Movies Til Dawn

What do Michael Nesmith (star of "The Monkees" and Liquid Paper heir), rocker Joe ("Life's Been Good To Me...") Walsh and Fritz Lang (genius German Expressionist/American Film Noir Master) have in common? The answer is: 1501 Summit Ridge Drive, a Spanish styled house perched on a precipice overlooking Pickfair.  Built in 1936, the house was acquired by Lang in 1945,  when he was finally successful and established enough in America to claim a hilltop overlooking Beverly Hills for himself. The house is something of an oddity. It's rather grandly set at the top of three acres of descending walkways, gardens and grounds. But the interior measures a modest 2635 square feet and, according to most listing reports, contains only two bedrooms. Indeed, in Kevin Thomas's LA Times remembrance of Lang, he calls the house a "Spanish cottage with spacious rooms sleekly redesigned by Richard Neutra." Do cottages normally have spacious rooms? Are cott...

The extraordinary Dateline NBC one hour special on Booker Wright and our search for the story of his life took all of us by surprise. It's depth, sincerity and detailed examination of the case were truly impressive. Beyond this, the piece was impeccably crafted--a fine example of modern broadcast journalism at its peak standard. If you missed it click here to go to the MSNBC site where you can find the whole thing in six parts. Here's a nice article that appeared over the weekend in The Arizona Republic--a publication straight from the hometown of Yvette Johnson, Booker's grandaughter. Finally, for those of you who've seen either our movie or the Dateline NBC piece, you'll know that Lusco's Restaurant was the establishment where Booker Wright worked when he made his "infamous" speech in my father's documentary. I've eaten there several times while in Greenwood and it's a fabulous place with the best Steaks in the world. Alas, they...

On Sunday July 15th, Dateline NBC will air a special extended segment devoted to the story we've unearthed and explored in our film "Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story". This is a major bit of business for an indie doc such as ours and we're thrilled that the people at Dateline decided to do it. Of course, NBC aired the original doc that my father made back in 1965 and the producer of the segment, Tim Beecham, knew of my father's film for awhile. Indeed, he pitched Dateline on updating the film for a segment awhile back. But with the emergence of our film and the research that it uncovered about Booker Wright's life and death, the segment became a much bigger story. David Zellerford (producer), Yvette Johnson (Booker's granddaughter) and I went to Mississippi a few months ago to work with Lester Holt and Tim on filming new material specifically for this segment. My father, Frank De Felitta, also will appear in the segment. For a preview of the Dat...