John Harkness, Senior Film Writer
The good, the bad and the ugly in film releases, week after week. John’s been in the business for over 28 years. If you need the definitive opinion, look no further.
Present at the birth of NOW -- he was the one fainting atthe sight of blood -- senior film writer John Harkness has written on film, music and books since the first issue of NOW in 1981.
Beyond the pages of NOW, John contributed articles to Sight And Sound, Take One, and the Cinematheque Ontario programme. He also spent several years as trade reporter for Screen International and Cinema Canada. "Anyone who wants to review film," he says, "should spend a year covering the industry. It tends to knock out a lot of one's illusions about the art of cinema." His book on the Oscars, The Academy Awards Handbook (Pinnacle Press) is currently in its eighth edition.
His favorite interviews over the years have been with the subjects he found most intimidating -- Susan Sontag, David Mamet, Harlan Ellison, and Peter Greenaway. "These are people whom you do not want to ask stupid questions."
Harkness' preferred leisure activity is poker, and has won several poker tournaments in Las Vegas. He plans to play in the prestigious Tournament of Champions this summer, and hopes to play in the World Series of Poker next spring.
Harkness was born in Montreal, but grew up in Sarnia and Halifax before obtaining a degree in English at Carleton University and doing post-graduate work in Cinema Studies at Columbia University,where he studied with the American critic Andrew Sarris and spent a great deal of time in New York's repertory cinemas. "Fifteen movies a week," he recalls, "and none of them on tape."
He is currently developing two book projects, a non-fiction book on the tournament poker scene and his first novel, Some Dark Hollow.
