Lawrence N. Fox
24 August 1934 – 5 July 2018
The Cinematograph is dedicated to Larry Fox, and its writings are an attempt to preserve his methods and philosophy of viewing films. Many of the observations and insights here are his, and he inspired the approach to understanding movies that guides this site.
Larry was born at Passavant Hospital in Chicago and grew up in South Bend, Indiana and Park Ridge, Illinois. He graduated from Harvard University with a major in government, spent a year at Wharton, and spent his career doing financial projections for companies in Boston, Washington DC, San Francisco, and Chicago. He was an active volunteer at Lyric Opera of Chicago until the end of his life.
When listening to music, Larry said he would listen note by note as if reading the score, instead of listening for the melody as most people do. The melody, he said, would still come to him just as vividly. He applied the same method to watching films – instead of watching for the plot, he would memorize the details as they came to him, with the faith that the plot would still manifest itself in the end. This is probably the best description he gave of his unique approach to music and movies, which has yielded so much new insight.
Larry was an exceptionally kind and generous man with a heart and spirit to match his formidable intellect, which he always deprecated. His favorite filmmaker was Michelangelo Antonioni, but he had a wide appreciation for cinema’s many different styles and periods. Although he traveled relatively little, he maintained a worldly outlook with strong interests in global affairs, philosophy, music, painting, and literature.
