Mark Maynard | film history

The etymology of “beazel”

By Mark | August 22, 2019

I’d wanted to write last night about Donald Trump’s ever-changing position on mandatory background checks for gun sales, and the pathetic way in which he publicly grovels at the feet of the NRA, but, when I saw that one of my favorite films, Preston Sturges’s delightfully thoughtful 1941 screwball comedy Sullivan’s Travels, was going to […]

Posted in Art and Culture, Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Also tagged 1922, 1939, 1941, 19th Amendment, background checks, barlow, beazel, beezle, biscuit, bitch", censorship, Charlie Chaplin, cross-dressing, crumb-gobbler, crumb-gobblers, Donald Trump, equality, etymology, films, flapper, flapperese, floozie, frail, George Cukor, great films, gun control, gun laws, ho, hobos, Joel McCrea, John L. Sullivan, Little Tramp, Logansport Pharos-Tribune, Mae West, mass shootings, NRA, pettable, pettable crumb-gobblers, petting, Preston Sturges, right to vote, roaring twenties, Robert Greig, Rosalind Russell, screwball comedy, slang, suffrage, Sullivan's Travels, The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances: Outrage at Couple Dancing in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, The Women, universal background checks, Veronica Lake, women's rights | 19 Comments

Designing the Curriculum for an Awesome High School Film Class: Part One

By Mark | August 1, 2019

An old friend of mine who teaches at a public high school in Minnesota just got word that he’s inherited a 12-week elective course on film, and he’s reached out to me, asking if I might help him design the curriculum. All that he’s been given to work with thus far is a list of […]

Posted in Art and Culture, Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Also tagged 1957, 1974, A Face in the Crowd, Algeria, Algerian War of Independence, Andy Griffith, Billy Wilder, Blade Runner, bugging, celebrity culture, curriculum, Dan Richardson, documentary film, Donald Trump, Double Indemnity, drifters, Elia Kazan, Eugene McCarthy, film criticism, film school, films, folksy, foreign film, France, Francis Ford Coppola, Gene Hackman, Gillo Pontecorvo, Glenn Beck, great films, Harrison Ford, Harry Caul, high school, Hot Channels, House Committee on Un-American Activities, Italy, Lonesome Rhodes, M, Martin Stett, Mildred Pierce, neorealist, populism, privacy, red scare, simple truths, small town America, social media, Sunset Boulevard, surveillance, surveillance culture, terrorism, The Battle of Algiers, The Conversation, The Killing, The Night of the Hunter, torture | 26 Comments

Looking for the Mark III

By Mark | August 19, 2018

I rarely share them here, but I’m known to go off on wild goose chases every now and then, trying my best to track down useless historical facts and obscure items that, for whatever reason, I’ve become obsessed by. A few years back, as you may recall, I decided that I needed to know what […]

Posted in Art and Culture, History, Pop Culture, Special Projects, Uncategorized | Also tagged 1973, 1976, adult films, Alan Frybach, Andrea Marie Truden, Andrea True, Art 1 and 2, computer game, disco, Don Knotts, dongs, Edith Massey, Germany, Henry Ford Museum, Hot Channels, Illinois, International Hot Channels Symposium on Virtual Reality and Popular Culture, Johnny Mnemonic, Mark III, Mark's obsessions, More More More, North Washington Street, Orson Welles, Paul Williams, porn, pubic hair, R.G. Benjamin, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Serial Mom, Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Museum of American History, technology, The Hearts of Age, The Lawnmower Man, The Matrix, virtual reality, Virtuosity, VR, Welt am Draht, Woodstock, World on a Wire | 13 Comments

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The etymology of “beazel”

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