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For film week, home movies and drive-ins (and David Foster Wallace on David Lynch)

For film week, home movies and drive-ins (and David Foster Wallace on David Lynch)

It was a lot of fun focusing on movies this week on Storyboard. Each day I tweeted out some of the best-written lines in filmdom — including the best one-word…
September 22, 2017
5(ish) Questions: Photographer Lindsay Rickert and "Drive-In America"

5(ish) Questions: Photographer Lindsay Rickert and “Drive-In America”

The big screens on suburban, prairie and desert roadsides once beaconed families and lovers. Now they’re mostly tattered and forlorn, a reminder of America’s midcentury love affair with the open…
September 21, 2017

“I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy buttinskis running around without a nickel in their pockets and for what? So a million hired girls and motormen’s wives’ll know what’s going on.”

Why is it great? Yes, it’s three sentences. But it’s one brilliant summation of journalists, from the best-written movie about journalists of all time. God, the banter in the screenplay!…
September 20, 2017
Documentary film as "home movie": Going beyond a public face to reveal a private one

Documentary film as “home movie”: Going beyond a public face to reveal a private one

Almost all of us have home movies of our families somewhere, from the flickering black and white of 8-millimeter film to the Instagramable perfection of an iPhone video. We like…
September 19, 2017
The big tent that is storytelling: embracing the richness (and beauty) of its diversity

The big tent that is storytelling: embracing the richness (and beauty) of its diversity

It shouldn’t be surprising that storytelling was the focus this week on Storyboard: That’s what we do. But I love the variety of the storytelling on offer. A narrative about…
September 15, 2017
5(ish) Questions: Abbie Gascho Landis and the surprising climate book "Immersion"

5(ish) Questions: Abbie Gascho Landis and the surprising climate book “Immersion”

The photograph on the cover of  Abbie Gascho Landis’ “Immersion” is the first hint that the book is going to be surprising. The image is at once coy and inviting,…
September 14, 2017

“If the history of the earth’s tides should one day be written by some observer of the universe, it would no doubt be said that they reached their greatest grandeur and power in the younger days of Earth, and that they slowly grew feebler and less imposing until one day they ceased to be.”

Why is it great? Few authors have written as magnificently about nature as Rachel Carson, and this sentence is a good example.  Its strength is not in form but content. …
September 13, 2017
Notable Narrative: The Marshall Project's Maurice Chammah and “The Accusation”

Notable Narrative: The Marshall Project’s Maurice Chammah and “The Accusation”

In the opening of Maurice Chammah’s story “The Accusation,” jointly published by Esquire and The Marshall Project, we meet Katie Spencer Tetz, a 25-year-old woman who learns that her father…
September 12, 2017
Sometimes journalism and literature are controversial; sometimes that's a good thing

Sometimes journalism and literature are controversial; sometimes that’s a good thing

I decided to try another “theme” week on Storyboard, after having such fun with the Southern focus last week. For this one, we took a look at controversial stories, books, writers…
September 8, 2017
An alt-weekly editor steps up to the plate to back a freelancer's controversial story

An alt-weekly editor steps up to the plate to back a freelancer’s controversial story

Like most journalists today, Britni de la Cretaz is accustomed to being on the receiving end of comments from critical readers and opinionated trolls. As a freelance writer who frequently…
September 7, 2017