Office: Room 358 University College
Telephone: 204.474-9161
E-mail: toles@cc.umanitoba.ca
Toles, George E. BA (SUNY, Buffalo), MA, PhD (Virginia). Professor in Film. Special interest in American films, theatre, and 19th-and 20th century European and American fiction. Publications include essays on William Faulkner, Charles Brockden Brown, Mark Twain, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, Judith Thompson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Agee, Marilynne Robinson, Anne Tyler, Jean Renoir, Tennessee Williams, Vittorio De Sica, the Coen brothers, Greta Garbo, Jean-Claude Lauzon, Jane Bowles, movie humiliation scenes and movie sentiment. Guest editor for a MOSAIC issue on 'Film/Literature'. Productions for the University of Manitoba Theatre Group include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The House of Blue Leaves, A Streetcar Named Desire, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Crimes of the Heart, The Cherry Orchard, White Biting Dog, Mary Barnes, Translations, I Am Yours, Reckless, and Miss Julie. He has also directed Ross McMillan's Washing Spider Out at the PTE Second Stage and Toby's Made Up Mind at the Gas Station Theatre. He has adapted and directed the film-for-stage production of Shack Out on 101 and produced and acted in an independent production of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow In 2001 he directed John Guare's Bosoms and Neglect for Persona Theatre. Co-author of screenplays for the award-winning feature films Archangel and Careful. Author of the original screenplay for Guy Maddin's latest feature film, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs. Other screenplays include Goodbye, Cock-a-Doodle Doo!, The Dikemaster's Daughter, an adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel The Man Who Laughs, and Our Lady of the Goats. His book on film, A House Made of Light, was published last year by Wayne State University Press. He recently finished a screenplay adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Saddest Music in the World with Guy Maddin, and a monograph on Gary Cooper. In February of 2002, he directed a musical, You Can't Beat Fun, for the University of Manitoba's 125th Anniversary. This summer he and Ross McMillan adapted Dostoevsky's novella, Notes from Underground for the stage. He directed the first production of this play at the Winnipeg Fringe. He is presently working on a screenplay for a full length stop action animation feature, Edison and Neemo, commissioned by Boneyard Films in Vancouver, and an essay on tunneling. "I would like my students to gain a better understanding of Henry James' injunction: 'Be one of those on whom nothing is lost.'"