Download or read book Making Movies written by Sidney Lumet and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does a director choose a particular script? What must they do in order to keep actors fresh and truthful through take after take of a single scene? How do you stage a shootout—involving more than one hundred extras and three colliding taxis—in the heart of New York’s diamond district? What does it take to keep the studio honchos happy? From the first rehearsal to the final screening, Making Movies is a master’s take, delivered with clarity, candor, and a wealth of anecdote. For in this book, Sidney Lumet, one of our most consistently acclaimed directors, gives us both a professional memoir and a definitive guide to the art, craft, and business of the motion picture. Drawing on forty years of experience on movies that range from Long Day’s Journey into Night to Network and The Verdict—and with such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino—Lumet explains how painstaking labor and inspired split-second decisions can result in two hours of screen magic.
Download or read book Sidney Lumet written by Maura Spiegel and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first-ever biography of the seminal American director whose remarkable life traces a line through American entertainment history Acclaimed as the ultimate New York movie director, Sidney Lumet began his astonishing five-decades-long directing career with the now classic 12 Angry Men, followed by such landmark films as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network. His remarkably varied output included award-winning adaptations of plays by Anton Chekhov, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O’Neill, whose Long Day’s Journey into Night featured Katharine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson in their most devastating performances. Renowned as an “actor’s director,” Lumet attracted an unmatched roster of stars, among them: Henry Fonda, Sophia Loren, Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Ethan Hawke, and Philip-Seymour Hoffman, accruing eighteen Oscar nods for his actors along the way. With the help of exclusive interviews with family, colleagues, and friends, author Maura Spiegel provides a vibrant portrait of the life and work of this extraordinary director whose influence is felt through generations, and takes us inside the Federal Theater, the Group Theatre, the Actors Studio, and the early “golden age” of television. From his surprising personal life, with four marriages to remarkable women—all of whom opened their living rooms to Lumet’s world of artists and performers like Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson—to the world of Yiddish theater and Broadway spectacles, Sidney Lumet: A Life is a book that anyone interested in American film of the twentieth century will not want to miss.
Download or read book Sidney Lumet written by Sidney Lumet and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2006 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of over twenty interviews with the director of Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, and 12 Angry Men
Download or read book Sidney Lumet written by Aubrey Malone and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Punctilious to a fault, Sidney Lumet favored intense rehearsal, which enabled him to bring in most of his films under budget and under schedule. An energized director who captured the heart of New York like no other, he created a vast canon of work that stands as a testament to his passionate concern for justice and his great empathy for the hundreds of people with whom he collaborated during a career that spanned more than five decades. This is the first full-scale biography of a man who is generally regarded as one of the most affable directors of his time. Using the oral testimonies of those who worked with him both behind and in front of the camera, this book explores Lumet's personality and working methods.
Download or read book Orpheus Descending written by Tennessee Williams and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 1983 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY: As The New York Times describes, The play tells of a woman storekeeper and a handsome, guileless youth who comes in off the highway. A guitar-player, he is a rural Orpheus who descends to rescue his love--not in Hades, precisely,
Download or read book Sidney Lumet written by Frank R. Cunningham and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-10-17 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1957, Sidney Lumet, the most prolific American director of his generation, has deepened audiences' awareness of social, ethical, and feminist issues through such distinguished films as 12 Angry Men, The Verdict, Running on Empty, and Critical Care. Especially praised for his literary adaptations—including Long Day's Journey into Night and Murder on the Orient Express—Lumet has also directed such trenchant urban films as Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and Network. In this new edition Frank Cunningham expands his analysis of Lumet's earlier films and examines his most recent work, from A Stranger Among Us (1992) to Gloria (1999). Also new to this edition are discussions of five other films, including The Appointment, Murder on the Orient Express, and Running on Empty. Cunningham studies in depth over thirty of Lumet's most significant films and surveys other films and the television productions to reveal their enduring artistic and humanistic importance.
Download or read book Reginald Rose and the Journey of 12 Angry Men written by Phil Rosenzweig and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist, 2021 Wall Award (Formerly the Theatre Library Association Award) The untold story behind one of America’s greatest dramas In early 1957, a low-budget black-and-white movie opened across the United States. Consisting of little more than a dozen men arguing in a dingy room, it was a failure at the box office and soon faded from view. Today, 12 Angry Men is acclaimed as a movie classic, revered by the critics, beloved by the public, and widely performed as a stage play, touching audiences around the world. It is also a favorite of the legal profession for its portrayal of ordinary citizens reaching a just verdict and widely taught for its depiction of group dynamics and human relations. Few twentieth-century American dramatic works have had the acclaim and impact of 12 Angry Men. Reginald Rose and the Journey of “12 Angry Men” tells two stories: the life of a great writer and the journey of his most famous work, one that ultimately outshined its author. More than any writer in the Golden Age of Television, Reginald Rose took up vital social issues of the day—from racial prejudice to juvenile delinquency to civil liberties—and made them accessible to a wide audience. His 1960s series, The Defenders, was the finest drama of its age and set the standard for legal dramas. This book brings Reginald Rose’s long and successful career, its origins and accomplishments, into view at long last. By placing 12 Angry Men in its historical and social context—the rise of television, the blacklist, and the struggle for civil rights—author Phil Rosenzweig traces the story of this brilliant courtroom drama, beginning with the chance experience that inspired Rose, to its performance on CBS’s Westinghouse Studio One in 1954, to the feature film with Henry Fonda. The book describes Sidney Lumet’s casting, the sudden death of one actor, and the contribution of cinematographer Boris Kaufman. It explores the various drafts of the drama, with characters modified and scenes added and deleted, with Rose settling on the shattering climax only days before filming began. Drawing on extensive research and brimming with insight, this book casts new light on one of America’s great dramas—and about its author, a man of immense talent and courage. Author royalties will be donated equally to the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School and the Justice John Paul Stevens Jury Center at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
Download or read book Street Smart written by Richard Aloysius Blake and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York has appeared in more movies than Michael Caine, and as a result of overfamiliarity, the City poses a problem for critics and casual moviegoers alike. Audiences mistake the New York image of skyscrapers and glitter for the real thing, but in fact the City is a network of small villages, each with its unique personality. Street Smart offers a novel approach to understanding the cultural influences of New York's neighborhoods on the work of four quintessentially New York filmmakers: Sidney Lumet, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and Spike Lee. The city's diverse economic and ethnic enclaves, where people live, work, shop, worship, bank, and go to school, often have little relationship to the concept of New York City created by the movies. Their New York, however, is as real as the smell of fried onions in the stairwell of an apartment building, and it is this New York, not the movie New York, that has left its impression on their films. Lumet, Allen, Scorsese, and Lee's imaginations have been shaped by their neighborhoods, not the New York of the movies. In turn, these directors have used their own life experiences to shape their films. Richard A. Blake examines their home villages -- from Flatbush and Fort Green in Brooklyn to the Lower East Side of Manhattan -- to enrich our critical understanding of the films of four of America's most accomplished contemporary filmmakers.
Download or read book Follies of God written by James Grissom and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkably illuminating portrait of Tennessee Williams lifts the veil on the heart and soul of his artistic inspiration: the unspoken collaboration between playwright and actor. At a low moment in Williams’s life, he summoned to New Orleans a young twenty-year-old writer, James Grissom, who had written him a letter asking for advice. After a long, intense conversation, Williams sent Grissom on a journey on his behalf to find out if he or his work had mattered to those who had so deeply mattered to him. Among the more than seventy women and men with whom Grissom talked were giants of American theater and film: Lillian Gish, (“the escort who brought me to Blanche”), Jessica Tandy (the original Blanche DuBois on Broadway), Eva Le Gallienne (“She was a stone against which I could rub my talent and feel that it became sharper”), Maureen Stapleton, Julie Harris, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, John Gielgud, and many more. Follies of God provides dazzling insight into how Williams conjured the dramatic characters and plays that so transformed American theater.
Download or read book Mad as Hell written by Dave Itzkoff and published by Times Books. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The behind-the-scenes story of the making of the iconic movie Network, which transformed the way we think about television and the way television thinks about us "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Those words, spoken by an unhinged anchorman named Howard Beale, "the mad prophet of the airwaves," took America by storm in 1976, when Network became a sensation. With a superb cast (including Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, and Robert Duvall) directed by Sidney Lumet, the film won four Academy Awards and indelibly shaped how we think about corporate and media power. In Mad As Hell, Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times recounts the surprising and dramatic story of how Network made it to the screen. Such a movie rarely gets made any more—one man's vision of the world, independent of studio testing or market research. And that man was Paddy Chayefsky, the tough, driven, Oscar-winning screenwriter whose vision—outlandish for its time—is all too real today. Itzkoff uses interviews with the cast and crew, as well as Chayefsky's notes, letters, and drafts to re-create the action in front of and behind the camera at a time of swirling cultural turmoil. The result is a riveting account that enriches our appreciation of this prophetic and still-startling film. Itzkoff also speaks with today's leading broadcasters and filmmakers to assess Network's lasting impact on television and popular culture. They testify to the enduring genius of Paddy Chayefsky, who foresaw the future and whose life offers an unforgettable lesson about the true cost of self-expression.
Download or read book The Meryl Streep Movie Club written by Mia March and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Escape to the breathtaking coast of Maine and let the unmissable novel from Mia March brighten up your summer. Perfect for fans of Jenny Colgan, Veronica Henry and The Jane Austen Book Club. On the coast of Maine sits The Three Captains Inn, a haven for tourists and locals alike. When Lolly, the owner, summons her nieces home, they assume she’s planning to sell the inn, the place they called home after they lost their parents in a car accident that also claimed the life of Lolly’s husband. Little do they know, the truth is far more unimaginable . . . Along with Kat, Lolly’s daughter, the women reunite for their first summer together in many years and home truths and long buried secrets begin to emerge. Then movie-lover Lolly invites her family to one of her legendary movie nights – this month’s theme: Meryl Streep – and what was intended to be a few hours’ distraction ends up making them question everything they thought they knew about life, love and one another. As each woman sees her complicated life reflected through the magic of cinema, will they be able to find their own happily-ever-afters before it’s too late? ‘A treat for movie lovers and fans of meaningful women’s fiction’ Romantic Times 'A heartwarming, spirit-lifting read just in time for beach season' Kirkus Reviews 'A touching story of self-discovery and the strength of family' Booklist
Download or read book The Book of Daniel written by E.L. Doctorow and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-11-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia. His name is Daniel Isaacson, and as the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He has not adjusted. Out of the shambles of his childhood, he has constructed a new life—marriage to an adoring girl who gives him a son of his own, and a career in scholarship. It is a life that enrages him. In the silence of the library at Columbia University, where he is supposedly writing a Ph.D. dissertation, Daniel composes something quite different. It is a confession of his most intimate relationships—with his wife, his foster parents, and his kid sister Susan, whose own radicalism so reproaches him. It is a book of memories: riding a bus with his parents to the ill-fated Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill; watching the FBI take his father away; appearing with Susan at rallies protesting their parents’ innocence; visiting his mother and father in the Death House. It is a book of investigation: transcribing Daniel’s interviews with people who knew his parents, or who knew about them; and logging his strange researches and discoveries in the library stacks. It is a book of judgments of everyone involved in the case—lawyers, police, informers, friends, and the Isaacson family itself. It is a book rich in characters, from elderly grand- mothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pen-tagon. It is a book that spans the quarter-century of American life since World War II. It is a book about the nature of Left politics in this country—its sacrificial rites, its peculiar cruelties, its humility, its bitterness. It is a book about some of the beautiful and terrible feelings of childhood. It is about the nature of guilt and innocence, and about the relations of people to nations. It is The Book of Daniel.
Download or read book Who the Devil Made It written by Peter Bogdanovich and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2012-05-30 with total page 1127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A must have for any film nut.”—Details Peter Bogdanovich, award-winning director, screenwriter, actor and critic, interviews 16 legendary directors over a 15-year period. Their richly illuminating conversations combine to make this a riveting chronicle of Hollywood and picture making. Join him in conversations with: Robert Aldrich • George Cukor • Allan Dwan • Howard Hanks • Alfred Hitchcock • Chuck Jones • Fritz Lang • Joseph H. Lewis • Sidney Lumet • Leo McCarey • Otto Preminger • Don Siegel • Josef von Sternberg • Frank Tashlin • Edgar G. Ulmer • Raoul Walsh NOTE: This edition does not include photographs. Praise for Who the Devil Made It “Illuminating . . . These were (and sometimes are: a few yet breathe) men rooted in history as much as in Hollywood. Their collected memories make the past look fearfully rich beside a present that is poverty-stricken in everything except money.”—The New Yorker “Bogdanovich is one of America’s finest writers on the cinema. . . . Thank goodness [his] Who the Devil Made It has come along to remind us that films and writing about film were, at one time, focused on the work and not strictly on the bottom line.”—The Boston Globe “A treasure trove on the craft of directing.”—Newsday “Monumental . . . The directors’ reminiscences about technique, working methods, sources of ideas, and relationships with actors and studios are thoroughly entertaining.”—Publishers Weekly “A fine achievement that helps illuminate the art and craft of some remarkable directors . . . There are plenty of revealing anecdotes.”—Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book Leaving Cheyenne written by Larry McMurtry and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If Chaucer were a Texan writing today . . . this is how he would have written and this is how he would have felt.”— New York Times In Leaving Cheyenne (1963), which anticipates Lonesome Dove more than any other early novel, the stark realities of the American West play out in a mesmerizing love triangle. Stubborn rancher Gideon Fry, resilient Molly Taylor, and awkward ranch hand Johnny McCloud struggle with love and jealousy as the years pass.
Download or read book Sydney Pollack written by Janet L. Meyer and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-08-13 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, Absence of Malice, Out of Africa, Tootsie, The Firm, Searching for Bobby Fischer--Sydney Pollack has produced, directed or appeared in some of the biggest and most influential films of the last quarter century. His emergence in Hollywood coincided with those of such other innovative directors as John Frankenheimer, George Roy Hill and Sidney Lumet, and with them he helped develop a contemplative style of filmmaking that was almost European in its approach but retained its commercial viability. Film-by-film, this work examines the directorial career of Sydney Pollack. One finds that his style is marked by deliberate pacing, ambiguous endings and metaphorical love stories. Topically, Pollack's films reflect social, culture and political dilemmas that hold some fascination for him, with multidimensional characters in place that generally break the stereotypical molds of the situations. Pollack's directing efforts on television are also detailed, as are his production and acting credits.
Download or read book Designs on Film written by Cathy Whitlock and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who can forget the over-the-top, white-on-white, high-gloss interiors through which Fred Astaire danced in Top Hat? The modernist high-rise architecture, inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, in the adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead? The lavish, opulent drawing rooms of Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence? Through the use of film design—called both art direction and production design in the film industry—movies can transport us to new worlds of luxury, highlight the ornament of the everyday, offer a vision of the future, or evoke the realities of a distant era. In Designs on Film, journalist and interior designer Cathy Whitlock illuminates the often undercelebrated role of the production designer in the creation of the most memorable moments in film history. Through a lush collection of rare archival photographs, Whitlock narrates the evolving story of art direction over the course of a century—from the massive Roman architecture of Ben-Hur to the infamous Dakota apartment in Rosemary's Baby to the digital CGI wonders of Avatar's Pandora. Drawing on insights from the most prominent Hollywood production designers and the historical knowledge of the venerable Art Directors Guild, Whitlock delves into the detailed process of how sets are imagined, drawn, built, and decorated. Designs on Film is the must-have look book for film lovers, movie buffs, and anyone looking to draw interior design inspiration from the constructions and confections of Hollywood. Whitlock lifts the curtain on movie magic and celebrates the many ways in which art direction and set design allow us to lose ourselves in the diverse worlds showcased on the big screen.
Download or read book Norman Jewison written by Ira Wells and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Norman Jewison directed some of the most iconic and beloved films of an era, from In the Heat of the Night and The Thomas Crown Affair to Jesus Christ Superstar and Moonstruck. But despite being what his friend William Goldman called "a giant of the industry," Jewison could also walk the streets of any city in the world and go unrecognized. Jewison was a man of contradictions: he cared more about telling great stories than gaining fame and fortune by showcasing movie stars, but generations of Hollywood's marquee actors - Judy Garland, Sidney Poitier, Faye Dunaway, Al Pacino, Jane Fonda, Burt Reynolds, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington - trusted him at crucial moments in their careers. Yet, for all his talent and the passionate support of his actors, Jewison suffered heartbreaking rejection from the executives who refused to believe in his dreams. Norman Jewison: A Director's Life is a story of artistic survival and reinvention, and about the fate of original cinematic ideas in an industry increasingly captive to corporate greed. Drawing upon exhaustive archival research and dozens of interviews, Ira Wells provides a soulful portrait of an idealist who had to fight for every frame of his legacy. Here are Norman's legendary collaborators--Hal Ashby, William Rose, Steve McQueen, and more--brought to vivid life in original letters, telegrams, and revealing, unpublished interviews. A clear-eyed reassessment of Hollywood's final golden age, Norman Jewison: A Director's Life is both the intimate portrait of an artist and a rallying cry for anyone who has had to fight for their creative vision.
