I’ve talked about this some in my newsletter, but I decided to write a novel set in Old Hollywood, but I didn’t actually know anything about Old Hollywood, so I have gone perhaps over the top in learning about it. In an effort to learn more about the history of film, I’ve now accumulated enough knowledge for three books (that’s not an exaggeration—I’ve written out plot summaries for three potential novels) but I realized that basically what I’m doing is a DIY history of film class. So I thought it might be useful to record some of what I’ve stumbled upon in this space. This post could be updated at a future date!
So, first, I took an actual class. (Called Hollywood: History, Industry, Art, a UPenn class available through EdX. What I liked about this class is that the video lectures include film clips. (I took a history of music class a couple of years ago where fear of violating copyright law meant that the professor put all the music in a separate Spotify playlist, so you either had to stop the lecture to listen to the song, or you had to listen after the lecture was over. I get why it had to be that way, but I found that annoying.) I learned a lot and took copious notes so I’d have them to reference later.
I’m watching films as part of this class. Most of what I’ve watched or am planning to watch are recommendations from the EdX class, but also from my film buff siblings. I started a Letterboxd account (it’s basically GoodReads for movies) where I’m keeping a list of movies I’ve watched. Watching these old movies is getting my brain churning with ideas about storytelling, but it’s also useful to me to see how movies were made, especially when the production code was in effect. (A lot of rom coms are very, “Hi, we met two days ago under weird circumstances, but I love you, so let’s get married!” which is wild to me.)
I’m also reading books! Here’s what I’ve got so far:
Hollywood: The Oral History by Sam Wasson and Jeanine Basinger
Oscar Wars by Michael Schulman
Further updates possibly coming soon.