I wrote a piece for @TheAtlantic about the 1957 film A Face In the Crowd and what Director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg got right about politicians and mass media — and what they missed theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
2/ One of the thrills of researching this piece was diving into the Budd Schulberg papers in the Rauner special collections at the @dartmouth library — thank you to them for working with me during this trying time of COVID-19! 
3/ (spoiler alert) The film may be best know for its climax but Kazan and Schulberg struggled to come up with that ending. In the short story, Rhodes trips on the stairs and dies. In early versions of the screenplay, he takes his own life. But then Kazan had an idea:
4/ It’s remarkably subversive, the film, and disturbingly prescient. Elvis Costello has been for years working on a musical version. In any case, hope you enjoy the piece —
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