
Joan Didion
Writing
Biography
Joan Didion was an American writer. In the late 1960s, Didion's reportage brought Californian subcultures to wider attention. Her political writing often concentrated on the subtext of rhetoric.
Known For

Today is a daily American morning television show that airs on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It was the first of its genre on American television and in the world, and is the fifth-longest running American television series. Originally a two-hour program on weekdays, it expanded to Sundays in 1987 and Saturdays in 1992. The weekday broadcast expanded to three hours in 2000, and to four hours in 2007. Today's dominance was virtually unchallenged by the other networks until the late 1980s, when it was overtaken by ABC's Good Morning America. Today retook the Nielsen ratings lead the week of December 11, 1995, and held onto that position for 852 consecutive weeks until the week of April 9, 2012, when it was beaten by Good Morning America yet again. In 2002, Today was ranked #17 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest Television Shows of All Time.
Today

Seasoned musician Jackson Maine discovers — and falls in love with — struggling artist Ally. She has just about given up on her dream to make it big as a singer — until Jack coaxes her into the spotlight. But even as Ally's career takes off, the personal side of their relationship is breaking down, as Jack fights an ongoing battle with his own internal demons.
A Star Is Born

At the turning point of the Iran-Contra affair, Elena McMahon, a fearless investigative journalist covering the 1984 US presidential campaign, puts herself in danger when she abandons her assigned task in order to fulfill the last wish of her ailing father, a mysterious man whose past activities she barely knows.
The Last Thing He Wanted

Tally Atwater has a dream: to be a prime-time network newscaster. She pursues this dream with nothing but ambition, raw talent and a homemade demo tape. Warren Justice is a brilliant, hard edged, veteran newsman. He sees Tally has talent and becomes her mentor. Tally’s career takes a meteoric rise and she and Warren fall in love. The romance that results is as intense and revealing as television news itself. Yet, each breaking story, every videotaped crisis that brings them together, also threatens to drive them apart...
Up Close & Personal

A stark portrayal of life among a group of heroin addicts who hang out in Needle Park in New York City. Played against this setting is a low-key love story between Bobby, a young addict and small-time hustler, and Helen, a homeless girl who finds in her relationship with Bobby the stability she craves.
The Panic in Needle Park

A cop clashes with his priest brother while investigating the brutal murder of a young prostitute.
True Confessions

Drunken, has-been rock star John Norman Howard falls in love with unknown singer Esther Hoffman after seeing her perform at a club. He lets her sing a few songs at one of his shows and she becomes the talk of the music industry. Esther's star begins to rise, while John's continues to fall. She tries desperately to get John to sober up and focus on his music, but it may be too late to save him.
A Star Is Born

This trio of tales, based on classic short stories, chronicles the complicated relations between the sexes.
Women and Men: Stories of Seduction
Vanity Fair Special Correspondent Dominick Dunne has become known the world over for his vociferous championing of the rights of the victim in high-profile murder cases. His powerful commentaries have made compelling reading in Vanity Fair for a quarter of a century. Now, aged 82, Dunne is covering his last murder trial for Vanity Fair -- the trial of music producer Phil Spector -- and reflects upon his past as a decorated WWII Veteran, his rise and spectacular collapse as a Hollywood producer, and his rebirth as the writer we know today. Dunne's mind offers a fascinating insight into the American psyche and its obsession with fame.
Dominick Dunne: After the Party

Literary icon Joan Didion reflects on her remarkable career and personal struggles in this intimate documentary directed by her nephew, Griffin Dunne.
Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold

A scrupulously honest judge finds he's a pawn in a federal sting to ferret out corrupt members of the bench, many of whom are his friends.
Broken Trust

Burned-out B-movie actress Maria, depressed and frustrated with her loveless marriage to an ambitious film director, Carter Lang, who would rather work on his career than on his relationship with her, numbs herself with drugs and sex with strangers. Only her friendship with a sensitive gay movie producer, B.Z., offers a semblance of solace. But even that relationship proves to be fleeting amidst the empty decadence of Hollywood.
Play It as It Lays

Follows the waves of literary, political, and cultural history as charted by the The New York Review of Books, America’s leading journal of ideas for over 50 years. Provocative, idiosyncratic and incendiary, the film weaves rarely seen archival material, contributor interviews, excerpts from writings by such icons as James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, and Joan Didion along with original verité footage filmed in the Review’s West Village offices.
The 50 Year Argument

Before "L.A. Confidential", there was "Shotgun Freeway" -- the groundbreaking 1995 documentary about Los Angeles coming to grips with it's own history. Against a backdrop of never-before-seen archival footage, Shotgun Freeway presents a diverse group of "Angelinos" who guide the film through their own past as well as the city's. We get crime scribe James Ellroy reliving his youth as a burglar, Actor/writer Buck Henry's tour of Hollywood fakery, Jazzman Buddy Collette's trip down Central Avenue, Historian Mike Davis' tour of LA's eventual Armageddon, and writer Joan Didion's take on LA's own ephemerality. From the Beaches to the Valley, "Shotgun Freeway" will show you a Los Angeles you never knew existed.
Shotgun Freeway: Drives Through Lost L.A.
Set against the contrasting backdrops of Manhattan and Los Angeles, this film examines the life of one of the world’s greatest celebrities of print journalism - Dominick Dunne. Drawing on the memories of big names in Dunne’s field, including Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, Tina Brown, Joan Didion and octogenarian New York Post gossip columnist Liz Smith as well as legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans (The Godfather, Chinatown), the film uncovers what lies beneath a life. The film examines Dunne’s life from childhood, and his early days of being “an outsider on the inside”: a theme that has informed his whole life. From his World War II service that made Dunne return an unlikely hero – awarded the Bronze Star for bravery – to his rise and ultimate fall in Hollywood and then total reincarnation as a writer in his fifties, this film explores the nature of reinvention, belief in oneself, and the all-pervasive cult of celebrity.
Celebrity: Dominick Dunne — A Journalist in the Age of Celebrity

Explores the history and mystery of Migraine, and its remarkable place in the human condition. Migraine is a devastating but fascinating neurological condition with a compelling story to tell. Alice in Wonderland, Thomas Jefferson, Sigmund Freud, and Joan Didion all figure into its colorful history.