The Road to Hollywood

A 60s super spy at the peak of his powers. A shadowy black marketeer haunting the back streets of post-war Vienna. An African-American PI redefining the noir genre for a 70s audience. A long-unseen 1940s romance unearthed for one-night-only.

That’s just some of the line-up for the 2011 TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, those four films – Goldfinger, The Third Man, Shaft and The Constant Nymph – the tip of the iceberg of a schedule that should make any movie fan pause and wonder if they really do need to pay the bills this year or if a trip to Los Angeles is more important.

I decided the latter when I first read about the Festival, and will be visiting Hollywood in a next few weeks time to try and catch as many of the 70+ films on offer. Most of them will be original or restored 35mm prints, with many accompanied by actors, directors or others closely linked with their production.

Peter O’Toole, Kirk Douglas, Angela Lansbury, Warren Beatty, Mickey Rooney, Ron Perlman and Debbie Reynolds are just some of those attending, and I hope to interview some of them. Angela Allen, who worked on The Third Man as a script supervisor, will also be in attendance, and I was lucky enough to interview her in February for the Glasgow Film Festival.

Commissioned by the Edinburgh Evening News to cover the event on a freelance basis, I’ll also be filming as much as possible for my YouTube channel and putting together a few other features that are in the pipeline.

I’m open to any suggestions for possible articles that could come from the trip.