PERSPECTIVES

Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s newest film King Coal, which credits no less than 330 filmmakers with a “special thank you” after its full production crew receives their end credit scroll, is a work of excessive creative trust in the vision of its creators. Sheldon admits to the difficulty in describing to collaborators exactly what the film […]

Detox In the runoff,rainbow slicksmix with plastic bags. An earthworm struggleson the precipiceof the sidewalk. City drainsare beer funnelsfor our drunken creeks that have no choicebut to drinkour intoxicated waste. Oceans chug riversof unfiltered litterforming trash pitsthat grow likekidney stoneswith nowhere to go. So our sick planetis always hungover—throwing up hurricanesand tornadoes—desperate to detoxthe waste […]

Love/Hate My mother had a secret romancewith Roger Staubach, quarterbackfor the Dallas Cowboys, two-timeSuper Bowl champion, and 1978NFL Man of the Year. Sundays were devotedto 11:00 mass and then Roger on TV, the secondmore significant and boisterous in our familyroom, where, when we were younger, my brothersand I had dutifully performed the manger sceneat Christmas, […]