On my radar: Peter Biskind’s cultural highlights
Born in 1940, Peter Biskind is a cultural critic and film historian whose books include Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, The Godfather Companion and Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America. Between 1981 and 1986 Biskind was editor-in-chief of American Film magazine, and was executive editor of Premiere magazine from 1986 to 1996. His writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone and Sight and Sound. His latest book, Pandora’s Box: The Greed, Lust, and Lies That Broke Television, explores the behind-the-screens story of the golden age of TV, from The Sopranos to streaming.
1. Film
Anora (dir Sean Baker, 2024)
Anora has got a lot of attention this year, and it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which Sean Baker dedicated to sex workers. It’s a screwball comedy about a struggling stripper in Brooklyn, played by Mikey Madison, who is saved by the son of a Russian oligarch, named Ivan. Of course, her honeymoon with Ivan doesn’t last, and she pays for her good fortune in several different ways. Baker is a singular talent, and his films deal with everyday people. He is also right to endorse theatres over streaming as the ideal place to show movies.
2. Book
The Hunter by Tana French
Tana French is known for her thrillers, but that doesn’t begin to do her justice. The Hunter is really a novel set in Ireland, bursting with vivid, finely etched characters, that happens to revolve around a murder. It’s about an American ex-cop called Cal who befriends a local girl and they repair furniture together. The girl is wonderfully described: she has very mixed feelings about her father, who’s a wastrel, and she plays a big role in uncovering the murder.
3. Food
Maine blueberries
I’m addicted to anything with blueberries, including blueberry pancakes, and pie stuffed with those tiny wild blueberries that Maine is famous for. Maine blueberries are just delicious, different from anywhere else. They have more flavour: blueberries that actually taste like blueberries are supposed to taste. There is also a blueberry crumb cake, courtesy of the New York Times cooking section, that I first tasted at the house of my friend Ruth Reichl, who’s a foodie celebrity. You get a wonderful contrast between the crumbly top of the cake and soft inside.
4. Documentary
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (dir Johan Grimonprez, 2024)
This is a really interesting new documentary about the overthrow of Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 60s, which nobody remembers, really. It’s a thorough and engaging documentary, and I think an important one, because it throws light on the negative impact of the CIA on democratic regimes in that period, as well as the United Nations, which was dominated by the US and the CIA at that point. It’s a real eye opener into cold war politics.
5. Place
Santa Barbara
It’s in southern California, right on the ocean, and it’s an incredibly picturesque, beautiful place – as close to heaven as you can get in the United States. I lived there, in the mountains, for three or four years in the mid-60s, when I was teaching English literature at UC Santa Barbara, at the University of California. It was right in the midst of the anti-war movement, so nobody was studying anything. That added to the drama of it all: the time that I lived there was extremely exciting. I haven’t been back – it’s wall-to-wall movie stars now.
6. TV
I love anything by Sally Wainwright: Last Tango in Halifax, Happy Valley, Scott & Bailey, and Gentleman Jack, with Suranne Jones, which HBO stupidly killed after two seasons. She’s a wonderful writer, and Yorkshire is a great setting. Her shows focus on crimes, but it’s not the crimes themselves that rivet viewers; rather, it’s the vibrant, eccentric, complex characters who commit and suffer from them. And women are central to the shows, which is something we often don’t find in thrillers.
