Hollywood pioneer Allan Dwan, who lived to be 96 and whose first films date back to 1911, famously told Peter Bogdanovich, “If you get your head up above the mob, they try to knock it off. If you stay down, you last forever.” Action! Interviews with Directors from Classical Hollywood to Contemporary Iran is our attempt to get 19 directors, working in a wide range of eras, genres, production styles, and budgets, to, “get their heads above the mob”–without, we trust, getting them “knocked off.”

It's fitting that this first collection of writings from Bright Lights is comprised of interviews with directors. I started the magazine in 1974 as an “auteurist, truth-and-light sheet,” in the words of early contributor Jeff Wise. Bright Lights' profile evolved over time according to the peculiar alchemy of my and the writers' interests. It continued to feature director studies and interviews while expanding into many other areas including genre studies, production histories, political screeds, explorations of marginalized realms like exploitation and queer cinema, and whatever other topics the writers found engaging. This diversity is represented in Action!

When compiling this collection, we asked ourselves, how do serious film fans experience cinema? What do they look for? Do they focus exclusively on specific directors, genres, high budgets or low budgets, European or Asian or American films? We believe that many viewers like to experience all that cinema has to offer–docs and features, indies and blockbusters, art films and exploitation.