Meet the Scholar: Author David Spaner

In Shoot It! Hollywood Inc. and the Rising of Independent Film, author David Spaner offers an alternate reading of film history as “a people’s history of Hollywood’s studios and the worldwide resistance to them.” In the first half of the book, Spaner traces the global dominance of Hollywood back to its early days; in the second half, he surveys the rise of a cinematic counter-narrative, in countries from France to South Korea, and from Romania to the United States. The result is a work that Rebel Without a Cause screenwriter Stewart Stern—whom Spaner interviewed for the book—says is “so needed and so well researched and so extraordinarily readable and so important.”

 LPA’s Meet the Scholars series is pleased to welcome Spaner, who will talk about Shoot It!, show a number of movie clips that illustrate his theme, and take questions from the audience. Among the filmmakers to be discussed are John Cassavetes, Mike Leigh, Claire Denis, John Sayles, Gus Van Sant, Ken Loach, Sarah Polley, and many others.

David Spaner has worked as a movie critic, feature writer, reporter, and editor for numerous newspapers and magazines. He is author of Dreaming in the Rain: How Vancouver Became Hollywood North by Northwest. He lives in Vancouver.