Book picks similar to
The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements by Kristen Hoerl
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Sh*t Rough Drafts: Pop Culture's Favorite Books, Movies, and TV Shows as They Might Have Been
Paul Laudiero - 2014
What if F. Scott Fitzgerald had gone with the title The Coolest Gatsby? How would The Hunger Games change if Peeta were armed only with blueberry muffins? If the Man of Steel's S stood for Sexyman? MacBeth, Moby Dick, Harry Potter, Sense and Sensibility, The Lord of the Rings, and many more are each presented as if they were the actual typed or handwritten pages by the authors themselves, revealing the funny and frightful works they might have been with a little less capable judgment.
Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait
Kendra Bean - 2013
For more than thirty years, her name alone sold out theaters and cinemas the world over, and she inspired many of the greatest visionaries of her time: Laurence Olivier loved her; Winston Churchill praised her; Christian Dior dressed her.Through both an in-depth narrative and a stunning array of photos, Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait presents the personal story of one of the most celebrated women of the twentieth century, an engrossing tale of success, struggles, and triumphs. It chronicles Leigh’s journey from her birth in India to prominence in British film, winning the most-coveted role in Hollywood history, her celebrated love affair with Laurence Olivier, through to her untimely death at age fifty-three in 1967.Author Kendra Bean is the first Vivien Leigh biographer to delve into the Laurence Olivier Archives, where an invaluable collection of personal letters and documents ranging from interview transcripts to film contracts to medical records shed new insight on Leigh’s story. Illustrated by hundreds of rare and never-before-published images, including those by Leigh’s "official" photographer, Angus McBean, Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait is the first illustrated biography to closely examine the fascinating, troubled, and often misunderstood life of Vivien Leigh: the woman, the actress, the legend.
The Art and Soul of Dune
Tanya Lapointe - 2021
The Art and Soul of Dune also features exclusive interviews with key members of the cast and crew, including Denis Villeneuve, Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, and many more, delivering a uniquely candid account of the hugely ambitious international shoot.
Healed - How Cancer gave me a new life
Manisha Koirala - 2018
From her treatment in the US and the wonderful care provided by the oncologists there to how she rebuilt her life once she returned home, the book takes us on an emotional roller-coaster ride through her many fears and struggles and shows how she eventually came out triumphant.Today, as she completes six years of being cancer-free, she shares her story-one marked by apprehensions, disappointments and uncertainties-and the lessons she learnt along the way. Through her journey, she unravels cancer for us and inspires us to not buckle under its fear, but emerge alive, kicking and victorious.
Child Star
Shirley Temple Black - 1988
Born in 1928 in southern California, Shirley Temple was extraordinary from the start. At the age of three, she began acting, often in exploitative films directed and produced by some abusive studio executives. But Shirley's talent and perseverance could not be thwarted, and she soon entered a fruitful relationship with Twentieth Century Fox. Before long she was making films with the top stars of the day, including Gary Cooper, Carole Lombard, Lionel Barrymore, Joel McCrea and many others. There was something magical about Shirley Temple that cheered the soul of America during the Depression. She was the number one movie star of the nation for four consecutive years, from 1935 through 1938. In Child Star Shirley Temple Black reveals the whole story, the ups and downs of life as a Hollywood prodigy--including numerous kidnap threats and even a murder attempt against her.
Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors
Peter Bogdanovich - 1997
In this chronicle of Hollywood and the art of making movies, Peter Bogdanovich (director, screenwriter, actor and critic) interviews 16 directors, including: Robert Aldrich; George Cukor; Howard Hawks; Alfred Hitchcock; Fritz Lang; Sidney Lumet; Otto Preminger; and Josef von Sternberg.
The Wizard of Oz
Salman Rushdie - 1992
The author briefly recounts the making of The Wizard of Oz and discusses its plot, music, and themes.
Be Scared of Everything: Horror Essays
Peter Counter - 2020
P. Lovecraft.Slinging ectoplasm, tombstones, and chainsaws with aplomb, Be Scared of Everything is a frighteningly smart celebration of horror culture that will appeal to both horror aficionados and casual fans. Combining pop culture criticism and narrative memoir, Counter’s essays consider and deconstruct film, TV, video games andtrue crime to find importance in the occult, pathos in Ouija boards, poetry in madness, and beauty in annihilation.Comprehensive in scope, these essays examine popular horror media including Silent Hill, Hannibal, Hereditary, the Alien films, Jaws, The X-Files, The Terror, The Southern Reach Trilogy, Interview withthe Vampire, Misery, Gerald’s Game, The Sixth Sense, Scream, Halloween, The Blair Witch Project, The Babadook, the works of H. P. Lovecraft, Slenderman stories, alongside topics like nuclear physics, cannibalism, blood, Metallica, ritual magic, nightmares, and animatronic haunted houses.This is a book that shows us everything is terrifying—from Pokémon to PTSD—and that horror can be just as honest, vulnerable, and funny as it is scary.
Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps: Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking
Annie Atkins - 2020
Dublin-based designer Annie Atkins invites readers into the creative process behind her intricately designed, rigorously researched, and visually stunning graphic props. These objects may be given just a fleeting moment of screen time, but their authenticity is vital and their role is crucial: to nudge both the actors on set and the audience just that much further into the fictional world of the film.
The Firm / The Partner / The Pelican Brief / The Rainmaker / A Time to Kill
John Grisham - 2001
Hollywood's Unhappiest Endings: Legends Never Die Updated
Les Macdonald - 2013
Hollywood has so many stories to tell and, unfortunately, so many of them do not have happy endings. From Marilyn Monroe to posthumous Oscar winner Heath Ledger, this book lays bare some of the myths and gets to the heart of some of Hollywood's Unhappiest Endings.
Garbo
Robert Gottlieb - 2021
Garbo appeared in just twenty-four Hollywood movies, yet her impact on the world--and that indescribable, transcendent presence she possessed--was rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe's. She was looked on as a unique phenomenon, a sphinx, a myth, the most beautiful woman in the world, but in reality she was a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, na�ve, and always on her guard. When she arrived in Hollywood, aged nineteen, she spoke barely a word of English and was completely unprepared for the ferocious publicity that quickly adhered to her as, almost overnight, she became the world's most famous actress.In Garbo, the acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb offers a vivid and thorough retelling of her life, beginning in the slums of Stockholm and proceeding through her years of struggling to elude the attention of the world--her desperate, futile striving to be "left alone." He takes us through the films themselves, from M-G-M's early presentation of her as a "vamp"--her overwhelming beauty drawing men to their doom, a formula she loathed--to the artistic heights of Camille and Ninotchka ("Garbo Laughs!"), by way of Anna Christie ("Garbo Talks!"), Mata Hari, and Grand Hotel. He examines her passive withdrawal from the movies, and the endless attempts to draw her back. And he sketches the life she led as a very wealthy woman in New York--"a hermit about town"--and the life she led in Europe among the Rothschilds and men like Onassis and Churchill. Her relationships with her famous co-star John Gilbert, with Cecil Beaton, with Leopold Stokowski, with Erich Maria Remarque, with George Schlee--were they consummated? Was she bisexual? Was she sexual at all? The whole world wanted to know--and still wants to know.In addition to offering his rich account of her life, Gottlieb, in what he calls "A Garbo Reader," brings together a remarkable assembly of glimpses of Garbo from other people's memoirs and interviews, ranging from Ingmar Bergman and Tallulah Bankhead to Roland Barthes; from literature (she turns up everywhere--in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, in Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and the letters of Marianne Moore and Alice B. Toklas); from countless songs and cartoons and articles of merchandise. Most extraordinary of all are the pictures--250 or so ravishing movie stills, formal portraits, and revealing snapshots--all reproduced here in superb duotone. She had no personal vanity, no interest in clothes and make-up, yet the story of Garbo is essentially the story of a face and the camera. Forty years after her career ended, she was still being tormented by unrelenting paparazzi wherever she went.Includes Black-and-White Photographs
Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat
Jonathan Kauffman - 2018
Impeccably researched, Hippie Food chronicles how the longhairs, revolutionaries, and back-to-the-landers rejected the square establishment of President Richard Nixon’s America and turned to a more idealistic and wholesome communal way of life and food.From the mystical rock-and-roll cult known as the Source Family and its legendary vegetarian restaurant in Hollywood to the Diggers’ brown bread in the Summer of Love to the rise of the co-op and the origins of the organic food craze, Kauffman reveals how today’s quotidian whole-foods staples—including sprouts, tofu, yogurt, brown rice, and whole-grain bread—were introduced and eventually became part of our diets. From coast to coast, through Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Vermont, Kauffman tracks hippie food’s journey from niche oddity to a cuisine that hit every corner of this country.A slick mix of gonzo playfulness, evocative detail, skillful pacing, and elegant writing, Hippie Food is a lively, engaging, and informative read that deepens our understanding of our culture and our lives today.
Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks
David Lavery - 1994
This fascinating collection of essays considers David Lynch's politics, the enigmatic musical score, and the show's cult status, treatment of family violence, obsession with doubling, and silencing of women. Also included are a director and writer list, a cast list, a Twin Peaks calendar, a complete scene breakdown for the entire series, and a comprehensive bibliography.
A Single Revolution: Don't look for a match. Light one.
Shani Silver - 2021
She's an advocate for single women feeling good while single—and there's a difference.A Single Revolution is one book for single women that won't approach you like you're unfinished. It's for those who are exhausted, frustrated, confused, or angry—who want relationships but don't deserve to be miserable in the meantime.A grueling dating grind isn't a prerequisite for partnership. You can be happily single and still meet someone—that's allowed. It's possible to value your single time so much that you refuse to give it up for anything less than the amazing relationships you deserve. It's also possible to stop searching for them so relentlessly that you ignore every other aspect of your valid, beautiful life. This isn't a book about dating. It's a book about living.You can choose how you feel about being single. You can choose to feel wrong, or you can choose to feel free.A Single Revolution isn't about changing yourself—it's about changing your mind.