B i o g r a p h y
My name is Carrie Specht and I love classic cinema. Actually, I love just about everything about films and filmmaking. I have a BA in Screenwriting from San Francisco State and an MFA in Producing from NYU. I've worked every technical position on set from lighting to sound, lost the tip of my thumb as a grip, and was nearly electrocuted as an electrician - needless to say I learned a lot about what NOT to do. I also worked a dozen or so years as an Assistant Director on major TV shows, often working with cinema's older character actors and stars of yesteryear. I have pictures with many of them and even received a kiss or two along the way.
ClassicFilmFan.com, is a resource for the Movie Fan, whether you lean toward the old classics, or the latest releases. This site, will consist of things concerning the movie culture, including reviews of the old and new, news of what's happening with independent offerings, festivals, TV finds, and whatever else we can find out in the world, cyber or real.
Most of the content is written by me, Carrie Specht, but other writers visit from time to time and are duly credited for their contributions. Please, check back often and tell your friends! Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for your interest.
I'm a classic film fanatic. I'm been watching them since I was a kid, doing chores around the house while the local cable station aired whatever it had available in the public domain that week (there was a lot of Bowery Boys). I remember watching Singing' In The Rain in Black and White on PBS. And weekends were spent at the local cinema where a couple of bucks could get you all the movies you could watch and all the candy you could eat - well, almost. My undergraduate days were spent in critical analysis classes and my time off in grad school was spent at the Film Forum in NYC. All in all I did pretty well before AMC came along, which would be usurped by the superior TCM, but not before the Fox Movie Channel came into existence. My early days of unemployment in LA were spent channel surfing between the three, stopping to watch anything I hadn't seen before.
Now, I'm a professor of Film & TV teaching the next generation about the technical side of filmmaking, and of course, the history of it all. I help the students develop their skills as filmmakers, but I also make sure they learn the rules before they go off breaking them. And perhaps more importantly, they learn about all the great films and filmmakers who laid the ground work for those rules. I'm very excited about the future of cinema, and its future past and the classics yet to be.
