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Quote by Edward Jay Epstein

“Who can now deny the loss of natural light, of skin tones, of real place, and common but precious things in our movies, to be replaced by the gorgeous imagery of things that have never been and never will be? The most special effect in movies is always the human face when its mind is being changed.”

Quote by Edward Jay Epstein

Author

Edward Jay Epstein

Edward Jay Epstein is a renowned American journalist and author known for his in-depth investigative reporting and analysis of complex social issues. His work often involves political, economic, and social topics, particularly skilled at uncovering the truth behind the surface phenomena. more

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“We have a thriving subculture of 'independent' American movies that makes an impact on America as a whole roughly equivalent to that of a the modern literary novel. These are the films sincere viewers marry, whereas, once upon a time, movies were a lifetime of one night stands.”

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“I regret the way that America has elected to make films for its bluntest section of society and in ways that flatter them, and we have to recognize how much that is being done for money. We have to find another way of measuring ourselves. And film is one of the few ways that might be done.”

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“Occasional observers of horror movies have a nasty habit of asking why it is that there is always some poor misguided soul who opens the door to the cellar or to the attic or to the crypt when it's quite clear that no sane person would even consider it.”

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“Like the panic stricken populace of 'The War of the Worlds' and countless other 1950s invasion movies, the victims are there to provide the human ground over which monster and expert, threat and defender, disordering and ordering impulses can battle it out. Second-class citizens of the genre, they are narratively indispensable because physically entirely disposable. We are only really involved with them in the momentary tension of their capture or demise.”

“Typical horror movies of the 1930s were often given a period setting in what looked like a kind of stylized 19th century... the sense of 'elsewhen', of distance, lent to many of these movies by their settings. They exist, as it were, in a 19th century of the mind.”

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“Contemporary audiences, other than those making a deliberate historical leap, would find, say, the 1931 'Dracula' impossibly slow.”

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“In a Western or a thriller there is often room for reflection upon the coercive necessities; even, occasionally, some attempt to pose other possibilities. In the horror movies there is finally a Hobbesian state of nature: 'continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'.”

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“Along with supernature and science, there is one other major source of horror movies disorder: the human psyche, most commonly homicidal psychosis. Unlike 'mad' scientists, horror-movies madmen are not visionary obsessives, glorifying in scientific reason as they single-mindedly purse their researches. They are, rather, victims of overpowering impulses that well up from within; monsters brought forth by the sleep of reason, not by its attractions.”

“In 'Play Misty For Me', its inexplicably assertive knife-woman nearly manages the impossible task of slaughtering Clint Eastwood.”

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“Ed, I see you're out drinking again. What's the occasion? I was sober.”

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