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Ed Wood by Scott Alexander
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The Making of Pride and Prejudice
Sue Birtwistle - 1995
This indispensable companion to the series is packed with colour photographs, interviews and lavish illustrations.Follow a typical day's filming, including the wholesale transformation of Lacock village into Jane Austen's Meryton. Discover how Colin Firth approaches the part of Darcy, how actors' costumes and wigs are designed and how Carl Davis recreates the period music and composes an original score. Piece together the roles of behind-the-scenes contributors from researchers to fencing masters.
The Wolf of Wall Street
Jordan Belfort - 2007
By night he spent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and international globe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids waiting at home, and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did his bidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called . . .THE WOLF OF WALL STREETIn the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notorious investment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamous names in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper who led his merry mob on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Street and into a massive office on Long Island. Now, in this astounding and hilarious tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story of greed, power, and excess that no one could invent.Reputedly the prototype for the film Boiler Room, Stratton Oakmont turned microcap investing into a wickedly lucrative game as Belfort’s hyped-up, coked-out brokers browbeat clients into stock buys that were guaranteed to earn obscene profits—for the house. But an insatiable appetite for debauchery, questionable tactics, and a fateful partnership with a breakout shoe designer named Steve Madden would land Belfort on both sides of the law and into a harrowing darkness all his own.From the stormy relationship Belfort shared with his model-wife as they ran a madcap household that included two young children, a full-time staff of twenty-two, a pair of bodyguards, and hidden cameras everywhere—even as the SEC and FBI zeroed in on them—to the unbridled hedonism of his office life, here is the extraordinary story of an ordinary guy who went from hustling Italian ices at sixteen to making hundreds of millions. Until it all came crashing down . . .
Notes on a Life
Eleanor Coppola - 2008
Her first book, Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now, was hailed as “one of the most revealing of all first hand looks at the movies” (Los Angeles Herald Examiner). And now the author brings the same honesty, insight, and wit to this absorbing account of the next chapters in her life. In this new work we travel back and forth with her from the swirling center of the film world to the intimate heart of her family. She offers a fascinating look at the vision that drives her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, and describes her daughter Sofia’s rise to fame with the film Lost in Translation. Even as she visits faraway movie sets and attends parties, she is pulled back to pursue her own art, but is always focused on keeping her family safe. The death of their son Gio in a boating accident in 1986 and her struggle to cope with her grief and anger leads to a moving exploration of her deepest feelings as a woman and a mother. Written with a quiet strength, Eleanor Coppola’s powerful portrait of the conflicting demands of family, love and art is at once very personal and universally resonant.
You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation
Susannah Gora - 2010
You’re a bonafide Brat Pack devotee—and you’re not alone.The films of the Brat Pack—from Sixteen Candles to Say Anything—are some of the most watched, bestselling DVDs of all time. The landscape that the Brat Packmemorialized—where outcasts and prom queens fall in love, preppies and burn-outs become buds, and frosted lip gloss, skinny ties, and exuberant optimism made us feel invincible—is rich with cultural themes and significance, and has influenced an entire generation who still believe that life always turns out the way it is supposed to.You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried takes us back to that era, interviewing key players, such as Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy, and John Cusack, and mines all the material from the movies to the music to the way the films were made to show how they helped shape our visions for romance, friendship, society, and success.
Juno: The Shooting Script
Diablo Cody - 2008
Quick-witted and distinctively unique, Juno walks Dancing Elk High's halls to her own tune—preferably anything by The Stooges—but underneath her tough, no-nonsense exterior is just a teenage girl trying to figure it all out.While most girls at Dancing Elk are updating their MySpace page or shopping at the mall, Juno is a whip-smart Minnesota teen living by her own rules. A typically boring afternoon becomes anything but when Juno decides to have sex with the charmingly unassuming Bleeker (Michael Cera). Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, she and best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) hatch a plan to find Juno's unborn baby the perfect set of parents courtesy of the local Penny Saver.They set their sights on Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), an affluent suburban couple longing to adopt their first child. Luckily, Juno has the support of her dad and stepmother (J. K. Simmons and Allison Janney). Juno's physical changes mirror her personal growth while the veneer of Mark and Vanessa's idyllic life starts to show signs of cracking. With a fearless intellect far removed from the usual teenage angst, Juno conquers her problems head-on, displaying a youthful exuberance both smart and unexpected.
Gilliam on Gilliam (Directors on Directors)
Terry Gilliam - 1999
From the medieval mock-epic Monty Python and the Holy Grail to the mythic, paranoid worlds of The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gilliam has pursued a totally personal, uncompromising vision. This has led to legendary battles with studios and financiers, notably over The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Brazil, which is now widely considered a classic. Gilliam is a famously candid commentator on his own work, and in these specially recorded interviews he reflects on how his Midwestern childhood and early career as an animator prepared him to undertake his extraordinary adventures in cinema.
The Heart of the Lion: A Novel of Irving Thalberg's Hollywood
Martin Turnbull - 2020
He’s climbed all the way to head of production at newly merged Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and is determined to transform Leo the Lion into an icon of the most successful studio in town.The harder he works, the higher he soars. But at what cost? The more he achieves, the closer he risks flying into oblivion. A frail and faulty heart shudders inside this chest that blazes with ambition. Thalberg knows that his charmed life at the top of the Hollywood heap is a dangerous tightrope walk: each day—each breath, even—could be his last. Shooting for success means risking his health, friendships, everything. Yet, against all odds, the man no one thought would survive into adulthood almost single-handedly ushers in a new era of filmmaking.This is Hollywood at its most daring and opulent—the Sunset Strip, premieres at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, stars like Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford—and Irving is at the center of it all.From the author of the Hollywood’s Garden of Allah novels comes a mesmerizing true-life story of the man behind Golden Age mythmaking: Irving Thalberg, the prince of Tinseltown.Martin Turnbull's Hollywood’s Garden of Allah novels have been optioned for the screen by film & television producer, Tabrez Noorani.
Before Sunrise & Before Sunset: Two Screenplays
Richard Linklater - 2005
They are immediately attracted. Despite knowing this may be the only time they will see each other, in the next few hours in the city of Vienna, they share everything and promise to meet again. Nearly a decade later, Jesse, now a novelist on a publicity tour, sees Celine in a bookstore in Paris. Again their time is short, and they spend it reestablishing the connection they experienced on their first meeting. Romantic, poignant, understated, and often profound, these two screenplays are sure to become classics in their own right.
Spencer Tracy
James Curtis - 2011
CohanHis full name was Spencer Bonaventure Tracy. He was called “The Gray Fox” by Frank Sinatra; other actors called him the “The Pope.”Spencer Tracy’s image on-screen was that of a self-reliant man whose sense of rectitude toward others was matched by his sense of humor toward himself. Whether he was Father Flanagan of Boys Town, Clarence Darrow of Inherit the Wind, or the crippled war veteran in Bad Day at Black Rock, Tracy was forever seen as a pillar of strength.In his several comedy roles opposite Katharine Hepburn (Woman of the Year and Adam’s Rib among them) or in Father of the Bride with Elizabeth Taylor, Tracy was the sort of regular American guy one could depend on.Now James Curtis, acclaimed biographer of Preston Sturges (“Definitive” —Variety), James Whale, and W. C. Fields (“By far the fullest, fairest, and most touching account . . . we have yet had. Or are likely to have” —Richard Schickel, The New York Times Book Review, cover review), gives us the life of one of the most revered screen actors of his generation.Curtis writes of Tracy’s distinguished career, his deep Catholicism, his devoted relationship to his wife, his drinking that got him into so much trouble, and his twenty-six-year-long bond with his partner on-screen and off, Katharine Hepburn. Drawing on Tracy’s personal papers and writing with the full cooperation of Tracy’s daughter, Curtis tells the rich story of the brilliant but haunted man at the heart of the legend. We see him from his boyhood in Milwaukee; given over to Dominican nuns (“They drill that religion in you”); his years struggling in regional shows and stock (Tracy had a photographic memory and an instinct for inhabiting a character from within); acting opposite his future wife, Louise Treadwell; marrying and having two children, their son, John, born deaf.We see Tracy’s success on Broadway, his turning out mostly forgettable programmers with the Fox Film Corporation, and going to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and getting the kinds of roles that had eluded him in the past—a streetwise priest opposite Clark Gable in San Francisco; a screwball comedy, Libeled Lady; Kipling’s classic of the sea, Captains Courageous. Three years after arriving at MGM, Tracy became America’s top male star.We see how Tracy embarked on a series of affairs with his costars . . . making Northwest Passage and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which brought Ingrid Bergman into his life. By the time the unhappy shoot was over, Tracy, looking to do a comedy, made Woman of the Year. Its unlikely costar: Katharine Hepburn.We see Hepburn making Tracy her life’s project—protecting and sustaining him in the difficult job of being a top-tier movie star.And we see Tracy’s wife, Louise, devoting herself to studying how deaf children could be taught to communicate orally with the hearing and speaking world.Curtis writes that Tracy was ready to retire when producer-director Stanley Kramer recruited him for Inherit the Wind—a collaboration that led to Judgment at Nuremberg, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and Tracy’s final picture, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner . . . A rich, vibrant portrait—the most intimate and telling yet of this complex man considered by many to be the actor’s actor.
Strange Days
James Cameron - 1995
1999: the recently perfected technology of virtual reality has spawned a large black market specializing in the buying and selling of other people's experiences. With color photos.
Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller
Janet Leigh - 1995
The innovative cinematography, the unsettling music score, and the stabbing scene in the shower at the Bates Motel, have established "psycho" as an enduring classic. Filled with Janet Leigh's memories, some well-known and some never-before-published photographs, and new interviews with key players, this book takes a revealing look at one of the most famous films ever made.
Hollywood Animal: A Memoir
Joe Eszterhas - 2003
He came to America and grew up in Cleveland—stealing cars, rolling drunks, battling priests, nearly going to jail. He became the screenwriter of the worldwide hits Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, and Flashdance. He also wrote the legendary disasters Showgirls and Jade. The rebellion never ended, even as his films went on to gross more than a billion dollars at the box office and he became the most famous—or infamous—screenwriter in Hollywood. Joe Eszterhas is a complex and paradoxical figure: part outlaw and outsider combined with equal parts romantic and moralist. More than one person has called him “the devil.” He has been referred to as “the most reviled man in America.” But Time asked, “If Shakespeare were alive today, would his name be Joe Eszterhas?” and he was the first screenwriter picked as one of the movie industry’s 100 Most Powerful People. Although he is often accused of sexism and misogyny, his wife is his best friend and equal partner. Considered an apostle of sex and violence, he is a churchgoer who believes in the power of prayer. For many years the ultimate symbol of Hollywood excess, he has moved his family to Ohio and immersed himself in the midwestern lifestyle he so values. Controversial, fearless, extremely talented, and totally unpredictable, the author of the best-selling American Rhapsody and National Book Award nominee Charlie Simpson’s Apocalypse has surprised us yet again: he has written a memoir like no other.On one level, Hollywood Animal is a shocking and often devastating look inside the movie business. It intimately explores the concept of fame and gives us a never-before-seen look at the famous. Eszterhas reveals the fights, the deals, the extortions, the backstabbing, and the sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll world that is Hollywood. But there are many more levels to this extraordinary work. It is the story of a street kid who survives a life filled with obstacles and pain . . . a chronicle of a love affair that is sensual, glorious, and unending . . . an excruciatingly detailed look at a man facing down the greatest enemy he’s ever fought: the cancer inside him . . . and perhaps most important, Hollywood Animal is the heartbreaking story of a father and son that defines the concepts of love and betrayal.This is a book that will shock you and make you laugh, anger you and move you to tears. It is pure Joe Eszterhas—a raw, spine-chilling celebration of the human spirit.
Hitchcock
François Truffaut - 1966
Here is a rare opportunity to eavesdrop on two cinematic masters from very different backgrounds as they cover each of Hitch's films in succession. Though this book was initially published in 1967 when Hitchcock was still active, Truffaut later prepared a revised edition that covered the final stages of his career. It's difficult to think of a more informative or entertaining introduction to Hitchcock's art, interests, and peculiar sense of humor. The book is a storehouse of insight and witticism, including the master's impressions of a classic like Rear Window ("I was feeling very creative at the time, the batteries were well charged"), his technical insight into Psycho's shower scene ("the knife never touched the body; it was all done in the [editing]"), and his ruminations on flops such as Under Capricorn ("If I were to make another picture in Australia today, I'd have a policeman hop into the pocket of a kangaroo and yell 'Follow that car!'"). This is one of the most delightful film books in print. --Raphael Shargel
The Citizen Kane Book
Pauline Kael - 1971
Mankiewicz and Orson Welles --Notes on the shooting script / prepared by Gary Carey --RKO cutting continuity of the Orson Welles production, Citizen Kane.
Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski
Annette Insdorf - 1999
His best-known films, Blue; White; Red; The Double Life of Veronique; and The Decalogue, remain watershed events in lmmaking history. Author Annette Insdorf, Kieslowskis close friend and translator, offers a revealing portrait of his life and monumental body of work. From the gold-bathed images of The Double Life of Veronique to the emotionally dark, visually haunting Blue, Kieslowskis films explore personal and social issues with inimitable brilliance. This paperback edition includes an updated introduction with information on the much anticipated release of Heaven (March 2002) which Kieslowski wrote and planned to film, before he died unexpectedly in March 1996.