Monsters in the Movies


John Landis - 2011
    He also surveys the historical origins of the archetypal monsters, such as vampires, zombies, and werewolves, and takes you behind the scenes to discover the secrets of those special-effects wizards who created such legendary frighteners as King Kong, Dracula, and Halloween's Michael Myers. With more than 1000 stunning movie stills and posters, this book is sure to keep even the most intense fright-seekers at the edge of their seats for hours!

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls


Peter Biskind - 1998
    This down-and-dirty romp through Hollywood in the 1970s introduces the young filmmakers--Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas, Spielberg, Altman, and Beatty--and recreates an era that transformed American culture forever.

DC Comics Year by Year: A Visual Chronicle


Daniel Wallace - 2010
    Here, for the first time, is the chronological account of the adventures of both the characters and the company that created them. The" DC Chronicle Year by Year" traces DC's fascinating story: the company's beginnings as National Allied Publications in the 1934, and its subsequent change to Detective Comics, Inc. in 1937. The book details all the major DC publishing landmarks and more, displayed clearly, month by month. Highlighting the debuts of Superman and Batman, the geniuses that invented them, and the real-life events-like the Vietnam War, the atom bomb, the Space Race- that shaped the atmosphere of the times, "DC Chronicle Year by Year" follows the characters' foray into the real world through TV series and blockbuster movies. Features original cover art by well-known DC artist Ryan Sook and a foreword by Paul Levitz, who was president of DC Comics from 2002 - 2009. TM & (c) DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Rebel Without a Crew, or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker with $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player


Robert Rodríguez - 1995
    This is both one man's remarkable story and an essential guide for anyone who has a celluloid story to tell and the dreams and determination to see it through.  Part production diary, part how-to manual, Rodriguez unveils how he was able to make his influential first film on only a $7,000 budget.  Also included is the appendix, 'The Ten Minute Film Course,” a tell-all on how to save thousands of dollars on film school and teach yourself the ropes of film production, directing, and screenwriting.

Adventures in the Screen Trade


William Goldman - 1983
    Two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter and the bestselling author of Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood's inner sanctums...on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and other films...into the plush offices of Hollywood producers...into the working lives of acting greats such as Redford, Olivier, Newman, and Hoffman...and into his own professional experiences and creative thought processes in the crafting of screenplays. You get a firsthand look at why and how films get made and what elements make a good screenplay. Says columnist Liz Smith, "You'll be fascinated.

Destroy All Movies!!!: The Complete Guide to Punks on Film


Zack Carlson - 2010
    Plus hundreds of stills, posters, covers, candid shots and images, many in full color! The most comprehensive and insane book ever made about punk and/or movies!!!

The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film


Michael J. Weldon - 1983
    He is now unfit for conventional employment. Because of the addictive nature of these films, we the publishers cannot guarantee that your sanity won't be endangered by reading this book.

Profoundly Disturbing: The Shocking Movies That Changed History


Joe Bob Briggs - 2003
    . . ugly and obscene . . . a degrading, senseless misuse of film and time." –The Los Angeles Times"People are right to be shocked." –The New YorkerFrom the murky depths can come the most extraordinary things. . . . Profoundly Disturbing examines the underground cult movies that have–unexpectedly and unintentionally–revolutionized the way that all movies would be made. Called "exploitation films" because they often exploit our most primal fears and desires, these overlooked movies pioneered new cinematographic techniques, subversive narrative structuring, and guerrilla marketing strategies that would eventually trickle up into mainstream cinema. In this book Joe Bob Briggs uncovers the most seminal cult movies of the twentieth century and reveals the fascinating untold stories behind their making. Briggs is best known as the cowboy-hat wearing, Texas-drawling host of Joe Bob's Drive-in Theater and Monstervision, which ran for fourteen years on cable TV. His goofy, disarming take offers a refreshingly different perspective on movies and film making. He will make you laugh out loud but then surprise you with some truly insightful analysis. And, with more than three decades of immersion in the cult movie business, Briggs has a wealth of behind-the-scenes knowledge about the people who starred in, and made these movies. There is no one better qualified or more engaging to write about this subject.All the subgenres in cult cinema are covered, with essays centering around twenty movies including Triumph of the Will (1938), Mudhoney (1965), Night of the Living Dead (1967), Deep Throat (1973), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Drunken Master (1978), and Crash (1996). Accompanying the text are dozens of capsule reviews providing ideas for related films to discover, as well as kitschy and fun archival film stills. An essential reference and guide to this overlooked side of cinema, Profoundly Disturbing should be in the home of every movie fan, especially those who think they've seen everything.

Young Frankenstein: The Story of the Making of the Film: A Mel Brooks' Book


Mel Brooks - 2016
    The book is alive and teeming with hundreds of photos, original interviews, and hilarious commentary.Young Frankenstein was made with deep respect for the craft and history of cinema--and for the power of a good schwanzstucker joke. This picture-driven book, written by one of the greatest comedy geniuses of all time, takes readers inside the classic film's marvelous creation story via never-before-seen black and white and color photography from the set and contemporary interviews with the cast and crew, most notably, legendary writer-director Mel Brooks.With access to more than 225 behind-the-scenes photos and production stills, and with captions written by Brooks, this book will also rely on interviews with gifted director of photography Gerald Hirschfeld, Academy Award-winning actress Cloris Leachman, and veteran producer Michael Gruskoff.

Who the Hell's in It: Conversations With Hollywood's Legendary Actors


Peter Bogdanovich - 2000
    He started out as an actor (he debuted on the stage in his sixth-grade production of Finian’s Rainbow); he watched actors work (he went to the theater every week from the age of thirteen and saw every important show on, or off, Broadway for the next decade); he studied acting, starting at sixteen, with Stella Adler (his work with her became the foundation for all he would ever do as an actor and a director).Now, in his new book, Who the Hell’s in It, Bogdanovich draws upon a lifetime of experience, observation and understanding of the art to write about the actors he came to know along the way; actors he admired from afar; actors he worked with, directed, befriended. Among them: Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, John Cassavetes, Charlie Chaplin, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, Ben Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn, Boris Karloff, Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, Frank Sinatra, and James Stewart.Bogdanovich captures—in their words and his—their work, their individual styles, what made them who they were, what gave them their appeal and why they’ve continued to be America’s iconic actors.On Lillian Gish: “the first virgin hearth goddess of the screen . . . a valiant and courageous symbol of fortitude and love through all distress.” On Marlon Brando: “He challenged himself never to be the same from picture to picture, refusing to become the kind of film star the studio system had invented and thrived upon—the recognizable human commodity each new film was built around . . . The funny thing is that Brando’s charismatic screen persona was vividly apparent despite the multiplicity of his guises . . . Brando always remains recognizable, a star-actor in spite of himself. ” Jerry Lewis to Bogdanovich on the first laugh Lewis ever got onstage: “I was five years old. My mom and dad had a tux made—I worked in the borscht circuit with them—and I came out and I sang, ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ the big hit at the time . . . It was 1931, and I stopped the show—naturally—a five-year-old in a tuxedo is not going to stop the show? And I took a bow and my foot slipped and hit one of the floodlights and it exploded and the smoke and the sound scared me so I started to cry. The audience laughed—they were hysterical . . . So I knew I had to get the rest of my laughs the rest of my life, breaking, sitting, falling, spinning.”John Wayne to Bogdanovich, on the early years of Wayne’s career when he was working as a prop man: “Well, I’ve naturally studied John Ford professionally as well as loving the man. Ever since the first time I walked down his set as a goose-herder in 1927. They needed somebody from the prop department to keep the geese from getting under a fake hill they had for Mother Machree at Fox. I’d been hired because Tom Mix wanted a box seat for the USC football games, and so they promised jobs to Don Williams and myself and a couple of the players. They buried us over in the properties department, and Mr. Ford’s need for a goose-herder just seemed to fit my pistol.”These twenty-six portraits and conversations are unsurpassed in their evocation of a certain kind of great movie star that has vanished. Bogdanovich’s book is a celebration and a farewell.From the Hardcover edition.

Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner


Paul M. Sammon - 1996
    Dick's brilliant and troubling SF novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, still rules as the most visually dense, thematically challenging, and influential SF film ever made. Future Noir is the story of that triumph.The making of Blade Runner was a seven-year odyssey that would test the stamina and the imagination of writers, producers, special effects wizards, and the most innovative art directors and set designers in the industry.A fascinating look at the ever-shifting interface between commerce and the art that is modern Hollywood, Future Noir is the intense, intimate, anything-but-glamerous inside account of how the work of SF's most uncompromising author was transformed into a critical sensation, a commercial success, and a cult classic.

The Gross: The Hits, the Flops: The Summer That Ate Hollywood


Peter Bart - 1999
    A backstage glimpse of the realities of the new Hollywood focuses on the film releases and strategies of the summer of 1998, showing why Godzilla was fated to fail and how Spielberg triumphed.

Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses: Roger Corman, King of the B-Movie


Chris Nashawaty - 2013
    As told by Corman himself and graduates of “The Corman Film School,” including Peter Bogdanovich, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, and Martin Scorsese, this comprehensive oral history takes readers behind the scenes of more than six decades of American cinema, as now-legendary directors and actors candidly unspool recollections of working with Corman, continually one-upping one another with tales of the years before their big breaks.Crab Monsters is supplemented with dozens of full-color reproductions of classic Corman movie posters; behind-the-scenes photographs and ephemera (many taken from Corman’s personal archive); and critical essays on Corman’s most daring films—including The Intruder, Little Shop of Horrors, and The Big Doll House— that make the case for Corman as an artist like no other. Praise for Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses: “This new coffee table book, brimming with outrageous stills from many of Corman’s hundreds of films, looks at the wild career of the starmaker who was largely responsible for so much of the Hollywood we know today.” —New York Post “Vividly illustrated.” —People “An enthusiastic ode to colorful, seat-of-your-pants filmmaking, this one’s hard to beat.” —Booklist (starred review) “It includes in-depth aesthetic appreciations of ten of Corman’s movies, which, taken together, make a compelling case for Corman as an artist.” —Hollywood.com “Author Nashawaty deftly describes how Corman’s legacy is far more nuanced than most realize.” —American Way magazine “Outrageously entertaining . . .”  —Parade magazine “Endlessly fascinating.” —PopMatters.com “You’d think it’d be impossible for any writer to put together a Roger Corman biography that's anywhere near as fun as his movies, but Entertainment Weekly writer/critic Chris Nashawaty has done just that.”  —Complex magazine

Star Wars


Will Brooker - 2009
    Though at first Star Wars seems a simple fairy-tale, it becomes far more complex when we realize that the director is rooting for both sides, creating a tension unsettles the saga as a whole and illuminates new sides of Lucas' masterpiece.

Cinema Sewer, Vol. 1


Robin Bougie - 2007
    A mind-melting compilation of gonzo writing, illustration and comics about the most insane, sexy, awkward, cheesy, hilarious, upsetting and jaw-dropping movies in the history of film, Cinema Sewer joyously celebrates the sleaziest aspects of the moviegoing experience, while delving deep into bizarre cinematic history. Bougie's distinctive writing style has made him famous among a loyal following of cult film fans. Includes: •Graphic illustrations by Bougie and associates • Bizarre film trivia • 100 pages of never-before-seen interviews, rants, comics • Rare genre film ads • DIY 'zine aesthetic