The Silver Screen Oasis

At the risk of sounding like one of those kids who goes trolling on message boards hoping to find someone who'll more or less write their term papers for them...

This Thursday, I'm scheduled to speak at my local Toastmasters, but with school and my new job with American Red Cross, I really have very little time to spend wrestling over a topic or writing the speech. As my last speech was rather technical, this time around I just wanted to have some fun with it, and as such I was going to try to speak on something movie-related, which would also be easy to write in a single evening.

The speech has to have a clear point and should be rather narrow in focus, because I have very little time to actually speak (it's only 5 minutes, give or take a minute).

My question is - Anyone out there have a movie-related topic they'd suggest that I do my speech about? I thought about focusing on a certain director or type of film, but I'm just not quite sure which I should do. (I think my frame of reference has become too broad.)

Let me emphasize - at this point, I just want a topic, and I can go from there. Thanks!

-Stephen

With the elections next week is is possible to have a political/election theme? I was thinking even more like the comedy side of things. Films like "Duck Soup" or "The Great Man Votes."

How about Halloween? Make suggestions for Horror/Sci-Fi films or discuss your favorites.

If it were me, and I love to speak in public, I would take my harried situation and turn it into a funny situation comedy of why I could not write a speech. Surely you could talk about the hassle you are having and how it infected your driving desire to be a Toastmaster. Go back in time and give a brief ulogy of your old life and now the new.

Good luck.


Uncle Stevie

Combine Movieman's "Election" topic with MichJ's "Halloween" topic:

The Undead (vampires) vs. The Living Dead (zombies) -- choose a movie to illustrate each and why either the Undead or the Living Dead (your choice) is the more monstrous.

How about comparing and contrasting going to the movies when you were a child with going to the movies today. It could focus on the change in the movie genres available, the costs involved or just the way a child sees the experience compared with the adult experience.

Just a thought.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going with one of four possible ideas:

1. General overview of the precode era and types of taboo content (sexual, violent, etc)
2. Overview of the horror genre, beginning with the silent era
3. Brief overview of world cinema and some of the key names with short summaries of their content (Bergman, Tati, De Sica, Godard, Fellini, Ray, Truffaut, Kurosawa, etc.) - I thought about starting each point with "If you like comedy/philosophy/adventure/realism/religion etc., you might try..."
4. An overview of silent comedy (or even silents in general with a few key names, if time permits)

I did like Chris's political idea as well, but with this bunch, I'm a little afraid to do something like that. I'm actually a bit nervous to do the pre-code thing as well, only I thought some might find it interesting.

-Stephen

Just hit on a brainstorm this evening on the way home from work - doing a presentation on William Castle and his gimmickry, and what perfect timing! Six of Castle's films are scheduled for TCM this weekend, so I can tie my presentation in to that.

-S.

Brilliant! Glad you liked my idea.

Sounds great; let us know how it goes!