Castaways of the Image Planet

Movies, Show Business, Public Spectacle

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by Geoffrey O'Brien

Counterpoint

Due/Published June 2002, 256 pages, paper

ISBN 1582431906

Castaways of the Image Planet collects sixteen years' worth of Geoffrey O'Brien's essays on film and popular culture, most originally published in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Film Comment, Filmmaker, and the New York Times. The topics range from the invention of cinema to contemporary F-X aesthetics; from Shakespeare films to "Seinfeld"; from '30's screwball comedies to Hong Kong martial-arts movies; from the roots of sexploitation pictures to the televising of Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony. There is an emphasis on the unpredictable interactions between film as a medium apt for expressing the most private dreams and film as the mass literature of the modern world, subject to all the pressures of financing and marketing. Many of the pieces are profiles of individual directors or actors--Orson Welles, Michael Powell, Ed Wood, Marlon Brando, Alfred Hitchcock, Dana Andrews, The Marx Brothers, Bing Crosby--whose careers are probed to look for the point where private obsession meets public myth-making.

Review

The interaction between film and life has become a familiar motif in film criticism and the movies themselves. Geoffrey O’Brien’s criticism is no exception as he brings his personal experiences to these superb discussions of films. Thus, in one essay, O’Brien considers how his adolescent longings informed his viewing of John Ford films while other pieces consider how certain films change as he grows older. What distinguishes O’Brien’s work is the balanced mix of the personal with the critical as well as his investigations into a wide range of subjects.

Castaways of the Image Planet collects sixteen years’ worth of O’Brien’s work from the New York Review of Books, The Village Voice, Film Comment and other publications. Inside are portraits of Orson Welles, Ed Wood, Michael Powell, Preston Sturges, and other directors along with discussions of Mad magazine, Japanese comics, and "Seinfeld." O’Brien’s insights regarding directors’ films and their personalities offer surprising new ways to look at and appreciate their work. He also examines films in their social contexts and the ways in which audiences shape and are shaped by movies. There is much insight and pleasure to be found in these pages, offering a real treat for fans of O’Brien’s writing and the movies.