Download or read book The Capra Touch written by Matthew C. Gunter and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, Academy Award-winning director Frank Capra (1897-1991) made propaganda films for the U.S. Government, such as Prelude to War, The Nazis Strike, The Battle of Britain, War Comes to America and The Negro Soldier. These entries in the Why We Fight documentary series have been largely neglected by Capra scholars. This work analyzes the cinematic and thematic techniques Capra employed in these films, linking them to the techniques and ideology of the director's popular mainstream narrative films, including It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Also analyzed are the manners in which Frank Capra's war service affected his later films, notably his 1946 masterpiece It's a Wonderful Life, and how Capra's belief in individual liberty shaped both his films and his career under the oppressive Hollywood studio system.

Download or read book Framework written by Tom Stempel and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third eidtion of this history of the art and craft of screenwriting from the silents to the present provides information and stories about those who write and have written for film. Includes anecdotal insights into the working lives of directors, producers, and stars, as well as how American movies get made.

Download or read book Fay Wray and Robert Riskin written by Victoria Riskin and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Biography) A Hollywood love story, a Hollywood memoir, a dual biography of two of Hollywood’s most famous figures, whose golden lives were lived at the center of Hollywood’s golden age, written by their daughter, an acclaimed writer and producer. Fay Wray was most famous as the woman—the blonde in a diaphanous gown—who captured the heart of the mighty King Kong, the twenty-five-foot, sixty-ton gorilla, as he placed her, nestled in his eight-foot hand, on the ledge of the 102-story Empire State Building, putting Wray at the height of New York’s skyline and cinematic immortality. Wray starred in more than 120 pictures opposite Hollywood's biggest stars—Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper (The Legion of the Condemned, The First Kiss, The Texan, One Sunday Afternoon), Clark Gable, William Powell, and Charles Boyer; from cowboy stars Hoot Gibson and Art Accord to Ronald Colman (The Unholy Garden), Claude Rains, Ralph Richardson, and Melvyn Douglas. She was directed by the masters of the age, from Fred Niblo, Erich von Stroheim (The Wedding March), and Mauritz Stiller (The Street of Sin) to Leo McCarey, William Wyler, Gregory La Cava, “Wild Bill” William Wellman, Merian C. Cooper (The Four Feathers, King Kong), Josef von Sternberg (Thunderbolt), Dorothy Arzner (Behind the Make-Up), Frank Capra (Dirigible), Michael Curtiz (Doctor X), Raoul Walsh (The Bowery), and Vincente Minnelli. The book’s—and Wray’s—counterpart: Robert Riskin, considered one of the greatest screenwriters of all time. Academy Award–winning writer (nominated for five), producer, ten-year-long collaborator with Frank Capra on such pictures as American Madness, It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizon, and Meet John Doe, hailed by many, among them F. Scott Fitzgerald, as “among the best screenwriters in the business.” Riskin wrote women characters who were smart, ornery, sexy, always resilient, as he perfected what took full shape in It Happened One Night, the Riskin character, male or female—breezy, self-made, streetwise, optimistic, with a sense of humor that is subtle and sure. Fay Wray and Robert Riskin lived large lives, finding each other after establishing their artistic selves and after each had had many romantic attachments—Wray, an eleven-year-long difficult marriage and a fraught affair with Clifford Odets, and Riskin, a series of romances with, among others, Carole Lombard, Glenda Farrell, and Loretta Young. Here are Wray’s and Riskin’s lives, their work, their fairy-tale marriage that ended so tragically. Here are their dual, quintessential American lives, ultimately and blissfully intertwined.

Download or read book Songs of Innocence and Experience written by Magdalena Grabias-Zurek and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2013-07-26 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Songs of Innocence and Experience: Romance in the Cinema of Frank Capra is a study of the director’s chosen movies from the perspective of three types of comedies: paradisal, purgatorial and infernal, as assigned by Dante in his Divine Comedy. Magdalena Grabias views Capra’s films in two broader categories of “innocence” and “experience,” where “innocence” represents Dantean paradisal level, and “experience” combines the levels of purgatory and inferno. Such a division constitutes the means to interpret Capra’s filmic universe and to describe the ever-evolving directorial vision of Frank Capra. The main purpose of the book is to demonstrate how, in the light of the theory of literary romance as presented by Northrop Frye in his seminal works concerning the subject, the films of Frank Capra fit into the genre of romance. Romantic elements in Frank Capra’s movies can be found in both “innocence” and “experience” categories and, hence, consequently in his paradisal, purgatorial and infernal comedies. However, in both categories, and all three comedy types, the romantic reality of each examined film is structured and developed in a different manner. The book offers an insight into Frank Capra’s films and the complex process of creating his multidimensional romantic universe within them.

Download or read book Frank Capra written by Joseph McBride and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2011-06-02 with total page 825 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moviegoers often assume Frank Capra's life resembled his beloved films (such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life). A man of the people faces tremendous odds and, by doing the right thing, triumphs! But as Joseph McBride reveals in this meticulously researched, definitive biography, the reality was far more complex, a true American tragedy. Using newly declassified U.S. government documents about Capra's response to being considered a possible “subversive” during the post-World War II Red Scare, McBride adds a final chapter to his unforgettable portrait of the man who gave us It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Meet John Doe.

Download or read book Making Videos for Money written by Barry Hampe and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1998-02-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides information on planning, writing, directing, and completing videos, discusses how to handle clients, and addresses the specific needs of different type of videos.

Download or read book All the Best Lines written by George Tiffin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pithy put-downs, hard-boiled snarlings, words of love and regret... All the Best Lines presents 500 memorable movie quotes, embracing both one-liners ('My name is Pussy Galore') and slices of snappy dialogue from pictures as diverse as When Harry Met Sally and Pulp Fiction. Arranged under such timeless themes as Dreams, Friends, Libido and Memories, the quotes juxtapose films and stars from every era and every genre. Dotted throughout the text are feature capsules focusing on themes and stories in the movies from Goldwynisms to Mae West, plus a generous scattering of cinema anecdotes, making the book both a joy to browse and an authoritative reference. Lavishly illustrated with full-colour photographs, All the Best Lines will delight and entertain you in equal measure, reacquainting you with your favourite movies and introducing you to some forgotten classics.

Download or read book Screenwriting 001 written by Hafed Bouassida and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2014-07-28 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The basics, the answers, the definitions, the reference, the examples, the inside jokes and the snide comments for you all, who decided despite all warnings to write a screenplay

Download or read book Frank Capra written by Robert Sklar and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frank Capra's films have had a lasting impact on American culture. His powerful depiction of American values, myths, and ideals was central to such famous Hollywood films asIt Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It's a Wonderful Life.These pre-war films are remembered for their depiction of an individual's overcoming adversity, populist politics, and an unflappable optimist view of life. This collection of nine essays by leading international film historians analyzes Capra's filmmaking during his most prolific period, from 1928 to 1939, taking a closer look at the more complex aspects of his work. They trace his struggles for autonomy against Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn, his reputation as an auteur, and the ways in which working within studio modes of production may have enhanced the director's strengths. The contributors also place their critiques within the context of the changing fortunes of the Hollywood studio system, the impact of the Depression, and Capra's working relationships with other studio staff and directors. The contributors' access to nineteen newly restored Capra films made at Columbia during this period fills this collection with some of the most comprehensive critiques available on the director's early body of work. Author note:Robert Sklar, Professor of Cinema at New York University, is the co-editor (with Charles Musser) ofResisting Images: Essays on Cinema and History(Temple), and the author of numerous books on film, includingMovie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, and Garfield, andFilm: An International History of the Mediumwinner of the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award.Vito Zagarrioteaches film history at the University of Florence and film analysis at the University of Rome III, Italy.

Download or read book What Happens Next written by Marc Norman and published by Crown Archetype. This book was released on 2008-10-07 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Screenwriters have always been viewed as Hollywood’s stepchildren. Silent-film comedy pioneer Mack Sennett forbade his screenwriters from writing anything down, for fear they’d get inflated ideas about themselves as creative artists. The great midcentury director John Ford was known to answer studio executives’ complaints that he was behind schedule by tearing a handful of random pages from his script and tossing them over his shoulder. And Ken Russell was so contemptuous of Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay for Altered States that Chayefsky insisted on having his name removed from the credits. Of course, popular impressions aside, screenwriters have been central to moviemaking since the first motion picture audiences got past the sheer novelty of seeing pictures that moved at all. Soon they wanted to know: What happens next? In this truly fresh perspective on the movies, veteran Oscar-winning screenwriter Marc Norman gives us the first comprehensive history of the men and women who have answered that question, from Anita Loos, the highest-paid screenwriter of her day, to Robert Towne, Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Kaufman, and other paradigm-busting talents reimagining movies for the new century. The whole rich story is here: Herman Mankiewicz and the telegram he sent from Hollywood to his friend Ben Hecht in New York: “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots.” The unlikely sojourns of F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner as Hollywood screenwriters. The imposition of the Production Code in the early 1930s and the ingenious attempts of screenwriters to outwit the censors. How the script for Casablanca, “a disaster from start to finish,” based on what James Agee judged to be “one of the world’s worst plays,” took shape in a chaotic frenzy of writing and rewriting—and how one of the most famous denouements in motion picture history wasn’t scripted until a week after the last scheduled day of shooting—because they had to end the movie somehow. Norman explores the dark days of the Hollywood blacklist that devastated and divided Hollywood’s screenwriting community. He charts the rise of the writer-director in the early 1970s with names like Coppola, Lucas, and Allen and the disaster of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate that led the studios to retake control. He offers priceless portraits of the young William Hurt, Steven Spielberg, and Steven Soderbergh. And he describes the scare of 2005 when new technologies seemed to dry up the audience for movies, and the industry—along with its screenwriters—faced the necessity of reinventing itself as it had done before in the face of sound recording, color, widescreen, television, and other technological revolutions. Impeccably researched, erudite, and filled with unforgettable stories of the too often overlooked, maligned, and abused men and women who devised the ideas that others brought to life in action and words on-screen, this is a unique and engrossing history of the quintessential art form of our time.

Download or read book In Capra s Shadow written by Ian Scott and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-10-17 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Because screenwriter Robert Riskin spent most of his career collaborating with legendary Hollywood director Frank Capra, Riskin's own unique contributions to film have been largely overshadowed. With five Academy Award nominations to his credit for the monumental films Lady for a Day, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It with You, Here Comes the Groom, and It Happened One Night (for which he won the Oscar), Riskin is often imitated but rarely equaled. In Capra's Shadow: The Life and Career of Screenwriter Robert Riskin is the first detailed critical examination of the Hollywood pioneer's life and work. In addition to being one of the great screenwriters of the classic Hollywood era, Riskin was also a producer and director, founding his own film company and playing a crucial role in the foundation of the Screen Writers Guild. During World War II, Riskin was one of the major forces behind propaganda filmmaking. He worked in the Office of War Information and oversaw the distribution -- and later, production -- of films and documentaries in foreign theaters. He was interested in showing the rest of the world more than just an idealized version of America; he looked for films that emphasized the spiritual and cultural vibrancy within the U.S., making charity, faith, and generosity of spirit his propaganda tools. His efforts also laid the groundwork for a system of distribution channels that would result in the dominance of American cinema in Europe in the postwar years. Riskin's postwar work included his production of the 1947 film Magic Town, the tale of a marketing executive who discovers the perfect American small town and uses it for polling. What Riskin created onscreen is not simply a community stuck in an antiquarian past; rather, the town of Grandview observes its own traditions while at the same time confronting the possibilities of the modern world and the challenges of postwar America. Author Ian Scott provides a unique perspective on Riskin and the ways in which his brilliant, pithy style was realized in Capra's enduring films. Riskin's impact on cinema extended far beyond these films as he helped spread Hollywood cinema abroad and articulated his vision of a changing America.

Download or read book Funny The Book written by David Misch and published by Applause Theatre & Cinema. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Applause Books). Funny: The Book is an entertaining look at the art of comedy, from its historical roots to the latest scientific findings, with diversions into the worlds of movies (Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers), television ( The Office ), prose (Woody Allen, Robert Benchley), theater ( The Front Page ), jokes and stand-up comedy (Richard Pryor, Steve Martin), as well as personal reminiscences from the author's experiences on such TV programs as Mork and Mindy . With allusions to the not-always-funny Carl Jung, George Orwell, and Arthur Koestler, Funny: The Book explores the evolution, theories, principles, and practice of comedy, as well as the psychological, philosophical, and even theological underpinnings of humor, coming to the conclusion that (Spoiler Alert!) Comedy is God.

Download or read book Film written by William H. Phillips and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-01-02 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This clear, well illustrated text takes the reader through the basics of film analysis, drawing on a wide range of film for discussion. Questions of genre and the contexts and meanings of film are considered.

Download or read book The President s Ladies written by Bernard F. Dick and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014-04-14 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ronald Reagan, a former actor and one of America's most popular presidents, married not one but two Hollywood actresses. This book is three biographies in one, discovering fascinating connections among Jane Wyman (1917–2007), Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), and Nancy Davis (b. 1921–2016). Jane Wyman, who married Reagan in 1940 and divorced him seven years later, knew an early life of privation. She gravitated to the movies and made her debut at fifteen as an unbilled member of the chorus, then toiled as an extra for four years until she finally received billing. She proved herself as a dramatic actress in The Lost Weekend, and the following year, she was nominated for an Oscar for The Yearling and soon won for her performance in Johnny Belinda, in which she did not speak a single line. Other Oscar nominations followed, along with a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Angela Channing in Falcon Crest. Conversely, Nancy Davis led a relatively charmed life, the daughter of an actress and the stepdaughter of a neurosurgeon. Surrounded by her mother's friends—Walter Huston, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Lillian Gish, and Alla Nazimova, her godmother—Davis started in the theater, then moved on to Hollywood, where she enjoyed modest success, and finally began working in television. When she married Reagan in 1952, she unwittingly married into politics, eventually leaving acting to concentrate on being the wife of the governor of California, and then the wife of the president of the United States. In her way, Davis played her greatest role as Reagan's friend, confidante, and adviser in life and in politics. This book considers three actors who left an indelible mark on both popular and political culture for more than fifty years.

Download or read book Essentials of Screenwriting written by Richard Walter and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-06-29 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollywood's premier teacher of screenwriting shares the secrets of writing and selling successful screenplays in this perfect gift for aspiring screenwriters. Anyone fortunate enough to win a seat in Professor Richard Walter's legendary class at UCLA film school can be confident their career has just taken a quantum leap forward. His students have written more than ten projects for Steven Spielberg alone, plus hundreds of other Hollywood blockbusters and prestigious indie productions, including two Oscar winners for best original screenplay—Milk (2008) and Sideways (2006). In this updated edition, Walter integrates his highly coveted lessons and principles from Screenwriting with material from his companion text, The Whole Picture, and includes new advice on how to turn a raw idea into a great movie or TV script-and sell it. There is never a shortage of aspiring screenwriters, and this book is their bible.

Download or read book So You Want to Be a Producer written by Lawrence Turman and published by Crown Archetype. This book was released on 2010-03-10 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few jobs in Hollywood are as shrouded in mystery as the role of the producer. What does it take to be a producer, how does one get started, and what on earth does one actually do? In So You Want to Be a Producer Lawrence Turman, the producer of more than forty films, including The Graduate, The River Wild, Short Circuit, and American History X, and Endowed Chair of the famed Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California, answers these questions and many more. Examining all the nuts and bolts of production, such as raising money and securing permissions, finding a story and developing a script, choosing a director, hiring actors, and marketing your project, So You Want to Be a Producer is a must-have resource packed with insider information and first-hand advice from top Hollywood producers, writers, and directors, offering invaluable help for beginners and professionals alike. Including a comprehensive case study of Turman’s film The Graduate, this complete guide to the movie industry’s most influential movers and shakers brims with useful tips and contains all the information you need to take your project from idea to the big screen.

Download or read book The Merchant Prince of Poverty Row written by Bernard F. Dick and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ben Hecht called him "White Fang," and director Charles Vidor took him to court for verbal abuse. The image of Harry Cohn as vulgarian is such a part of Hollywood lore that it is hard to believe there were other Harry Cohns: the only studio president who was also head of production; the ex-song plugger who scrutinized scripts and grilled writers at story conferences; a man who could see actresses as either "broads" or goddesses. Drawing on personal interviews as well as previously unstudied source material (conference notes, memos, and especially the teletypes between Harry and his brother, Jack), Bernard Dick offers a radically different portrait of the man who ran Columbia Pictures—and who "had to be boss"—from 1932 to 1958.