This Guy!

I’m James Kenney

I write and I teach (for the City University of New York and St. John’s University) and I raise some kids with my wife. I saved the only copy of Peter Bogdanovich’s final film, SQUIRRELS TO THE NUTS and returned it to him seven years after he shot it. The film premiered at the New York Museum of Modern Art in March 2022 and I have been presenting it around the world, with screenings across the U.S., and in London and Melbourne in 2023. Most recently there have been screenings in Philadelphia (with Carrie Rickey) and New Orleans, and the film had its official premiere at the L.A. Cinemateque and at the Tribeca Screening Room in New York in early 2025. It is now avaiIable for rental and purchase from the usual suspects.

I have been contracted to write a book on Bogdanovich, due Spring 2026.

I am currently working in getting Gee Malik Linton’s director’s cut of DAUGHTER OF GOD, starring Keanu Reeves and Ana De Armas, exhibited, with its U.S. theatrical premiere in April 2023 at the Wisconsin Film Festival.

Trivia: I wrote a piece on Michael Pare that he personally thanked me for, and then he blocked me on Twitter because he was a Trump supporter. I still like Mike!

My work and research has been featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times and Sight and Sound magazine.

PUBLICATIONS:

I worked with Brian De Palma to edit and write the introduction to his unpublished screenplay, Ambrose Chapel, and edited and wrote introductions to Larry Cohen’s memoir I Killed Bettie Davis and his unproduced screenplay Headhunter.

Upcoming projects include editing and writing the introduction for Jim McBride’s Lost Screenplays of the 70s, Alex Cox and Rudy Wurlitzer’s collection of unproduced screenplays Zero Tolerance and Spare Parts, and additional projects with Lizzie Borden (Working Girls and Born in Flames) and Steven De Souza (screenwriter of Die Hard)