Highlights from the Networker Journey
Mary Sykes Wylie, Dusty Miller, Esther Perel, Frank Pittman, Fred Wistow, Gary Greenberg, Katy Butler, Laura Markowitz, Molly Layton, Rich Simon, Ron Taffel • 1/1/2017
Out of all the hundreds and hundreds of articles that have appeared in the Networker over the past four decades, we’ve chosen a small sampling that captures the magazine’s most journalistic side, conveying not so much the eternal verities of our profession, but the sense of reading a first draft of the field’s history. Among other things, you’ll find therapeutic methods that, as exciting as they seemed at the moment, didn’t stand the test of time as well as initial forays into discussing complex issues we’re still struggling with today. We’ve also added in a few examples of writing so immediate and compelling that they have an air of timelessness. Prepare yourself for an interesting journey.
Magazine Article
Frank Pittman • 9/24/2009
By Frank Pittman - When TV finally came, in the early '50s, the world it brought into our living rooms was black and white, and dumbed way down. Newsmen now had faces, and, as eyewitnesses, we could now determine who had an honest face and who didn't. The most honest of the talking heads seemed to be the revered war correspondent Edward R. Murrow. Now the actor George Clooney has put together a reenactment of the public clash between Murrow and the rabid senator Joe McCarthy. It's called Good Night and Good Luck.
Magazine Article
Move Over, Meryl: Kate Winslet Ascends to Center Stage
Frank Pittman • 5/5/2009
What separates screen actors who remain enshrined in our memory from those who just momentarily catch our eye?
Magazine Article
Inside Out: Frost/Nixon and Milk Hold a Mirror to Our Fears
Frank Pittman • 3/1/2009
Movies are about giving us outsiders in the audience the illusion of being inside the charmed circle of real experience.
Magazine Article
Tell Me a Story: As Hollywood Goes Postmodern, Has Narrative Become Passé?
Frank Pittman • 1/1/2009
If you're like me, you've noticed that movies don't make as much sense as they used to. Nevertheless, I suspect that there's still an audience somewhere out there with an old-fashioned appetite for narrative coherence—an audience that wants a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end; a story that inspires, instructs, and offers insights into the human condition.
Magazine Article
More than Just Frivolity: Joel and Ethan Coen Give Us the Antidote to the Happy Ending
Frank Pittman • 11/1/2008
The Coen brothers specialize in redefining the rules of whatever movie genre they happen to be subverting.
Magazine Article
Violence is Central to Some of the Year's Best Films
Frank Pittman • 10/18/2008
By Frank Pittman - While lions and sharks go into frenzy at the smell of blood, at the sight of blood, moviegoers seem to experience a heightening of all emotions, sometimes recoiling from the horror, but more often anticipating the danger to follow. Violence and blood on the screen, even more than naked people coupling, grabs our attention and makes us perk up our ears and feel our own vulnerability, like rabbits sensing danger.
Magazine Article
Darkness and Light: Evoking the Flip Sides of the Hollywood Dream Machine
Frank Pittman • 9/1/2008
Two hugely successful films, released on the same weekend this summer, revealed the flip side of the Hollywood experience.
Magazine Article
No Country for Old Men * Indiana Jones and the Temple of Youth
Frank Pittman • 7/1/2008
Part of the magic of Hollywood movies is that the larger-than-life heroes and heroines up there on the screen don't age and wither and deteriorate like the rest of us do. In fact, it may be that one of the reasons we go to the movies, at least in youth-obsessed America, is to bathe in a cinematic fountain of perpetual youth. If they're not getting older and flabbier, maybe we won't either.
Magazine Article
Hollywood and the Unwed Mother: Comedy is a Window on Our Social Mores
Frank Pittman • 5/1/2008
Some comedies about unwed motherhood reveal deeper truths about those subjects we can laugh about and those we can't.
Magazine Article