Michael Hollister

Michael A. Hollister Novelist & Critic

FILM REVIEWS HOME PAGE BIOGRAPHY MODEL OF METAPHORS DANEgerus Patrick Garry, novelist

(Film review excerpt from novel Follywood) High Noon     "Do you know Eisenhower's favorite movie?" Elia asked.     "The General," Ryan guessed.     "His favorite movie is High Noon!"     They burst into laughter at that, because the screenwriter Carl Foreman was a former Communist who said he wrote High Noon to attack the investigation of Hollywood.     "The noble sheriff takes revenge on the House Committee," Elia quickly drew and fired with fingers of both hands. "Shooting down their surrogates one by one! A dirty cowboy gang of murderers! Then he scorns the community that didn't back him up by tossing his badge away into the dirt!"     "Trouble is, Gary Cooper got cast as the hero!" Molly giggled.     "Everybody knows Cooper is a conservative!"     Their laughter had a bittersweet edge.     "Carl's plot," Ryan rollicked. "His own parable turns around and blows him away like that cannon in the cartoon!"     "Maybe that's why Eisenhower got elected in a landslide," Sarah suggested with a smile. "People think at least he can identify the enemies of the country and shoot in the right direction. I think the high art of High Noon was the film editing of Elmo Williams and Harry Gerstad." Follywood, pages 308-09

Apocalypse Now The Best Years of Our Lives The Big Chill Billy Budd The Bostonians Casablanca Citizen Kane Close Encounters of the Third Kind Coming Home Daisy Miller The Day of the Locust Dr. Strangelove Easy Rider Fail-Safe A Farewell to Arms The Front Gone with the Wind Good Night, and Good Luck The Graduate The Grapes of Wrath The Great Gatsby Guilty by Suspicion High Noon Huckleberry Finn Invasion of the Body Snatchers Key Largo The Majestic Meet John Doe Moby-Dick The Old Man and the Sea On the Waterfront The Player The Red Badge of Courage Reds The Scarlet Letter The Shrike, based on Miss Lonelyhearts 2001: A Space Odyssey The Sun Also Rises Triumph of the Will The Way We Were Wise Blood The Wizard of Oz Woodstock The World According to Garp

The HOLLYWOOD Trilogy Three historical novels dramatize Hollywood's global influence from the 1930s to the present age of terrorism, through the life stories of Sarah McCloud, a farm girl from Oregon, and Ryan Eisley, the son of a beer distributor from Ohio.

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Hollywood and spirituality in the 1930s. The first marriages of Sarah and Ryan illustrate effects of popular culture on morality. When her husband Burke leaves her, Sarah must separate from her little boy and goes to work in a defense plant. Ryan rises from gas pump attendant to movie director at the Fox studio, with sordid adventures at a Hollywood brothel and an orgy hosted by a horror star. He adapts stories pertinent to his life, including a comic biopic of theologian Jonathan Edwards. Their lives converge to an inspirational ending as the nation rallies after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, a time when Americans felt united as a country. In the climax, Burke fights in the battle of Tarawa. (2004)

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Hollywood in the 1940s-50s, with deep focus on directors, writers and politics. Sarah marries Ryan and they produce independent films adapting American classics, while she tries to overcome his infidelities with scripts and actresses. Their lives and films dramatize the dominant political and aesthetic conflicts in Hollywood. Their first collaboration is a true untold story of heroism by black tank commanders in WWII. Then they become involved on both sides of the Blacklist scandal with Women in Hemingway starring John Huston, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Tracy and Hepburn influence them while making Blithedale, Orson Welles takes over their Pierre and Stalin courts Judy Garland in their Flowering Judas. (2005)

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The Eisleys film Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, then during the 1960s Ryan turns countercultural and documents the black civil rights, hippie and anti-Vietnam War movements. Their son Davin serves as a medic in Vietnam, while Sarah tries to hold their family together, becomes a film critic in San Francisco, then moves to Portland and enters the Hollyworld of higher education. Their story is interwoven with films including Billy Budd, Dr. Strangelove, The Graduate, Woodstock, Easy Rider, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters, Apocalypse Now, Reds, The Big Chill, The Player and The Passion. It exposes Communist propaganda movies, ridicules political correctness, satirizes Marxist movie stars and professors and culminates with the Iraq War. (2006)