The Grand Inquisitor

Eddie Muller is a contemporary renaissance man. He has written novels, biographies, movie histories, plays, short stories, and films. He also designs books, programs film festivals, curates museum exhibitions, and provides commentary for television, radio, and DVDs. Now he has added film direction to his resume.

His debut novel, The Distance, was honored with the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America as the best first novel of 2002. It was recently published in France by Fayard as Mister Boxe. Muller is a two-time Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award nominee, and twice an Anthony Award nominee.

Muller earned the nickname "The Czar of Noir" after the publication of his histories of the subject, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir, and The Art of Noir: Posters and Graphics from the Classic Film Noir Era. He is the founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to rescuing and restoring the genre's lost and damaged films.

Each January he produces and hosts NOIR CITY in San Francisco, the most expansive and well-attended film noir festival in the United States. January 2008 will be the sixth annual NOIR CITY festival.

Eddie is also the coauthor of the recent national bestseller Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, nominated by the Lambda Literary Foundation as the best gay-themed memoir of 2006.

Mau Mau Sex Sex (2001), an 82-minute documentary based on Muller's 1996 book Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of Adults-Only Cinema, was one of the very first all-digital films to play in American theaters. Muller was the film's writer and coproducer.

"Guilty Bystander," Muller's newspaper column exploring the contemporary world of crime fiction, appears monthly in the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review.

Marsha Hunt, a native of Chicago, began her Hollywood career in 1935, signing with Paramount Pictures at the age of 17. Before she turned 20 she had made more than 12 films, costarring with the likes of John Wayne, Robert Cummings, and Jack Benny.

Although model-gorgeous, Hunt disdained the studio's efforts to sell her as an ingenue; she refused to pose for the so-called leg art that was the publicists' stock in trade. Once she moved to MGM she quickly earned a reputation for tackling challenging roles, many of them seemingly beyond her years. By the mid-1940s she was being called Hollywood's youngest character actress, having costarred in a wide range of comedies, dramas, and musicals (in which she did her own singing). Her biggest projects included Pride and Prejudice, Flight Command, Blossoms In the Dust, Seven Sweethearts, None Shall Escape, and the 1944 best picture nominee The Human Comedy.

She worked with an array of legendary directors, from stalwart vets Frank Borzage, Allan Dwan, and Edgar G. Ulmer to such ascendant talents as Jules Dassin, Andre de Toth, Fred Zinnemann, and Anthony Mann. Raw Deal, the 1948 crime drama she made with Mann, is considered one of the finest examples of film noir ever produced.

Hunt's career, however, was dramatically curtailed in the late 1940s. After traveling to Washington DC to protest the actions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (as part of the famous and ill-fated Hollywood Fights Back caravan of stars), Hunt's name appeared in the infamous periodical Red Channels. Film offers dried up. While continuing to pursue her acting career on television and the stage, Hunt redirected her attentions to humanitarian causes, working with the United Nations as a global activist. In Southern California she was one of the first citizens to press the plight of the homeless as a major social issue. Her dedication to these and other causes led to her being named the honorary mayor of Sherman Oaks in 1980.

In 1993 Hunt published The Way We Wore: Styles of the 1930s and '40s and Our World Since Then, a classic look at Hollywood fashions of that era. And in 2007 she produced Songs from the Heart, an album of jazz standards by Tony London and the Page Cavanaugh Trio, which contains two of her original songs, "Simple Trust" and "Life Is a Swing." Read more about her extraordinary life at the Alternative Film Guide.

A 2005 graduate of the University of California at Berkeley with a BA in film and psychology, Leah Dashe made a name for herself on the college stage playing Goneril in Seven Lears and the title role in Barbies That Matter. She made her professional acting debut in 2006 as Electra in the Collegiate Players' production of The Oresteia. Since then she has acted as a principal member of the Pan Theatre improvisational comedy troupe and garnered a leading role in Custom Made Theater's A Very Brechty X-Mas.

In 2007 Dashe became a featured performer with the San Francisco-based Thrillpeddlers, playing leading roles in Jonathan Horton's original series of plays The Juliet Drug, The Glass Womb, and The Chaos Masquerade. It was there that she first worked with writer/director Eddie Muller, starring as the doomed innocent Nini in his adaptation of the Grand Guignol classic Orgy in the Lighthouse.

Her role in The Grand Inquisitor as Lulu Vaughn, a troubled girl who finds herself dangerously obsessed with the unsolved Zodiac murders, is her film debut.

"Working with Marsha Hunt was initially terrifying. Here I am in my first film role, and Marsha would be delighting everyone with stories about the Paramount contract she got at 17, how Vincent Price was one of the sweetest men she ever knew, and how she saw a "dumpy little girl" (Judy Garland) sing in a nightclub at age 12. Marsha, of course, wouldn't allow my nervousness to remain. She immediately began my tutelage on how to be a "star." The night before shooting began, we arrived together (fashionably late) at Eddie Muller's house for dinner with the crew. We walked in side by side, and when the crew saw Marsha everyone jumped to their feet, clapping and cheering. I turned scarlet and stepped to the side. Marsha stopped me with a touch on the arm and said, 'No, no, that isn't what we do.' She took my hand and whispered to me, 'We bow.'"

Dashe currently lives in Brooklyn, where she is pursuing a career in theater and film. Contact her at Leah.Dashe@gmail.com.

Anita Monga programs SIFF Cinema for the Seattle International Film Festival Group. A founding member of the Film Noir Foundation, Monga programs San Francisco‘s annual Noir City Festival. She has served as Associate Programming Director at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and Programming Director of the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Despite occasional distractions, Jonathan Marlow is a cinematographer, critic, curator and composer. Not necessarily in that order. A moderately accomplished filmmaker with over twenty short films (and a little-seen feature) to his credit, he is presently the President & CEO of independent film distributor Cabinetic, with stops along the way at “e-tailer” Amazon (in its infancy) and DVD/VOD service Greencine . It is not uncommon for Marlow to draw on his disparate experience in writing for numerous print and online publications on assorted issues relating to the motion picture business. A member of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Cinematheque, Marlow concurrently consults for a handful of festivals and organizations devoted to the noble efforts of film exhibition, production and preservation. Furthermore, he regularly can be found hosting film screenings throughout the country showcasing remarkable cinematic works otherwise unavailable elsewhere.

Hannah has lived a rather schizophrenic life. Stuck somewhere between her hometown of Melbourne Australia, and her adopted city of San Francisco, she’s also been caught between two careers. After graduating from film school in Melbourne, she has worked in the video field, as a freelance camera woman, staff editor and manager for almost ten years. Concurrently she has regularly published articles on a variety of topics, often film related, for several publications including the Santa Cruz Sentinel, SOMA Magazine, Grist, GreenCine and PopMatters. Hannah currently works as a web producer and editor for Link TV (www.linktv.org).

A native of San Francisco, Ian D. Thomas began his career as a classically trained percussionist. For more than a decade, he worked as a studio musician and live performer before making the journey to the other end of the recording chain. After recording and producing several bands in the late 90’s, he eventually decided to combine his passion for music and sound with his love of film. Aside from his sound design work in films (Raging Cyclist, bgFATldy) and commercials (Toyota, Coke, Nike), he continues to write music. His work has been featured on NBC’s Pretender as well as Fox’s Freakylinks. He also writes about music for Film Score Monthly.

“Blackie” has been involved in film for a real long time. He has done a whole lot of films. Some of them even made it to the multiplex. Blackie turned his back on the major studios & stuck with independent films because he felt it was better to rule in Hell than to be a kiss-up in Heaven. Free estimates on decks, bathroom & kitchen remodels. Quality you can trust from start to finish. Blackwood Building CA-B889269.

Andy Spletzer moved to Seattle in 1991 to help start the alternative weekly newspaper The Stranger. Since then he's worked as a film critic, freelance writer, filmmaker, and film programmer. As a script supervisor, he's worked on Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin's Super-8 feature Brand Upon the Brain! and the Sundance hit Police Beat, as well as a dozen other features and shorts. He is a programmer for the Seattle International Film Festival, co-runs SIFF's year-round Screenwriters Salon, and is the Production Manager for the upcoming PBS show Biz Kid$. He has also made a number of short films that have played festivals all over the country, and is a fan of Vikings, hobos, pirates and robots.

Originally from Seattle, Cammi Upton has always been interested in art. She enrolled in a school for make-up effects in Pittsburgh, PA when she saw that she could combine her art with her love of movies. She studied under, and remains friends with Dick Smith, the godfather of special effects makeup. While in school she worked on smaller films that led to a make-up assistant job on the movie Smart People. She learned a lot from the make-up department head, Judy Chin, and is able to apply what she was taught on every project she has worked on. Since moving to California she hopes to continue to do the work she loves and see where it takes her.

Megan Rible is a fifth-generation San Franciscan, and an eleventh-generation Californian. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in Computer Science, Megan astonished her friends and family by saying she wanted to go to art school to learn computer graphics and visual effects. The extra years paid off, and she landed her dream job at Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas' visual effects company in San Francisco, where she is currently working in tech support writing software tools and assisting artists. She is thrilled to have this opportunity to put her artistic skills to good use as she works toward her goal of becoming a Technical Director at ILM.