Museum of the Moving Image Pinewood Dialogues

With his critically acclaimed low-budget independent film The Daytrippers, and his raunchy blockbuster hit Superbad, Greg Mottola established himself as a gifted director of comedies. On the occasion of the release of Adventureland, a personal film that invests the teen comedy genre with emotional depth and insight, Museum of the Moving Image presented a daylong retrospective. Writer/director Mottola and producers Ted Hope and Anne Carey discussed the film following a preview screening.

Dennis Hopper is one of the most iconoclastic and accomplished actors and directors in American cinema. He has appeared in nearly 300 films and TV shows, with credits including Rebel Without a Cause, Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, and Blue Velvet. 2008 was a particularly good year for Hopper; he received great reviews for his performance in Elegy, starred in the TV series Crash, and was the subject of an exhibition at the Cinematheque Francaise. In this evening of conversation and clips, introduced by artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel and moderated by Chief Curator David Schwartz, Hopper talked about his remarkable career.

Jerry Lewis has been one of the most popular and inventive figures in American show business since the late 1940s. As a performer, director, writer, and producer, he has created an enormously entertaining body of work in film, television, and live performance that is deeply personal while offering a fascinating view of American culture. In this Museum of the Moving Image special event, Lewis discussed his career in a conversation with the film director, actor, and author Peter Bogdanovich. The two have been friends for more than forty-five years. In 2009, Lewis received an Academy Award for his humanitarian work.

Saturday Night Live has provided an irreverent yet influential perspective on American presidential politics since its debut season in 1975. Two days after kicking off its fall 2008 season with a sketch portraying Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, SNL was the subject of a panel discussion with series creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels (pictured left, selected by Time Magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people; cast members and Weekend Update co-anchors Amy Poehler (center) and Seth Meyers (right); and veteran SNL writer James Downey. The program celebrated the launch of the 2008 edition of the Museum's website The Living Room Candidate, an archive of American presidential campaign commercials.

The HBO series The Wire, a panoramic view of Baltimore through its drug world, schools, government, seaport, and newspaper, has been widely acknowledged as one of the greatest television dramas ever produced. To mark the DVD release of the final season, Museum of the Moving Image presented a panel, Making "The Wire", with David Simon, the series creator and co-producer; novelist and screenwriter Richard Price, who wrote several episodes; and four of the show's stars: Seth Gilliam (who played Ellis Carver), Clark Johnson (city editor Gus Haynes), Clarke Peters (Lester Freemon), and Wendell Pierce ("Bunk"), moderated by David Schwartz, Chief Curator.

Werner Herzog and Jonathan Demme are two of the most accomplished and adventurous filmmakers in contemporary cinema. Emerging on the international scene in the 1970s, they have each made—and continue to make—a wide range of fiction and documentary features: Demme's films include Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and Neil Young: Heart of Gold, while Herzog's include Aguirre: The Wrath of God, The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, and Encounters at the End of the World. This lively conversation between the Demme and Herzog was presented to celebrate the launch of the Museum's new website Moving Image Source, a Museum website devoted to the history of film and media.

Actor/director Stanley Tucci is one of the most accomplished creative figures in New York film, television, and theater. His films as director include Big Night (1996) and The Impostors (1998), and his memorable performances include Road to Perdition (2002), Winchell (1998), and The Devil Wears Prada (2006). In this informal conversation, Tucci discusses his art and craft with some friends: the chef and restaurateur Mario Batali; actress Hope Davis, who has worked with Tucci on five films; actress Natasha Richardson; and actor Steve Buscemi, who has formed a new company with Tucci, Olive Productions. The conversation was moderated by author Gay Talese.

Michel Gondry is one of the most creative contemporary directors, known for his astonishingly inventive style that combines complex technological innovation with an almost childlike playfulness, and an ability to move fluidly between dream and reality. Gondry has directed feature films (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind, The Science of Sleep), documentaries (Dave Chappelle's Block Party), music videos for Bjork, Radiohead, The White Stripes, and Daft Punk, and numerous award-winning commercials. He is also an installation artist who has been featured at Deitch Projects. In this conversation with Chief Curator David Schwartz, Gondry discusses his remarkable career.

Andrew Sarris and Molly Haskell are two of the most influential American film critics. Sarris's book The American Cinema introduced the auteur theory to American readers, establishing the idea that a director's personality is the key artistic influence on a film. With her book From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Haskell introduced a new perspective to the hermetic world of film criticism, writing lucidly about art and sexual politics. Sarris and Haskell, who are also husband and wife, spoke to a group of aspiring critics at the Moving Image Institute in Film Criticism.

Wong Kar-wai is one of the most influential film directors of his generation. His impressionistic, evocative movies capture the fleeting nature of time and love and the chaotic swirl of contemporary urban life. The Hong Kong director is best known for his dazzling romances, including Chungking Express (1994), Fallen Angels (1995), and In the Mood for Love (2000). He spoke about his career at a Museum of the Moving Image program on the eve of the theatrical release of My Blueberry Nights (2007), his first English-language film. Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee introduced the evening.

The independent feature Chop Shop, a deeply affecting slice of urban neo-realism by Ramin Bahrani, the director of Man Push Cart, is set in the Iron Triangle in the shadows of Shea Stadium. The film follows a 12-year-old orphan who ekes out an existence with his sister. The director and the film's young lead actor Alejandro Polanco discussed their film following a preview screening at the Museum of the Moving Image.

J. Hoberman is one of the world's most erudite and perceptive film critics, with writings that combine deep historical knowledge with an expansive view of cinema. To celebrate his 30th anniversary as a film critic at The Village Voice, the Museum of the Moving Image presented a program including a conversation with Hoberman moderated by New York Times film critic A. O. Scott. David Schwartz, the Museum's Chief Curator, introduced the evening with a Top-10 List of things to like about Hoberman, and the discussion was followed by a screening of Julia Loktev's independent feature Day Night Day Night, one of Hoberman's favorite films of 2007.

The film Honeydripper is the first collaboration between actor Danny Glover and director John Sayles. A veteran of stage, screen, and television, Glover has starred in such movies as Beloved, The Color Purple, To Sleep With Anger, and Dreamgirls. In Honeydripper, he plays the owner of a 1950s Alabama roadhouse that is threatened by the rise of rock 'n roll. The Museum presented a special evening with Glover, with opening remarks by John Sayles, a conversation with Glover and Sayles (pictured), and two songs performed live by the Texas blues guitarist Gary Clark Jr., who makes his film debut in Honeydripper.

Daniel Day-Lewis's magnificent performance as the ambitious and ruthless oil tycoon Daniel Plainview is at the core of Paul Thomas Anderson's critically acclaimed movie There Will be Blood. In this discussion, which followed a Museum of the Moving Image preview screening of the film, the actor and director playfully and thoughtfully discussed their intense collaborative process.

The independent film The Savages is a remarkable collaboration between writer/director Tamara Jenkins and a cast including Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as a brother and sister forced to care for their father—played by Philip Bosco—as he descends into dementia. With sharp humor, surprising warmth, and brilliant performances and dialogue, The Savages confronts the messy reality of aging and reveals the bonds between a brother and sister who—to say the least—have serious emotional issues. Tamara Jenkins, Laura Linney, and Philip Bosco took part in a lively conversation following a preview screening of the film.