I Want To Live!: Three Minutes of Your Time to Watch & Consider One of the Best Anti-Death Penalty Films Ever Made
a vHopeful Conversation with my grandfather, Walter Wanger who died before I was born, but whose legacy lives on in ways I'm still exploring
Thank you to director Rob Hampton and producer Rocky Lang. (Thanks as always to Ted Hope for being there for me and watching as I sat frozen as if in an electric chair myself! Ha!) Rob and Rocky got this TCM interstitial out in time for TCM’s Summer Under the Stars’ August 5th, Joan Bennett (my grandmother) day which I wrote about here, and August 13th, Susan Hayward day.
Susan Hayward
Thursday, August 13
6:00 AM
Tulsa (1948)
8:00 AM
The Lusty Men (1952)
10:00 AM
Smash Up: The Story of a Woman (1947)
12:00 PM
They Won’t Believe Me (1947)
2:00 PM
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)
4:00 PM
Top Secret Affair (1957)
6:00 PM
Back Street (1961)
8:00 PM
Valley of the Dolls (1967)
10:15 PM
I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955)
12:30 AM
I Want to Live! (1958)
2:45 AM
I Thank a Fool (1962)
4:30 AM
Deadline at Dawn (1946)
Joan Bennett
Wednesday, August 5
Eddie’s Pick
6:00 AM
Disraeli (1929)
7:30 AM
Eleven Men and a Girl (1930)
9:00 AM
Moby Dick (1930)
10:30 AM
The Housekeeper’s Daughter (1939)
12:00 PM
Hollow Triumph (1948)
1:30 PM
The Woman on the Beach (1947)
2:45 PM
I Met My Love Again (1938)
4:15 PM
The Woman in the Window (1944)
6:00 PM
Scarlet Street (1945)
8:00 PM
Man Hunt (1941)
10:00 PM
Father of the Bride (1950)
12:00 AM
Suspiria (1977)
2:00 AM
House of Dark Shadows (1970)
4:00 AM
Father’s Little Dividend (1951)
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I shared more about the making of this video in my vHopeful conversation with legendary film critic and historian David Thompson about film culture, America and his brilliant new book, A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies. We trace his earliest experiences of cinema—from the terror and beauty of Laurence Olivier’s Henry V to watching Brief Encounter through his mother’s emotional response—and consider why films can both enchant and unsettle us. Our conversation moves through Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Hollywood’s treatment of women, film noir, documentary’s complicated relationship to truth, the creative force of émigré filmmakers, and the enduring work of visionary women directors. David offers a bracing critique of cinematic authoritarianism, the Oscars, and the increasingly difficult path for original independent films, while making a powerful case for curiosity, doubt, film history, and making ambitious work with less.
The conversation felt as if he and I were old friends and was one of the most enjoyable, meaningful film discussions of my life. It’s a conversation I think we may be continuing soon…