A keeper: Quincy Jones photo-portrait for TCM Fest

Film · Music · Visual arts
At arts·meme, we like it when art begets art. That’s why we respond so positively to photographer Stefanie Keenan’s outstanding photo-portrait of an artist — Quincy Jones — that came across the transom from Turner Classic Movies this morning. The prodigious Jones gave a fascinating, free-wheeling interview to movie (and jazz) maven Leonard Maltin at ...

TCM Fest: writer Robert Benton on “Bonnie & Clyde” 1

Film
“You couldn’t grow up in Texas without knowing about Bonnie and Clyde. They were folk heroes. Kids would dress up as Bonnie and Clyde for Halloween,” said filmmaker and writer Robert Benton, a Waxahachie, Texas native, speaking before a screening of his highly influential 1967 movie at TCM Fest. Benton, who went on to direct ...

TCM Fest: “Frankenstein’s gonna bite me and kill me,” said 5-year-old Mel Brooks 1

Film
In conversation with Turner Classic Movies creative exec, Tom Brown, prior to the TCM Fest screening of his great comedy classic, Young Frankenstein (1974), director Mel Brooks dug deep into his memory bank. Asked by Brown what spurred his ribald take-off of the James Whale horror flick, Brooks recalled: “In 1931, I was five years ...

“Travis Banton inspired my dressing Cher,” says Bob Mackie at TCM Fest

Fashion · Film
In a curtain talk with costume historian Deborah Nadoolman-Landis prior to a TCM Fest opening-night screening of Cleopatra, Bob Mackie described an early influence. It was designer Travis Banton’s amazing costumes for Claudette Colbert in Cecil B. DeMille’s at-turns-camp, at-turns-sumptuous Roman romp. “I was thirteen, I lived in Inglewood, there were three movie theaters there. An ...