The Fan

Sep 22, 2009 — A new era in popular music deserves a new era in filmmaking—that’s the basis of the perfect, fortuitous match-up between rock and cinema in D.A. Pennebaker’s concert film.

Mar 16, 2009 — This long-underappreciated giant of Japanese cinema was an innovative visual stylist and a born storyteller who preferred to make films about outsiders.

Aug 17, 2020 — Deep Dives Baseball’s back in America—as of this writing, anyway—though for much of spring and early summer the Major League season hung in the balance as negotiations between the owners and the players’ union approached a peak of acrimony. Being...

Apr 28, 2020 — “Fuck! Fuck you fuck me fuck old people fuck children fuck peace! Fuck peace.”Miranda July shouts at her car’s steering wheel. With a black Sharpie, she scrawls FUCK in huge letters on the inside of her windshield. She drives. Sunlight...

Mar 21, 2019 — “The world is full of skeptics,” Detour’s Al Roberts struggles to explain, in voice-over, while on-screen we’re pondering Vera’s dead body. “I know. I’m one myself . . .”Even now, closing in on seventy-five years after the Producers Releasing Corporation...

Jun 8, 2018 — On a rainy Saturday in May that called to mind the foggy Pacific Northwest atmospheres of Twin Peaks, a crowd gathered at the music venue Brooklyn Steel for a journey through the world of David Lynch. Celebrating its third annual...

Oct 25, 2012 — The following piece by Sunday Bloody Sunday screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt originally appeared as the introduction to the 1971 U.S. publication of the script. A friend of mine who had started scrubbing at fourteen and went on to be a barmaid...

Dennis Perrin is the author of Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O'Donoghue, The Man Who Made Comedy Dangerous (Avon Books) and American Fan: Sports Mania and the Culture That Feeds It (Spike/HarperCollins).

Jan 26, 2026 — The new year brings an ode to Judy Garland, conversations with Martin Scorsese, and a novel by John Sayles.

Mar 16, 2023 — While the competition juries have their say, critics spotlight a few favorites from the gala premieres.