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Activities at the Fair [return to all activities]

Crime Novels and Books that Inspired American Film Noir
Saturday, November 17, 2007 5:00 PM

• Kenneth Turan, author and Los Angeles Times film critic

A film critic at the Los Angeles Times for fifteen years, Kenny Turan is the author of several books, including 2006’s Now In Theaters Everywhere: A Celebration of a Certain Kind of Blockbuster; 2004’s Never Coming to a Theater Near You: A Celebration of a Certain Kind of Movie; and 2002’s Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made. 

Kenny is the film critic for National Public Radio’s Friday broadcast “Morning Edition” and the director of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes; he lives in Los Angeles.

• Kevin Johnson, author and bookseller

In his new book, The Dark Page: Books that Inspired American Film Noir 1940-1949, Kevin Johnson presents a comprehensive collector’s guide to first edition literary sources for the era’s first decade, the 1940s. The book covers in detail over 150 films and their sources, including information on the authors, characteristics about each book’s adaptation into film, and the first edition sources complete with full-page, color images of each.

With a foreword by film Paul Schrader, the book serves as film scholars’ most cited source of inspiration for the resurgence of film noir beginning in the 1970s. Schrader wrote the screenplay for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and has put his own noir sensibility into many of the films he has directed, such as Light Sleeper, Affliction, and Autofocus.

Published by Oak Knoll in November 2007.