Gehring Beside Himself: More Selected Essays
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"Gehring remains supreme in film comedy scholarship."
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In the movie GRAND CANYON, Steve Martin's character discovers a troubled friend who has not seen the film SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, and says, "That's part of your problem, you haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies. It's a story about a man who loses his way...and he forgets for a moment what he was set on earth to do."
The character Martin is referencing is meant to entertain via film. The goal of this essay collection is to be entertainingly insightful about an assortment of movies, and comedy. I believe strongly in the axiom "The unexamined life is not worth living" - and like Martin, it is best explored through a fun look at film. This means if you join me, we can be part of novelist Michael Chabon's army "of movie lovers...who climbed into a film as into a time machine or a bottle of whiskey and set the dial for NEVER COME BACK."
Think of me as your film shrink; don't you want to pull back the curtain and see the wizard? I write to learn who I am. Hopefully, some of that might catch on. I have written 43 books, but I feel I am at my best in the short form essay. Thus, learn how John Ford's THE SEARCHERS was the inspiration for STAR WARS, what was left out of MY MAN GODFREY, learn Stehen King's thoughts on the genres of the fantastic ( horror, science fiction, and fantasy ), and what really would have happened if Steve McQueen had honored an invitation to that Sharon Tate gathering in which the Manson family ( so called ) showed up....There is lots more, but I was told to keep this to a tease.
I also like to write/right things about film history that have been lost and/or never been recorded before. In addition, the text reminds readers that no matter how timeless the work...it is time-bound - a documentary of when it was made.
Be that as it may, like the comedy analysis inside the text, it reminds you it is sometimes necessary to blow raspberries at the world around us. Everyone needs to be a humor activist. The book aspires to Victor Borge's observation, "Laughter is the shortest distance between people."
"I find myself always drawn into Wes' comedic research and storytelling by its insights into history, politics and sociology of the period explored. In that context, his gift is not only that of a researcher but also a "deeper understanding" of what leads a reader to explain, "Oh, so that's how he (the subject) got that way."
Steve Bell, former ABC News and Good Morning America anchor
"Gehring has a breezy and playful writing style. I found myself chuckling aloud at times. His prose is also, at times, wickedly cynical."
Columbia University's Hitchcock Annual (Gehring's Hitchcock and Humor)
"Just about anything with film historian and media writer Wes D. Gehring's name on it will be of quality."
Cinema Retro
Wes D. Gehring is Ball State University's Distinguished Professor of Film. He is the Award-winning author of more than forty books. In 2017 and 2018 he was one of Turner Classics Movies' on-screen scholars for its summer online classes. His writing has resulted in speaking engagements from the Paris-Sorbonne University to New York's Museum of Modern Art.
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