David Thomson / Sleeping with Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire

The Bindery hosts a special afternoon with David Thomson, the celebrated film critic and author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, for his new book Sleeping with Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire. Please join us!

Film can make us want things we can not have. But, while sometimes rapturous, the interaction of onscreen beauty and private desire speaks to a crisis in American culture, one that pits delusions of male supremacy against feminist awakening and the spirit of gay resistance. Combining criticism, his encyclopedic knowledge of film history, and memoir, David Thomson examines how film has found the fault lines in traditional masculinity and helped to point the way past it toward a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be a person desiring others. Ranging from advertising to pornography, Rudolph Valentino to Moonlight, Rock Hudson to Call Me By Your Name, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant to Phantom Thread, Thomson shows us the art and the artists we love under a new light. He illuminates the way in which film as art, entertainment, and business has been a polite cover for a kind of erotic séance. And he makes us see how the way we watch our movies is a kind of training for how we try to live.

David Thomson is the author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, Moments That Made the Movies, and the pioneering novel Suspects, which was peopled with characters from film. Author photo by Lucy Gray.

Please note: this event will be held at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.

This is an all ages event with mature themes. The bar opens with doors at 2pm; event starts at 4pm.

As with all of our events, seating may be limited; you can guarantee a seat by pre-purchasing the book below — when checking out, just be sure to include a note that you’d like to attend the event. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of Sleeping with Strangers, and/or any of David’s books, order below and put your request in the comments field.

RSVP appreciated but not required.