Jeanine Basinger
Encyclopedia
Jeanine Basinger a film historian, is Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies and Founder and Curator of The Cinema Archives at Wesleyan University
, Middletown
, Connecticut
.
She is also a trustee emeritus of the American Film Institute
, a member of the Steering Committee of the National Center for Film and Video Preservation, and one of the Board of Advisors for the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers. On February 11, 2005, she has been named to the board of directors of the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures
.
Basinger has been described as "one of the most important film scholars alive today." Among other accomplishments, she is credited with having built Wesleyan's Film Studies program into one of the ten best film schools in the world. "A shockingly disproportionate number of Hollywood movers and shakers" are graduates of the program. Former graduates include, but are not limited to: Akiva Goldsman
, Joss Whedon
, Michael Bay
, Paul Weitz
, Laurence Mark
, Paul Schiff
, Alex Kurtzman
, Bruce Eric Kaplan
, Toby Emmerich
, Nick Meyer
, Marc Shmuger, Rick Nicita, Bradley Fuller
, Dana Delany
, Stephen Schiff
, Rodger Grossman, Toni Ross, Bradley Whitford
, Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, Liz Garcia, Marc Longenecker, Jon Turteltaub
, Owen Renfroe
, Jeffrey Lane
, Zak Penn
, Jeremy Arnold and Miguel Arteta
.
She has appeared in numerous documentaries, and also in a dramatic role in A Better Way to Die (2000). In 2006 she participated in Wanderlust, a documentary film on road movies
and their effect on American culture.
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
, Middletown
Middletown, Connecticut
Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, 16 miles south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated as a town under its original Indian name, Mattabeseck. It received its present name in 1653. In 1784, the central...
, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
.
She is also a trustee emeritus of the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
, a member of the Steering Committee of the National Center for Film and Video Preservation, and one of the Board of Advisors for the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers. On February 11, 2005, she has been named to the board of directors of the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures
National Board of Review of Motion Pictures
The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures was founded in 1909 in New York City, just 13 years after the birth of cinema, to protest New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr.'s revocation of moving-picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908. The mayor believed that the new medium...
.
Basinger has been described as "one of the most important film scholars alive today." Among other accomplishments, she is credited with having built Wesleyan's Film Studies program into one of the ten best film schools in the world. "A shockingly disproportionate number of Hollywood movers and shakers" are graduates of the program. Former graduates include, but are not limited to: Akiva Goldsman
Akiva Goldsman
Akiva J. Goldsman from Walker Valley, New York is an American screenwriter and film producer. He received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the 2001 film, A Beautiful Mind, which also won the Oscar for Best Picture....
, Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...
, Michael Bay
Michael Bay
Michael Benjamin Bay is an American film director and producer. He is known for directing high-budget action films characterized by their fast edits, stylistic visuals and substantial practical special effects...
, Paul Weitz
Paul Weitz (filmmaker)
Paul John Weitz is an American film producer, screenwriter, actor, and film director.-Personal life:Weitz was born in New York City, New York, the son of the actress Susan Kohner and novelist/fashion designer John Weitz, and the grandson of producer Paul Kohner and Mexican actress Lupita...
, Laurence Mark
Laurence Mark
Laurence Mark is a film producer and educated at Eaglebrook School, Hotchkiss School and Wesleyan University from which he graduated in 1971. He also has a Master of Arts degree in Film from New York University...
, Paul Schiff
Paul Schiff
Paul Schiff is a film producer. His films include Mona Lisa Smile, Young Guns and its sequel Young Guns II, Epic Movie, and My Cousin Vinny....
, Alex Kurtzman
Alex Kurtzman
Alex Kurtzman is an American film and television screenwriter and producer.Kurtzman was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, where he met his high school friend and long time collaborator Roberto Orci...
, Bruce Eric Kaplan
Bruce Eric Kaplan
Bruce Eric Kaplan, known as BEK, is an American cartoonist whose single-panel cartoons frequently appear in The New Yorker. His cartoons are known for their signature simplistic style and often dark humor. Kaplan is also a screenwriter and has worked on Seinfeld and on Six Feet Under...
, Toby Emmerich
Toby Emmerich
Toby Emmerich is an American producer, film executive, and screenwriter. He was born in New York City, the son of Constance , a concert pianist, and André Emmerich , a Frankfurt-born gallery owner and art dealer...
, Nick Meyer
Nick Meyer
Nick Meyer was the president of Paramount Vantage until December 2008. In 2007, with Meyer as co-head of Paramount, the Studio received 19 Academy Award nominations...
, Marc Shmuger, Rick Nicita, Bradley Fuller
Bradley Fuller
Bradley Fuller, better known as Brad Fuller, is an American film producer. He co-owns Platinum Dunes, a production company specialized in producing horror movies, most notably The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Fuller is a graduate of...
, Dana Delany
Dana Delany
Dana Welles Delany is an American film, stage, and television actress, producer, host and health activist.After various roles in the early career, Delany garnered her first leading role in 1987 in the short-lived NBC sitcom Sweet Surrender and achieved wider fame in 1988–1991 as Colleen McMurphy...
, Stephen Schiff
Stephen Schiff
Stephen Schiff is an American screenwriter and journalist. He grew up in Littleton, Colorado and began his writing career at The Boston Phoenix, where he became the chief film critic and film editor , and hired and trained such critics as Owen Gleiberman and David Edelstein.In 1983, he was a...
, Rodger Grossman, Toni Ross, Bradley Whitford
Bradley Whitford
Bradley Whitford is an American film and television actor. He is best known for his roles as Deputy White House Chief of Staff Josh Lyman on the NBC television drama The West Wing, as Danny Tripp on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, as Dan Stark in the Fox police buddy-comedy The Good Guys, as...
, Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, Liz Garcia, Marc Longenecker, Jon Turteltaub
Jon Turteltaub
Jonathan Charles "Jon" Turteltaub is an American film director and producer. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the USC School of Cinematic Arts...
, Owen Renfroe
Owen Renfroe
Owen Renfroe is an American television soap opera director and former editor. He graduated from Wesleyan University, where he studied film with Professor Jeanine Basinger.-Positions held:General Hospital* Director...
, Jeffrey Lane
Jeffrey Lane
Jeffrey Lane is an author, television scriptwriter, film producer and actor. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University.-Broadway:Lane wrote the book for the musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which ran on Broadway in 2005 and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Musical...
, Zak Penn
Zak Penn
Zak Penn is an American screenwriter and director. Penn wrote and directed Incident at Loch Ness, The Grand, and co-wrote the script for X-Men: The Last Stand. With Michael Karnow, Penn is the co-creator of Alphas.-Early life:...
, Jeremy Arnold and Miguel Arteta
Miguel Arteta
Miguel Arteta is a Puerto Rican director of film and television, known for his independent film Chuck & Buck , for which he received the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award.-Early life:...
.
She has appeared in numerous documentaries, and also in a dramatic role in A Better Way to Die (2000). In 2006 she participated in Wanderlust, a documentary film on road movies
Road Movies
Road Movies is a 1995 composition for piano and violin by American minimalist composer John Adams. The piece was commissioned by the McKim Fund of the Library of Congress.The work is in three movements:*Relaxed Groove*Meditative*40% Swing...
and their effect on American culture.
Awards
- 1996 Wesleyan's Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching
- 1999 National Board of ReviewNational Board of Review of Motion PicturesThe National Board of Review of Motion Pictures was founded in 1909 in New York City, just 13 years after the birth of cinema, to protest New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr.'s revocation of moving-picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908. The mayor believed that the new medium...
's William K. Everson Prize for Film History for Silent Stars - 2005 Governor's Arts and Tourism Award from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism
- Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the American Film Institute on June 7, 2006
- 2008 Theatre Library Association Award for The Star Machine
Books
- The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre (1985, 2003)
- Anthony MannAnthony MannAnthony Mann was an American actor and film director, most notably of film noirs and Westerns. As a director, he often collaborated with the cinematographer John Alton and with James Stewart in his Westerns.-Biography:...
: A Critical Study - The It's a Wonderful LifeIt's a Wonderful LifeIt's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....
Book - Shirley Temple (1975)
- Lana Turner (1976)
- Gene Kelly (1976)
- A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930-1960 (1993)
- American Cinema: 100 Years of Filmmaking (companion book for a PBS series).
- Silent Stars (1999)
- The Star Machine, Alfred A. KnopfAlfred A. KnopfAlfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
(2007) (ISBN 978-1-4000-4130-5). About the height of the studio systemStudio systemThe studio system was a means of film production and distribution dominant in Hollywood from the early 1920s through the early 1960s. The term studio system refers to the practice of large motion picture studios producing movies primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under...
in the Golden Age from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Audio Commentaries
- The Ghost and Mrs. MuirThe Ghost and Mrs. MuirThe Ghost and Mrs. Muir romantic fantasy film starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. It is based on a 1945 novel written by Josephine Leslie under the pseudonym of R. A. Dick...
, with film historian Kenneth Geist - GigiGigi (1958 film)Gigi is a 1958 musical film directed by Vincente Minnelli. The screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner is based on the 1944 novella of the same name by Colette...
, with actress Leslie CaronLeslie CaronLeslie Claire Margaret Caron is a French film actress and dancer, who appeared in 45 films between 1951 and 2003. In 2006, her performance in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit won her an Emmy for guest actress in a drama series... - In This Our LifeIn This Our LifeIn This Our Life is a 1942 American drama film, the second to be directed by John Huston. The screenplay by Howard Koch is based on the 1941 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Ellen Glasgow. The cast included the established stars Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland as sisters and...
- ItIt (1927 film)It is a 1927 silent romantic comedy film which tells the story of a shop girl who sets her sights on the handsome and wealthy boss of the department store where she works. Because of this film, actress Clara Bow became known as the "It girl"...
- It's a Wonderful LifeIt's a Wonderful LifeIt's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....
(CriterionThe Criterion CollectionThe Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
laserdiscLaserdiscLaserDisc was a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially licensed, sold, and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in North America in 1978, the technology was previously referred to interally as Optical Videodisc System, Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Optical...
) - Jezebel
- LauraLaura (1944 film)Laura is a 1944 American film noir directed by Otto Preminger. It stars Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews and Clifton Webb. The screenplay by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Elizabeth Reinhardt is based on the 1943 novel of the same title by Vera Caspary....
, with composer David RaksinDavid RaksinDavid Raksin was an American composer born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. With over 100 film scores and 300 television scores to his credit, he became known as the "Grandfather of Film Music." One of his earliest film assignments was as assistant to Charlie Chaplin in the composition of the score... - The Philadelphia Story
- Pearl HarborPearl Harbor (film)Pearl Harbor is a 2001 American action drama war film directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Randall Wallace, who wrote the screenplay...
, with director Michael BayMichael BayMichael Benjamin Bay is an American film director and producer. He is known for directing high-budget action films characterized by their fast edits, stylistic visuals and substantial practical special effects... - Sergeant YorkSergeant YorkSergeant York is a 1941 biographical film about the life of Alvin York, the most-decorated American soldier of World War I. It was directed by Howard Hawks and was the highest-grossing film of the year....
- The Tall TThe Tall TThe Tall T is a 1957 western film directed by Budd Boetticher. It stars Randolph Scott, Richard Boone, Maureen O'Sullivan and Henry Silva. The film was adapted by Burt Kennedy from an Elmore Leonard short story, "The Captives."...
- Three Coins in the Fountain
- Week-End in HavanaWeek-End in HavanaWeek-End in Havana is a 1941 Fox musical film directed by Walter Lang. The movie stars Alice Faye and Carmen Miranda. It was the second of three pictures the two stars made together and the second Faye film to have a Latin-American theme, typical for Fox musicals of the early 1940s...
- The Wild OneThe Wild OneThe Wild One is a 1953 outlaw biker film directed by László Benedek and produced by Stanley Kramer. It is famed for Marlon Brando's iconic portrayal of the gang leader Johnny Strabler.-Basis:...