Film Studies

Some still like it hot

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Some still like it hot Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/01/2026 - 07:00

Cody DeBos

On what would have been her 100th birthday, Marilyn Monroe still defies the image society gave her, says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder film historian Clark Farmer

Platinum blond hair framing red lips parted just so. A white skirt flapping over the grate of a subway. Her image, the portrait of 1950s Americana, is instantly recognizable.

Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, died at age 36. Today, a century after her birth, Marilyn Monroe remains one of the most iconic stars in American cultural history.

But how well do we actually know her? More importantly, what does it mean that we know the image so much better than the woman beneath?

Clark Farmer, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder assistant teaching professor in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts, encourages students to look closer at film and the cultural machinery responsible for our favorite on-screen stories.

Clark Farmer, an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts at the �鶹��Ѱ��, has spent his career teaching students to look closer at film and the cultural machinery responsible for our favorite on-screen stories.

On what would be Monroe’s 100th birthday, Farmer offers a nuanced perspective of her mythos.

A star is built

The Monroe the world knows was as much discovered as she was constructed. When Norma Jeane entered the film business in 1946, the Hollywood studio system was already adept at creating personalities for its stars.

“Studios had a vast machinery to manufacture personas for their actors, but the performers were able to contribute to the process,” Farmer says.

That was something Monroe took seriously. She collaborated with her personal makeup artist, Allan “Whitey” Snyder, to develop the signature look she debuted in Niagara.

“This is the look that people who have never seen a Monroe film still recognize. The look immortalized in Andy Warhol’s silkscreens,” Farmer says.

Of course, studios also controlled which roles stars were cast in, giving them an outsized say in how they were seen. From the start, Monroe was handed “dumb blonde” parts and spent years fighting to be seen as something more.

More than glamour

Hollywood had no shortage of glamorous women before Monroe arrived on set and has had no shortage since. Rita Hayworth set hearts alight and Betty Grable smiled her way onto wartime pinups.

However, when Monroe broke through in 1953, starring in Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, the cultural shock was palpable. That same December, the first issue of Playboy hit newsstands with Monroe starring in its centerfold.

“She wasn’t simply glamorous or alluring,” Farmer says. “She was sexuality personified.”

Unlike earlier Hollywood sirens who projected power and control, Monroe came across unguarded, almost innocent.

“Monroe seemed softer and more vulnerable, even to some extent damaged. Men might project on to her fantasies of an unthreatening partner who didn’t demand anything from them,” Farmer says of the way Monroe’s sexuality was coded.

That image only deepened her allure. After her untimely death, the idea of Monroe as a beautiful victim became a permanent part of her star persona.

During the 1950s, though, her status as the “ultimate sex symbol” was cemented in the zeitgeist. It was widely accepted during a time when cultural gender roles were incredibly narrow.

A year after her death in 1962, the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique would help launch second-wave feminism. This was the start of an evolution in how society viewed Monroe and helped pave the way for wider appreciation of the actress, not just the image.

“I think that the true legacy of Monroe is in her performances, where you can see her as a great talent that transcends just being an image,” says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder film historian Clark Farmer. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

“I think it is a better world where a woman isn’t reduced to being just sex and nothing else, and we can instead see their sexuality as part of their complete humanity,” Farmer says.

The actress behind the archetype

While studios and many fans were content to enjoy the eye candy, Farmer is quick to point out the seriousness with which Monroe approached her craft. From 1947, she trained in Method acting, first at the Actors' Laboratory Theater and later at Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio in New York.

Her 1956 film Bus Stop, filmed under a new contract that gave her more creative control, was a turning point. Monroe took on an Ozark accent and stripped away her signature glamour to deliver a performance that garnered a positive critical reception for her acting chops rather than her looks.

However, Farmer says dramatic work wasn’t where Monroe’s talent was greatest. He suggests comedy was where her star shined brightest.

“Critics and audiences often underestimate how much skill goes into comic acting,” Farmer says. “In part because ‘serious’ acting is associated with dramatic roles. But playing a ‘dumb blonde’ who secretly isn’t so dumb is actually very challenging.”

In films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, Farmer sees an actress using irony, comedic timing and quiet intelligence to subvert the stereotypes she’s performing.

“Today I think we recognize the immense skill in her comic roles,” he says.

A lasting image

More than six decades after her death, Monroe’s image has grown only more vivid. That is no accident.

“James Dean and Marilyn Monroe are encased in the amber of film at the moment of their peak popularity. We don’t have to let a pesky thing like aging get in the way of fantasizing about them,” Farmer says. “Monroe will never be older than 36.”

Earlier Hollywood sex symbols didn’t fare as well. Many saw their stars rise and fall with their eras. Others found themselves embroiled in controversy, forever tarnishing once glamourous personas.

Monroe’s untimely death froze her popularity at its height, and her image would go on to inspire everyone from Madonna to a generation of filmmakers who never met her.

Still, most people, including the students in Farmer’s classes, know Monroe’s image from a distance, but have never actually watched her work.

“They are often surprised by her singing ability, her comic timing, and her obvious intelligence,” Farmer says.

On Monroe’s 100th, perhaps the most fitting tribute is to not just admire the icon, but to watch her films with greater appreciation for the woman smiling behind the cherry lipstick.

“I think that the true legacy of Monroe is in her performances,” Farmer says, “where you can see her as a great talent that transcends just being an image.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about cinema studies and moving image arts? Show your support.

On what would have been her 100th birthday, Marilyn Monroe still defies the image society gave her, says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder film historian Clark Farmer.

Traditional

White

All the world’s a stage for William Shakespeare

Kylie Clarke — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 21:32:57 +0000

All the world’s a stage for William Shakespeare Kylie Clarke Wed, 11/26/2025 - 14:32

Alexandra Phelps

With the Nov. 26 cinematic release of Hamnet, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholars consider what we actually know about the famed playwright and why we’re still reading him four centuries later

Act One: Setting the scene

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” The legacy and legend of William Shakespeare has expanded well beyond the open-air theaters of Renaissance London. Embedded in classrooms, films and novels, his plays and poetry have become universally known and loved. Before he inspired generations of artists, however, he was inspired by the art around him. Adapting the stories and dramas he observed and experienced, his storytelling has entertained viewers and readers for four centuries.

However, his dramas are mostly what we have left of him.

“The wealth of beautiful and deep feeling poetry and drama that Shakespeare left, contrasted with the poverty of documents that give us a sense of who he is as a person, is very intriguing” explains Dianne Mitchell, a �鶹��Ѱ�� assistant professor of English and Renaissance literature scholar. This poverty has led scholars and writers, including bestselling author Maggie O’Farrell, to imagine what the lives of Shakespeare and his family may have been like.

In her 2020 novel Hamnet, a film adaptation of which will be released in theaters today (Nov. 26), O’Farrell weaves a plot following Shakespeare and his wife – referred to in the novel and film as Agnes – and their children, twins Judith and Hamnet and their older sister Susanna, creating a domestic view of their lives in Stratford. Based on the sparse information about Shakespeare available through legal documents, O’Farrell spins a fictional tale of loss, love and the family of one of the world’s most influential playwrights.

Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare in Hamnet. Image provided by Focus Features

Meet the Shakespeare scholars

Scene One: Finding a love

Enter Dianne Mitchell, Katherine Eggert, Kevin Rich, Heidi Schmidt, & Amanda Giguere

At �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, Shakespeare’s work is integral both in English classrooms and on stages. Scholars of literature and theater, as well as organizers of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF), found a love for Shakespeare’s work which now guides their professional careers.

Katherine Eggert

Katherine Eggert, a professor of English and vice chancellor and senior vice provost for academic planning and assessment, remembers, “I was going to study Victorian literature in graduate school, but then I took a class from Stephen Greenblatt, who is one of the world’s most famous Shakespeare scholars, and I knew that I could not leave the Renaissance behind.”

Eggert, drawing on her work on Renaissance epistemology – understanding how it is possible we know things and not others – and Renaissance history, explains, “We know a great deal about Shakespeare’s dealings in property, his legal involvements, we know whether he paid his taxes. We know the kinds of records that get kept in life. We do not have his diaries; we do not have his private remarks about what he thought about any given subject. What we do have is his literary work.”

Dianne Mitchell

For Dianne Mitchell, literary work and poetry of the Renaissance in particular spoke to her. “I had some great teachers when I was an undergraduate who really brought the 16th and 17th century literary world to life, especially poetry. I hadn’t realized how sensual and how deep the poetry felt.” Mitchell, among the other classes she teaches, developed an upper-level English course that is cross-listed with women and gender studies called Sex in Shakespeare’s Time. She reflects that students are “often surprised how up front both real women and imaginary women can be about what it is that they can and don’t desire.”

Kevin Rich

The stage is another way people find new ways to look at texts and themselves. For Kevin Rich, associate professor of theater and director of the Applied Shakespeare graduate certificate, theater offered him a place to conquer his fear of speaking. He remembers, “I was at a summer camp junior year of high school and they said do something that scares you, and I said acting scares me. I always wanted to be a teacher and once I found acting, I knew what I wanted to teach.”

Later, he saw a six-person production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It on a basketball court in New York City’s lower east side and “it was magical. It was awesome. Kids who were coming to play basketball saw that a play was happening and sat on their basketballs and watched it,” he recalls.

Heidi Schmidt

For Heidi Schmidt, a director and teacher with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, it was the connections she made rather than the setting of a theater that drew her in. “I really liked theater people. When I started hanging around theater people there was this relief that I could just be more of myself than I was in the rest of my life.” Now involved in every aspect of the theater, she works alongside Rich and Amanda Giguere, CSF director of outreach, to develop the CSF school program.

Amanda Giguere

Amanda Giguere found theater at a young age at a Shakespeare camp: “It planted the seed and now this is my life’s work.” When she was choosing a graduate school, “I applied to one school, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, sight unseen … because of its connection to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Twenty-one years later, I’m still here.” Her book, Shakespeare & Violence Prevention: A Practical Handbook for Educators, allows teachers all over the country to use CSF’s teaching and practices in their classrooms.

In the five years since its publication and adaptation to film, the novel has grown a wider audience interested in imagining who Shakespeare could have been. Although scholars often try – to varying degrees of success – to explain Shakespeare the person, it is often novelists and playwrights like Shakespeare who bring him most to life. Through his plays, Shakespeare has touched audiences by interpreting the world he experienced through his writing.

Many �鶹��Ѱ�� Shakespeare scholars and Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF) drama researchers are excited for the film adaptation of Hamnet. This film offers another insight into what Shakespeare could have been, beyond the dramas he created.

Act Two: Teaching Shakespeare

Enter �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Dianne Mitchell, Katherine Eggert, Kevin Rich, Heidi Schmidt and Amanda Giguere

“Shakespeare’s plays can be a way to think through questions that students themselves are asking, and we don’t only need Shakespeare to help us answer these questions. But it’s funny how much he is wondering about some of the same issues many of my students are wondering about or exploring some of the same problems that beset them,” says Mitchell.

Part of Shakespeare’s brilliance is his ability to reach people at any age. Kevin Rich, an associate professor of Theatre at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, remembers seeing “a 4-year-old perform a Cleopatra monologue (from Antony and Cleopatra). You would think that’s too hard, but at that age, they’re not afraid of words yet – all words are new. This language was not intimidating and she killed it. She was so brave and let the words be as big as they were. That’s when I realized no age is too young to be introduced to these plays, and you’ll always learn more as you get older.”

Eggert emphasizes the importance of reading the text aloud in English courses: “I do ask students to read in class. I think it’s really important to hear Shakespeare and to hear the language coming out of your mouth and not just as a professional. When you read Renaissance literature – not just Shakespeare – and literature of any kind aloud, you understand it in your ear, even if you don’t understand every word on the page.”

Act Three: Favorite plays

Everybody reads Shakespeare differently, allowing for individuals to connect with his works in different ways.

Schmidt, for example, recalls a time at a camp where she was directing Measure for Measure. The play is about a duke who lets the affairs of state slide and instead of handling them, claims he’s going on sabbatical. However, he doesn’t and sticks around in disguise, observing as people get manipulated by his deputy.

“I said, ‘OK, let’s just agree as a group that tricking someone into having sex with someone they don’t want to is bad. Period, the end,’” Schmidt says. “The youngest kid in the class, 13, puts her hand in the air and shouts, ‘Consent is sexy!’ It was one of my proudest teaching moments.”

Giguere recognizes the power in drawing connections between historical events and the situations Shakespeare portrays in his stories.” Tyrant by Stephen Greenblatt is about the tyrants in Shakespeare’s plays. I’m on the section on Richard III, and I’m thinking about how it shows what happens when hate is allowed to grow and fester. It’s crazy that Richard III became king, that’s sort of baffling.”

Rich sees great power in how Shakespeare can capture human conditions in social and emotional situations, recalling, “I’ve had an inmate say to me, ‘Shakespeare had to have done time,’ because he cannot have written the prison scene in Richard II without having spent time in a cell himself. I’ve had veterans say he had to have been in war, because he cannot have possibly written about war like he does without having experienced it. So, maybe that’s true or maybe he was just that empathetic, that able to imagine perspectives other than his own.”

Mitchell reflects, “I’ve started teaching one of Shakespeare’s late plays — by which I mean a play that he wrote at the end of his dramatic career — both at the undergraduate and graduate level. It’s a play called Cymbeline. One of the reasons [I like teaching it] is that students have no expectations about the play and its characters when they come into my class. I like teaching it because you really see a Shakespeare at the end of his career who is so confident in his dramatic abilities that he starts breaking all the rules. It’s really fun to watch him discard habits that he practices in some of his more canonical plays.”

Eggert finds that familiarity can generate new insights. She says, “The play I most like to teach, that’s Hamlet. It’s infinitely rich and even if students have already read it before, there is so much to discover on the second, third and 20th reading.” Whether a student is completely new to a play or reading it again, there are so many meaningful ways for them to interact with the text.

Act Four: Hamnet as a novel and a stage play

Giguere and Schmidt both saw the first stage adaptation of Hamnet at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Prior to seeing it, Giguere read the novel and was pleased that even though the novel takes a lot of liberties with who Shakespeare’s wife was, they are “beautiful liberties.”

O’Farrell’s novel, despite being about Shakespeare, leans more deeply into the lives of Agnes and his children than other novelists and scholars have. Often villainized in history, Agnes in the novel is shown in a new light. There is much speculation about the circumstances around her and William Shakespeare’s marriage, Eggert disputes some scholars’ insinuations that since she was older than he and was pregnant, she trapped him in a marriage that he didn’t want. This has led to a fictional narrative in which the two lived separate lives, and Shakespeare moved to London to escape her.

Eggert emphasizes that there is no evidence that supports this theory. In fact, she says, “just a few months ago, a scholar made a good case that a letter found in an old book that had been owned by an acquaintance of Shakespeare’s, used as part of the binding of this book, was written to Shakespeare’s wife, and the letter was to her in London. While this letter doesn’t indicate the entirety of their relationship dynamic, it displays that their lives weren’t as separate as some scholars would want them to be.”

Mitchell describes the importance of centering a story around women, especially beside a character as large as Shakespeare. Instead of imagining Agnes’ life as small in comparison to Shakespeare’s, “One of the things that I liked about the novel was that it’s not about Shakespeare and his rise to fame and success, but rather about the domestic life of the intelligent and deep-feeling woman he married. We don’t have diaries or letters, so fiction is doing the work (of defining) that (Agnes) wasn’t some small person who wasn’t cared for and who was just kind of caught up in the Shakespeare industry. She has her own important life.”

Mitchell explains that the villainization of Agnes’ character could possibly stem from a thoughtful act William Shakespeare and his wife did. Many scholars use the fact that the couple didn’t get married in the local parish church to diminish her character since this act was violating the religious conventions at the time. However, at the time they got married, Shakespeare’s father, John – a cruel character in the novel – was being pursued for his debts. Instead of getting married in the church, where people would have seen him and tried to collect, William and Agnes married elsewhere as a kindness to William’s father.

Act Five: Hamnet as a film

There are many films that have captured, or attempted to capture, the plays and fictionalized life of Shakespeare. Movies such as Shakespeare in Love offer viewers a way to enter his life, even if it’s heavily fictionalized. Films are often one of the most important tools used by professors, including Eggert. Films about Shakespeare or his plays allow viewers to better understand the content, through observing the choices actors and directors make.

“I show clips from films and theater adaptations; there are resources through the [�鶹��Ѱ��’s] libraries where you can see how if something is performed slightly differently, it emphasizes an entirely different meaning to the text,” Eggert says.

Although there are fictionalized elements, the stage adaptation of Hamnet was another way for viewers to understand Shakespeare and England at the time. The stage adaptation included people of various ethnic and racial backgrounds, something Schmidt notes was a larger part of Shakespeare’s London than people often consider.

Colorado Shakespeare Festival remains popular

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival program has reached more than 140,000 Colorado students and continues to be an integral part of English courses in college. For this school cycle, Rich has adapted Hamlet into a digestible 30-minute and 45-minute play, depending on the student audience. Giguere and Schmidt’s work allows for teachers to prep their students on the plots, background and characters in the plays. Similarly to Rich’s opinion that anyone can interact with the material, Giguere states, “I don’t think you need to be a professional actor or violence prevention expert to use Shakespeare’s plays to think about patterns of violence. I think the plays unlock a lot about our own world and help us understand what it means to be human and what it means to live in a society.

“There is a lot of research that exists about how London, in particular, is a lot more diverse than we like to think it was – it was not all white. There were a lot of different people coming from all over the world and living in London and making their lives in London. I think [an all-white version of London] is an outdated and disproven illusion of what life looked like,” Schmidt says.

Rich adds that the landscape in theatre for interpreting Shakespeare has moved beyond a binary system of comedy and tragedy. “When I was first starting out as an actor, auditioning for companies, they would ask for two contrasting monologues – one comedic, one tragic. It seems that many have moved away from that because that creates a two dimensional view of his plays, which in reality are more than just two genres of comedies and tragedies. He finds levity in serious moments and he finds gravity in the funny moments.”

The film version of Hamnet continues to break down these binaries and established structures through its storytelling. The mysticism that Rich sees in Shakespeare’s work is what Giguere recognizes in O’Farrell’s novel. Some film viewers may recognize the mysticism of the novel while also seeing the humanity of Shakespeare and his family.

Some 400 years later, Shakespeare can connect with individuals on a number of levels. Hamnet’s release in theaters offers viewers a fictionalized way to see him as a person and one version of the life he could have led. However, the concrete things people know about Shakespeare’s storytelling and genius are found in his works. Giguere emphasizes that people should read “all of them. Truly, every Shakespeare play collides with you in different ways depending on where you are in life or what the world is doing. I say this in a tongue-and-cheek way, read all of them, watch all of them. Because that’s what baffles me about these works, is that sometimes you’ll collide with a play and it just hits you in the right way where, ‘Oh my goodness, this sheds light on this other aspect of my life.’”

They Exit (the movie theater)

With the Nov. 26 cinematic release of Hamnet, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholars consider what we actually know about the famed playwright and why we’re still reading him four centuries later.

Traditional

White

Image provided by Focus Features

Why Skinner Myers isn’t chasing Hollywood glory

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Why Skinner Myers isn’t chasing Hollywood glory Rachel Sauer Wed, 11/19/2025 - 07:30

Cody DeBos

The �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts assistant professor is finding success as an independent filmmaker

When Skinner Myers shoots a movie, he doesn’t need a Hollywood backlot, a multi-million-dollar budget or even a month-long shooting schedule. For Myers, a career in film isn’t about glitz and glam. It’s an opportunity to tell stories he’s passionate about while adhering to a moral code.

That dedication to his craft has carried him on a lengthy path full of unexpected twists to who he is today: an award-winning filmmaker and recipient of the prestigious Amplifier Fellowship.

“I submitted an original pilot and I got selected. It’s really opened up my network to individuals that I probably could reach as … an indie filmmaker professor,” Myers says of the opportunity. “So, it’s been good. The timing has been really good.”

Skinner Myers, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder assistant professor of cinema studies and moving image arts, recently received an Amplifier Fellowship from Film Independent.

He’s currently in the middle of two projects, including Tragic Boogie, a pro-wrestling crime drama, and a feature film called Mood Swing Whiskey.

“We shot the latter in March of this year in Los Angeles during CU’s spring break. It’s a slow-cinema, avant-garde horror thriller shot on black-and-white Super 16 film,” he says.

Earlier this year, another of Myers’ films premiered at the Berlin Critics Week film festival and was quickly picked up by a distributor, with a release planned for 2026.

But for Myers, an assistant professor of cinema studies and moving image arts at the �鶹��Ѱ��, these are more than artistic milestones. He sees each one as proof that it’s still possible to make bold, personal work outside the traditional Hollywood system.

Rewriting his own script

Myers didn’t originally set out to be a filmmaker. In fact, he spent much of his early career pursuing gigs on the other side of the camera.

“I was originally an actor, starting at the age of 18,” he says.

He moved to New York City to study acting, performed in off-Broadway plays and started a band. After 9/11, he relocated to Los Angeles in search of commercial work but found the industry disheartening.

“I got quickly disillusioned with the idea of making it as an actor,” Myers recalls.

Rather than ending the story there, Myers decided to pick up the camera for himself. He began experimenting with documentaries, including a self-financed trip to Uganda to shoot a vérité-style doc in the slums of Kampala.

“After that, I applied to film school, which was a big change for me, because this entire time I was an actor, I didn’t know much about filming,” he says.

“I remember one of the teachers who had seen my feature doc during the admissions process asked me, ‘Why do you want to come to film school? You’re already making films.’ At the time I didn’t really understand the question, which I do now, but I wanted connections, so I went anyway,” he adds.

After stints in graduate school, work on the TV series True Detective, and a job teaching film to middle and high schoolers, Myers began producing short films on the side. Eventually, he landed a full-time role at Loyola Marymount University, which allowed him to finance his first feature, The Sleeping Negro, shot in just six days and on a $40,000 budget.

The film went on to play at Slamdance in 2021, receive coverage in the Los Angeles Times, and score a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes after being screened in 20 countries.

Filmmaker Skinner Myers shot his film The Sleeping Negro in just six days and on a $40,000 budget. It went on to play at Slamdance in 2021, receive coverage in the Los Angeles Times and score a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes after being screened in 20 countries. (Photo: Josiah Myers)

“It won lots of awards, and that was when I started to apply for tenure-track positions outside of LA, just because LA was really expensive for my growing family,” Myers said.

His momentum carried him to Boulder and gave him the confidence to keep shooting films.

A radical approach to independent cinema

Myers is committed to a filmmaking approach he describes as deeply personal, politically intentional and structurally independent.

“One of the things that makes my approach unique is the lack of resources I’ve had,” he says. “I’ve never had more than six days to make a feature.”

Efficiency—often forced by that lack of resources—is reflected in his poignant, narrative-driving scripts and his low shooting ratio. One thing he splurges on is shooting exclusively on film. These decisions are as much logistical as they are part of his larger philosophy on telling a meaningful story, Myers says.

“I’m also a huge fan of the Black radical cinematic traditions that come before me,” he says, citing the influence of Oscar Micheaux, Haile Gerima and Charles Burnett.

“I want to create films that connect the traditions from the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s to today, because I feel like that bridge has not been connected,” he adds. “These are the things I think about as I’m writing, as I’m thinking through visuals, as I’m thinking about characters, making something that is not only equitable to the crew and cast financially, but is unique in its own way.”

His latest project, Tragic Boogie, is a crime thriller set in the world of professional wrestling.

“We just finished the script on that one. I’m really stoked on it because I think it’s something that, for pro wrestling fans, they’ll totally attach to, but it’s still me and still the type of film I want to make,” Myers says.

Thematically, the film explores how bodies, especially those of Black athletes, are commodified and discarded in entertainment industries.

Myers also sees it as a community project.

“Really, my goal is to make the film here in Denver and really try to bring the local community together and have everyone involved, and even have some students involved,” he says.

Amplifying voices from screen to classroom

Earlier this year, Myers received an Amplifier Fellowship from Film Independent, a nonprofit arts organization that supports emerging filmmakers. The program, sponsored by Netflix, is designed to elevate underrepresented voices in film.

“I try to use my work to show students that, ‘Hey, this is totally doable.’ I try to bring in these real-world experiences as they’re happening to me. And I’m very candid and open with my students."

“It’s been great,” Myers says. “Materialistically, I got financial support. But more importantly, I’ve gotten some new mentors in my life who really understand what I’m trying to do.”

“They have a lot more experience than I do. They’re a lot older. And that’s been really nice, getting some of that wisdom and guidance,” he adds.

The fellowship also has given him precious time. It’s a gift he’s using to write, to collaborate and to think about what kind of artist and educator he wants to be as his career continues to develop.

At �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, Myers sees filmmaking and teaching as two parts of a whole. He makes a point to include students in real productions and to demystify the business side of the industry by sharing real stories from his own work and that of his colleagues.

“I try to use my work to show students that, ‘Hey, this is totally doable,’” he says. “I try to bring in these real-world experiences as they’re happening to me. And I’m very candid and open with my students.

“I’ve made three features at this point. I’ve gone through the distribution process (and) the festival process,” he says. “That way, they can see, all right, there’s a way to balance some type of life where you make money and your artistic life.”

Staying true to the story

As for what’s next, Myers is passionate about continuing to create projects that don’t always fit into a press kit.

“I’m not trying to make a Hollywood film; that doesn’t interest me,” he says.

He also encourages young filmmakers to choose their medium with purpose and not to be afraid of change.

“There are a lot of artistic mediums out there other than film,” he says. “So, really know why you need to use that medium to say what you want to say and not something else.”

And if that calling ever changes?

“It’s OK to not do this forever,” he says. “Maybe you say what you want to say in five films. It’s OK to say, ‘OK, I’m going to do something else in my life.’ That’s totally OK.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about cinema studies and moving image arts? Show your support.

The �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts assistant professor is finding success as an independent filmmaker.

Traditional

White

Top image: Skinner Myers in his film The Sleeping Negro (Photo: Josiah Myers)

It was a very good year (for movies)

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 20:51:36 +0000

It was a very good year (for movies) Rachel Sauer Wed, 11/12/2025 - 13:51

Rachel Sauer

The films of 1975, currently featured in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s International Film Series, reflected the times and the culture in ways that hadn’t been seen before, says film scholar Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz

It wasn’t all bad news in 1975. On July 5, Arthur Ashe became the first Black man to win Wimbledon, and several months later, on Oct. 11, Saturday Night Live debuted, the same day that Bruce Springsteen earned his first Top 40 hit with "Born to Run."

But then…

It was also the year that Saigon fell, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, two assassination attempts were made on Gerald Ford and U.S. unemployment peaked at 9.2%. Jimmy Hoffa was reported missing, and Patty Hearst was captured in San Francisco.

“Between the political context and the historical context and technological developments 50 years ago, it created this environment for a lot of exceptional filmmaking,” notes Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder professor of cinema studies and moving image arts.

The times felt raw and upside-down, so filmmakers responded by making indelible, groundbreaking art.

Of course there have been other momentous years for films now considered classics, but perhaps none so densely populated as 1975: Jaws, Nashville and Dog Day Afternoon. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Barry Lyndon and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Shampoo, The Stepford Wives and 3 Days of the Condor.

“Between the political context and the historical context and technological developments 50 years ago, it created this environment for a lot of exceptional filmmaking,” says Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz, a �鶹��Ѱ�� professor of cinema studies and moving image arts.

A new era

Some might argue, Acevedo-Muñoz says, that the films of 1975 had their genesis in November 1963 with the assassination of John F. Kennedy: “It’s seen as this breaking point in American history that leads to a decade of cynicism and that ends with the fall of the Nixon administration. From ’63 to ’75, a number of historical events—from Kennedy to Johnson to the Tet Offensive, My Lai, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the end of Vietnam, the end of Nixon—we haven’t had, I don’t think, that amount of public and social turbulence in such a compact amount of time since then.”

The filmmakers who began creating during this time—including Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick and others now considered legends—were not only embedded in and products of the times but represented the first generation to study the history and craft of filmmaking and cinema at university, Acevedo-Muñoz says.

Further, they came of artistic age during a time that wrote the epitaph for Hollywood’s Golden Age, when the producer was king and the studio system ruled everything from actors’ contracts to production and distribution deals with movie houses. This new generation of filmmakers ushered in the era of the director and the so-called American New Wave, because they were not only studying filmmaking, but were strongly influenced by international films and filmmakers.

This was the time that also saw the end of the Hays Code—Hollywood’s self-imposed morality guidelines that some say creatively cowed the industry from 1934 to 1968—and the “rise of the rating system that we know, which allowed for more frank representations of sex and violence,” Acevedo-Muñoz says.

See the films of 1975

The International Film Series is Boulder's first arthouse series and has been locally programmed since 1941. Its main venue is Muenzinger Auditorium, with a secondary venue in the Visual Arts Complex Auditorium.

This semester, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder's International Film Series has highlighted notable films from 1975 among the other films on its full schedule and will feature two more before the winter break: Barry Lyndon Sunday, Nov. 16, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show Thursday, Dec. 4.

Learn more

“So, there’s this context of general pissed offness, there’s the generation gap of the ‘60s, we’re getting our asses whupped by guerillas in Vietnam, we’ve seen a U.S. presidency collapse, and there’s this sense of, ‘Let’s be pissed off and make movies that rattle cages.’”

‘Nothing to compare it to’

For Acevedo-Muñoz, one of the great examples of this evolution is Robert Altman’s Nashville, which he considers the best movie of the ‘70s because “there’s nothing to compare it to. It’s sui generis. This movie was in production in 1974, and it’s about a presidential primary with a third-party candidate who’s challenging the establishment. And then it’s got this massive scope of 24 principal characters and five days of continuous action and this music that goes from magnificent to abject—I think some of the advertising for Nashville said it’s ‘the damndest thing you ever saw’—and it ends with the assassination of a celebrity by a nut with a gun.”

The films of 1975 not only mirrored the political and social upheaval of the times but represented a certain creative daring and willingness to explore previously taboo topics. The Rocky Horror Picture Show—which wasn’t an American movie but made its way to Hollywood via Australia, the West End and Broadway—made the case that “everybody’s queer and it’s perfectly fine and even monsters are not really monsters, it’s the normal people who come off as squares and weird," Acevedo-Muñoz says. "It’s one of the reasons why Rocky Horror has never really gone away, and if anything has become more and more of an anthem for all things marginalized and all things kicked off center by The Man and a sign of rebellion.”

The events and themes in Dog Day Afternoon, including robbing a bank to help pay for a character’s gender-affirming surgery, had never really been seen in a major Hollywood production before, said �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder film scholar Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz. (Photo: Warner Bros.)

And the events and themes in Dog Day Afternoon, such as robbing a bank to help pay for a character’s gender-affirming surgery, had never really been seen in a major Hollywood production before, Acevedo-Muñoz says.

“Sidney Lumet directed it, and he was bringing to the discussion topics that would have been unthinkable a decade before, starting with a trans character,” Acevedo-Muñoz says. “And he was highlighting the frustration and the anger of the times, and we see that evolve into the street crowd that starts being curious about what’s happening in the bank and then ends up cheering for Al Pacino’s and John Cazale’s characters and applauding as they drive away to the airport.

“That anger from a criminal element previously would have been completely marginalized, not just in the decade and a half before, but also in the censorship system that predated the current rating system, where the bad guys could never be sympathetic. They could be charming, which Hitchcock did in the ‘40s, but they couldn’t be sympathetic. But here everybody’s heartbroken when Al Pacino’s character gets caught. The crowd outside of the bank are you and me in the movie theater, and the bank is a symbol of The Man, of the establishment, of capitalism. It’s a beautiful and, in so many ways, a beautifully shocking movie.”

Irreverence and creativity

The filmmakers of 1975 also saw the introduction of the Steadicam, a revolutionary camera stabilizer mount invented by Garrett Brown that entered the market that year. The technology allowed for greater movement and mobility in shooting and was notably used in filming Rocky the following year.

Even if filmmakers weren’t using the Steadicam, the growing preference for dynamic shots with more movement was still evident in many of the films of 1975, Acevedo-Muñoz says. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is noted for its gritty, almost handmade quality. “Suddenly movies didn’t have to be so pretty anymore, and they could do things like lens flare, they could play with grain in ways we hadn’t seen before.”

He adds that it wasn’t all gritty political and social commentary in 1975. Shampoo, for example, could best be described as a sexy romp—women and men having fun in a hair salon, legendary actors at their height of beauty, a loving farewell to the hippie era.

The films of 1975 are bookended by other exceptional films released in the previous and following years but symbolize the core of a decade when everything seemed to change, Acevedo-Muñoz says, adding that subsequent eras have seen the events of the times reflected in their films, but not in the way that they were in 1975.

“Take September 11,” he says. “It was a traumatic event, and what did it lead to? It led to more Marvel movies, it led to vision after vision after vision of New York being destroyed and a group of good ol’ Americans dressed in red, white and blue kicking alien ass. We’re now getting a couple of good movies that appear to address January 6—Civil War is the best, I think—but we’re not seeing a wave of it and we’re not seeing a concentration as we did, not coincidentally, a year and a half after the collapse of the Nixon administration. (The year 1975) was exciting because anger brings irreverence and also creativity.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about cinema studies and moving image arts? Show your support.

Traditional

White

Lights! Camera! Action! Cherry Yogurt!

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 23:04:09 +0000

Lights! Camera! Action! Cherry Yogurt! Rachel Sauer Mon, 10/06/2025 - 17:04

Bradley Worrell

Aspiring filmmaker and �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder senior Francesca Hiatt’s short film, Cherry Yogurt, relies on subtlety to touch on grief and support, viewed through children’s eyes

Sitting alone on a wooden pew in a quiet church, a 7-year-old boy stirs cherry yogurt in a cup with his spoon. He seems distraught.

Entering the ornate church, a young girl approaches the boy. She asks if he has been crying. He tells her he has a headache, and he points to a pill mixed in the yogurt that he says is for the pain.

Nearby, behind closed doors, adult voices murmur. At one point, a woman can be heard crying softly.

Francesca Hiatt, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder film major, received an Office of Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship (PACES) Tier 1 micro grant to make her short film, Cherry Yogurt, which began as an assignment in a screenwriting class.

The scene marks the opening of Cherry Yogurt, a short film written, directed and produced by Francesca Hiatt, a �鶹��Ѱ�� film major. With her short film, Hiatt didn’t set out to create a neatly packaged story. Instead, in just less than seven minutes, she constructed what might be considered an emotional memory, loosely defined and quietly observed.

The idea: kids watching the world

Hiatt began Cherry Yogurt as a script for a screenwriting class in November. However, the kernel of the idea had been forming long before that.

“I like to write films about adult themes put into children’s perspective,” she says. “I work with kids a lot, and I’m the oldest sibling of four. Just seeing what adult scenarios look like through their eyes always intrigued me, so that’s typically what I write about.”

That approach became the foundation for Cherry Yogurt. In the film, the adult world remains mostly off-screen. It’s hinted at—through murmured conversations off camera. The children in the film aren’t unaware, but they don’t fully comprehend, either. That gap in understanding is central to the short film, Hiatt says.

“Subtlety is really important in this piece. Any time you’re writing from the personal perspective of children, you paint the world how they view it,” she explains.

One thing that is clear to the boy and girl is how slowed down time feels as they wait for the adults to emerge from behind closed doors, as children and adults experience time differently, Hiatt notes.

“Maybe it’s only an hour long, but if you’re a child kept waiting it feels like it’s four hours long,” she says.

Making the film was a family affair

As intimate as the short film’s story is, the production of Cherry Yogurt was even more so. Hiatt cast her younger brother, Victor, in the lead role. Her mother, an actress, also played a part, as did her father, despite not being an actor.

“My whole family are actors. My dad is not an actor—but I made him do it anyway,” she says with a laugh. “It was a family effort for sure.”

Get your spoon and enjoy some Cherry Yogurt.

Watch Cherry Yogurt

In that respect, making the short film felt very familiar, as Hiatt previously directed her siblings in several short homemade movies.

“Back in the COVID days, I was making movies with my siblings in our basement. Honestly, they were not great, but they were very funny to me and I learned a lot from making them,” she says. Later, at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, Hiatt participated in a number of student filmmaking projects, some of which she had a supporting role in and some that she spearheaded.

“I had previously done a couple of other films at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, but Cherry Yogurt was the first film that I made from inception and writing the script all of the way to completion,” she says.

Filming took place over one hectic day, following a prep day that involved doing camera tests for lighting at the ornate Denver church. “It was insane. We only had eight hours to shoot because of a time limit on making use of the location, so we had to just get one solid take and move on,” Hiatt explains.

Despite the rush, Hiatt says the results were effective. She credits her cast—especially the two child actors—for bringing an authentic spirit to the film.

Student filmmaker Francesca Hiatt cast her younger brother, Victor (seated, wearing red hoodie), in the lead role of her short film Cherry Yogurt, which she filmed in one hectic day at a Denver church. (Photo: Francesca Hiatt)

“Flubbing a line is a totally different universe when they’re 7 years old and just laughing,” she says, explaining that laughter and innocence are exactly the point.

The crew and the gear came together

While the film’s cast was largely made up of family members, the crew came from Hiatt’s close circle of collaborators at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

“It’s a group of four of us,” she says, referring to her fellow film students. “We’ve worked on every single one of each other’s films since the first day.”

Hiatt also tapped into Denver’s professional film community, recruiting a professional director of photography with whom she had previously worked. In turn, he brought a few seasoned crew members to elevate the film’s production value, she says.

All of this was made possible by a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Office of Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship (PACES) Tier 1 micro grant for $2,000. The funding was awarded to Hiatt’s Action! Film Club, which she created to provide middle school students opportunities to be part of film projects.

“The grant was huge,” Hiatt says. “I honestly don’t think the film would have been made without it.”

The PACES funding covered the location fee, catering for a 20-person shoot and, crucially, a rented gimbal—a stabilizing camera rig that made handheld shots smoother and more professional looking. The grant funding also paid for all of the costumes and props.

The cherry yogurt of it all

The film’s title, Cherry Yogurt, seems whimsical—almost trivial—at first glance. That, too, was intentional.

“It was something youthful and it was a symbolic item throughout the film,” Hiatt says. “You hear ‘cherry yogurt’ and you think of something bright, but it doesn’t hint at how heavy the other parts of the theme are.”

Francesca Hiatt credits her cast—especially the two child actors (above, in a scene from the film)—for bringing an authentic spirit to the film. (Photo: Francesca Hiatt)

Some scenes leave questions unanswered. Is the boy distraught solely because of a headache or are there other reasons? Is the pill in the yogurt simply intended for pain relief or possibly for something else? In a later scene, the girl, wearing several friendship bracelets, gives one to the boy, saying they offer protection. But protection from what, exactly?

Hiatt kept those elements intentionally ambiguous.

As for what the adults are meeting about behind closed doors, Hiatt says she originally specified in the script that they were attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. In the final version of the film, the nature of the meeting is left unspecified, but Hiatt says it is made clear through the hushed tones of the adults that it’s something serious.

Post-production offers time for reflection

Final editing of the film wrapped in August, more than a year after Hiatt first wrote the script.

“It’s crazy how long it takes to make even a short film,” she says. “After finding the (PACES) grant funding, I started all of the pre-production work, which includes establishing the timelines, location scouting, producer work, getting a crew together and securing the cast. It takes a lot of planning and a lot of work getting people to respond, and I was doing all of this on top of being a full-time student and working full-time, so it was definitely a big project.”

Even during post-production, Hiatt says she kept learning.

“I look back and think, ‘Wow, I already know so much more now than when I shot this,’” she says. “I’m lucky to have opportunities to learn quickly and it’s hard for my art to keep up with how much I learn—even on a daily basis.”

Hiatt recently screened Cherry Yogurt for cast and crew members. Meanwhile, she has submitted the short to a handful of film festivals in hopes of attracting a larger audience for the production. The short film can be viewed here.

Exit, stage left

Hiatt is graduating a year early and will walk with the class of 2026 in May. She has worked with several Denver and Boulder film production companies already and sees herself continuing freelance video work while aiming for her long-term goal: destination Los Angeles.

However, Hollywood is just one possible path to what is most important to Hiatt: “The big goal for me is to get a job that I’m passionate about—something that makes me happy, drives me creatively and where I can make money. Something that makes me excited to go to work every day.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about cinema studies and moving image arts? Show your support

Aspiring filmmaker and �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder senior Francesca Hiatt’s short film, Cherry Yogurt, relies on subtlety to touch on grief and support, viewed through children’s eyes.

Traditional

White

We still need a bigger boat

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 17:02:38 +0000

We still need a bigger boat Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/17/2025 - 11:02

Rachel Sauer

Fifty years after Jaws made swimmers flee the ocean, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder cinema scholar Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz explains how the 1975 summer hit endures as a classic

On June 19, 1975, it wasn’t such a terrible thing to feel something brush your leg while frolicking in the ocean. It was startling, sure—humans’ relationship with the ocean has long harbored a certain element of fear, says �鶹��Ѱ�� Professor Andrew Martin—but the rational mind could more quickly acknowledge that it was probably seaweed.

That changed the following day, when a film by a young director named Steven Spielberg opened on screens across the United States. On June 20, 1975, to feel something brush your leg in the ocean was to immediately think, “SHARK!”

Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder professor of cinema studies and moving image arts, regularly teaches Jaws in Introduction to Cinema Studies.

Are sharks really as scary as their reputation?

In the 50 years since Jaws made people flee the water for fear of sharks, the film has become widely recognized as a cinematic landmark.

“Jaws is a movie I teach regularly in Introduction to Cinema Studies—yes, it’s that important,” says Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder professor of cinema studies and moving image arts, adding that Jaws also is an important case study for misconceptions, including the evolution and de-evolution, of the term “blockbuster.”

A disaster-horror movie

The cinematic landscape in which Jaws arrived was one of greater daring and a transition away from the focus on producers in the classical Hollywood era to a focus on a new cohort of directors—“mostly men, mostly white,” Acevedo-Muñoz acknowledges—who studied cinema in college and were greatly influenced by the French New Wave.

“With the collapse of the Hollywood studio system, suddenly there’s more opportunity for creativity, for edgy content,” he says. “In the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, you have some movies that really were trailblazers in what’s unofficially called the American New Wave. Bonnie and Clyde, 1967, comes to mind—nobody had seen that kind of romanticization of violence and graphic violence before.”

Young directors like Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese were more in touch with the counterculture of the time, and old-guard producers, recognizing these young mavericks might be lucrative, green-lit projects like The Godfather, Mean Streets and Jaws, Acevedo-Muñoz says.

“There’s incentive to be risky in that juncture of the ‘60s to the ‘70s,” he notes. “Then to that context you add the economic crisis of the early 1970s, the recession and unemployment, plus the end of the Vietnam War, heads are getting hot and people are angry.

Creating doom in two simple notes

It’s possible for a universe of dread to exist between two notes: duu-DU … duu-DU

Just two notes, played with increasing urgency and speed, let moviegoers know that a shark is coming, and fast.

An element of the genius of John Williams’ Oscar-winning score for the film “Jaws,” released 50 years ago Friday, is how much it conveys in just those iconic two notes.

“Williams layers melodic tension in these notes with an increasing rhythmic motion—he accelerates the speed in which we hear the notes, and he accelerates their frequency,” says Michael Sy Uy, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder associate professor of musicology and director of the American Music Research Center. “When you combine that with the emotions attached to the fear, anxiety and dread of being attacked by a shark, then we start to feel how this music is living with and entering our ears, and it makes us feel actual anxiety or dread.”

The two notes of duu-DU are separated by the closest interval in Western musical notation that our ears are trained and socialized to hear, he adds—a half step—that, when played in succession, can help listeners feel a sense of melodic tension.

In the case of the “Jaws” soundtrack, it can help listeners feel a deep dread. In fact, some scholars argue that “Jaws” would not be the cinematic landmark it is without John Williams’ score.

“It’s hard to imagine movies today and over the past five decades without their soundtracks,” Uy says. “We make music a part of the storytelling because music can add an extra layer of meaning. It can contradict what is happening in a scene between actors, or it can validate what they’re saying. Music can tell the story even when words don’t.”

Learn more about �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder's film and television soundtrack connections in the American Music Research Center's Dave Grusin collection. Grusin is a Grammy-winning composer, contemporary of John Williams and �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus.

“The crises of the 1970s are one of the reasons why we have the flourishing of the disaster film at that time. I would point first to The Poseidon Adventure, which is the best of them all, and The Towering Inferno, Earthquake. And to a certain extent, Jaws is a hybrid of the classic horror monster movie and the 1970s disaster movie.”

The dire economic background of the early 1970s was important to Jaws and other disaster films, Acevedo-Muñoz says, because “a disaster movie, like a horror movie, tells us we are going through a really rough time, but if we all work together and we make a few sacrifices, we’re going to get out of this OK. If we follow the lead of Paul Newman or Steve McQueen or Gene Hackman, we’ll eventually get out of this all right.”

Driving the buzz

Jaws is often called the original summer blockbuster, but relentless repetition of this idea does not make it true, Acevedo-Muñoz says: “There’s no one movie we can point to as the original summer blockbuster.”

In fact, he adds, the term “blockbuster” really refers to the end of a classic Hollywood distribution and exhibition practice called block booking: If theaters wanted to show big-draw feature films, they also had to book smaller, cheaper, shorter films that came to be known as “B movies," which "were made quickly by 'B units' that often reused sets or even costumes from the big movies to cut costs. But scholarship on B movies has argued that because the studios weren’t paying too much attention to those units, some of the B movies were rather edgy and interesting."

Block booking meant that the producers and distributors controlled a lot of what was in exhibition venues, "but there were occasionally movies that may have broken that pattern, and those were in some ways the original blockbusters—as in busting the block of block booking practice," he says.

While Jaws did break box-office records of the time, it’s also noteworthy in cinema history as one of the first miracles of marketing, he says. It was based on a mega-bestselling book by Peter Benchley, one that was optioned for film while still in galleys, and the film marketing piggy-backed on the name recognition of the book.

Further, Jaws was one of the first films to intentionally create buzz as part of the overall publicity and marketing plan, including strategically leaked tidbits from the film’s set on Martha’s Vineyard.

On its June 20, 1975, opening day, Jaws was one of the most prominent films to benefit from a practice called “front loading,” which meant making more prints of the film and showing it in as many theaters as possible, rather than the previous practice of rolling openings from largest to smallest markets.

“The marketing and distribution team of Universal Pictures also decided to take a front-loading approach with Jaws, so that it was playing everywhere,” Acevedo-Muñoz says. “Or almost everywhere. It still took months to get to my hometown, but we knew it was coming, and that anticipation was building.

“So, Jaws is important because it was this consolidation of these different practices of marketing, creating buzz, creating anticipation, creating tie-ins—it put all these things in one place that were practices that had been around before the summer of ’75 but afterwards became the model.”

As for the film’s effect on moviegoers and their summer vacation plans? “I know a lot of people,” Acevedo-Muñoz says, “who refused to go swimming after they saw Jaws.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about cinema studies and moving image arts? Show your support.

Fifty years after Jaws made swimmers flee the ocean, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder cinema scholar Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz explains how the 1975 summer hit endures as a classic.

Traditional

White

Alum thinks about crime the write way

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 21 May 2025 00:01:33 +0000

Alum thinks about crime the write way Rachel Sauer Tue, 05/20/2025 - 18:01

Doug McPherson

What happens when a freshly minted film studies graduate heads out into the world with no particular plan? How A&S alum Patrick Hoffman went from taxi driver to private investigator to successful author

Back in 1998, Patrick Hoffman had just finished his degree in film studies at the �鶹��Ѱ�� when he decided to head back to his hometown of San Francisco with no real plan in mind for a career.

“I was very green when I came out of college,” says Hoffman. “I didn’t have much street smarts. I’d lived a pretty sheltered life.”

Author Patrick Hoffman, a 1998 �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder film studies graduate, located his newest novel, Friends Helping Friends, in Colorado.

He ended up landing a job as a taxi driver at night and working as a private investigator during the day. “Driving cabs at night in San Francisco and investigating murder cases are very quick ways to learn about the seamier side of life.”

Those lessons in the seamy side of life informed his recently released novel Friends Helping Friends, a thriller set in Grand Junction and Denver, Colorado, that sees its main character infiltrating a white-supremacist compound on the Western Slope.

Before writing his newest novel—or any of his previous and acclaimed ones—Hoffman realized that what he was seeing in his jobs as a private investigator and cab driver might make good grist for fiction.

Easier said than done, though. Hoffman would get started, but after a day or two, his motivation would melt away.

The best writing advice Hoffman ever got came from a friend who asked him what he wanted to do with his life. “I told him I wanted to write thrillers. He asked what was stopping me. I told him that whenever I started something I felt great at first … but then on the second or third day, the inspiration would go away, and I’d feel like a complete fraud.”

Hoffman’s friend then told him that the bad feelings were actually a good sign, and that the secret was to just embrace those feelings and keep going. “I literally started my first book the very next day and everything that has followed can be traced directly back to that conversation.”

It all started in film classes

Hoffman adds that his film classes were “where it all started.” Those days, he was thinking about very basic things like story and plot. “But those were important questions, and you really get to wrestle with them when you’re studying something like film. I had great teachers, too: Jerry Aronson, Marian Keane and, of course, the legend Stan Brakhage. I also had wonderful philosophy teachers. Gary Stahl, may he rest in peace, comes to mind. The English and Humanities Departments were wonderful, too.”

Following his friend’s advice, and armed with the basics from his �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder classes, Hoffman turned out his first novel, The White Van, set in San Francisco and about a troubled young woman wanted for bank robbery and hunted by a corrupt cop who wants the money more than justice.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus Patrick Hoffman drew on his experience as a private investigator to write his new novel, Friends Helping Friends.

Hoffman is adapting that book into a movie. “Hopefully that happens,” he says.

His second novel, Every Man A Menace, was also set in San Francisco. Clean Hands, his third novel, was set in New York City, where he lives now.

And his latest novel, Friends Helping Friends, takes place in Denver and Grand Junction, Colorado. “For this one, it was time to come back home to Colorado,” he says. “There is a certain comfort in it. Also, Denver makes a great setting for a neo-western noir.”

He admits that before his last novel, he was kind of blocked for about eight months, having a hard time coming up with ideas. “One day I literally just started typing. I thought, ‘OK, there’s a woman in Denver, she’s a lawyer and she’s using steroids, and that was the start of the book. I went blindly from there. That’s how I do it, though. The tricky part is getting started.

“For me, writing fiction is 100% about overcoming self-doubt, being able to see something through to the end. The hard part is always starting the book. But then the middle and ends, of course, are hard, too.”

Part of Friends Helping Friends takes place in a white-supremacist compound. To understand that arena, Hoffman says his 20 years working as a private investigator (he still does it) and handling many murder cases helped.

“So, all of that, of course, informs the fiction. But also, I’ll just Google around and look for federal cases.” And he searches public records for indictments. “I love talking to journalists, too. My wife is a journalist, so she gives me introductions to her friends and colleagues, and I force them to answer all my questions.”

Up next for Hoffman is another book—this one set in Boulder, a place he’s now reminded of regularly when riding the subway in New York.

“It’s been amazing to see Coach Prime make �鶹��Ѱ��trendy. I see people wearing �鶹��Ѱ��Buffalo jerseys and jackets. I’m just like wow! It’s amazing. Go Buffs!”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about cinema studies and moving image arts? Show your support.

Traditional

White

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s another superhero film!

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:45:54 +0000

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s another superhero film! Rachel Sauer Wed, 02/19/2025 - 13:45

Doug McPherson

Following a blockbuster opening weekend for Captain America: Brave New World, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Benjamin Robertson reflects on the appeal of superhero franchises and why they dominate studio release schedules

Captain America continues to conquer obstacles and crush villains―not bad for a man approaching age 85.

The comic book hero made his debut in print in December 1940, then on TV in 1966 and hit the silver screen in 2011―gaining massive momentum along with way. This past Presidents Day weekend, the fourth installment of the superhero series, “Captain America: Brave New World,” hit the top spot at the box office in the United States, and earned $192.4 million around the globe.

Benjamin Robertson, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder assistant professor of English, notes that superhero franchises are comforting in their repetitiveness.

It’s the fourth-best Presidents Day launch on record, behind three other superhero movies: Black Panther, Deadpool and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

What’s going on here? What’s giving Captain America his muscle? And why do folks keep going back to these same stories, characters and worlds over and over?

Benjamin Robertson, a �鶹��Ѱ�� assistant professor of English who specializes in popular culture, film and digital media, says there are two answers: “One, the genre is comforting in its repetitiveness. This is the least interesting answer, however,” he says.

The second answer appears a little more sinister. Robertson says viewers return to these stories because creators make “story worlds that solicit consumers’ attention and that must always grow and that turn increasingly inward.”

He says the first Iron Man film is about America intervening in the Middle East following Sept. 11, but later M�鶹��Ѱ��(Marvel Cinematic Universe, the franchise behind many superhero movies) films seem less and less about real or historical matters and more about the M�鶹��Ѱ��itself.

“As a colleague once put it, every M�鶹��Ѱ��film is simply the trailer for the next M�鶹��Ѱ��film, the result of a strategy that seeks to create a fandom that can’t escape from the tangled narrative that the franchise tells,” he explains.

In short, Robertson says if consumers want to know the full narrative—the full world that these films and series describe—they have to go to the theater. “As this world becomes about itself rather than about external history or real-world events, a certain ‘lock in’ manifests, making it harder and harder to not see these films if one wants to understand the world they create.”

‘Flatter American identities’

Actor Anthony Mackie plays the titular Captain America in Captain America: Brave New World. (Photo: Marvel Studios)

Another trick is that M�鶹��Ѱ��films tend to “flatter American identities” by celebrating militarism, focusing on charismatic heroes who try to do the right thing unconstrained by historical necessity and suggesting that everything will work out in the end, Robertson says.

“I can see the more comforting aspects of these films having appeal to many consumers. Don’t fear climate change, fear Thanos [a supervillain] and other embodiments of badness,” he says.

As to the question of whether franchises are just growing their worlds and the characters in them, or retelling the same story because it makes money, Robertson says each M�鶹��Ѱ��film is a piece of intellectual property, but an individual film is far less valuable than a world.

“A film might spawn a sequel or sequels, but without developing the world, the sequels will likely be of lesser quality and, eventually, no longer be profitable or not profitable enough to warrant further investment,” Robertson says. “But if producers develop the world into a complex environment that contains numerous characters with distinct and yet intersecting story arcs, well, then you have the foundation for potentially unlimited storytelling and profit in the future.”

He adds that in that context, Captain America has obvious value as an individual character, but he has far more value as part of a world that can develop around him and allow for new actors to play him as he evolves with the world.

So, as the world grows as an intellectual property and in narrative development, "so does the potential for profit, although we may now be seeing the limits of this dynamic as some M�鶹��Ѱ��films have not been doing as well at the box office over the past five years, although there are likely several factors that contribute to this decline.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about English? Show your support.

Following a blockbuster opening weekend for ‘Captain America: Brave New World,’ �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Benjamin Robertson reflects on the appeal of superhero franchises and why they dominate studio release schedules.

Traditional

White

Top photo: Marvel Studios

Say hello to my little friend, the gangster movie

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 20:16:36 +0000

Say hello to my little friend, the gangster movie Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/26/2024 - 13:16

Bradley Worrell

In honor of what would have been Al Capone’s 125th birthday, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder cinema researcher Tiel Lundy explains the enduring popularity of gangsters in film and the American imagination

What is the most quintessentially American genre of film?

Some might argue for the Western, but there also is a case to be made for the gangster film, says Tiel Lundy, associate teaching professor with the �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts. Lundy should know—she’s been teaching a class on the portrayal of gangsters in film for almost 10 years as part of the Libby Hall Residential Academic Program (RAP), recently rebranded as Creative Minds RAP at Libby.

Movies about gangsters date back to the early days of modern motion pictures, and hundreds of them have been made over the years. In fact, following the success of the first recognized gangster film, Little Caesar, in 1931, starring Edward G. Robinson as a small-town mobster rising through the ranks of organized crime, Hollywood made more than 50 gangster movies the following year.

Tiel Lundy, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder associate teaching professor in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts, teaches a course on the portrayal of gangsters in film.

With this month marking the 125th anniversary of the birth of America’s most famous gangster, Al Capone, Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine asked Lundy about the continued popularity of the genre, how it has evolved over the years and what makes for a good gangster movie. Her responses have been lightly edited for style and condensed for space considerations.

Question: Given how many gangster films have been made, it seems fair to say the genre is popular with Hollywood producers.

Lundy: It is. And I think that, much like the genre of the Western, there’s always a question about gangster movies amongst film scholars: Does it continue to be viable, or has it pretty much reached its terminus? But just when people want to pronounce it dead, it finds its next incarnation.

I have some thoughts as to why it remains a really enduring genre. From its beginnings, the gangster film is an American cinematic invention. Other national cinemas have adopted it and riffed on it, but it is an American genre, and the genre itself really was contemporaneous to the history of gangsters in America, like Al Capone. I think that’s part of what explains its continuing appeal—that it’s rooted in actual history. I also think the gangster, as this mythic figure, is kind of the embodiment of this American identity.

Question: It seems like early gangster films focused on Italian-American or maybe Irish-America mobsters, but later films have broadened to represent greater American diversity.

Lundy: You’re definitely touching on something that is core to the genre. The genre is about American identity. And you can’t extricate race and ethnicity from American identity just because of the sort of unique nature and way this country has come together and continues to evolve. So, early films from the 1930s reflected the immigration patterns of the day. If you look at the late 19th and early 20th century, many of the immigrants were coming from southern Europe, and from Italy in particular.

As our questions about American identity become refined and maybe more focused on second- and third-generation Americans, I think they start to become less concerned with immigration status and ethnicity and really more at the intersection of race and class. I’m thinking now about Boyz n the Hood, for example. That is not the classic rise-and-fall story. That is a story that condemns racism and the failures of democracy and capitalism.

If you look at other films that are slightly more recent, for instance, The Departed, they do look at ethnicity, but I think their focus is really more on capitalism.

Question: Do you have any thoughts on Hollywood’s treatment of perhaps America’s most famous gangster, Al Capone?

Lundy: The obvious two films that we would look to would be the original Scarface, by Howard Hawks, and then the remake from 1983 from director Brian De Palma. And they’re remarkably similar in the way that they depict Capone, or in this case, ‘Tony.’ Tony Camonte is the name of the character in the original movie and Tony Montana is the remake with actor Al Pacino's character.

What I think they share between the two depictions, as well as the actual Al Capone, is that this man who is very aware of his presentation publicly and who really has worked to craft a kind of persona and public image of himself. And that’s my understanding as to part of why Al Capone has lived on in our memory, because he was a very good kind of social promoter—almost like an influencer of his day. The gangster’s identity has everything to do with how the public sees him, so he goes to great lengths to create this kind of mythic, larger-than-life impression in the press and popular culture.

John Singleton's 1991 film Boyz n the Hood condemned racism and the failures of democracy and capitalism. (Photo: Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.)

Question: Movie-wise, it seems like the American gangster has gone through several incarnations over the years.

Lundy: You’re right, there are definitely different iterations. And those iterations are a function of the release date of the film as well as when it’s set. They also are very much impacted by censorship.

If you look at the bulk of what we call the classic cycle of gangster films—those films that come out from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s and early ’50s—the content of those and the depiction of the gangsters was strongly enforced by the Hollywood Production Code.

The writers and directors were always somewhat hamstrung by the demands of the Hayes Office and the Production Code. If you were to try and really abide by the letter of the law, you couldn’t have a gangster that was flouting the law or remained sympathetic … because then you are creating a figure who doesn’t exemplify proper values. But, of course, that also makes for a really boring gangster.

So, the directors were always trying to find a way to kind of thread that needle to create a gangster who was charismatic, and was interesting, and who satisfied audiences’ craving for criminality and ruthlessness—but at the same time, that they could get it past the censors and release their films.

So, up until Bonnie and Clyde from 1967, movies were very much informed by the restrictions of the Production Code. By the time you get to Bonnie and Clyde, you have a different set of parameters, and a little bit more latitude as far as how to depict these gangsters.

Question: Prior to the Production Code, it seems like Hollywood romanticized gangsters a bit, but after the code Hollywood turns its attention to romanticizing law enforcement, correct?

Lundy: During the Great Depression, there was a feeling of disenfranchisement and dissatisfaction with American institutions, and that’s really embedded in gangster films at the time. They (gangsters) are there to challenge those institutions like banks and other institutions that were seen as utter failures that had let people down.

So, in the 1930s the gangster was most certainly romanticized. Those gangsters had qualities that made them more sympathetic to audiences and they had certain vulnerabilities.

Edward G. Robinson starred in Little Caesar, considered the first gangster film. (Photo: Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Archive)

Once we get into the official Production Code era, after 1934 until about the end of the 1940s, that 15-year or so period is when the Production Code was enforced most vigorously, and as a consequence the gangsters became less romanticized because the code was leaning hard on the studios to make gangsters less sympathetic and make law enforcement more sympathetic.

Question: With the enforcement of the Hollywood Production Code, it seems like movie gangsters were predestined to end up dead or in prison by the end of the movie.

Lundy: Exactly. You could have a gangster committing crimes, but ultimately, he had to be punished for them. So, that’s why you have movies like Little Caesar and Scarface and Public Enemy, where the gangster always goes out in a hail of bullets. He’s effectively ‘punished’ by dying. But it’s a very dramatic, spectacular death that satisfied audiences craving for that kind of action and violence and drama.

Question: Besides being focused on gangsters, are there some general unifying themes in this genre of film?

Lundy: What those movies—especially The Godfather and Scarface—have in common is this ongoing central theme about social mobility in America and the kind of tension between the gangster wanting to move up the social ladder and acquire a certain kind of class respectability—but at the same time never wanting to really fulfill that social contract. He wants to get to the top, but he wants to find the shortcut way to get there.

I think that’s common to some extent across American gangster films. They express that tension between wanting to be accepted in the highest levels, maybe even have political capital, but be able to commit crimes with impunity.

I’ve been thinking more about this recently, and I think that explains why this genre continues to remain vital: It’s pretty hard-baked into the American consciousness, that tension between being a renegade and also wanting to do your part so that we can have a functioning society.

Question: With so many gangster films to choose from, how do you narrow down the list of ones you will focus on in class to a manageable level?

Marlon Brando (right) starred as Don Vito Corleone, the titular godfather, in The Godfather. (Photo: Paramount)

Lundy: Basically, that’s what goes into shaping the syllabus. What can we do in about 14 weeks? If this is the only time that a student is going to watch gangster films, what are the ones they absolutely must see? What are the films that express those key turning points in the genre that express the central conflicts and themes?

I always know where the starting point is going to be. It's going to be the first film, Little Caesar. I don’t always know what the last, most recent film is, because I always move chronologically. But there are always going to be some films that that will never go away, like The Godfather. I would be drawn and quartered by my colleagues if I taught a gangster class and left out The Godfather.

Question: Is there anything specific that you think makes for a good gangster film?

Lundy: Beyond the technical effects, I think what the most endearing films have in common is the scope of the story. These are master narratives with sweeping stories that cover decades in a family’s story. I think that, in part, that’s why The Godfather trilogy is such a favorite.

Movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas offer really broad, sweeping narratives. I think why they work so well and are so appealing is that, with that kind of scope, they can really engage in questions about America and American identity that is always going to be core to the gangster genre. It’s always going to be interrogating Americanism and the promises of America.

Maybe my answer is not so much what makes for a ‘good’ gangster film, but what makes for the most enduring and popular gangster films for American audiences.

Top image: scene from Howard Hawks' 1932 film Scarface, starring Paul Muni (center) as Tony Camonte. (Photo: Bettman Archive)

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about cinema studies and moving image arts? Show your support.

Traditional

White

Award-winning filmmaker gives persistence, ‘energy’ to next generation

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 22:51:30 +0000

Award-winning filmmaker gives persistence, ‘energy’ to next generation Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/14/2022 - 16:51

Cody DeBos

John W. Comerford, who discovered the power of film at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, arranges major gift to the Brakhage Center for Media Arts

A gust of Colorado night air washed over John W. Comerford (’90 Psych & Film) like a tidal wave.

The �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus recalls stepping out for a breath of fresh air after viewing the hard-hitting Leni Riefenstahl Nazi propaganda piece Triumph of Will for a film-studies class.

Looking for a sign of where to take his career, that gust of wind led to an epiphany.

Film can change the world.

Under the wing of legendary experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, Comerford would go on to pursue a career in film and push the boundaries of what it means to tell stories on the big screen.

“I learned that the impact of film is a lot bigger than I had ever imagined,” Comerford says, reflecting on his time at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

At the top of the page: As principal at Paradigm Studio, John Comerford has helped produce and write a wide array of films. Above: Comerford hopes the gift he arranged to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder will help inspire young filmmakers to pursue a career in the industry.

He also reflected on a propaganda film from the Spanish Civil War period that Brakhage chose to show in class. The piece depicted scenes of seemingly normal life while the narrator spoke of sickness and suffering among the people. By all appearances, the people were healthy.

“This film demonstrated the power of narrative voice,” Comerford says.

He also pinpoints this as a pivotal moment in his career. He learned early on that film can be powerfully suggestive and that such power could be used to illuminate rather than manipulate.

Now, 30 years later, Comerford works as principal at Paradigm Studio, a production company. Comerford lends his visionary eye for the meaning of film to a wide array of projects and experimental pieces.

One of which, Around the Fire, co-written and produced with longtime friend and fellow �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alum Tommy Rosen (‘90), is slated for its 25th-anniversary re-release this year. The award-winning coming-of-age drama explores topics like adolescence, drug use and the importance of music culture.

Comerford attributes much of his success to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s spirit of discovery.

“I didn’t get a lot of direction from my parents growing up as far as what sort of career to pursue,” he says. “When my acceptance letter from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder arrived, it was actually dated on my birthday, Jan. 18. I thought, well, that’s a sign.”

Comerford’s first on-campus experience is committed to memory.

He reflects, “Coming down 36 and seeing the Flatirons for the first time, I thought, ‘Well this is going to be amazing.’”

Indeed, it was the start of something special for Comerford.

He has helped produce and write a number of critically acclaimed documentary and narrative films via Paradigm Studio, exploring topics from jazz music to gun violence. Themes of late include the environment and media literacy.

Lynch: A History made a splash as an experimental piece. It stitches together more than 700 internet video clips of former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch to form a narrative on race, media and the world of professional sports.

Comerford notes the piece has received praise from athletes at all levels, including from Lynch himself. He says it has also sparked discussions about the media’s impact among players and coaches throughout the sports industry.

Currently, Comerford has several projects in the works. He is producing a narrative feature film based on a true story of the fight to preserve California’s native redwood trees, authored by David Harris.

He’s also working with fellow Boulderite, filmmaker and musician Charles Hambleton on a film titled Kensu Maru. It highlights the search for a Japanese hospital ship laden with gold scuttled in the Philippines during WWII.

None of our productions happen without persistence. ... That persistence, and most importantly the persistence inspired by collaboration, is really essential.”

The story is about more than treasure, though. It is a tale of justice and defeating personal demons.

In recent years, Comerford has been thinking about how to give back. “The first thing that popped into my head was Stan,” he says.

“I did some research, and I thought of the Brakhage Center and the University of Colorado. I just thought, ‘Wow, that is the perfect place to return to the world, if you will, the energy and spirit of that gift given to me by Stan.’”

Comerford helped arrange a gift of $30,000 to the Brakhage Center for Media Arts at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. To be rolled out over three years, the gift is one of the largest ever received by the Brakhage Center.

He hopes the gift will help inspire young filmmakers to pursue a career in the industry. Comerford also hopes that students studying at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder will be able to gain a higher understanding of media literacy and its impact on consciousness.

Hanna Rose Shell, assicuarte professor and faculty director of the Brakhage Center for Media Arts, says the gift will do just that: “We at the Brakhage Center are thrilled to have the support and deep engagement from John Comerford, which will help enable students to enrich their horizons in the multiple realms of experimental film and beyond.”

When asked to share a bit of wisdom with those interested in pursuing a film career, Comerford offered two words:

“Collaboration and persistence.”

“None of our productions happen without persistence,” he adds. “Particularly as a producer, where you have the longest relationship with the motion picture of anyone involved. That persistence, and most importantly the persistence inspired by collaboration, is really essential.”

John W. Comerford, who discovered the power of film at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, arranges major gift to its Brakhage Center for Media Arts.

Off

Traditional

White

Film Studies

Some still like it hot

Related Articles

All the world’s a stage for William Shakespeare

Act One: Setting the scene

Act Two: Teaching Shakespeare

Act Three: Favorite plays

Act Four: Hamnet as a novel and a stage play

Act Five: Hamnet as a film

Related Articles

Why Skinner Myers isn’t chasing Hollywood glory

Related Articles

It was a very good year (for movies)

Related Articles

Lights! Camera! Action! Cherry Yogurt!

Related Articles

We still need a bigger boat

Are sharks really as scary as their reputation?

Related Articles

Alum thinks about crime the write way

Related Articles

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s another superhero film!

Related Articles

Say hello to my little friend, the gangster movie

Related Articles

Award-winning filmmaker gives persistence, ‘energy’ to next generation

Off