Reel Talks: The Making of Sunset Boulevard

Talks on movies, the culture of cinema, and filmmaking.

Enjoy a discussion on the making of Sunset Boulevard with author David M. Lubin and host Scott Adlerberg, film connoisseur.

By exploring the history of Sunset Boulevard in time for the movie’s 75th anniversary, from its inception to its making its present-day legacy, David M. Lubin's Ready for My Close-Up breathes life into a beloved masterpiece of American cinema, not only marking its influential place in film history, but also proving how prescient it really was in terms of the human costs of relentless technological change and our obsessive quest for fame, youth, and immortality.

David M. Lubin studied filmmaking at the USC School of Cinema while reviewing music for Rolling Stone. He earned his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale. Among his seven books is an in-depth study of the blockbuster film Titanic. A professor at Wake Forest University, he has been a visiting professor at Oxford and lectured throughout the United States, Europe, China, and Australia. His Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images won the Smithsonian Institution’s Charles C. Eldredge Prize for “distinguished scholarship in American art.” Lubin is a Guggenheim Fellow and an NEH Public Scholar.

Scott Adlerberg is the author of five novels, including Graveyard Love, Jack Waters, and The Screaming Child.  He has written many short stories and contributes pieces regularly to sites such as CrimeReads and Mystery Tribune.  He was born in New York City and lives in Brooklyn.