Tom Stempel (born 1941) is an American film scholar and critic. He is a Professor Emeritus in Film at
Los Angeles City College
Los Angeles City College (LACC) is a public community college in East Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. A part of the Los Angeles Community College District, it is located on Vermont Avenue south of Santa Monica Boulevard on the former campu ...
, where he taught from 1971 to 2011.
His students at LACC included writer director, Maggie Greenwald and Karen Moncrieff, directors Tamra Davis and Emmy-award winning Mimi Leder, film editors Carole Kravitz and Academy Award-nominated Kevin Tent,Academy Award-winning short filmmaker Ron Ellis and Rick Schmidlin who received The New York Film Critics Circle award for the re-edit of Touch of Evil.
An expert and teacher of screenwriting, he has written for ''
Film Quarterly
''Film Quarterly'', a journal devoted to the study of film, television, and visual media, is published by University of California Press. It publishes scholarly analyses of international and Hollywood cinema as well as independent film, including d ...
'', ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...
'', ''
Sight & Sound
''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...
'', ''
Film & History'', ''
Senses of Cinema
''Senses of Cinema'' is a quarterly online film magazine founded in 1999 by filmmaker Bill Mousoulis. Based in Melbourne, Australia, ''Senses of Cinema'' publishes work by film critics from all over the world, including critical essays, career ...
,'' ''
Slant Magazine
''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New Yo ...
,''
and has contributed to the ''
Journal of Screenwriting''.
Books
He is the author of books such as ''Screenwriter: the Life and Times of Nunnally Johnson'', ''FrameWork: A History of Screenwriting in the American Film'', ''Storytellers to the Nation: A History of American Television Writing'', and ''Understanding Screenwriting: Learning from Good, Not-Quite-So-Good, and Bad Screenplays''.
Philip Dunne, the screenwriter of ''How Green Was My Valley'', said in this Foreword to ''FrameWork'' that the book was "the definitive work on the history of screenwriting." According to Ian Scott, Stempel's book ''FrameWork'' "sets out a number of reasons that a wave of playwrights, journalists, and short-story writers made their way to Hollywood, principally from New York, in the late 1920s and early '30s".
Other film historians who have acknowledged Stempel's influence in the field and in their research include Ally Acker, Douglas Heil, Claus Tieber, Steven Maras, Steven Price, and Jill Nelmes and Jule Selbo. Since 2008 Stempel has written the on-line column "Understanding Screenwriting," in which he reviews new movies, old movies, and television from the screenwriting perspective. From 2008 to 2013, it appeared in ''Slant Magazine/House Next Door'', and from 2013 on at www.creativescreenwiting.com.
Selected articles
* ''Let's Hear It For Eastwood's 'Strong Women'': Los Angeles Times Sunday Calendar Magazine, March 11, 1984.
* ''The Sennett Screenplays,'': Sight and Sound, Winter 1985.
* ''Rear Window: A John Michael Hayes Film'': Creative Screenwriting, Winter 1997.
* ''The Collaborative Dog: Wag the Dog'': Film & History Volume 35.1.
* ''Talking Back to Documentaries'':
* ''Darryl F. Zanuck: 19th Century Fox'' Senses of Cinema, Issue 55, July 11, 2010.
* ''Tim Holt and the B western'': Offscreen.com, November 2013.
* ''Filling up the glass: A Look at the Historiography of Screenwriting'': The Journal of Screenwriting, Volume 5.2.
References
Living people
1941 births
American film historians
American film critics
Screenwriting instructors
Film theorists
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