Most Popular Books by Phil Hall

They were the big screen royalty that left us too soon - the brilliantly talented icons whose premature deaths continue to fill the hearts of movie lovers with rue and pain. From Robert Harron and Rudolph Valentino of the silent era to Heath Ledger and Natasha Richardson of today''s cinema, the history of movies is filled with too many legends and rising stars who died before fulfilling their career destinies. But what would have happened if fate had been kinder? What could have been the careers of Jean Harlow, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy Dandridge, Bruce Lee, John Belushi, River Phoenix, Chris Farley, and many other screen luminaries who died too soon? What if They Lived? offers a speculative trajectory for the careers that the late, great stars never had. Piecing together pending film projects, industry trends and wider shifts in popular culture, What if They Lived? considers what could have happened to the beloved movie actors who never had a chance to enjoy a long and fruitful professional output.

Everyone''s heard of public relations, but what exactly is it? Even among PR professionals, there''s no real consensus. New technologies, new media, and new corporate thinking have caused even more confusion. The New PR: An Insider''s Guide to Changing the Face of Public Relations explores the changing face of public relations, with its dramatic shift away from the hoary concept of media relations into sophisticated marketing strategies. Phil Hall draws on his experience as the head of one of New York''s savviest PR agencies to offer a no-holds-barred examination of what works, what doesn''t, and why -- with the goal of helping readers secure high-impact results. Dispensing with the myth of traditional media, Hall shows why virtual and experiential marketing are today''s most effective messengers. Refreshingly free of dull theory and convoluted language, this entertaining, eminently useful handbook shows readers how PR really works and how to get the most bang for their PR buck.

Chronologically organized, this reference offers a visual history of more than 650 wonderful experimental machines, starting with the Buick Y-Job dream car of the 1930s to the 2002 fuel-cell-propelled cars and light-duty trucks.

On October 20, 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin emerged from a forest in Northern California with 59 seconds of grainy, shaky, silent 16mm film that supposedly offered documentary evidence of the Sasquatch, a creature of Native American folklore. Although neither Patterson nor Gimlin had any previous experience in filmmaking or zoology, they presented their remarkable footage as the first motion picture confirmation of the existence of the elusive Sasquatch.However, not everyone was convinced by the imagery on the Patterson-Gimlin Film. Additional doubt was generated by the strange story behind the film’s creation. Over the years, odd rumors emerged about the film, including the story of an Academy Award-winning make-up artist’s alleged role in assembling the creature seen on camera.Film journalist Phil Hall traces the convoluted history of how Patterson and Gimlin supposedly wound up in the right place at the right time with their camera, and how they brought their weird little film into the scientific community and American popular culture. While the debate over the authenticity of the Patterson-Gimlin Film continues to percolate, few would question the effectiveness of how this piece of celluloid brought forth an unlikely sensation lovingly dubbed Bigfoot.Phil Hall is the author of The History of Independent Cinema, The Greatest Bad Movies of All Time and In Search of Lost Films. His film writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Daily News and Wired, and he is the host of the award-winning SoundCloud podcast “The Online Movie Show with Phil Hall.”

I am sitting outside at dawn on Otty Lake, where I live, in the woods. The light is coming over the trees, and each morning the poem is written as if right while it is being read... The lyric weaving of honesty about the self-toward revelation & transformation. My poetics has widened, here, to include more space, more primitive sounds and glyphs, less metaphor, less anecdote, more tangential conjugating... My poetics, in its growing inclusiveness, is not sad but hopeful. The term "conjugation" refers to more than the obvious grammatical movement of pronouns through time (I am / you are / they will be). For, in Biology, it also refers to the transfer of information between cells. And Conjugation, the new collection of poetry from award-winning poet Phil Hall, sees an open realm where individual letters inside a word are each rolling through their possibilities, from A to Z. Thereby, the language in this collection travels into and out of itself, as Hall says, "escaping my ego, while revealing, word by slightly different word, my deeper connections and disconnections to things—to what used to be called poetry''s ''subjects.''" As much care was taken with the writing of this collection as the shaping of the poems themselves. Replete with images of the natural world and in some cases, the mechanisms that transform it-horses, leaping fish, trees, canals and locks— Conjugation signals a return to the nature/nurture elements that have wound their way through his earlier collections, but also a versed ode to the discouragement that many Canadians have felt about the progression of their country and government over the past number of years.

The first word in this new collection by Phil Hall is "raw" and the last word is "blurtip." Between these, many nouns cry faith within a hook-less framework that sings in chorus while undermining such standard forms & tropes as "the memoir," "genealogy" and "the shepherd''s calendar." With a rural pen, these poems talk frogs, carrots, local noises, partial words, remnants, dirt roads, deep breath & hope: my laboratory the moment is accordion-shaped - cluttered - sopping & not eternal

Unlike most independent films, undergrounds roll far from traditional filmmaking circles. With micro-budgets that couldn''t cover a day''s catering on typical Hollywood films, these productions challenge audiences with bold content and audacious visuals that make cineplex fare taste like stale popcorn.

Increasingly known as the “poet’s poet,” Governor General’s Award–winner Phil Hall has long been a constructor of intricate sequences, collecting and arranging lines and phrases, artifacts, and small revelations. He writes on influences, literary and local; he writes of rural Ontario, attempting to comprehend a deeply personal family violence; he stitches together lines and tall tales and fables from his life and the stories that float around the ethos of his variety of Ontario wilds. Hall’s isn’t a poetry carved into perfect diamond form but a poetry whittled from scores of found materials pulled apart and rearranged. This volume is not so much a “selected poems” as it is a reshuffle, a sampler from the span of Hall’s published work. Guthrie Clothing is a collage-selection by Hall. Lines, stanzas, and poem-fragments are reworked and patterned into a new sequence, a fresh structure. The afterword consists of an important new essay-poem by Hall as well. It argues against irony from a rural perspective and amounts to Hall’s ars poetica. In an encompassing introduction, rob mclennan explores Hall’s four-plus decades of bricolage.

The title of An Oak Hunch comes from one of the sequences in this five-sequence book of poems: Phil Hall''s homage to a poetic mentor, Al Purdy. Its subtitle is "Essay on Purdy," and these highly original, highly personal takes on the poetry and the life of Al Purdy "essay" in the root sense of the word: attempt or probe. The other four sequences, "The Interview," "Mucked Rushes," "Gang Pluck" and "Index of First Lines" are also probes, each of a different sort, written in a language that stretches the denotative values of words. Phil Hall is as leftist as he ever was, but his recent books like Trouble Sleeping have also been adventures in language. His writing shines with a new economy reminiscent of that of some of the so-called "language poets." Sometimes the poems of An Oak Hunch carry a narrative, sometimes they are leaping and lyrical, but they are all composed of word-music that connects the ear and the heart. Saying the old, chipped words, I liked to think I was helping them pray too-words don''t know how to read, books don''t know how to read-they need my weak eyes-I thought, like some missionary to island lepers-but I was the one banished to an island-and the words were the missionaries-I am the one with these stinking wounds in the palms of my hands-these gifts?-my articulate hands that can not make straight arrows. From "Index of First Lines," Section V of An Oak Hunch

It is one of the most astonishing facts of cinema history: an extraordinary number of important films are believed to be lost forever. Spanning from the early days of the silent movies to as late as the 1970s and touching all corners of the global film experience, groundbreaking works of significant historical and artistic importance are gone. Cinema icons including Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Oscar Micheaux and Vincente Minnelli are among those impacted by this tragedy, and pioneering technological achievements in color cinematography, sound film technology, animation and widescreen projection are among the lost treasures. How could this happen? And is it possible to recover these missing gems? In this book, noted film critic and journalist Phil Hall details circumstances that resulted in these productions being erased from view. For anyone with a passion for the big screen, In Search of Lost Films provides an unforgettable consideration of a cultural tragedy.

Phil Hall is well known as a writer and supporter of "work poetry." He stands in solidarity with workers, with the little guy, the often faceless many. His poetry can be fierce in their service, but it is sponsored by humane inquiry, not dogma. Amanuensis takes its title from a poem about ghostwriting, and the image plays teasingly over the whole volume. The language of this poetry, often spare and yet astonishingly sensuous, springs from mysterious though not supernatural sources in commonplace experience approached with reverence. Followers of Phil Hall''s work will welcome the appearance in Amanuensis of a selection of his terrific workplace drawings.

From the flickering silent images of the nickelodeon to the roaring vibrancy of today''s digital video productions, independent cinema has always challenged the way films are created, released and viewed. The History of Independent Cinema presents an extraordinary journey that revisits the innovative men and women who stood up to the status quo and brought revolutionary new ideas and technologies to the motion picture world. The History of Independent Cinema celebrates the pioneers who introduced color, sound, widescreen projection and videography to the filmmaking process. You will meet the brave individuals who tore down racial and gender barriers behind the camera, challenged censorship taboos imposed on film production, formulated new strategies for film distribution, and created many of the greatest movies ever made. Spanning the full spectrum of the U.S. film experience, The History of Independent Cinema is a tribute to the legendary filmmakers and landmark films that reshaped - and continue to reshape - American popular culture.

WINNER OF THE 75th GOVERNOR GENERAL''S LITERARY AWARD FOR POETRY WINNER OF THE 25th TRILLIUM BOOK PRIZE WINNER OF AN ALCUIN AWARD FOR DESIGN SHORTLISTED FOR THE GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE These are poems of critical thought that have been influenced by old fiddle tunes. These are essays that are not out to persuade so much as ruminate, invite, accrue. Hall is a surruralist (rural & surreal), and a terroir-ist (township-specific regionalist). He offers memories of, and homages to -- Margaret Laurence, Bronwen Wallace, Libby Scheier, and Daniel Jones, among others. He writes of the embarrassing process of becoming a poet, and of his push-pull relationship with the whole concept of home. His notorious 2004 chapbook essay The Bad Sequence is also included here, for a wider readership, at last. It has been revised. (It''s teeth have been sharpened.) In this book, the line is the unit of composition; the reading is wide; the perspective personal: each take a give, and logic a drawback. Language is not a smart-aleck; it''s a sacred tinkerer. Readers are invited to watch awe become a we. In Fred Wah''s phrase, what is offered here is "the music at the heart of thinking."

These are the films that inspire wonder-you are left wondering how seemingly intelligent people could gather together and spend money to create such bizarre productions. From A-list atrocities to Grade-Z zaniness, 100 of the most wonderfully warped anti-classics have been gathered together for this celebration of cinematic kookiness. Relive the jaw-dropping spectacle of John Wayne as Genghis Khan, Halle Berry as Catwoman, Jack Palance as Fidel Castro, and Jerry Lewis as a Gore Vidal-inspired extra-terrestrial. Sing along with a naked Anthony Newley, tap your toes to a "Pennsylvania Polka" dance number in the middle of an unauthorized remake of A Streetcar Named Desire, watch a suicidal Elizabeth Taylor run amok in Rome and appreciate Coleridge''s poetry with topless women. Hook up with Edward D. Wood Jr., Phil Tucker, Tommy Wiseau and their peers in the so-bad-they''re-good genre, and marvel at how cinema royalty including Stanley Kubrick, George Cukor, Michelangelo Antonioni and Clint Eastwood could conceive celluloid debacles of an unprecedented scale. When it comes to shock and awe, nothing compares to The 100 Greatest Bad Movies of All Time.

"If only my cousin had kept off me, kept out of me his brown fly-strop glue, his shot dog-eye cream. Afterwards, he would comb my hair to a wet Elvis point between my eyes and warn me what his wolves would do to me, and where I''d be sent, if I ever told." This experience is at the core of Phil Hall''s Trouble Sleeping. It is the source of bad dreams and also, paradoxically, the source of his crisp, luminous text. Trouble Sleeping makes visible the poetry of hopeful despair by remembering a poor working class family of Irish descent, living outside the margins of respectability at the edge of the Laurentian Shield in mid-Northern Ontario in the 1950s. This raw world is seen by a child who is a misfit in it (especially among its brutal, drunken males). That child will eventually come to speak for the plight of unregarded misfits in society at large. "Orthodontics is a class issue" to the writer looking back on a time when it never occurred to his parents that crooked teeth might be fixed - not that they could have afforded it. In Trouble Sleeping, working a variation on the Japanese form of haibun, Hall alternates prose passages with poems that reflect nightmarishly on the interwoven narratives.

This new updated edition provides a wide range of interviews with filmmakers, distributors, festival programmers, marketing experts, and critics. ""Independent Film Distribution"" takes the reader deep into the process of positioning a film for distribution. Unique case studies and exclusive commentary from the top names in independent cinema - including Mark Cuban, Hal Hartley, Bill Plympton, Liz Garbus, and Arthur Dong - help provide a hands-on approach to the subject.