Visit the Media Page to view new video features:
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 200 Year Anniversary
Leo Braudy on the History of Fear
ALOUD AT THE CENTRAL LIBRARY PRESENTS
LEO BRAUDY: THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Kevin Roderick leads a conversation with Leo Braudy about the history of the Hollywood sign. Follow the link above to listen to the .mp3 podcast on the LAPL website.
Yale University Press will publish The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon in February 2011.
This video, produced for the University of Southern California, features a reading from the section on Peg Entwhistle’s suicide accompanied by some beautiful archival images, as well as a discussion of the book and of Leo Braudy’s teaching at USC.
Susan Andrews of the USC College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences interviewed Leo about his forthcoming book on the Hollywood sign. The video can be found below, as well as a link to the full text of the article.
Commanding, evocative and unmistakable. With nine white steel and concrete letters standing 30 feet wide and 45 feet tall, the Hollywood Sign is one of the most recognized symbols in the world.
The sign is also the subject of Leo Braudy’s twelfth book, The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon, which will appear in 2011 as one in a series of books about American icons to be published by Yale University Press. In the book, Braudy discusses the complex history of the Hollywood Sign and its interaction with the history of Hollywood, as a real and fantasized place.
A teacher, cultural theorist, film critic, and expert on 17th-century literature, Braudy is fascinated most by the interaction of things that seem disparate or far apart from each other. “In my mind, the seemingly disconnected fields nurture and feed upon one another, and it’s less about the individual parts.”
Read the rest of the article here.
SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT: Raymond Chandler, 50 Years Later
March 25, 2009, 7:30pm
USC University Club
Join leading LA noir experts for a lively discussion of Raymond Chandler’s novels, films, and the future he foretold. Fifty years after his death, how have his perceptions and his portrayal of the City of Angels endured? Moderator: Judith Freeman, author of The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved. Speakers: Leo Braudy, USC Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature and University Professor; Denise Hamilton, author of the Eve Diamond mystery series; and Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic.
View video of the talk at the link above.
ALOUD AT CENTRAL LIBRARY
Tuesday, May 6, 2008, 7 pm
A conversation with screenwriter Millard Kaufman, whose debut novel, Bowl of Cherries,was published last year by McSweeney’s. The .mp3 podcast is available at the link above.
LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS
Saturday, April 29, 2008, 10:30 am
Moderator, A History of Violence, featuring David A. Bell, Mark Kurlansky, Scott Martelle, and Andrew Nagorski. Flash video provided by C-SPAN’s BookTV at the link above.
In “An Interview with Leo Braudy,” published in The Hedgehog Review‘s Celebrity Culture issue (Spring 2005), Jennifer L. Geddes discusses with Leo Braudy the current incarnation of the phenomenon of fame and celebrity. Follow the link to read the article.
Leo Braudy discusses From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity with host Connie Martinson on Connie Martinson Talks Books, June 15, 2005. Follow the link above or click on the image to view the video provided by Claremont Colleges Digital Library.
