Announcing... Film Week

With the glitzy parade of the Oscars behind us, it seems a good moment to sit back and… well, watch a film. But also to think about what it means to do that. What’s behind it all, and why should we care? Is a life in Hollywood bound to end in tears? (Or should I say, in blood?) What should we do if our childhood heroes become record-breaking porn stars? Why are we fools for the same old clichés? And do we just go to the movies to see our own relationships reflected and idealised?

In a special-feature week on granta.com, we will be examining that big-screen phenomenon, with pieces from our film issue of 2004 as well as new writing.

What to look out for...

On Monday, Colson Whitehead goes through the motions of a cinema visit with a loved-one. ‘This is the part with the montage sequence. Their love grows, pruned by expert editors.’

Gaby Wood re-visits the site of a controversial death on Tuesday: that of actress Lana Turner’s lover, Johnny Stompanato, stabbed by Turner’s fourteen-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane. The house is a Hollywood Mecca for ‘Lanatics’, hardly changed since that much-debated occasion – but it guards its secrets carefully.

On Thursday, a new and exclusive article will look at writing for film. Jeremy Sheldon, author of novel The Smiling Affair and short-story collection The Comfort Zone, will examine the often-overlooked contribution that writers make to the cinema. This isn’t the same old rant about insufficient credit for writers – we’re talking about an alternative literary art.

The week will end as Granta’s film issue did – with a whimsical reflection by film auteur Atom Egoyan on Friday. Egoyan first saw Philip Toubus – a.k.a. Dr Gonad – in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar. The industrious Doctor went on to produce forty instalments of Swedish Erotica in a single year – starring in many of them himself – and took his last directorial credit for Weapons of Masturbation.

This is the first of several themed weeks the site will be running this year, combining the riches of our archive with – what else – the freshest new writing. See you there...

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