What are you reading?
Trollope’s Framley Parsonage. At 3:30 last night, I was reading a passage and I had a moment of being intensely grateful to Trollope. That sounds very pretentious.
Your new book also describes your long love affair with the movies.
I snuck off to the movies two or three times a week, for two or three years, from school, instead of going to gym, when I was in my early teens. My father never found out. This was the beginning of Hollywood’s golden age, and I saw some great stuff: King Kong, Scarface, the Marx Brothers, The Public Enemy. I memorized all the character actors.
The movies taught me a great deal about storytelling and drama. I don’t know what exactly, but it was such a powerful medium. I’m a big believer in popular culture. I know
people who say they don’t have a television. You better belong to the times that you’re in.
Email
Print
The Transformation of TV Into an Art Form
The Draw of Dream Worlds in Film
Gosselin, Prince of the Professional Nobodies
A Decade of Defining Moments in Pop-Culture
The Invention of New York's Local Cuisine 
Thirty-Five Short-Lived Looks of the Decade
Two Views of a Swath of the Upper West Side
An Older Generation Moves Into Williamsburg
Ten Years That Changed Everything
A Generation of Overparenting
The Sports Rivalry of the Decade
What Is the Point of the United States Senate? 
