Tag archives: director
My congratulations to Montecito film director Frederick Toye, 57, who has just received two of the movie industry’s highest awards at the 77th annual Directors Guild of America Awards at the Beverly Hilton. Frederick, whose mother is screenwriter (and MJ contributor) Sigrid Toye, received the Outstanding Directorial Achievements in a Dramatic Series Award and an […]
Walking in the grass, feeling the morning dew, hearing the serenity of the place – we might think of a beautiful park surrounded by nature, our senses alive with feeling. But instead here we are back in 1994 – when the Devereux Slough was still a golf course. What so intrigued a businessman that he […]
Santa Barbara playwright, director, and producer Rod Lathim has been hitting the Big Apple with his latest art exhibition Let There Be Light at the Kate Oh Gallery, just a tiara’s toss from the Ralph Lauren flagship store at the historic Rhinelander Mansion. The three-week debut show opened last month and Rod tells me they’ve […]
One of the gems presented in the short film program of the 2022 Santa Barbara International Film Festival was a 13-minute beautifully shot piece titled Kissy and the Shark helmed by writer/director Lola Blanche. In its brief running time, the film covers a myriad of topics that include nuanced views of interpersonal relationships, humanity’s deep […]
I reconnected with showbiz vets James Widdoes and Tim Matheson on the passing of Ivan Reitman, the prolific director and producer and founder of the wildly successful production company The Montecito Picture Company. All four of us (including Reitman) are connected through the National Lampoon, a magazine where I was once editor but which has […]
On a personal note, I remember Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, who has died at the age of 75 at his Montecito home, formerly part of the legendary 70-acre El Mirador estate near Westmont College. Reitman first made his mark producing the irreverent college fraternity film National Lampoon’s Animal House with John Belushi in 1978. A […]
Creativity comes in many forms, yet is unique to each individual pursuing it. However our own unique creativity cannot be expressed until we explore it. The illustrious career of Darryl Hickman represents a lifelong pursuit of creativity and discovering the unknown. Darryl has been called the “the ultimate Hollywood hyphenate” with an over eighty-year career […]
As you are reading this, it’s the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birthday (January 8) and I’ve been talking to Steve Binder, an American producer and director born in Los Angeles. Steve, who just celebrated his 88th birthday last month, is currently working as a creative consultant on Baz Luhrmann’s film Elvis, where Dacre Montgomery is […]
The Diary of a Teenage Girl is the 2015 comedy-drama that earned writer-director Marielle Heller an Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature. The film received a lofty score of 87 from review aggregate Metacritic for its sharp, funny, and provocative account of one girl’s sexual and artistic awakening in 1970s San Francisco, largely told […]
Epically known as the one director who can harvest the funniest talent for his movies, Ivan Reitman continues his film making legend during lockdown with eight screenplays in the works, a sequel to Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting, and the next installment of the Ghostbuster series, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, to be released in theaters in June […]
Actor-director-playwright Ed Giron has been a very busy thespian despite the limitations of the pandemic. Although in-person appearances have been curtailed due to COVID, of course, the well-known Santa Barbara actor has found, or mostly fashioned, frequent opportunities to perform and/or direct theater events online. Giron’s lockdown list began with recording himself reading “Bedtime Stories” […]
If things were different, if the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 hadn’t turned into a global pandemic shutting down almost everything across the world, this would have been a weekend of wonder for Otto Layman. The theater director had planned a big blowout of a show to serve as his crowning achievement in a career that […]
On a personal note, I remember Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli, who has died in Rome aged 96. I met the Oscar nominee a number of times with New York socialite Mary Mead Carter, a good friend of the helmsman of the 1968 film Romeo and Juliet, and the 1999 gem Tea with Mussolini, starring […]
Santa Barbara director Andrew Davis, better known for his Hollywood action films, including The Fugitive, has returned to the world of documentaries with an intimate portrait of two renowned local photographers, Tony Vaccaro and an old friend Santi Visalli. In Mentors – Tony & Santi, Davis focuses on the warm supportive relationship between the twosome […]
Renowned New York theater producer Winthrop Ames (1870-1937) significantly influenced the development of Santa Barbara’s community arts programs, the opening of the new Lobero Theatre, and, by extension, Old Spanish Days Fiesta. Ames was born into a prominent family in Easton, Massachusetts, whose wealth derived initially from the manufacture of shovels and expanded exponentially through […]
