TCM SPECIAL TO FEATURE HIRSCH, KOEPP, AND MORE
Turner Classic Movies will air a new series of one-hour specials this fall produced by Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks Television. The series is called A Night At The Movies, and the first special, The Suspenseful World Of Thrillers, was written, produced, and directed by Laurent Bouzereau, author of The De Palma Cut. The special will air on Friday, October 2 2009, at 8pm eastern time. Bouzereau has produced and directed numerous behind-the-scenes features over the years for laserdisc and DVD releases of films by Brian De Palma and Spielberg, among others. His TCM special on thrillers will feature new interviews with frequent De Palma editor Paul Hirsch, as well as David Koepp, who wrote the screenplays for De Palma's Carlito's Way, Mission: Impossible, and Snake Eyes. Other interviews for the program include Kenneth Branagh, Scott Frank, Bryan Singer, Martin Landau, Mel Brooks, and Diablo Cody. A TCM press release states that the special "will explore such topics as the origin of thrillers and development of stylistic conventions; the use of a wrongly accused everyman as a protagonist; the range of female roles, from damsel in distress to femme fatale; the creation of classic villains and the actors who relished playing them; the impact of World War II on the genre; the emergence of more violent thrillers in the 1960s; the rise of the paranoid thriller in the 1970s; and how the genre continues in popularity by latching onto the current zeitgeist." Also see the press release for a list of the films the channel will feature every Friday in October under the following headings: "Thrillers and Hitchcock," "Political Thrillers," "Crime Thrillers," "Gothic Thrillers," and "Psychological Thrillers."