We are showing Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2002 absurdist rom com Punch-Drunk Love as part of the Double Exposure series, which offers audiences the unique experience of enjoying a graduate-level educational event as well as the film — all for the price of a movie ticket.
Punch-Drunk Love stars Adam Sandler as an entrepreneur with social anxiety who falls in love with his sister's co-worker, played by Emily Watson. The supporting cast includes Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman and Luis Guzmán. Anderson, currently nominated for three Academy Awards for One Battle After Another, won Best Director at Cannes for this film.
The Double Exposure series is presented by SHU’s Film & Television Master’s Program, with this evening’s lecture given by Dr. Scott Higgins, the Charles W. Fries Professor, Director of the Wesleyan College of Film and the Moving Image and Curator of Wesleyan’s Reid Cinema Archives. His books include Harnessing the Rainbow (2007), Arnheim for Film and Media Studies (2011) and Matinee Melodrama: Playing with Formula in the Sound Serial (2016). He’s currently at work on a study of Vincente Minnelli titled How it Feels when the Universe Reels.