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The Rhinecliff Cinephile Behind NYU's Cinema Studies: Dana Polan

Episode 236: The Rhinecliff Cinephile Behind NYU's Cinema Studies: Dana Polan

Dana Polan, Martin Scorsese Professor of Cinema Studies at NYU Tisch, on Sinatra, Scorsese vs. Spielberg, and the difference between a movie and a film

Show notes

Norm sits with Dana Polan, the Martin Scorsese Professor and Chair of the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at NYU Tisch. The chat ranges across a lifetime of thinking seriously about American film. Dana grew up in New York and Westchester, did his doctorate in France, and was later knighted by the French Ministry of Culture as a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts. He explains how cinema studies emerged from English departments in the 70s, why USC made its production students take film history (and why they usually came back grateful), and how a young teaching assistant named Martin Scorsese could remember individual shots from films he'd seen years earlier. Dana explains the difference between a movie and a film, with Spielberg's own quote about Close Encounters as a starting point. Dana lays out the case for Scorsese as artist and Lucas as entertainer, the 80s backlash of hard-bodied masculinity in Die Hard and Rambo, the femme fatale in Double Indemnity and The Killers, and the way recent films like Barbie and Everything Everywhere All At Once try to have it every way at once. He makes the case for The Florida Project and the first Die Hard, pushes back gently on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as accidental pedagogy, and explains why Strangers on a Train was the film that made him realize movies were made on purpose, shot by shot. Dana is currently co-writing Hoboken to Hollywood: The American Places of Frank Sinatra with Chuck Granata for Reaktion Books' Reverb series, and he shares stories from his Sinatra odysseys, including a tour of the Twin Palms bachelor pad in Palm Springs and a sobering evening in Las Vegas watching Sinatra's grandson perform in a no-gambling lounge.

Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org

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Dana Polan

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