Download or read book Down and Dirty Pictures written by Peter Biskind and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-01-08 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “dishy…superbly reported” (Entertainment Weekly) New York Times bestseller, Peter Biskind chronicles the rise of independent filmmakers who reinvented Hollywood—most notably Sundance founder Robert Redford and Harvey Weinstein, who with his brother, Bob, made Miramax Films an indie powerhouse. As he did in his acclaimed Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind “takes on the movie industry of the 1990s and again gets the story” (The New York Times). Biskind charts in fascinating detail the meteoric rise of the controversial Harvey Weinstein, often described as the last mogul, who created an Oscar factory that became the envy of the studios, while leaving a trail of carnage in his wake. He follows Sundance as it grew from a regional film festival to the premier showcase of independent film, succeeding almost despite the mercurial Redford, whose visionary plans were nearly thwarted by his own quixotic personality. Likewise, the directors who emerged from the independent movement, such as Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, and David O. Russell, are now among the best-known directors in Hollywood. Not to mention the actors who emerged with them, like Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Ethan Hawke, and Uma Thurman. Candid, controversial, and “sensationally entertaining” (Los Angeles Times) Down and Dirty Pictures is a must-read for anyone interested in the film world.
Download or read book Down and Dirty Pictures written by Peter Biskind and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the sensational classic "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" delivers anastute account of how film powerhouses Miramax and Sundance nurtured and thentransformed independent filmmaking, changing the face of Hollywood. ofphotos.
Download or read book Easy Riders Raging Bulls written by Peter Biskind and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-12-13 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1969, a low-budget biker movie, Easy Rider, shocked Hollywood with its stunning success. An unabashed celebration of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (onscreen and off), Easy Rider heralded a heady decade in which a rebellious wave of talented young filmmakers invigorated the movie industry. In Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind takes us on the wild ride that was Hollywood in the '70s, an era that produced such modern classics as The Godfather, Chinatown, Shampoo, Nashville, Taxi Driver, and Jaws. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls vividly chronicles the exuberance and excess of the times: the startling success of Easy Rider and the equally alarming circumstances under which it was made, with drugs, booze, and violent rivalry between costars Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda dominating the set; how a small production company named BBS became the guiding spirit of the youth rebellion in Hollywood and how, along the way, some of its executives helped smuggle Huey Newton out of the country; how director Hal Ashby was busted for drugs and thrown in jail in Toronto; why Martin Scorsese attended the Academy Awards with an FBI escort when Taxi Driver was nominated; how George Lucas, gripped by anxiety, compulsively cut off his own hair while writing Star Wars, how a modest house on Nicholas Beach occupied by actresses Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt became the unofficial headquarters for the New Hollywood; how Billy Friedkin tried to humiliate Paramount boss Barry Diller; and how screenwriter/director Paul Schrader played Russian roulette in his hot tub. It was a time when an "anything goes" experimentation prevailed both on the screen and off. After the success of Easy Rider, young film-school graduates suddenly found themselves in demand, and directors such as Francis Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, George Lucas, and Martin Scorsese became powerful figures. Even the new generation of film stars -- Nicholson, De Niro, Hoffman, Pacino, and Dunaway -- seemed a breed apart from the traditional Hollywood actors. Ironically, the renaissance would come to an end with Jaws and Star Wars, hugely successful films that would create a blockbuster mentality and crush innovation. Based on hundreds of interviews with the directors themselves, producers, stars, agents, writers, studio executives, spouses, and ex-spouses, this is the full, candid story of Hollywood's last golden age. Never before have so many celebrities talked so frankly about one another and about the drugs, sex, and money that made so many of them crash and burn. By turns hilarious and shocking, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is the ultimate behind-the-scenes account of Hollywood at work and play.
Download or read book Indie Inc written by Alisa Perren and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indie, Inc. surveys Miramax's evolution from independent producer-distributor to studio subsidiary, chronicling how one company transformed not just the independent film world but the film and media industries more broadly. Miramax's activities had an impact on everything from film festival practices to marketing strategies, talent development to awards campaigning. Case studies of key films, including The Piano, Kids, Scream, The English Patient, and Life is Beautiful, reveal how Miramax went beyond influencing Hollywood business practices and motion picture aesthetics to shaping popular and critical discourses about cinema during the 1990s ... [and] looks at the range of Miramax-released genre films, foreign-language films, and English-language imports released over the course of the decade.
Download or read book Pictures at a Revolution written by Mark Harris and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documents the cultural revolution behind the making of 1967's five Best Picture-nominated films, including Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, Doctor Doolittle, In the Heat of the Night, and Bonnie and Clyde, in an account that discusses how the movies reflected period beliefs about race, violence, and identity. 40,000 first printing.
Download or read book The Edge of the Bed written by Lisa Palac and published by Little Brown & Company. This book was released on 1998 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Called "the queen of high-tech porn" by The New York Times, the author charts her errancy from Catholic schoolgirl to feminist advocate of pornography and explores the challenges faced by sexually provocative women. 20,000 first printing. Tour.
Download or read book The Dirty Life written by Kristin Kimball and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-04-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After interviewing a young farmer, writer Kristen Kimball gave up her urban lifestyle to begin a farm with her interviewee near Lake Champlain in northern New York.
Download or read book Rebels on the Backlot written by Sharon Waxman and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-02-19 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1990s saw a shock wave of dynamic new directing talent that took the Hollywood studio system by storm. At the forefront of that movement were six innovative and daring directors whose films pushed the boundaries of moviemaking and announced to the world that something exciting was happening in Hollywood. Sharon Waxman, editor and chief of The Wrap.com and for Hollywood reporter for the New York Times spent the decade covering these young filmmakers, and in Rebels on the Backlot she weaves together the lives and careers of Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction; Steven Soderbergh, Traffic; David Fincher, Fight Club; Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights; David O. Russell, Three Kings; and Spike Jonze, Being John Malkovich.
Download or read book The Sky is Falling written by Peter Biskind and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'You'll never look at your favourite movies and TV shows the same way again. And you shouldn't' Steven Soderbergh 'Insanely readable' Slavoj Zizek 'Your book was ... like a bag of pot, with me saying, 'I'm not gonna smoke.' But I was insatiable' Quentin Tarantino on Easy Riders, Raging Bulls In The Sky is Falling! bestselling cultural critic Peter Biskind takes us on a dizzying ride across two decades of pop culture to show how the TV and movies we love - from Game of Thrones and 24 to Homeland and Iron Man - have taught us to love political extremism. Welcome to a darkly pessimistic, apocalyptic world where winter has come, the dead are walking, and ultra violence, revenge and torture are all in a day's work. Welcome to the new normal.
Download or read book Film Firsts written by Ethan Alter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-02-17 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This forward-looking exploration of contemporary American film across the last 40 years identifies and examines the specific movies that changed the film industry and shaped its present and future. Since the mid-1970s, American cinema has gone through enormous changes, such as the birth of the modern summer blockbuster, the rise of the independent film industry, ongoing technological advancements in special effects, and the ever-evolving models for film distribution. Written by a professional film critic and film buff, this book tells the story of contemporary American cinema in a unique and engaging way: by examining 25 key movies that demonstrated a significant creative, technological, or business innovation that impacted the industry at large. Each chapter in this chronological survey of contemporary film is divided into two sections: "The Film," which offers a critical overview of the film in question; and "The First," which describes the specific innovation achieved by that film and places that achievement in the larger historical context. Two additional appendices in each chapter explore other significant aspects of both the film and its groundbreaking nature. The broad coverage—ranging from action movies to horror films to science fiction favorites—ensures the work's appeal to all film fans.
Download or read book Martin Scorsese and the American Dream written by Jim Cullen and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-18 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than perhaps any other major filmmaker, Martin Scorsese has grappled with the idea of the American Dream. His movies are full of working-class strivers hoping for a better life, from the titular waitress and aspiring singer of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore to the scrappy Irish immigrants of Gangs of New York. And in films as varied as Casino, The Aviator, and The Wolf of Wall Street, he vividly displays the glamour and power that can come with the fulfillment of that dream, but he also shows how it can turn into a nightmare of violence, corruption, and greed. This book is the first study of Scorsese’s profound ambivalence toward the American Dream, the ways it drives some men and women to aspire to greatness, but leaves others seduced and abandoned. Showing that Scorsese understands the American dream in terms of a tension between provincialism and cosmopolitanism, Jim Cullen offers a new lens through which to view such seemingly atypical Scorsese films as The Age of Innocence, Hugo, and Kundun. Fast-paced, instructive, and resonant, Martin Scorsese and the American Dream illuminates an important dimension of our national life and how a great artist has brought it into focus.
Download or read book Directing written by Virginia Wright Wexman and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-10 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a film is acclaimed, the director usually gets the lion’s share of the credit. Yet the movie director’s job—especially the collaborations and compromises it involves—remains little understood. The latest volume in the Behind the Silver Screen series, this collection provides the first comprehensive overview of how directing, as both an art and profession, has evolved in tandem with changing film industry practices. Each chapter is written by an expert on a different period of Hollywood, from the silent film era to today’s digital filmmaking, providing in-depth examinations of key trends like the emergence of independent production after World War II and the rise of auteurism in the 1970s. Challenging the myth of the lone director, these studies demonstrate how directors work with a multitude of other talented creative professionals, including actors, writers, producers, editors, and cinematographers. Directing examines a diverse range of classic and contemporary directors, including Orson Welles, Tim Burton, Cecil B. DeMille, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, and Ida Lupino, offering a rich composite picture of how they have negotiated industry constraints, utilized new technologies, and harnessed the creative contributions of their many collaborators throughout a century of Hollywood filmmaking.
Download or read book Quentin Tarantino written by Ian Nathan and published by White Lion Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Get an intimate look at the cult filmmaker of our generation. Packaged in a handsome slipcase and loaded with stunning pictures from the Kobal archives, this biography explores the genesis of Tarantino's unique directorial style and provides insight into his inspirations and his frequent collaborations with favored actors. An 8-page foldout timeline presents Tarantino’s entire filmography in the heart of the book. Through in-depth and informative text written by renowned film journalist Ian Nathan, this book examines the entirety of Tarantino's work, including his early writing on screenplays such as True Romance and Natural Born Killers, his break-out directorial debut Reservoir Dogs and the career-defining Pulp Fiction, as well as his later iconic films, such as Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained. You'll also go behind the scenes of Tarantino's latest epic, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. As you make your way through Tarantino's incredible career, discover what inspired him, his working methods, and the breadth of his talent. With a visually arresting design that mimics Tarantino's approach to film-making and chapters organized by film, the pages are brimming with images taken on set and behind the scenes. This is the ultimate celebration for any Tarantino fan.
Download or read book Hollywood Ending written by Ken Auletta and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid biography of Harvey Weinstein—how he rose to become a dominant figure in the film world, how he used that position to feed his monstrous sexual appetites, and how it all came crashing down, from the author who has covered the Hollywood and media power game for The New Yorker for three decades Twenty years ago, Ken Auletta wrote an iconic New Yorker profile of the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was then at the height of his powers. The profile made waves for exposing how volatile, even violent, Weinstein was to his employees and collaborators. But there was a much darker story that was just out of reach: rumors had long swirled that Weinstein was a sexual predator. Auletta confronted Weinstein, who denied the claims. Since no one was willing to go on the record, Auletta and the magazine concluded they couldn’t close the case. Years later, he was able to share his reporting notes and knowledge with Ronan Farrow; he cheered as Farrow, and Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, finally revealed the truth. Still, the story continued to nag him. The trail of assaults and cover-ups had been exposed, but the larger questions remained: What was at the root of Weinstein’s monstrousness? How, and why, was it never checked? Why the silence? How does a man run the day-to-day operations of a company with hundreds of employees and revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and at the same time live a shadow life of sexual predation without ever being caught? How much is this a story about Harvey Weinstein, and how much is this a story about Hollywood and power? In pursuit of the answers, Auletta digs into Weinstein’s life, searching for the mysteries beneath a film career unparalleled for its extraordinary talent and creative success, which combined with a personal brutality and viciousness to leave a trail of ruined lives in its wake. Hollywood Ending is more than a prosecutor’s litany; it is an unflinching examination of Weinstein's life and career, embedding his crimes in the context of the movie business, in his failures and the successes that led to enormous power. Film stars, Miramax employees and board members, old friends and family, and even the person who knew him best—Harvey’s brother, Bob—all talked to Auletta at length. Weinstein himself also responded to Auletta’s questions from prison. The result is not simply the portrait of a predator but of the power that allowed Weinstein to operate with such impunity for so many years, the spiderweb in which his victims found themselves trapped.
Download or read book Channel 4 and the British Film Industry 1982 1998 written by Laura Mayne and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph offers the first ever comprehensive study of Channel 4's film production, distribution and broadcasting activities and represents a significant contribution to British cinema and television history. The importance of Channel 4 to the British film industry over the last 40 years cannot be overstated. The birth of the Channel in 1982 heralded a convergence between the UK film and television sectors which was particularly notable given that the two industries had historically been at loggerheads. In addition to its role as a broadcaster and curator of feature film programming, since its inception Channel 4 has funded or co-funded hundreds of feature films through its film commissioning arm, Film4. The Channel's commitment to financing between 15-20 films per year helped form the backbone of the ailing film sector throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, while Film4 funding has also been instrumental to the success of many companies which have become vital to the British film industry.
Download or read book Indie Inc written by Alisa Perren and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1990s, films such as sex, lies, and videotape, The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, and Shakespeare in Love earned substantial sums at the box office along with extensive critical acclaim. A disproportionate number of these hits came from one company: Miramax. Indie, Inc. surveys Miramax’s evolution from independent producer-distributor to studio subsidiary, chronicling how one company transformed not just the independent film world but the film and media industries more broadly. As Alisa Perren illustrates, Miramax’s activities had an impact on everything from film festival practices to marketing strategies, talent development to awards campaigning. Case studies of key films, including The Piano, Kids, Scream, The English Patient, and Life Is Beautiful, reveal how Miramax went beyond influencing Hollywood business practices and motion picture aesthetics to shaping popular and critical discourses about cinema during the 1990s. Indie, Inc. does what other books about contemporary low-budget cinema have not—it transcends discussions of “American indies” to look at the range of Miramax-released genre films, foreign-language films, and English-language imports released over the course of the decade. The book illustrates that what both the press and scholars have typically represented as the “rise of the American independent” was in fact part of a larger reconfiguration of the media industries toward niche-oriented products.
Download or read book Los Angeles Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 2004-04 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Los Angeles magazine is a regional magazine of national stature. Our combination of award-winning feature writing, investigative reporting, service journalism, and design covers the people, lifestyle, culture, entertainment, fashion, art and architecture, and news that define Southern California. Started in the spring of 1961, Los Angeles magazine has been addressing the needs and interests of our region for 48 years. The magazine continues to be the definitive resource for an affluent population that is intensely interested in a lifestyle that is uniquely Southern Californian.
