Wednesday Website Write-Up: Old Hollywood

Good news everyone – yours truly has found herself gainful employment. Non-paying employment... but gainful all the same, you money-grubbing bastard. I have been hired by the Films Staff of the Campus Events Commission! It’s the organization on campus that puts up all the free preview movies and concerts and other cool events that I’ve been attending this whole year. I applied on a whim, had a pathetically bad interview ("I – uh – am very – uh – a very responsible – uh – person –") and was subsequently shocked to actually get the job, since hundreds of kids try to get into CEC every year. Bit of an ego-boost, that. They must have liked the “Lost”-themed haiku I wrote on my application (one lesson I’ve learned in life: writing a haiku will get you almost anywhere). Something I’m super excited about is that each person on the staff gets assigned to one or two studios a year, and from that studio's annual crop of releases gets to choose which movies they want to screen at UCLA and then negotiate with the studio people to let us have them... Did you hear that? Choose! I get to choose which films this school sees, bitches. That's power right there.

I’m glad I'm doing this. Makes me feel somewhat satisfied that I’m not the most useless person in the world and that the past 9 months haven’t been a complete waste of my freshman year at college - you know, typical end-of-year doubts. I don't usually get the cool job, probably because deep down I never feel like I really deserve it; but somehow I've stumbled my way into this and I'm excited.



Anyway, yes, this has all been a very long intro to this week's lovely lovely website, which is movie-related! Yay! Old Hollywood. I only discovered this blog fairly recently but it's just shot up my list of endlessly fascinating, beautiful, makes-the-internet-world-a-better-place blogs. Every time I click on it I feel like I've entered an excellently-curated museum - slightly chilly, elegant, tastefully dim, chock full of forgotten gems from the last hundred or so years of our collective movie culture. For someone like me, eager but intimidated by the vastness of classic movie history, it's a helpful way to find a place to begin; each post is an obsession waiting to happen. I mean just look at the pictures I've collected. (Still from Repulsion, Grace Kelly, still from Bonnie and Clyde, Sophia Loren in Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, stills from Night of the Hunter - oh the macabre gorgeousness, Bogie and Bacall with soldiers.) If you're unfamiliar with any of these things you're probably already dying to know more.













And then there's all the great quotes, and songs, and interviews (my current favorite is this brilliantly candid Sean Connery interview which reveals so much about the man)... Old Hollywood is a real treasure trove. You'll thank me for this one. I know I would.