works such as Days Between Stations, Tours of the Black Clock and Zeroville, he is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award and a Guggenheim fellowship.
Terminal Station is a 1953 romantic drama film directed and produced by Vittorio De Sica and starring Jennifer Jones, Montgomery Clift, and Richard Beymer in his debut role. It tells the story of the love affair between a married American woman and an Italian intellectual. The title refers to the Roma Termini railway station in Rome, where the film takes place. The film was entered into the 1953 Cannes Film Festival.
The Young Lions is a 1958 American epic World War II drama film directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and Dean Martin. It was made in black-and-white and CinemaScope and was theatrically released by 20th Century-Fox. The film is based on the 1948 novel of the same name by Irwin Shaw.
The Defector is a 1966 thriller film starring Montgomery Clift, Hardy Krüger, Roddy McDowall and Macha Méril. It was directed by Belgian director/producer Raoul Lévy and based on the 1965 novel L'espion by Paul Thomas.
Good Guys Wear Black is a 1978 American martial arts action film starring Chuck Norris and directed by Ted Post. This was the second film to feature Norris as the star, following Breaker! Breaker! (1977). However, this is the one that Norris considers his "breakthrough".
The Passage is a 1979 British action-war film directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Anthony Quinn, James Mason, Malcolm McDowell and Patricia Neal. The film is based upon the 1976 novel Perilous Passage by Bruce Nicolaysen, who also wrote the screenplay for the film.
Amnesiascope is a 1996 novel by Steve Erickson. Set in Los Angeles after a cataclysmic earthquake, the novel incorporates elements of other novels that Erickson had published, such as the silent film from his first novel, Days Between Stations. Though not a genre novel, it was a finalist for the British Fantasy Award.
David John Franco is an American actor and filmmaker. He began his career with small roles in films such as Superbad (2007) and Charlie St. Cloud (2010). Following a starring role in the ninth season of the comedy series Scrubs, Franco had his film breakthrough as a supporting role in the buddy comedy film 21 Jump Street (2012).
I, Madman is a 1989 American supernatural slasher film directed by Tibor Takács and starring Jenny Wright and Clayton Rohner. Its plot follows a Los Angeles bookstore worker who becomes engrossed in a horror novel titled I, Madman, and finds a series of murders resembling those in the book occurring around her. The film's working title was Hardcover, and it was released in some international markets under this name.
James Franco is an American actor, filmmaker, and college instructor. He began acting on television, guest-starring in Pacific Blue (1997). He landed his breakthrough role in the comedy-drama television series Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000). After his film debut in Never Been Kissed (1999), Franco won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film and was nominated for Screen Actors Guild Award and Primetime Emmy Award in the same categories for playing the eponymous actor in the 2001 television biopic James Dean. He went on to play Harry Osborn in the superhero film Spider-Man (2002), and reprised the role in its sequels Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007). For the last of the three, he garnered a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor. His only screen appearance of 2003 was in the ballet film The Company. Franco directed and starred in the comedy The Ape (2005).
Zeroville is a 2019 American comedy-drama film directed by James Franco, based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Steve Erickson. The film stars Franco, Megan Fox, Seth Rogen, Joey King, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson and Jacki Weaver.
