I learned many things helping Kiki make her short film, The Game Camera, and I’ll share two of the more curious lessons here. First, I learned that the writer’s job is pretty much to keep out of everyone’s way once the production begins. I have almost no photos of myself on-set, and the image here…
A full transcript of Rolf’s 2025 video essay about the role places play in cinema.
I’ve said before that one of the reasons I named my podcast Deviate (as opposed to, say, Vagabonding) was that I wanted the creative freedom to veer away from the travel issues I’ve covered as a journalist for the past 25+ years, and explore other intellectual themes. Since my interest in cinema and screenwriting is…
Jenny Inzerillo of High Plains Public Radio’s “High Plains Morning” chats with actress/writer Kristen Bush about her film THE GAME CAMERA, the Rural Women Films initiative, and its artistic mission to uplift female voices in rural America. CONDENSED TRANSCRIPT Jenny Inzerillo: Folks, you are tuned to High Plains Public Radio. I am so excited to…
The grateful acre was created when God created the Earth. The grateful acre was grateful to wake up one day and realize that it was an acre. God smiled upon it and the grateful acre was grateful. It was grateful when dirt appeared upon it. Even though the dirt made the acre feel heavier, the…
There is something curiously ephemeral about theater: Actors bring a specific world alive onstage for a few weeks or months, then that world vanishes when the play finishes its run. Kristen Bush’s extraordinary presence and stamina as “Emma” in Duncan Macmillan’s dark addiction-recovery drama People, Places and Things at DC’s Studio Theatre was lauded by…
One of the reasons I named my podcast Deviate (as opposed to, say, Vagabonding) is that I wanted the creative freedom to veer away from the travel issues I’ve covered as a journalist for the past two decades, and explore other intellectual themes. Since my interest in cinema and screenwriting is as old as my…
(Originally published in Holiday Magazine, November 1967) One warm summer day I was standing on a beach near Tom Never’s Head on Nantucket. Children were splashing around in the gentle surf as their mothers lay gabbing by the Styrofoam ice chests and the Scotch Grills. About thirty yards from shore, a man paddled back and…
From The New Yorker, June 17, 2002 (an excerpt) In the summer of 1977, I saw Star Wars twenty-one times, mostly by myself. I was thirteen—that kid alone in the ticket line, slipping past ushers who’d begun to recognize me, impatient to get to my favorite seat. All twenty-one viewings took place at the Loews…
There is this sense from Before Sunrise that life, when it adds kinds of completeness and continuation, never equals the potential those youthful moments once contained.
At some point in the past five years I realized that listening to podcasts has replaced watching TV or movies for me. Though I still watch the occasional video entertainment, usually via streaming on Netflix or Amazon Prime, I more often turn to podcasts for amusement and edification when the workday is done. My relationship…
