Movie Directors Books

Rebel without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player

Robert Rodriguez

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 115 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Without a Crew? 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is mostly a tale about making a particular film. It is entertaining but it lacked the nitty gritty details I was hoping for.

Cracks along at a pace. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Well written, full of fun and wit and most importantly a damn fine blueprint to gain inspiration from should you wish to go out and make your own movies. Best non-fictional book I've read on the making of films in a long while. Up there with Roger Corman's 'How I Made One Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime.'

Dust off that camcorder dude! 4 out of 5 stars.
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Fun and easy reading book about a young man making a movie on the cheap just so he can get his first ten bad movies out of the way before making a good one. Fancy this first effort to hit it big in Hollywood! Inspiring stuff, and especially inspiring considering he never expected this el-cheapo B-rate Spanish language movie, made with volunteer actors in a border town, to amount to anything but a practice run for the Mexican video market if he was lucky. Get it, read it, write down that script you have in your head and go dust off the old camcorder and start shooting!

This book also has lots of cool hints as to how to make expensive looking scenes!

Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard

Richard Brody

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A landmark biography explores the crucial resonances among the life, work, and times of one of the most influential filmmakers of our age

When Jean-Luc Godard wed the ideals of filmmaking to the realities of autobiography and current events, he changed the nature of cinema. Unlike any earlier films, Godard’s work shifts fluidly from fiction to documentary, from criticism to art. The man himself also projects shifting images—cultural hero, fierce loner, shrewd businessman. Hailed by filmmakers as a—if not the—key influence on cinema, Godard has entered the modern canon, a figure as mysterious as he is indispensable.

In Everything Is Cinema, critic Richard Brody has amassed hundreds of interviews to demystify the elusive director and his work. Paying as much attention to Godard’s technical inventions as to the political forces of the postwar world, Brody traces an arc from the director’s early critical writing, through his popular success with Breathless, to the grand vision of his later years. He vividly depicts Godard’s wealthy conservative family, his fluid politics, and his tumultuous dealings with women and fellow New Wave filmmakers.

Everything Is Cinema confirms Godard’s greatness and shows decisively that his films have left their mark on screens everywhere.

Adventures in the Screen Trade

William Goldman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Required Reading... 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is not a text book, but it should be required reading for anyone who wants a career in the motion picture industry - or anyone who loves film in general. Why is it not a textbook? Because it is one heck of an entertaining read. The book runs almost six-hundred pages and I devoured it in just a couple of days.

William Goldman is one of most respected screenwriters alive; he knows as much about it as anyone. What he gives us is a picture of Hollywood (the business and who does what), the art of writing a screenplay, the process of working on a film, and his own personal anecdotes. One of the chief pleasures of the book is how cheerfully gossipy it is. "PART ONE: HOLLYWOOD REALITIES" is full of stories of the excesses of Hollywood that people out there consider normal. A lot of the time he doesn't supply names, but sometimes he does. (Dustin Hoffman, while a brilliant actor, is notorious for being a bit eccentric.) He also gives us an idea of how the studio works and how pictures get made.

The last third of the book will primarily interest serious film students. Goldman includes his entire script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and uses it as a teaching tool. Then he presents a short story he wrote and uses that as a teaching tool regarding adapting previously written material.

This book was written in 1982 and reading it is a stroll down memory lane. That was a dark time in motion picture history. Most of the films he references from that period have been forgotten. In other words, it is just like today. We need to read this book again more than ever.

Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking

Eric Lax

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the author of the best-selling biography Woody Allen—the most informative, revealing, and entertaining conversations from his thirty-six years of interviewing the great comedian and filmmaker.

For more than three decades, Woody Allen has been talking regularly and candidly with Eric Lax, and has given him singular and unfettered access to his film sets, his editing room, and his thoughts and observations. In discussions that begin in 1971 and continue into 2007, Allen discusses every facet of moviemaking through the prism of his own films and the work of directors he admires. In doing so, he reveals an artist’s development over the course of his career to date, from joke writer to standup comedian to world-acclaimed filmmaker.

Woody talks about the seeds of his ideas and the writing of his screenplays; about casting and acting, shooting and directing, editing and scoring. He tells how he reworks screenplays even while filming them. He describes the problems he has had casting American men, and he explains why he admires the acting of (among many others) Alan Alda, Marlon Brando, Michael Caine, John Cusack, Judy Davis, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mia Farrow, Gene Hackman, Scarlett Johansson, Julie Kavner, Liam Neeson, Jack Nicholson, Charlize Theron, Tracey Ullman, Sam Waterston, and Dianne Wiest. He places Diane Keaton second only to Judy Holliday in the pantheon of great screen comediennes.

He discusses his favorite films (Citizen Kane is the lone American movie on his list of sixteen “best films ever made”; Duck Soup and Airplane! are two of his preferred “comedian’s films”; Trouble in Paradise and Born Yesterday among his favorite “talking plot comedies”). He describes himself as a boy in Brooklyn enthralled by the joke-laden movies of Bob Hope and the sophisticated film stories of Manhattan. As a director, he tells us what he appreciates about Bergman, De Sica, Fellini, Welles, Kurosawa, John Huston, and Jean Renoir. Throughout he shows himself to be thoughtful, honest, self–deprecating, witty, and often hilarious.

Conversations with Woody Allen is essential reading for everyone interested in the art of moviemaking and for everyone who has enjoyed the films of Woody Allen.

My Boring Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Voyeurism for the View Askew fan ... 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book is a great read. I'll assume that if you're interested in this book in the first place, that you are already a Kevin Smith / View Askew fan. Clearly, that's who this book is really for. And if you are that kind of person, the kind of person who owns all the DVD's, has watched all the commentaries, reads the boards, listens to smodcast, and in some crazy way thinks of these people as some bizarre one-way extension of your own circle of friends, then you will love this book.

Editorial Review:

Anything but boring, the creator of Jay and Silent Bob shares his x-rated thoughts in his diary, telling all in his usual candid, heartfelt and irreverent way!

Lewd, crude and hilariously rude, Kevin Smith pulls no punches in this hard-hitting, in-your-face exposé of, er, his rather dull and uneventful life… well, not always dull. In between watching his TiVo, he manages to make and release Clerks II, relate the story of his partner-in-crime Jason Mewes’ heroin addiction, get a tattoo, serve on a jury... and get caught stealing donuts from Burt Reynolds

Thrown in are his views on the perils of strip clubs, the drawback of threesomes, the pain of anal fissures, his love-affair with Star Wars and so much more! Adults Only!

Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters: Defending the Earth with Ultraman and Godzilla

August Ragone

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Special effects without the blue screen 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Tsuburaya Eiji was the Japanese special effects director who was behind so many monster movies that came out from Japan during the 1950s and 1960s. This is a pictorial biography of Tsuburaya Eiji that proves to be very well written and informative. I found the book to be rather insightful as the author included inserts written by men who worked with or worked under Tsuburaya Eiji during his career. The book also comes well illustrated with photographs and movie posters on almost every page as it traces the life and time of Tsuburaya Eiji's career. It was interesting to note that during World War II, he made a movie made from miniatures that showed the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was so realistic that during the initial post war period, Americans thought it was the real thing. Tsuburaya Eiji was also the man who made Godzilla what he was and creator of the Ultraman series that is still going on to this day.

Overall, this book is definitely worth your time and money to read over and treasure. Tsuburaya Eiji is one of the great pioneers of motion picture industry regarding special effects and his influence help shape this industry to this day. His influence in the science fiction genre will remains pretty strong as monster movies like Cloverfield still hit our theaters and on DVD to this day. The book strongly reflects the heydays of Japanese monster movie era history and it will remind many of us, the fun and wonder these movies brought us during our younger days. And it will inform otherwise misinformed that there is more to these movies then just a "guy in the monster suit" concept.

(And yes, I am writing the subject's name in Japanese style...sur name first always...Tsuburaya Eiji is the way you would address him if he was still alive today...as you would with any Japanese national.)

Editorial Review:

Behind-the-scenes hero to anyone who's thrilled by giant monsters duking it out over Tokyo, Eiji Tsuburaya was the visual effects mastermind behind Godzilla, Ultraman, and numerous Japanese science fiction movies and TV shows beloved around the world. The first book on this legendary film figure in English, this highly visual biography details his fascinating life and career, featuring hundreds of film stills, posters, concept art, and delightful on-set photos of Tsuburaya prompting monsters to crush landmark buildings. A must-have for fans, this towering tribute also features profiles of Tsuburaya's film collaborators, details on his key films and shows (most available on DVD), and features on the enduring popularity of the characters he helped create.

WALT DISNEY: AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL

Bob Thomas

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Walt Disney: An American Original 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This was a great and interesting book. I loved reading it and learning things about Disney and his history that I didn't know. A great read.

Wonderful Insight to a GREAT MAN 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

If you are a Disney fan this is the one to read. Lots of info about his early days & how Disneyland came to be. He was sure he would die before he had finished what he set out to do. The Disney company was never the same after his death.
But is John Lassiter the new Walt..... Let's hope so.

Wonderful read!! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book was such a pleasure to read. It allows you to escape reality and enter the wonderful world that Walt Disney created. I loaned it to my father as soon as I finished it, and he cannot put it down!
Walt was a true inspiration and is to be admired.

Disney Version? 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Bob Thomas gets to the heart of things early: Disney was a greatly talented man whose singular vision lives on in his work. Fair enough. We really do forget that all this, that we call "Disney," was created by a man of extraordinary creative genius. The 60s generation sneered at Disney. Many resented the militarized discipline of the Disneyland work force with their clean-shaved faces, the uniforms and the regimented smiles. Now that the hippies have gone with the wind, we see what is enduring in the culture. Ironically, Disney himself was not a money man, not a finance wizard, not a bean counter. He was in debt most of his creative life, owing millions to the Bank of America. It was TV that saved Disney studios, not Cinderella. Disney cared about quality, cared about product, cared about audience. It is almost quaint to read about such an idealism; it even sounds like a mantra from the 60s. If Disney has become a dirty word, it is because of those who came after the Master himself. The greedy killers of the golden goose weren't interested in Disney's world; they were interested in exploiting it. This biography leaves out much, no doubt, but as hagiography it has its purposes. We see that Disney lived at that moment in America when it was possible to turn suffering into nostalgia. Like many of his generation, the down-home mid-westerner that Disney was put aside memories of mindless drudgery and turned his early childhood into a show, with singing ducks, dancing goats, and happy farmers. Author Thomas makes clear that Disney - like other film moguls like Louis B. Mayer - held a vision of America that had not yet been made anachronistic. But what astonishes most of all is Disney's integrity as a man of the arts. His donations to CALARTS coupled with his wife's gift to Disney Hall in Los Angeles make the Disney name synonymous with creative life.

Where Did I Go Right?: You're No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead

Bernie Brillstein

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"My wink is binding," Bernie Brillstein writes in the middle part of his memoir of a career in showbiz. At this point the movie-star manager has already admitted that he wanted power and prestige as soon as he started in the William Morris agency mailroom. And that he chased after a Don Corleone-ish kind of respect afterward. But even when he became a clout-carrying manager and near-mogul he kept his people-first credo. You suspect he loves it too for the way it echoes the Borscht Belt, since that's the kind of verbal energy he draws on throughout this anecdote-crammed autobiography. He calls himself "show," but in four decades he had to be "business" too, tough enough to tell clients, as he says he did, when to start their career over from scratch. The book begins with a graphically honest memory of his visit to the proctologist with his family when he was 24--something he guffaws off, but it's probably not far from the sort of reality check he regularly gave clients like Jim Henson, Norm Crosby, Lorne Michaels, John Belushi, and Brad Pitt. He cops to a gambling addiction, a love of "high class call girls," and to the way he stole from Laugh-Into invent Hee Haw. But he also brokered Lorne Michael's big break with SNL, produced Dangerous Liaisons, and eventually got News Radio and The Sopranos on the air. He candidly assesses professional pains too, including Michael Ovitz's pathology, Garry Shandling's riddling neuroses, and the loss of Belushi and Henson. "I care," he writes finally, "because that's who I am." It's easy to smile at that, but by the end of the book it's also easy to believe he means it. --Lyall Bush

Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light

Patrick Mcgilligan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Best entry into the world of Hitch bios 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

McGilligan's Alfred Hitchcock : A Life in Darkness and Light is not a "tell all the dirty secrets" biography, but rather a serious attempt to examine the man and his life, filling in the pieces through interviews, letters and published writings. That very much works in its favor. While other bios have often focused on the "dark" side of the Master of Suspense, painting a portrait of a disturbed man, McGilligan's work is more measured. We see the darkness, but we also see the light. There are some "tell all" moments that show Hitchcock's strange/dark side, but they don't come across as too gossipy.

The pacing is a bit off - the initial chapters, for instance, spend far too much time dealing with a handful of short stories he wrote for publication prior to his film career - but the writing is good, and more detail is gone into on the state of Hitchcock's life during each individual film than any other bio. It's a really strong look into his life AND his films.

For film lovers, the looks at how Hitch handled direction and his inventiveness are especially a joy to read. You get a very strong insight into how the master worked, which made me appreciate his films all the more.

This bio is very long, but also very comprehensive. Highly reocmmended.

Editorial Review:

In a career that spanned six decades and more than sixty films, Alfred Hitchcock became the most widely recognized director who ever lived. His films -- including The 39 Steps, Notorious, Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds -- set new standards for cinematic invention and storytelling élan. Since his death, Hitchcock has become crystallized in the public imagination as the macabre Englishman, the sexual obsessive, the Master of Suspense. But this remarkable biography draws on prodigious new research to restore Hitchcock the man -- the ingenious craftsman, the avid collaborator, the constant trickster, provocateur, and romantic. Like Hitchcock's best films, Patrick McGilligan's life of Hitchcock is a drama full of revelation, graced by a central love story, dark humor, and cliff-hanging suspense: a definitive portrait of the most creative, and least understood, figure in film history.

My Last Sigh

Luis Bunuel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A beautiful little book 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Bunuel gave some interviews towards the end of his life discussing his long list of movies. That's why I was delighted to find that his autobiography--which is one of the greatest, if not the greatest by a filmmaker--does not dwell on them. Instead Don Luis chronicles his childhood and upbringing, the relationships he cultivated, and meditates on life, love, death, art, alcohol and cigarettes. Many of the stories from his younger days are even more surreal than his movies. He writes in detail about his stormy friendships with Garcia Lorca and Dali, about his half-hearted attempt to try Hollywood on for size, meetings with Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, and others. The book is not somber or sentimental, it's not over-inflated. Bunuel's voice does not intimidate, it soothes. He's a master storyteller, a very gifted and generous writer.

Editorial Review:

Luis Buñuel lived many lives-surrealist, Spanish Civil War propagandist, hedonist, friend of artists and poets, and filmmaker. With surprising candor and wit, Buñuel offers his sometimes scathing opinions on the literati and avant-garde members of his sweeping social circle, including Pablo Picasso, Jorge Luis Borges, Salvador Dalí, and Federico García Lorca. These colorful stories of his nomadic life reveal a man of stunning imagination and influence.

Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) was one of the twentieth century's greatest filmmakers. His many credits include Un Chien andalou (1924), which he conceived with Salvador Dalí, and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.