Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Thomas Anderson have made a new movie called There Will Be Blood, based on the Upton Sinclair novel, “Oil.” After seeing a special edition of Moby Dick, made by Arion Press, they called the San Francisco publisher of fine art ...

Allan Arkush is an executive producer and director of the TV series, “Heroes”, which begins a new season on September 24th. The series is such a hit that it has engendered spin-offs. Arkush, who was trained by Roger Corman, doing promotional films, has come a long way ...

Ken Burns was at the Telluride Film Festival last weekend, where I spoke with him on the street, before he came to San Francisco for a special screening of his new series, The War, this weekend at the Letterman Digital Arts Center. “The War” airs on ...

Eddie Muller, the Czar of Noir, talks about all his books beginning with Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of ‘Adults Only’ Cinema and Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir all the way up to the movie he just finished shooting based on his new short story, ...

This conversation about casting for movies is with Davia Nelson, who has worked with Francis Coppola, Phil Kaufman, Barbet Shroeder and she has become a Peabody Award-winning radio creator of Hidden Kitchens on NPR. One of those shows is now the basis of a Broadway ...

Lynn Hershman Leeson has twenty-six venues to show her film, Strange Culture all over the world. She’s also nearly finished editing a documentary she’s been working on for forty years, called Women + Art = Revolution. There are trailers for both films after a talk about her ...

Robert Ryan became a movie star working for Paramount Pictures and then RKO in the 1940s while Dana Andrews worked simultaneously for Samuel Goldwyn and Twentieth Century Fox. Their daughters, Lisa Ryan and Susan Andrews, talk about growing up with their famous fathers in ...

Diane Johnson is best known for her novels set in Paris “Le Divorce”, “Le Mariage” and “L’Affaire”. She is in San Francisco for the summer and putting the final touches on her latest novel to be called “Complicity” or “The Virginity Test”. It’s a spy novel ...

Niles is a town in the Bay Area that is dedicated to its Silent Film History. Charlie Chaplin had a formative year there where he created his character, The Tramp. And when you think about his impoverished background growing up in London, it’s amazing to imagine him ...

Tina Brown, turnaround editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, has written her first book, The Diana Chronicles. A bestseller about Lady Diana Spencer, the Princess of Wales, the book is very well-researched and thought out and ultimately as dull as the royal family.

Mark Farley and Clair Farley were born identical male twins. Six months ago, Clair changed her gender. Their story is told in a lovely, heartfelt documentary film, Red Without Blue. The film showed at Frameline 31, the LGBT Film Festival, and will be showing on the Sundance ...

Michael Ondaatje is best known for his novel, The English Patient. He has a new book out called Divisadero. I spoke with him on the San Francisco street that gives the book its name, where he told me why it was the best title for a ...

Rob Reger is enjoying the thirteenth anniversary of his character “Emily the Strange.” Reger went to the graduate program at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he says he learned to push a project beyond its apparent limits. He has so far brought Emily from t-shirt phenomenon to a major ...

Faith Wheeler and Sara Barker are two highly original and successful food and wine branders. In an effort to make something of their own, they have written their first screenplay, which they submitted to a contest at the San Francisco Digital School of Filmmaking. The winner gets their screenplay made ...

Michael Taylor is the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle’s car section. He is also the son of screenwriter Samuel Taylor, who wrote plays and movies (including Sabrina and Vertigo, which was made in San Francisco fifty years ago).

Steven Bach was the head of worldwide production at United Artists when the movie Heaven’s Gate sank the company. Since then he’s written four books. The new one, Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl, has just come out. She was the evil genius director of movies for ...

Peter Morgan is perhaps the most celebrated screenwriter in the world right now, and he deserves to be. He’s written five plays — four screenplays and one stage play — that establish his oeuvre. He’s a great writer at the top of his game and we can only hope for ...

Lisa Loven is an ingenue from Norway. Right now in her country she is the star of a national advertising campaign for a food product. She moved to Los Angeles four months ago to become a movie actress. People I know think she’s got a chance.

The San Francisco International Film Society has a new director, Graham Leggat. He (and about 50 other people, he tells me) put on a spectacular opening night for the 50th Anniversary. It’s the oldest film festival in America and it’s had its ups and downs, but things are looking up ...

This is an interview with San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle and his wife, the playwright Amy Freed. She has written six plays that have been produced, which in itself is astounding, but one of them has also been a Pulitzer finalist. She also teaches at Stanford University.

Shi-Zheng Chen is a renowned singer, choreographer and director of operas all over the world. I spoke with him at the San Francisco Asian Fim Festival, where his directorial debut feature film, “Dark Matter” played closing night.

Lynn Hershman Leeson was a very early digital filmmaker and creator of virtual realities. She has made three films for the American theatrical market but had terrible trouble with distribution. I spoke with her about her new documentary, “Strange Culture.” Ten seconds after her interview there is another one with ...

Last weekend, the “Witness to War: Documentary Perspectives World War II to Iraq” was programmed by the inestimable and reliable Tom Luddy. He has had a long and varied career in the business that has, in part, resulted in him producing eleven movies. He also started the

This year, like movie fans around the world, Lucy Gray watched the Academy Awards with friends. Her group of friends that night included nine-time Oscar nominee (and three-time winner) Walter Murch. Murch is a film editor whose professional credits include work on 22 films, including “The Godfather,” “The Conversation,” “American ...