Heroin Acting And Comedy In New York City

This book focuses on New York City-based actors and comedians who are self-acknowledged heroin users. Barry Spunt examines a number of hypotheses about the reasons why actors and comedians use heroin as well as the impact of heroin on performance, creativity, and career trajectory. A primary concern of the book is the role that subculture and identity play in helping us to understand the heroin use of these entertainers. Spunt captures the voices of actors and comedians through narrative accounts from a variety of secondary sources. He also examines how New York-based films about heroin relate to the major themes of his research.

Actresses and Mental Illness investigates the relationship between the work of the actress and her personal experience of mental illness, from the late nineteenth through to the end of twentieth century. Over the past two decades scholars have made great advances in our understanding of the history of the actress, unearthing the material conditions of her working life, the force of her creative agency and the politics of her reception and representation. By focusing specifically on actresses’ encounters with mental illness, Fiona Gregory builds on this earlier work and significantly supplements it. Through detailed case studies of both well-known and neglected figures in theatre and film history, including Mrs Patrick Campbell, Vivien Leigh, Frances Farmer and Diana Barrymore, it shows how mental illness – actual or supposed – has impacted on actresses’ performances, careers and celebrity. The book covers a range of topics including: representing emotion on stage; the ‘failed’ actress; actresses and addiction; and actresses and psychiatric treatment. Actresses and Mental Illness expands the field of actress studies by showing how consideration of the personal experience of the actress influences our understanding of her work and its reception. The book underscores how the actress can be perceived as a representative public woman, acting as a lens through which we can examine broader attitudes to women and mental illness.

Aggressive policing and draconian sentencing have disproportionately imprisoned millions of African Americans for drug-related offenses. Michael Javen Fortner shows that in the 1970s these punitive policies toward addicts and pushers enjoyed the support of many working-class and middle-class blacks, angry about the chaos in their own neighborhoods.

Shakespeare and the Embodied Heroine is a bold new investigation of Shakespeare's female characters using the late plays and the early adaptations written and staged during the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

Comedy is centuries old. In Medieval Times monarchs were entertained by court jesters. Melodramas provided boredom and stress relief for the pioneers of America’s West. The Nineteenth Century brought vaudeville and burlesque and entertainment jobs for many early comedians. Many of these passed on to their children their comedic skills. These 20th Century comedians are the subject of this book. They moved from burlesque and vaudeville to radio, Broadway, films, and some into television. Some remained “full-time” comedians and some chose serious acting roles at times.

This volume offers a stimulating perspective on the status of representations of a new kind of female character who emerged on the scene on US television in the mid-2000s, that of the anti-heroine. This new figure rivaled her earlier counterpart, the anti-hero, in terms of her complexity, and was multi-layered and morally flawed. Looking at the cable channels Showtime and HBO, as well as Netflix and ABC Television, this volume examines a range of recent television women and shows, including Homeland, Weeds, Scandal, How to Get Away With Murder, Veep, Girls, and Orange is the New Black as well as a host of other nighttime programs to demonstrate just how dominant the anti-heroine has become on US television. It examines how the figure has arisen within the larger context of the turn towards “Quality Television”, that has itself been viewed as part of the post-network era or the “Third Golden Age” of television where new forms of broadcast delivery have created a marketing incentive to deliver more compelling characters to niche audiences. By including an exploration of the historical circumstances, as well as the industrial context in which the anti-heroine became the dominant leading female character on nighttime television, the book offers a fascinating study that sits at the intersection of gender studies and television. As such, it will appeal to scholars of popular culture, sociology, cultural and media studies.

Ever wondered how Robin Williams and Bob Hoskins rose to stardom? There have been few men as simultaneously talented, funny, sympathetic, and enthusiastically passionate about their craft as comedian and actor Robin Williams. Although he was born into a privileged existence as the son of a Detroit motor company executive, Williams quickly abandoned his place as heir to a business empire to try his hand at acting and comedy. The young man’s unbridled enthusiasm and energy, as well as his hard-working attitude, quickly brought Williams success on the stand-up comedy scene in San Francisco. What followed was a whirlwind of success. Although most movie fans remember the surly and pudgy actor Bob Hoskins as the hardboiled detective in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the British actor was actually responsible for bringing a new level of class and artistic commitment to British filmmaking in the 80’s and 90’s. Beginning his life in the theater, Hoskins brought great poise and preparation to every role he undertook. For more interesting facts you must read the biographies. Grab Your biography book now!

The popular, critically acclaimed text on psychopathology in movies – now including the latest movies and more Explores films according to the diagnostic criteria of DSM-5 and ICD-11 Provides psychological ratings of nearly 1,500 films Includes downloadable teaching materials Films can be a powerful aid to learning about mental illness and psychopathology – for practitioners and students in fields as diverse as psychology, psychiatry, social work, medicine, nursing, counseling, literature, or media studies, and for anyone interested in mental health. Watching films relevant to mental health can actually help you become a more productive therapist and a more astute diagnostician. Movies and Mental Illness, written by an eminent clinical psychologist (who is also a movie aficionado), has established a reputation as a uniquely enjoyable and highly memorable text for learning about psychopathology. This new edition has been completely revised to explore current issues, such as children's screentime and celebrities with mental illness, and to include the numerous films that have been released since the last edition. The core clinical chapters raise provocative questions about differential diagnosis (according to the DSM-5 and ICD-11) for the primary characters portrayed in the films. Included are also a full index of films; sample course syllabus; ratings of close to 1,500 films; fascinating appendices, such as "Top 50 Heroes and Villains," psychotherapists in movies, and misconceptions about mental illness in movies. Accompanying the new edition are downloadable resources for teachers that include critical questions and topics for discussion, as well as fabricated case histories based on movie characters with Mini-Mental State Examinations that help explain, teach, and encourage discussion about important mental health disorders. In addition, the author plans a regular series of online "Spotlights" articles that will critically examine the psychological content of new movies as they are released.