What people are saying about the book

“Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa: The Foreign Film In America”

“Just got the book you sent me, and after looking through it, I am positive you produced the finest, most beautiful volume devoted to film art that has ever been written! I kept saying “Wow!” at every page. Ordinarily, it might be rather difficult to associate such qualities as courage, imagination, compassion, and artistic wisdom with the owner-operator of a movie theatre in America. But all those attributes and several more mark the character of James N. Selvidge.”
---- Lou Guzzo
Drama Editor, The Seattle Times

“I did indeed get your book, for which I thank you. It’s an important book and I’m both gratified to relive through it my own immersion in these landmark films, and to feel above all a measure of relief that you are playing no small role in keeping them alive. At the time, we took their timelessness for granted, but now we know better, and with this in mind, my hat goes off to you!”
---- Jay P. Carr
National Society of Film Critics

“As a longtime Seattle film buff, I am loving your new book! I’m only up to page 81, but it has brought back many memories for me. I just wanted to say that I am greatly enjoying your book. For the price of a hundred dollars, it has brought back a million dollars worth of memories to me!”
---- John F. Black
Film Buff, Seattle, WA.

“The name Jim Selvidge has largely been forgotten in local movie circles, but he was Seattle’s pioneering exhibitor of foreign-language films in the 1950’s and 1960’s and the spiritual godfather of the vibrant specialty film scene the city now enjoys.
Over those two decades, Selvidge successfully ran several Northwest movie venues, including the Ridgemont, the first Seattle cinema to book foreign films as a regular policy and - - from 1956 to 1971 - - one of the most influential art houses in the country.
The book is full of reflection on Seattle’s odyssey from provincial backwater to cultural mecca, observations about the role of the exhibitor in the ever-changing film business and entertaining anecdotes about a host of long-vanished West Coast movie characters.”
---- William Arnold
Movie Critic, Seattle-Post Intelligencer

“In the age of Netflix, when just about any film made anywhere can be summoned painlessly to your mailbox, we do well to remember that once upon a time there were only a handful of independently operated movie theaters in the United States dedicated to showing foreign-language cinema. Prints were few, sane distributors fewer, and even as the beleaguered exhibitors struggled to build an audience for “movies you had to read,” often as not they had to fight off local censor boards, right wing xenophobes, and self-appointed arbiters of morality and decency. Jim Selvidge was one of these cultural heroes. Single handedly at times he championed Bergman, Godard, Bunuel, Kurosawa, et al., put the Seattle Censor Board out of business, founded the Seattle Film Society and enticed his community to take the first steps toward acquiring a reputation as one of the savviest movie towns in the country. It’s an important story.”
---- Richard T. Jameson
Manger Edgemont Theatre (1967-1970)
Editor Movitone News (1971-81) and Film Comment (1990-2000)