Victor is the stoic, handsome son of an alcoholic father who has abandoned his family. Thomas is a gregarious, goofy young man who lost both his parents in a fire at a very young age. Through storytelling, Thomas makes every effort to connect with the people around him: Victor, in contrast, uses his quiet countenance to gain strength and confidence.When Victor's estranged father dies, the two men embark on an adventure to Phoenix to collect the ashes. Along the way, Smoke Signals illustrates the ties that bind these two very different young men and embraces the lessons they learn from one another.

    "Mr. Pierson covers his territory with urgency and conviction."--New York Times Book Review.

    

    "L'astragale" is the French word for the ankle bone Albertine Sarrazin's heroine Anne breaks as she leaps from her jail cell to freedom. As she drags herself down the road, away from the prison walls, she is rescued by Julien, himself a small-time criminal, who keeps her hidden. They fall in love. Fear of capture, memories of her prison cell, claustrophobia in her hideaways: every detail is fiercely felt.Astragal burst onto the French literary scene in 1965; its fiery and vivacious style was entirely new, and Sarrazin became a celebrity overnight. But as fate would have it, Sarrazin herself kept running into trouble with the law, even as she became a star.She died from a botched surgery at the height of her fame. Sarrazin's life and work (her novels are semi-autobiographical) have been the subject of intense fascination in France; a new adaptation of Astragal is currently being filmed. Patti Smith, who brought Astragal to the attention of New Directions, contributes an enthusiastic introduction to one of her favorite writers.

    With his country on the brink of war and in desperate need of a leader, his wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), the future Queen Mother, arranges for her husband to see an eccentric speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). After a rough start, the two delve into an unorthodox course of treatment and eventually form an unbreakable bond. With the support of Logue, his family, his government and Winston Churchill (Timothy Spall), the King will overcome his stammer and deliver a radio-address that inspires his people and unites them in battle.As David Seidler writes in his introduction, "The King's Speech is about a great deal more than a speech impediment. It is about friendship. I'm talking about mentoring and support and a great deal of humor. We lose these deep, meaningful friendships at our peril."The Newmarket Press Book includes:A fascinating introduction by screenwriter David Seidler about how and why an idea that came to him almost thirty years ago evolved into the award-winning screenplayComplete Shooting ScriptComplete cast and crew credits

    Based by Noel Coward upon his 1936 short play 'Still Life', the screenplay conjures up the drab, emotionally restrained world of post-war Britain better than almost any other literary text. It was nominated for an Oscar at the 1947 Academy Awards. Brief Encounter is perhaps the most moving and fully realized of all David Lean's films. This volume contains a specially commissioned introduction by Coward's biographer, Sheridan Morley.

    An invaluable reference for film students and fans, this book details the evolution of the epic romance from script to screen, including scenes and dialogue cut from the final film, as well as annotations explaining footage seen in the final cut, yet not contained in the screenplay. Never-before-seen photographs of the stars, storyboards for sequences never filmed, and an in-depth interview with Cameron make Titanic: James Cameron's Illustrated Screenplay an essential companion to the #1 bestseller James Cameron's Titanic.

    38 photographs.

    Sometime partner of the eccentric Howard Hughes, drinking buddy of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, an inveterate gambler and a notorious liar, Hawks was the most modern of the great masters and one of the first directors to declare his independence from the major studios. He played Svengali to Lauren Bacall, Montgomery Clift, and others, but Hawks's greatest creation may have been himself.As The Atlantic Monthly noted, "Todd McCarthy . . . has gone further than anyone else in sorting out the truths and lies of the life, the skills and the insight and the self-deceptions of the work." "A fluent biography of the great director, a frequently rotten guy but one whose artistic independence and standards of film morality never failed." -- The New York Times Book Review; "Hawks's life, until now rather an enigma, has been put into focus and made one with his art in Todd McCarthy's wise and funny Howard Hawks." -- The Wall Street Journal; "Excellent . . . a respectful, exhaustive, and appropriately smartass look at Hollywood's most versatile director." -- Newsweek.

    Internationally-renowned directing coach Weston demonstrates what constitutes a good performance, what actors want from a director, what directors do wrong, script analysis and preparation, how actors work, and shares insights into the director/actor relationship.

    The saga of Britain's best-loved martini hound (who we all know prefers his favorite drink "shaken, not stirred") has adapted to changing times for four decades without ever abandoning its tried-and-true formula of diabolical international conspiracy, sexual intrigue, and incredible gadgetry.James Chapman expertly traces the annals of celluloid Bond from its inauguration with 1962's Dr. No through its progression beyond Ian Fleming's spy novels to the action-adventure spectaculars of GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies. He argues that the enormous popularity of the series represents more than just the sum total of the films' box-office receipts and involves questions of film culture in a wider sense.Licence to Thrill chronicles how Bond, a representative of a British Empire that no longer existed in his generation, became a symbol of his nation's might in a Cold War world where Britain was no longer a primary actor. Chapman describes the protean nature of Bond villains in a volatile global political scene--from Soviet scoundrels and Chinese rogues in the 1960s to a brief flirtation with Latin American drug kingpins in the 1980s and back to the Chinese in the 1990s. The book explores how the movies struggle with changing societal ethics--notably, in the evolution in the portrayal of women, showing how Bond's encounters with the opposite sex have evolved into trysts with leading ladies as sexually liberated as Bond himself.The Bond formula has proved remarkably durable and consistently successful for roughly a third of cinema's history--half the period since the introduction of talking pictures in the late 1920s. Moreover, Licence to Thrill argues that, for the foreseeable future, the James Bond films are likely to go on being what they have always been, a unique and very special kind of popular cinema.

    Here they offer 140 strategies for making movies no matter what. Amateurs as well as seasoned veterans can pick up this entertaining and incredibly useful guide in any place--at any point of crisis--and find tactics that work. Whether it's raising money or cutting your budget; dealing with angry landlords or angry cops; or jump-starting the production or stalling it while you finish the script, these strategies are delivered with funny, illustrative anecdotes from the authors' experiences and from veteran filmmakers eager to share their stories. Irreverent, invaluable, and a lot cheaper than a year's tuition, this friendly guide is the smartest investment any future filmmaker could make.Strategies from the book include: Love your friends for criticizing your work--especially at the script stage; Shyness won't get you the donuts; Duct tape miracles; Don't fall in love with cast or crew (but if you do...).

    Written in an informal "how-to-do-it" style, renowned director Edward Dmytyrk shares his expertise and experience in film editing in an anecdotal and philosophical way. In On Film Editing, Dmytryk contends that many technicians and professionals on the film crew-- from the cameraman and his assistants to the producer and director-- must understand film editing to produce a truly polished work. In this book he explains in layman's terms the principles of film editing, using examples and anecdotes from almost five decades in the film industry.

    "Its a ghost story, a thriller, an action-packed murder mystery, and a great tragedy that is profoundly moving." With an outstanding cast of international actors--including Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Julie Christie as Gertrude, Kate Winslet as Ophelia, Charlton Heston as the Player King, Robin Williams as Osric, and Gerard Depardieu as Reynaldo--Branagh's version, in which he will play the title role as well as direct, is sure to go down in film history.This beautiful volume includes Branagh's introduction and screenplay adaptation of Shakespeare's text, color and black-and-white stills, and a production diary that takes us behind the scenes for a day-to-day look at the shooting of his film.

    Though already a widely acclaimed novelist, the author of such modern classics as "The Orchard Keeper" and "Child of God," McCarthy had never before written a screenplay. Using nothing more than a few photographs in the footnotes to a 1928 biography of a famous pre-Civil War industrialist as inspiration, the author and Pearce together roamed the mill towns of the South researching their subject. One year later McCarthy finished "The Gardener's Son," a taut, riveting drama of impotence, rage, and ultimately violence spanning two generations of mill owners and workers, fathers and sons, during the rise and fall of one of America's most bizarre utopian industrial experiments. Produced as a two-hour film and broadcast on PBS in 1976, "The Gardener's Son" recieved two Emmy Award nominations and was shown at the Berlin and Edinburgh Film Festivals. This is the first appearance of the film script in book form.Set in Graniteville, South Carolina, "The Gardener's Son" is the tale of two families: the Greggs, a wealthy family that owns and operates the local cotton mill, and the McEvoys, a family of mill workers beset by misfortune. The action opens as Robert McEvoy, a young mill worker, is having his leg amputated -- the limb mangled in an accident rumored to have been caused by James Gregg, son of the mill's founder. McEvoy, crippled and isolated, grows into a man with a "troubled heart"; consumed by bitterness and anger, he deserts both his job and his family. Returning two years later at the news of his mother's terminal illness, Robert McEvoy arrives only to confront the grave diggers preparing her final resting place. His father, the mill's gardener, is now working on the factory line, the gardens forgotten. These proceedings stoke the slow burning rage McEvoy carries within him, a fury that ultimately consumes both the McEvoys and the Greggs.