Some of the material in this book has appeared in various publications, though in most cases the essays have been revised and in some cases considerably extended. The essays on Altman, Raging Bull, and Heaven’s Gate, and the section of the Brian De Palma essay on Sisters appeared in Movie, as did “The Incoherent Text.” The chapter on the 70s horror film has been assembled from a number of articles published in Film Comment. The third section of chapter 8 (“Returning the Look”) appeared in American Film under the editorially imposed title “Beauty Bests the Beast.” The remarks on John Badham’s Dracula in the third section of chapter 5 (“Testing the Limits”) are taken from a long essay entitled “The Use and Obsolescence of Count Dracula” published in the Canadian literary journal Mosaic. All these are reprinted with the editors’ permission. Brief sketches for certain sections appeared in Canadian Forum, for which I write a regular film column, and sketches for the section on Making Love and Victor, Victoria, co-written with Richard Lippe, appeared in Body Politic.
Two writers who are also my close friends—Andrew Britton and Varda Burstyn—have had a major influence on this book and indeed on the whole direction of my thought over the past few years. They are given specific acknowledgment in the text, but their influence is far more pervasive than such local recognition suggests.
Two of my ex-students, now my colleagues, who wrote M.A. theses under my supervision, have certainly taught me at least as much as I taught them. Florence Jacobowitz and Lori Spring will doubtless detect the traces of our collaboration in these pages, although I am not conscious of specific borrowing.
I cannot claim direct influence (our paths have been too divergent), but I would like to say hello here to two film critics and theorists whose work I have come greatly to admire: Stephen Heath and Noel Burch. I have learned a lot from their writings, and have found in them a most important stimulus to the more precise definition of my own approach. And although I lack their subtlety and their daunting grasp of complex theoretical issues, we share at least a radical position.
I want to thank Arthur Penn for his kindness in reading the essay on The Chase and for correcting certain misapprehensions concerning his involvement in that film—and also for his generosity and encouragement over many years.
I come now to a very problematic and cloudy area. Virtually everything I write originates as lectures for my classes; innumerable minor modifications and clarifications have resulted from classroom discussions or from my reading of students’ work. The kind of debt involved is impossible to detail. If any of my students read this, however, I would like to say to them that they probably never realized the importance to me of their encouragement and enthusiasm. Their attitudes, their openness, their readiness to explore and discover, and—in the case of those who have allowed me glimpses into their personal lives—their recognition of the need to rethink human relationships have frequently rekindled my faith in a culture whose dominant movement tends to extinguish it.
Finally, I want to acknowledge the contribution to this book of its dedicatee, Richard Lippe, my lover since 1977. Richard has read every sentence of the text and has made many suggestions that I have incorporated. Without his support, most of it would never have been written in the first place.