The Lady in the Van Magazine"'s Elise Nakhnikian said the film is all about the "fastidious, somewhat timid, and reclusive playwright Alan Bennett", and stated the film's "annoying glibness is neatly summarized" by the line: "In life, going downhill is an uphill job". The Lady in the Van The Lady in the Van is a 2015 British comedy-drama film directed by Nicholas Hytner, and starring Maggie Smith and Alex Jennings, based on the novel of the same name created by Alan Bennett. It was written by Alan Bennett, and it tells the (mostly) true story of his interactions with Mary Shepherd, an elderly woman who
The Spook Who Sat by the Door (film) in the early days of affirmative action when the first Black person hired by a company or agency would be seated close to the office entrance so that all who came and went could see that the company was racially mixed. The word "spook" in the title has a dual meaning: a racial slur for an African American and a slang term for spy. The same dual meaning plays a role in the plot of the 2000 Philip Roth novel, "The Human Stain", as well as in the film made after the book. This is shown in the film when