All in All: An Actor's Life On and Off the Stage


Stacy Keach - 2013
    In his long, impressive career, he has been hailed as America's finest classical stage actor, earning acclaim for his portrayals of Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, and King Lear. He has worked alongside and become friends with the giants of American culture, from Joseph Papp to George C. Scott, from James Earl Jones to Oliver Stone.Keach’s memoir begins with the riveting account of his arrest in London for cocaine possession. He takes readers through his trial and his time at Reading Jail as he battles his drug addiction and then fights to revive his career. Keach poignantly reveals his acting insecurities and relationship struggles. All in All is full of priceless behind the scenes Hollywood moments and friendships—from his late-night pool and backgammon showdowns with John Huston to his passionate relationship with Judy Collins.

The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror


David J. Skal - 1993
    Skal chronicles one of our most popular and pervasive modes of cultural expression. He explores the disguised form in which Hollywood's classic horror movies played out the traumas of two world wars and the Depression; the nightmare visions of invasion and mind control catalyzed by the Cold War; the preoccupation with demon children that took hold as thalidomide, birth control, and abortion changed the reproductive landscape; the vogue in visceral, transformative special effects that paralleled the development of the plastic surgery industry; the link between the AIDS epidemic and the current fascination with vampires; and much more. Now with a new Afterword by the author that looks at horror's popular renaissance in the last decade, The Monster Show is a compulsively readable, thought-provoking inquiry into America's obsession with the macabre.

Kubrick


Michael Herr - 1995
    Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange. From their first meeting at an advance screening of The Shining in 1980, Kubrick and Herr began an intense intellectual exchange that grew into the artistic collaboration that ultimately produced the groundbreaking Vietnam film Full Metal Jacket.Filled with personal insights and previously untold anecdotes, Kubrick is a probing view into the inner life of a man whose creative passion and powerful intellect changed the art of filmmaking forever -- and of the complicated, often misunderstood man behind the art.

Kinski Uncut


Klaus Kinski - 1988
    Probably the most outrageous autobiography ever--less a memoir than a hyperbolically pornographic performance piece.--Newsweek. photos.

Loitering with Intent: The Child


Peter O'Toole - 1992
    Loitering with Intent: The Child captivates readers with O'Toole's rakish wit and shining eccentricity, recounting the story of his weird, wacky, wild, and wonderful early life. Photos.

Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration, with a Complete Filmography of Their Films Together


Gregory William Mank - 1990
    Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff starred in dozens of black-and-white horror films, and over the years managed to collaborate on and co-star in eight movies. Through dozens of interviews and extensive archival research, this greatly expanded new edition examines the Golden Age of Hollywood, the era in which both stars worked, recreates the shooting of Lugosi and Karloff's mutual films, examines their odd and moving personal relationship and analyzes their ongoing legacies. Features include a fully detailed filmography of the eight Karloff and Lugosi films, full summaries of both men's careers and more than 250 photographs, some in color.

The Long Hard Road Out of Hell


Marilyn Manson - 1998
    "By turns moving, funny, appalling, disturbing. . . . There has never been anything like it".--"Rolling Stone". 80 b&w photos. 16-page color insert.In his twenty-nine years, rock idol Manson has experienced more than most people have (or would want to) in a lifetime. Now, in his shocking and candid memoir, he takes readers from backstage to gaol cells, from recording studios to emergency rooms, from the pit of despair to the top of the charts, and recounts his metamorphosis from a frightened Christian schoolboy into the most feared and revered music superstar in the country.

Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography


Victoria Price - 1999
    In addition to being an icon of stage and screen large and small, Price was also an avid art collector, a gourmand, a dashing and relentless charmer, and a loving father. His daughter Victoria was born shortly before Price turned 51, at the height of his popularity. Though the star's busy film schedule took him in and out of his young daughter's life, he was always a larger-than-life presence and, simply, her father. Victoria adored him, and despite his harrowing schedule, their relationship was close. That is, until Price married his third wife, the headstrong and independent actress, Coral Browne. Victoria was a girl of twelve, and her new stepmother resented the strong relationship between father and daughter, and consequently did much to keep the two apart. Late in Price's life, however, he and his daughter were brought together again for some of their most memorable time together. In this elegant biography-cum-memoir, Victoria Price reveals a man both complex and human. An actor of range, he starred in both the film noir milestone Laura and the Biblical classic The Ten Commandments. As a "pre-war anti Nazi sympathizer," he was greylisted during the Red Scare of the 1950s-until, in a desperate gesture, he signed a secret oath that saved his career. And his passion for the arts gave him a second life as an erudite columnist and collector, even as his films graced drive-ins nationwide. Victoria Price's account life of her father is full and candid; both his passionate and charismatic public persona and his conflicted inner life are treated with curiosity and understanding.Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography is, in short, the thorough-and uniquely intimate-life of a legend.

Lust & Wonder


Augusten Burroughs - 2016
    Then came Dry. Now, there's Lust & Wonder.In chronicling the development and demise of the different relationships he's had while living in New York, Augusten Burroughs examines what it means to be in love, what it means to be in lust, and what it means to be figuring it all out. With Augusten's unique and singular observations and his own unabashed way of detailing both the horrific and the humorous, Lust and Wonder is an intimate and honest memoir that his legions of fans have been waiting for.

David Lynch: Beautiful Dark


Greg Olson - 2008
    Lynch's films delve into the subjective consciousness of his characters to reveal both the depraved darkness and luminous spirituality of human nature. From his experimental shorts of the 1960s to feature films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and INLAND EMPIRE, Lynch has pushed the boundaries of cinematic storytelling. In David Lynch: Beautiful Dark, author Greg Olson explores the surreal intricacies of the director's unique visual and visceral style not only in his full-length films but also his early forays into painting and short films, as well as his television landmark, Twin Peaks. This in-depth exploration is the first full-length work to analyze the intimate symbiosis between Lynch's life experience and artistic expressions: from the small-town child to the teenage painter to the 60-year-old Internet and digital media experimenter. To fully delineate the director's life and art, Olson received unprecedented participation from Lynch, his parents, siblings, old school friends, romantic partners, children, and decades of professional colleagues, as well as on-set access to the director during the production of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Throughout this study, Olson provides thorough analyses of the filmmaker's works as Lynch conceived, crafted, and completed them. Consequently, David Lynch: Beautiful Dark is the definitive study of one of the most influential and idiosyncratic directors of the last four decades.

Louise Brooks: A Biography


Barry Paris - 1989
    Louise Brooks left Wichita, Kansas, for New York City at age fifteen and lived the kind of life of which legends are made. From her beginnings as a dancer to her years in Hollywood, Berlin, and beyond, she was hailed and reviled as a new type of woman: independent, intellectually daring, and sexually free. In this widely acclaimed, first and only comprehensive biography, Barry Paris traces Brooks's trajectory from her childhood through her fall into obscurity and subsequent "resurrection" as a brilliant writer and enduring film icon.

The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made


David Hughes - 2002
    What would Terry Gilliam’s Watchmen have been like, and how did Darren Aronofsky almost end up directing the movie? Why was Nicolas Cage paid $20 million for not playing Superman?Also covered are Steven Spielberg’s Night Skies, Stanley Kubrick’s Childhood’s End, Philip Kaufman’s Star Trek: Planet of the Titans, Kevin Smith’s Six Million Dollar Man, Tim Burton’s Superman Lives and James Cameron’s Alien 5!

Jaws


Antonia Quirke - 2002
    Under extreme pressure on a catastrophic location shoot, Universal's 27 year-old prodigy crafted a thriller so effective that for many years Jaws was the highest-grossing film of all time. It was also instrumental in establishing the concepts of the event movie and the summer blockbuster. Jaws exerts an extraordinary power over audiences. Apparently simplistic and manipulative, it is a film that has divided critics into two broad camps: those who dismiss it as infantile and sensational - and those who see the shark as freighted with complex political and psychosexual meaning. Antonia Quirke, in an impressionistic response, argues that both interpretations obscure the film's success simply as a work of art. In Jaws Spielberg's ability to blend genres combined with his precocious technical skill to create a genuine masterpiece, which is underrated by many, including its director. Indeed, Quirke claims, this may be Spielberg's finest work.

MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot


Steven Bingen - 2010
    During its Golden Age, the studio employed the likes of Garbo, Astaire, and Gable, and produced innumerable iconic pieces of cinema such as The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, and Ben-Hur.It is estimated that a fifth of all films made in the United States prior to the 1970s were shot at MGM studios, meaning that the gigantic property was responsible for hundreds of iconic sets and stages, often utilizing and transforming minimal spaces and previously used props, to create some of the most recognizable and identifiable landscapes of modern movie culture.All of this happened behind closed doors, the backlot shut off from the public in a veil of secrecy and movie magic. M-G-M: Hollywood’s Greatest Backlot highlights this fascinating film treasure by recounting the history, popularity, and success of the MGM company through a tour of its physical property.Featuring the candid, exclusive voices and photographs from the people who worked there, and including hundreds of rare and unpublished photographs (including many from the archives of Warner Bros.), readers are launched aboard a fun and entertaining virtual tour of Hollywood’s most famous and mysterious motion picture studio.

Se7en


Richard Dyer - 1999
    A serial killer on a warped moral mission who turns his victims' "sins" into the means of their murder. The movie Seven is analyzed here covering topics such as sin, story, structure, seriality, sound, sight and salvation.