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Acknowledgments
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xi Acknowledgments There are many people who have made this book possible. My first order of thanks goes to those who listened so attentively and commented so perceptively on my musings on film behind the gates of Columbia University. I am indebted especially to Martin Puchner for his sharp readings and shrewd advice over more than a decade now, to Julie Stone Peters for her elegant commentary , and to Maura Spiegel for her willingness to be a patient and wise sounding board. I also want to offer my thanks to Matthew Wilson Smith for always being willing to listen or to read and to Amanda Claybaugh for offering such helpful guidance. The seeds of this work began to germinate even before Columbia, during my many years at New York University. Special thanks go to David K. Irving, who chaired the film program during my time there, and to Leonard Jenkin in the Department of Dramatic Writing, for their example and inspiration. Ultimately this work truly came into being during my time at the University of Texas at Austin, and I am deeply grateful for all the support I have received here. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Elizabeth Cullingford, chair of the Department of English, for her remarkable support and general administrative genius, which were instrumental in making the completion of this work possible. I am also thankful to Roger Louis, director of the Program in British Studies, for his support in all regards. And I will be forever grateful to Douglas Bruster, whose thoughtful, meticulous, and incisive commentary on this manuscript helped make it what it is in ways both large and small. A robust round of thanks belongs to my colleagues in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin, where I have had the good fortune of discovering a community of scholars that gives full meaning to both of those terms. Special thanks go to Alan Friedman, for his ongoing guidance and encouragement; Martin Kevorkian and Wayne Lesser, who have taken pains to make teaching xii acknowledgments here such a pleasure; and Elizabeth Scala for being both friend and mentor. A full accounting of all the individuals who have so richly defined my experience at the University of Texas would be too long to include here. Instead, I must offer my thanks to a few in particular: Samuel Baker, Janine Barchas, J. K. Barret, Daniel Birkholz, Mia Carter, Matt Cohen, James Cox, Brian Doherty, Patricia García, John González, Lars Hinrichs, Heather Houser, Coleman Hutchison, Julia Lee, James Loehlin, Allen MacDuffie, Carol MacKay, Lisa Moore, Gretchen Murphy, Domino Perez, Lindsay Reckson, Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, Snehal Shingavi, Jennifer Wilks, Michael Winship, Hannah Wojciehowski, and Marjorie Woods. It has been a great privilege to find myself among such scholars, colleagues, and friends these past years. I must also acknowledge the generous support of Randy Diehl and Richard Flores in the College of Liberal Arts, who have made available research and subvention funding to support this work. Finally, I owe thanks to my students, far too many to name here, who were among the first to hear many of these ideas in detail and who were invaluable in helping them take their current shape. Is it possible to thank a city? This work began in New York, but I cannot help but feel that it might not be quite the same had I not had the opportunity to complete it in Austin. While writing this book, I had the chance to see many of the films discussed here and others of the period the way they were meant to be seen—in packed theaters with enthusiastic audiences. Even in today’s world, there is simply no better way to see a film, and I have to think that aspects of this project were shaped in part by my experiences at the Paramount Theatre, the Alamo Drafthouse, and other venues around town. While on the subject of film viewing, I also want to thank the folks at Vulcan Video North, a veritable archive of obscure and out-of-circulation films and perhaps the greatest video rental joint left standing in the world. Portions of chapter 8 can be found in Quarterly Review of Film and Video 31, no. 5, and portions of chapter 9 in Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism 4, no. 1. I am grateful to the editors of these journals for permission to use this material here. For the images reproduced in...