Podcast appearances and mentions of robert polito

On the fortieth episode of All the Film Things, I talked with professor/ author James Miller! James Miller is a liberal studies professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City. He wrote music reviews for Rolling Stone in the 70s and spent much of the 80s reviewing books and writing pop music criticism for Newsweek. Among Jim's many accomplishments, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and his work continues to be published in magazines, peer- reviewed academic journals, and newspapers. Jim has written several books over the course of his decades- spanning career focused on various subject matters from philosophy (Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche) to politics (Can Democracy Work? A Short History of a Radical Idea, from Ancient Athens to Our World) to music. His book Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock & Roll won the ASCAP- Deems Taylor Award for the best music book written of 1999.Jim's latest book, the first he's written focused on film, is titled The Passion of Pedro Almodóvar: A Self- Portrait in Seven Films and will be published through Columbia University Press on April 29. Through this book, Jim examines the work, and by extension self, of Almodóvar through his most personal films. This book will be available for purchase wherever books are sold so preorder your copy now on Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc.! You'll definitely want to click this link to preorder the book on Barnes & Noble!: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-passion-of-pedro-almodovar-james-miller/1146504374;jsessionid=473B373D1171A12E15F5B951CC989AA7.prodny_store01-atgap07 If you're in the New York area, Jim will be sitting down with Robert Polito for an hour- long conversation on pub day about his book at the New School at 6 pm. Learn more about this event by clicking this link!: https://event.newschool.edu/booklunchjimmillerThis is Jim's first appearance on ATFT! I wouldn't have had the opportunity to interview him without two- time ATFT guest, film historian Max Alvarez presenting me with this opportiunity. I'm very grateful to him and Sarah C. Noell of Columbia University Press for helping bring this interview into fruition. Before reading Jim's book, I had seen three Almodóvar films and the latter two, Parallel Mothers (2021) and All About My Mother (1999), blew me away. For a few years now, I had been wanting to go through Almodóvar's work but his films are not so easy to come by. Reading Jim's brilliant, analytical book was the perfect opportunity to finally dive in, leaving me completely changed. Why aren't people talking about Almodóvar?! Quentin Tarantino was right when he said Almodóvar is largely underrated in the US. This episode was recorded on April 3, 2025. In this episode, Jim shares incredible stories from his career from gettign a private concert from Paul McCartney to inspiring a Jimi Hendrix song. We talk about some of cinema's greatest filmmakers, such as Ingmar Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock, before discussing the work of Pedro Almodóvar for much of the episode. Filmmakers and film aficionados will especially enjoy this episode. Jim also talks about the impact of Michelangelo Antoninoni's Blow-up (1966) , Almodóvar's dynamic with muse Penélope Cruz, and inspiring Tom Hayden to write his memoir. All this and much more on the latest episode of All the Film Things!P.S.) If you're listening on Spotify, share your thoughts on Pedro Almodóvar in the comments! Background music created and used with permission by the Copyright Free Music - Background Music for Videos channel on YouTube.

Bhi Bhiman. Waimea River Surfing. Jack Quinn, Mr Mysterious and Robert Polito poems.

This week on The Spectator Film Podcast… Detour (1945) 11.22.19 Featuring: Austin, Maxx Commentary track begins at 16:35 — Notes — We watched the Criterion Collection release of Detour for our show this week. It’s a wonderful version of the film, and it’s got lots of fun bonus supplemental features as usual. As of the posting of this episode (11.26.19), Detour is also available on The Criterion Channel. “Some Detours to Detour” by Robert Polito from The Current “Ulmer, Edgar G.” by Erik Ulman from Senses of Cinema Detour by Noah Isenberg — The BFI Film Classics book on Detour is as insightful and useful as you’d expect. Isenberg manages to pack in a lot of information and lead introduce lots of additional criticism on the film. “Perennial Detour: The Cinema of Edgar G. Ulmer and the Experience of Exile” by Noah Isenberg from Cinema Journal — Here’s the link a PDF file of this essay. Isenberg discusses Ulmer’s entire career and his life as an Austrian-born émigré in the US, highlighting the ways in which Ulmer’s work can be seen as exploring concepts of exile. It’s a wonderful read. Britton on Film: The Complete Film Criticism of Andrew Britton by Andrew Britton, Ed. Barry Keith Grant — Here’s the link to a published collection of Andrew Britton’s film criticism. This was the first time we’ve relied on Britton’s writing in our preparation for the show, and the precision of his insights are genuinely remarkable. Britton avoids over-reliance on structuralist language, and the clarity of his arguments make his writing very enjoyable. We’ll include some of the relevant passages from his essay ‘Detour’ below: “The whole meaning of Detour depends on the fact that Al is incapable of providing the impartial account of the action which convention leads us to expect in first-person narratives… O’Hara and Marlowe [other male noir narrators] are to be thought of simply as speaking the truth, both about themselves and about the narrative world in general. They may be mistaken, but they never equivocate, and their impersonality is never questioned for a moment. Al’s commentary, however, though it is not hypocritical – he plainly believes every word of it – is profoundly self-deceived and systematically unreliable… In fact, Al’s memory of the past is in itself a means of blotting it out, and his commentary, far from serving as the clue which leads us infallibly to the meaning of the narrative action, is like a palimpsest beneath which we may glimpse the traces of the history he has felt comepelled to rewrite” (195). “[Al] has simply concluded this is the way life must be, and the willed (if unconscious) defeatism implicit in his attitude to his blighted career is the first sign of his habitual tendency to attribute his own choices, and their disastrous consequences, to forces external to himself… Ulmer uses these brief, and extraordinarily elliptical, expository sequences to define his hero as a man who lacks all sense of aim and purpose, who is essentially indifferent to everything but what he takes, at a given moment, to be his own interests, and who, above all, instinctively rationalizes his convenience on all occasions, either by absolving himself of responsibility for his actions completely or by providing himself with a spurious but flattering account of his motives” (195-96). “[Vera] clearly sets out to ‘rook’ Al in exactly the way he rooked Haskell, who was in turn preparing to rook his own father, but her spontaneous rapaciousness is actually quite different in kind from that of her male antagonists. The most obvious indication of this difference is the hectoring aggressiveness of her manner. Vera is not a trickster like Al and Haskell, and she does not try to deceive, disarm, or win the confidence of her chosen victim. On the contrary, she goes straight for the jugular in order to dispel any illusion that her womanhood makes her susceptible either to physical violence or to seduction. It is not enough for her to present herself as Al’s (or any man’s) equal… Vera needs to establish that the inequality of the sexes has been reversed, not eliminated, and her every word and action is designed to convince Al that she can do exactly what she likes with him… and to rub his nose in the humiliating fact of his complete subordination to her… Ulmer unmistakably invites us to take pleasure in the comeuppance of this obtuse pusillanimous egotist at the hands of a woman of such formidable wit, energy, and intelligence” (200). “Ulmer embodies the contradictory concept of the savage, or nonsocial, society in his use of the metaphor of the road. This metaphor recurs frequently in American narratives, and it is almost invariably used to celebrate individual resistance to the constraints of an intolerably oppressive, conservative, and regimented culture. Actually existing American society is seen as an insuperable impediment to the full self-realization of the individual, and the road becomes the last sanctuary of the true American spirit, which can survive only by taking flight from the social world constructed in its name. This use of the road metaphor turns the mythic American ideals on their head. It employs exactly the same terms of reference – heroic individualism and democratic society – but takes the irreversible debasement of the latter for granted and goes on to affirm the former through characters whose refusal to participate in social life comes to signify a rebellious vindication of America in spite of itself. By contrast, Ulmer preserves the connection between individualism and American social institutions established by the original myth, and he uses the metaphor of the road to argue that this connection manifests itself in practice, not as a democracy of heroes but as an exceptionally inhumane and brutal capitalism. Ulmer’s road is not a refuge for exiles from a culture in which America’s ideals have been degraded; it is a place where the real logic of advanced capitalist civil society is acted out by characters who have completely internalized its values, and whose interaction exemplifies the grotesque deformation of human relationships by the principles of the market. Al, Vera, and Haskell are isolated vagabonds whose lives are dedicated to the pursuit of private goals which they set themselves ad hoc, in the light of their own immediate interests, and who collide with one another in a moral vacuum where human contacts are purely contingent, practical social ties have ceased to exist, and other people appear as mere values to be exploited at will” (204). “All Lost in Wonder: Edgar G. Ulmer” by Tag Gallagher from Screening the Past More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts by James Naremore — One of my favorite books discussing the noir genre. Naremore only spends a few pages discussing Detour specifically, but the book is an wonderful examination of the genre at large. “Film Theory’s Detour” by Tania Modleski from Screen — We didn’t bring it up much during our conversation, but Modleski’s writing brings a psychoanalytic angle to our discussion of the femme fatale archetype. Recommended reading for anyone who takes interest in psychoanalytic criticism.

The movie The Big Clock was released in April of 1948, adapted from a book by the radical, Depression-era poet Kenneth Fearing. As WNYC’s Sara Fishko tells us, Fearing’s work zeroed in on advertising and media long before it was the thing to do. In honor of poetry month: this edition of Fishko Files. Jeanine Basinger is the Chair of Film Studies at Wesleyan University and the author of numerous books and articles on film. Geoffrey O'Brien is the author of Hardboiled America: Lurid Paperbacks and the Masters of Noir, among many others. Robert Polito is a professor of writing at the New School and edited the Library of America's Kenneth Fearing: Selected Poems. Fearing's book "The Big Clock" (1946) and the film The Big Clock (1948) are available on Amazon. Cracked Record Blues by Kenneth Fearing Read by David Garland The Doctor Will See You Now by Kenneth Fearing Read by David Garland Fishko Files with Sara Fishko Assistant Producer: Olivia BrileyMix Engineer: Wayne ShulmisterEditor: Karen Frillmann

LARB Podcast #39: Robert Polito, Tom Healy, Adam Fitzgerald by LA Review of Books

Join distinguished scholars Robert Polito and Patricia Patterson at D.G. Wills Books as they discuss “Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber”, a collection of Farber’s film criticism that spans his early weekly reviews for “The New Republic” and “The Nation” to his later essays (some written in collaboration with his wife, Patricia Patterson). Farber’s unusual and pointed prose was credited by many with reinventing film criticism. Later, he devoted himself to his painting and taught film and art at UC San Diego from 1970 to 1987. [Humanities] [Show ID: 17411]

Join distinguished scholars Robert Polito and Patricia Patterson at D.G. Wills Books as they discuss “Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber”, a collection of Farber’s film criticism that spans his early weekly reviews for “The New Republic” and “The Nation” to his later essays (some written in collaboration with his wife, Patricia Patterson). Farber’s unusual and pointed prose was credited by many with reinventing film criticism. Later, he devoted himself to his painting and taught film and art at UC San Diego from 1970 to 1987. [Humanities] [Show ID: 17411]

Philadelphia noir is the focus of two panels at Noircon 2008. The first panel presents the historical moment, cultural milieu and writings of the 19th century Philly writer George Lippard. Ed Petit and Robert Polito make a compelling case to consider Lippard an important proto-noir author, an author whose writings look back towards 1798's gothic novel WIELAND and forward towards 20th century hardboiled. The second panel addresses the issue of Philly noir through a discussion among noir and crime writers currently living and working in Philadelphia. Clute and Edwards talk more with Philly authors William Lashner and Jon McGoran (D.H. Dublin) about what is Philadelphia noir and how does Philadelphia figure as one of the great American noir cities. For more information about  Noircon, visit the official conference website at www.noircon.com. For more information about the hard-boiled podcasts of Clute and Edwards, visit www.noircast.net