Taking Dennis Hopper's words, "That's what it's all about man" to heart, they abandoned their comfortable upper middle class life and gave Illeana a childhood filled with hippies, goats, free spirits, and free love. Illeana writes, "Since it was all out of my control, I began to think of my life as a movie, with a Dennis Hopper-like father at the center of it."I Blame Dennis Hopper is a testament to the power of art and the tenacity of passion. It is a rollicking, funny, at times tender exploration of the way movies can change our lives. With crackling humor and a full heart, Douglas describes how a good Liza Minnelli impression helped her land her first gig and how Rudy Valley taught her the meaning of being a show biz trouper. From her first experience being on set with her grandfather and mentor-two-time Academy Award-winning actor Melvyn Douglas-to the moment she was discovered by Martin Scorsese for her blood-curdling scream and cast in her first film, to starring in movies alongside Robert DeNiro, Nicole Kidman, and Ethan Hawke, to becoming an award winning writer, director and producer in her own right, I Blame Dennis Hopper is an irresistible love letter to movies and filmmaking. Writing from the perspective of the ultimate show business fan, Douglas packs each page with hilarious anecdotes, bizarre coincidences, and fateful meetings that seem, well, right out of a plot of a movie.I Blame Dennis Hopper is the story of one woman's experience in show business, but it is also a genuine reminder of why we all love the movies: for the glitz, the glamor, the sweat, passion, humor, and escape they offer us all.

    A History of the French New Wave Cinema offers a fresh look at the social, economic, and aesthetic mechanisms that shaped French film in the 1950s, as well as detailed studies of the most important New Wave movies of the late 1950s and early 1960s.Richard Neupert first tracks the precursors to New Wave cinema, showing how they provided blueprints for those who would follow. He then demonstrates that it was a core group of critics-turned-directors from the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma—especially François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Jean-Luc Godard—who really revealed that filmmaking was changing forever. Later, their cohorts Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Pierre Kast continued in their own unique ways to expand the range and depth of the New Wave. In an exciting new chapter, Neupert explores the subgroup of French film practice known as the Left Bank Group, which included directors such as Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda. With the addition of this new material and an updated conclusion, Neupert presents a comprehensive review of the stunning variety of movies to come out of this important era in filmmaking.

    Mikels, Larry Cohen, and others who dared to make independent feature films their way, without bowing to a committee or focus group. This is an oblique how-to manual, covering everything from financing, distribution, lighting, camerawork and acting, to publicity, marketing and screenwriting. Would-be filmmakers as well as scholars will find much inspiration and enlightenment in this volume, which has been used in college film classes. In-depth interviews focus on philosophy, while anecdotes entertain as well as illuminate theory. Lists of recommended films, an A-Z directory, and quotations are also included.

    Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film contains all of Deren's essays on her own films as well as more general essays on film theory, the relation of film to dance, various technical aspects of film production, the distinction between amateur and professional filmmaking, and the famous 1946 chapbook titled "An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film," which has been reset here for the first time. There are hard-to-find articles written for magazines and art journals, as well as lectures, Q&A sessions, program notes, and manifestoes. This book will be particularly welcomed by the large audience that saw Martina Kudlacek's documentary, "In the Mirror of Maya Deren," during its theatrical release in the U.S. and Europe in 2002. The importance of Maya Deren's films and writings is further evidenced by the American Film Institute having named its highest award for independent filmmaking the "Maya Deren."

    In his distinct voice we hear Wilder's inside view on his collaborations with such stars as Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, William Holden, Audrey Hepburn, and Greta Garbo (he was a writer at MGM during the making of Ninotchka. Here are Wilder's sharp and funny behind-the-scenes stories about the making of A Foreign Affair, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Love in the Afternoon, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and Ace in the Hole, among many others. Wilder is ever mysterious, but Crowe gets him to speak candidly on Stanwyck: "She knew the script, everybody's lines, never a fault, never a mistake"; on Cary Grant: "I had Cary Grant in mind for four of my pictures . . . slipped through my net every time"; on the "Lubitsch Touch": "It was the elegant use of the super-joke." Wilder also remembers his early years in Vienna, working as a journalist in Berlin, rooming with Peter Lorre at the Chateau Marmont -- always with the same dry wit, tough-minded romanticism, and elegance that are the hallmarks of Wilder's films. This book is a classic of Hollywood history and lore.

    and Fosse comes the revelatory account of the making of a modern American masterpiece Chinatown is the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema. Its twist ending is the most notorious in American film and its closing line of dialogue the most haunting. Here for the first time is the incredible true story of its making.In Sam Wasson's telling, it becomes the defining story of the most colorful characters in the most colorful period of Hollywood history. Here is Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers, as compelling a movie star as there has ever been, embarking on his great, doomed love affair with Anjelica Huston. Here is director Roman Polanski, both predator and prey, haunted by the savage death of his wife, returning to Los Angeles, the scene of the crime, where the seeds of his own self-destruction are quickly planted. Here is the fevered dealmaking of "The Kid" Robert Evans, the most consummate of producers. Here too is Robert Towne's fabled script, widely considered the greatest original screenplay ever written. Wasson for the first time peels off layers of myth to provide the true account of its creation.Looming over the story of this classic movie is the imminent eclipse of the '70s filmmaker-friendly studios as they gave way to the corporate Hollywood we know today. In telling that larger story, The Big Goodbye will take its place alongside classics like Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and The Devil's Candy as one of the great movie-world books ever written.Praise for Sam Wasson:"Wasson is a canny chronicler of old Hollywood and its outsize personalities...More than that, he understands that style matters, and, like his subjects, he has a flair for it." - The New Yorker "Sam Wasson is a fabulous social historian because he finds meaning in situations and stories that would otherwise be forgotten if he didn't sleuth them out, lovingly." - Hilton Als

    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.

    His incisive writings on individual filmmakers define film culture as a diverse and ever-evolving practice, unpredictable yet subject to analyses just as diversified as his own discriminating tastes. For Rosenbaum, there is no high or low cinema, only more interesting or less interesting films, and the pieces collected here, from an appreciation of Marilyn Monroe’s intelligence to a classic discussion on and with Jean-Luc Godard, amply testify to his broad intellect and multi-faceted talent. Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia gathers together over fifty examples of Rosenbaum’s criticism from the past four decades, each of which demonstrates his passion for the way we view movies, as well as how we write about them. Charting our changing concerns with the interconnected issues that surround video, DVDs, the Internet, and new media, the writings collected here also highlight Rosenbaum’s polemics concerning the digital age. From the rediscovery and recirculation of classic films, to the social and aesthetic impact of technological changes, Rosenbaum doesn’t disappoint in assembling a magisterial cast of little-known filmmakers as well as the familiar faces and iconic names that have helped to define our era. As we move into this new decade of moviegoing—one in which Hollywood will continue to feel the shockwaves of the digital age—Jonathan Rosenbaum remains a valuable guide. Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia is a consummate collection of his work, not simply for fans of this seminal critic, but for all those open to the wide variety of films he embraces and helps us to elucidate.

    Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) is one of the most revered and enigmatic filmmakers of our time, and Fitzcarraldo is one of his most honored and admired films.  More than just Herzog’s journal of the making of the monumental, problematical motion picture, which involved, among other things, major cast changes and reshoots, and the hauling (without the use of special effects) of a 360-ton steamship over a mountain, Conquest of the Useless is  a work of art unto itself, an Amazonian fever dream that emerged from the delirium of the jungle.  With fascinating observations about crew and cast - including Herzog’s lead, the somewhat demented internationally renowned star Klaus Kinski - and breathtaking insights into the filmmaking process that are uniquely Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless is an eye-opening look into the mind of a cinematic master.

    Fat, lonely, burning with fear and ambition, his childhood was an isolated one, scented with fish from his father's shop. Afraid to leave his bedroom, he would plan great voyages, using railway timetables to plot an exact imaginary route across Europe. So how did this fearful figure become the one of the most respected film directors of the twentieth century?As an adult, Hitch rigorously controlled the press's portrait of himself, drawing certain carefully selected childhood anecdotes into full focus and blurring all others out. In this quick-witted portrait, Ackroyd reveals something more: a lugubriously jolly man fond of practical jokes, who smashes a once-used tea cup every morning to remind himself of the frailty of life. Iconic film stars make cameo appearances, just as Hitch did in his own films. Grace Kelly, Carey Grant and James Stewart despair of his detached directing style, and, perhaps most famously of all, Tippi Hedren endures cuts and bruises from a real-life fearsome flock of birds.Alfred Hitchcock wrests the director's chair back from the master of control and discovers what lurks just out of sight, in the corner of the shot.

    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.

    Colin McGinn–“an ingenious philosopher who thinks like a laser and writes like a dream,” according to Steven Pinker–enhances our understanding of both movies and ourselves in this book of rare and refreshing insight.

    Woody Allen on Woody Allen is a unique self-portrait of this uncompromising filmmaker that offers a revealing account of his life and work. In a series of rare, in-depth interviews, Allen brings us onto the sets and behind the scenes of all his films. Since its original publication, Woody Allen on Woody Allen has been the primary source of Allen's own thoughts on his work, childhood, favorite films, and inspirations. Now updated with one hundred pages of new material that brings us up to his Hollywood Ending, Woody Allen on Woody Allen is a required addition to any cinephile's library.

    Founded in 1951, it was responsible for establishing film as the ‘seventh art,’ equal to literature, painting or music, and it revolutionized film-making and writing. Its contributors would put their words into action: the likes of Godard, Truffaut, Rivette, Rohmer were to become some of the greatest directors of the age, their films part of the internationally celebrated nouvelle vague.In this authoritative new history, Emilie Bickerton explores the evolution and impact of Cahiers du Cinéma, from its early years, to its late-sixties radicalization, its internationalization, and its response to the television age of the seventies and eighties. Showing how the story of Cahiers continues to resonate with critics, practitioners and the film-going public, A Short History of Cahiers du Cinéma is a testimony to the extraordinary legacy and archive these ‘collected pages of a notebook’ have provided for the world of cinema.

    They had already made films that redefined the gangster movie, the screwball comedy, the fable, and the film noir, among others. No Country is just one of many Coen brothers films to center on the struggles of complex characters to understand themselves and their places in the strange worlds they inhabit. To