Hollywood | ZETEO

Cocteau, Americans, Dignity, Slinkys

August 6, 2015 by William Eaton

In 1949, the French writer, artist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau wrote a few lines about French politics at that time, lines that might help Americans today view their own political battles with more optimism than usual. In my translation: I know well that in 1949 politics are a big deal and the clashes of different factions seem more important than lovers’ quarrels. But, just between us, don’t these political battles feature the same injustice and bad faith as lovers’ quarrels? […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: art, France, Hollywood, Jean Cocteau, Le Journal des Goncourt, Museum of Modern Art, Picasso, technology, toys, United States of America

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An American Romance?

August 29, 2014 by William Eaton

[print_link] [email_link] “I hate to see somebody get screwed,” Maggio said. “Then you might as well get use to it,” the Chief said. “You probly be seein it often before you die.” These lines summarize the dilemma dramatized in James Jones’s 1951 bestseller, From Here to Eternity; do we get used to injustice, accommodate to it, accept it, or do we do something about it? Readers may be surprised at this interpretation, for the cultural imprint left by the […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: fiction, Hollywood, homosexuality, literature, social justice

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Figuring it out

August 10, 2014 by William Eaton

From one of the songs of The Pajama Game, which won the Tony Award for the best musical of 1955: I figured it out I figured it out With a pencil and a pad I figured it out! Seven and a half cents doesn’t buy a hell of a lot, Seven and a half cents doesn’t mean a thing! But give it to me every hour, Forty hours every week, And that’s enough for me to be living like […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Broadway theater, capitalism, consumerism, Hollywood, unions

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Making a Getaway to the Movies

January 10, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

This week I started reading a book on the Jewish Mafia passed on by my friend Rick Mester (who read it for research while writing his novel). Tough Jews is one of those non-fiction books that reads like fiction, describing characters in detail and constantly setting the scene for the reader. Of course I could not help but picture it as a movie and had to laugh when I read the scenario below: The troop later found out what had happened. After […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: film, Hollywood, Jewish studies, Mafia, movies, novels