Book picks similar to
Steps To Stardom: My Story by Paul Picerni


television
biography
film
film-and-tv-history

Not Bad For A Human


Lance Henriksen - 2011
    He's best know as the empathetic android Bishop in Aliens and the intuitive criminal profiler Frank Black in the TV series "Millennium," but he has also played gunfighters and gangsters, an astronaut, a vampire, a sadistic monk, Charles Bronson and Abraham Lincoln. He's mentored Tarzan, Evel Knievel and the Antichrist, and fought Terminators, Aliens, Predators, Pinhead, Bigfoot, Superman, the Autobots, Mr. T, Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal. He's worked with directors James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Kathryn Bigelow, Walter Hill, Sidney Lumet, Francois Truffaut, John Huston, David Fincher, John Woo, Jim Jarmusch and Sam Raimi... But this is just skimming the surface.Henriksen is a true artist - a painter, a potter and a creative collaborator who brings complexity and humanity to all of his work by drawing on real life experiences that are often stranger than fiction. His biography not only celebrates the actor's screen persona, film by film, but also recounts the chaotic upbringing and early life experiences that shaped him, revealing the man behind the image. As Lance so candidly states, "This isn't just a book about me becoming an actor. It's about all the people I've crossed paths with over the years who have helped me flourish in spite of the chaos in my early life. It's about a lifelong process of becoming a human being."

I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution


Craig Marks - 2011
    It was such a radical idea that almost no one thought it would actually succeed, much less become a force in the worlds of music, television, film, fashion, sports, and even politics. But it did work. MTV became more than anyone had ever imagined.I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV's programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands, learn about new music, and have something to talk about at parties. From its start in 1981 with a small cache of videos by mostly unknown British new wave acts to the launch of the reality-television craze with The Real World in 1992, MTV grew into a tastemaker, a career maker, and a mammoth business. Featuring interviews with nearly four hundred artists, directors, VJs, and television and music executives, I Want My MTV is a testament to the channel that changed popular culture forever.

On Kubrick


James Naremore - 2007
    This book argues that in several respects Kubrick was one of the cinema's last modernists.

Jason Priestley: A Memoir


Jason Priestley - 2014
    Yet despite more than twenty years in and out of the limelight, Priestley has carefully maintained his privacy. In this compelling memoir, the actor, director, and race-car aficionado invites us into his private world for the first time.With humor, sincerity, and charm, Priestley offers little-known details about his life and stories of his nine years in America’s most famous zip code. He talks candidly about celebrity, marriage, fatherhood, and his passion for car racing. He does not shy away from the devastating lows—his brief jail sentence for drunk driving and the crash at the Kentucky Speedway that nearly took his life. Priestley shares his innermost thoughts about life as a ’90s icon, and goes beyond the Brandon Walsh squeaky-clean image, revealing the tumultuous events that have shaped him, and where he finds his greatest happiness today

The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History


Andy Greene - 2020
    . . or it might have been last night, when you watched three episodes in a row. But either way, fifteen years after the show first aired, it's more popular than ever, and fans have only one problem--what to watch, or read, next.Fortunately, Rolling Stone writer Andy Greene has that answer. In his brand-new oral history, The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, Greene will take readers behind the scenes of their favorite moments and characters. Greene gives us the true inside story behind the entire show, from its origins on the BBC through its impressive nine-season run in America, with in-depth research and exclusive interviews. Fans will get the inside scoop on key episodes from "The Dundies" to "Threat Level Midnight" and "Goodbye, Michael," including behind-the-scenes details like the battle to keep it on the air when NBC wanted to pull the plug after just six episodes and the failed attempt to bring in James Gandolfini as the new boss after Steve Carell left, spotlighting the incredible, genre-redefining show created by the family-like team, who together took a quirky British import with dicey prospects and turned it into a primetime giant with true historical and cultural significance.Hilarious, heartwarming, and revelatory, The Office gives fans and pop culture buffs a front-row seat to the phenomenal sequence of events that launched The Office into wild popularity, changing the face of television and how we all see our office lives for decades to come.