Making Movies


Sidney Lumet - 1995
    Drawing on 40 years of experience on movies ranging from Long Day's Journey Into Night to The Verdict, Lumet explains the painstaking labor that results in two hours of screen magic.

The Wes Anderson Collection


Matt Zoller Seitz - 2013
    A true auteur, Anderson is known for the visual artistry, inimitable tone, and idiosyncratic characterizations that make each of his films—Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom—instantly recognizable as “Andersonian.”The Wes Anderson Collection is the first in-depth overview of Anderson’s filmography, guiding readers through his life and career. Previously unpublished photos, artwork, and ephemera complement a book-length conversation between Anderson and award-winning critic Matt Zoller Seitz. The interview and images are woven together in a meticulously designed book that captures the spirit of his films: melancholy and playful, wise and childish—and thoroughly original.

Harvey


Mary Chase - 1944
    Dowd starts to introduce his imaginary friend Harvey, a six and a half foot rabbit, to guests at a dinner party, his sister, Veta, has seen as much of his eccentric behavior as she can tolerate. She decides to have him committed to a sanitarium to spare her daughter, Myrtle Mae, and their family, from future embarrassment. Problems arise, however, when Veta herself is mistakenly assumed to be on the fringe of lunacy when she explains to doctors that years of living with Elwood's hallucination have caused her to see Harvey also! The doctors commit Veta instead of Elwood, but when the truth comes out, the search is on for Elwood and his invisible companion. When he shows up at the sanitarium looking for his lost friend Harvey it seems that the mild-mannered Elwood's delusion has had a strange influence on more than one of the doctors. Only at the end does Veta realize that maybe Harvey isn't so bad after all.

Cast Away: The Shooting Script


William Broyles Jr. - 2001
    So begins William Broyles, Jr.'s fascinating introduction, written exclusively for this book, about the process and challenges inherent in writing a screenplay that was not, by design, going to have a lot of dialogue in it, and about his collaboration with two extraordinarily gifted artists, actor Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis.Broyles's introduction shows how a movie and its story evolve, shift, and shape while the creators grapple with all manner of internal and external choices: from developing what was Tom Hanks's idea into a story, and building a narrative structure and thematic threads into a screenplay, to researching the details of the specific—and ironic—situation of a FedEx executive stranded on a desert island.Also included in this unique Newmarket Shooting Script® edition is the complete shooting script, a preface to the script by Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Contact), movie stills, and complete cast and crew credits.

Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad


Arthur Kopit - 1960
    Wealthy, overbearing Madame Rosepettle with her stuttering, awkward son Jonathan at her heels, arrives at a posh hotel with a man-eating tropical plant, pirahna fish and coffin in tow. Rosalie, a voluptuous babysitter from the couple next door "who never come home" attempts to seduce Jonathan and proves a formidable opponent to Madame herself.

Little Miss Sunshine: The Shooting Script


Michael Arndt - 2006
    Brazenly satirical yet deeply human, Little Miss Sunshine introduces audiences to one of the most endearingly fractured families in recent cinema history. Meet the Hoovers, a motley six-member family who treks from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach, California, to fulfill the deepest wish of seven-year-old Olive, an ordinary little girl with big dreams.Starring Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Abigail Breslin, Paul Dano, and Alan Arkin, the film strikes a nerve with everyone who's ever been awestruck by how their muddled families seem to make it after all. On the way the family must deal with crushed dreams, heartbreak, and a broken-down VW bus, leading up to the surreal Little Miss Sunshine competition itself. On their travels through this bizarrely funny landscape, the Hoovers learn to trust and support each other along the path of life, no matter what the challenge.

Inception: The Shooting Script


Christopher J. Nolan - 2010
    The story of a group of thieves who specialize in invading the mind through one’s dreams, Inception explores the Nolan’s signature psychological themes of memory, paranoia, and self-doubt as the protagonist, Dom Cobb, is pitted against a hostile subconscious spurred on by personal demons and regrets from the past. In a conversational preface, Nolan discusses with brother and frequent collaborator, Jonah, the genesis of the idea for the film and the decade-long process it took to write it. Detailing the results of Nolan’s efforts, Inception: The Shooting Script includes key storyboard sequences, full-color concept art, and an appendix on the workings of the mysterious Pasiv Device that Cobb and his fellow extractors use to initiate the dream-share. An exclusive exploration of a highly original concept, Inception: The Shooting Script is the record of a writer-director at the height of his craft.

Groucho and Me


Groucho Marx - 1959
    Julius Henry Marx.

Stage Door


Edna Ferber - 1926
    The scene is Mrs. Orcutt's boarding house, where the hopes and ambitions of sixteen young women are revealed in scenes of entertaining comedy. Contrasted with this are the cases of the girl without talent and the elderly actress whose days are over. The central plot has to do with courageous Terry Randall, who fights against discouragement to a position in the theater where we are sure she will conquer. One of her fellow aspirants gives up in despair, one gets married, and one goes into pictures, but Terry, with the help of idealistic David Kingsley, sticks to her guns.

Lincoln


Tony Kushner - 2013
    Screenwriter Tony Kushner blows the dust off history by investing it with flesh, blood, and churning purpose. . . . A great American movie.” –Peter Travers, Rolling Stone“Lincoln is a rough and noble democratic masterpiece. And the genius of Lincoln, finally, lies in its vision of politics as a noble, sometimes clumsy dialectic of the exalted and the mundane…And Mr. Kushner, whose love of passionate, exhaustive disputation is unmatched in the modern theater, fills nearly every scene with wonderful, maddening talk. Go see this movie.” –A.O. Scott, New York Times“A lyrical, ingeniously structured screenplay. Lincoln is one of the most authentic biographical dramas I’ve ever seen…grand and immersive. It plugs us into the final months of Lincoln’s presidency with a purity that makes us feel transported as if by time machine.” –Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment WeeklyA decade-long collaboration between three-time Academy Award® winner Steven Spielberg and Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, Lincoln is a revealing drama that focuses on the 16th President’s tumultuous final months in office. Having just won re-election in a country divided, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of America, and generations, to come. Containing eight pages of color photos from the film and inspired by Doris Kearns Goodwin’s critically acclaimed Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln is now a major motion picture by DreamWorks starring two-time Academy Award® winner Daniel Day-Lewis.Tony Kushner's plays include Angels in America, Parts One and Two; A Bright Room Called Day; Slavs!; Homebody/Kabul; Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; and The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols's film of Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg's Munich. Kushner is the recipient of a Pultizer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, and two Oscar nominations, among other honors. In 2008 he was the first recipient of the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award.

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood


Mark Harris - 2008
    Explores the epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967-Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Doolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde-and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood, and America, forever.

Seabiscuit: The Screenplay


Gary Ross - 2003
    Now, here is the complete shooting script of this extraordinary film from Universal Pictures, Dreamworks Pictures, and Spyglass Entertainment, featuring a foreword from "Seabiscuit" author Laura Hillenbrand and thirty full-color still photos from the motion picture. An American epic of triumph and perseverance set during the Great Depression, this stunning adaptation brilliantly dramatizes the story of the three men and the down-and-out racehorse that took them and the entire nation on the ride of a lifetime.

The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan


Tom Shone - 2020
    A rare, revelatory portrait, as close as you're ever going to get to the Escher drawing that is Christopher Nolan's remarkable brain (Sam Mendes). In chapters structured by themes and motifs (Time; Chaos; Dreams), Shone offers an unprecedented intimate view of the director. Shone explores Nolan's thoughts on his influences, his vision, his enigmatic childhood past--and his movies, from plots and emotion to identity and perception, including his latest blockbuster, the action-thriller/spy-fi Tenet (Big, brashly beautiful, grandiosely enjoyable--Variety).Filled with the director's never-before-seen photographs, storyboards, and scene sketches, here is Nolan on the evolution of his pictures, and the writers, artists, directors, and thinkers who have inspired and informed his films.Fabulous: intelligent, illuminating, rigorous, and highly readable. The very model of what a filmmaking study should be. Essential reading for anyone who cares about Nolan or about film for that matter.--Neal Gabler, author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood and Walt Disney, The Biography

Make Your Own Damn Movie!: Secrets of a Renegade Director


Lloyd Kaufman - 2003
    In 25 years, Kaufman, along with partner Michael Herz, has built Troma Studios up from a company struggling to find its voice in a field crowded with competitors to its current--and legendary--status as a lone survivor, a bastion of true cinematic independence, and the world's greatest collection of camp on film.As entertaining and funny as it is informative and insightful, Make Your Own Damn Movie! places Kaufman's radically low-budget, independent-studio style of filmaking directly in the reader's hands. Thus we learn how to: develop and write a knock-out screenplay; raise funding; find locations and cast actors; hire a crew; obtain equipment, permits, and music rights (all for little or no money); make incredible special effects for $0.79 each; charm, schmooze, and network while on the film-festival circuit; and, finally, make a bad actor act so bad it's actually good.From scriptwriting and directing to financing and marketing, this book is brimming with utterly off-the-wall, decidedly maverick, yet consistently proven advice on how to fully develop one's idea for an independent film.

All in the Timing


David Ives - 1994
    Ives's characters plunge into black holes called "Philadelphias," where the simplest desires are hilariously thwarted. Chimps named Milton, Swift, and Kafka are locked in a room and made to re-create Hamlet. And a con man peddles courses in a dubious language in which "hello" translates as "velcro" and "fraud" comes out as "freud."At once enchanting and perplexing, incisively intelligent and side-splittingly funny, this original paperback edition of Ives's plays includes "Sure Thing," "Words, Words, Words," "The Universal Language," "Variations on the Death of Trotsky," "The Philadelphia," "Long Ago and Far Away," "Foreplay, or The Art of the Fugue," "Seven Menus," "Mere Mortals," "English Made Simple," "A Singular Kinda Guy," "Speed-the-Play," "Ancient History," and "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread."