Download or read book The Friedkin Connection written by William Friedkin and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Friedkin’s book does the unthinkable: It relates the behind-the-scenes stories of his triumphs like The French Connection and The Exorcist, but also sees Friedkin take responsibility (brutally so) for his wrong calls. . . . In doing so, he captures the gut-wrenching shifts of a filmmaker’s life—the bizarre whipsaw from success to disaster.” —Variety An acclaimed memoir from William Friedkin, a maverick of American cinema and Academy Award–winning director of such legendary films as The French Connection, The Exorcist, and To Live and Die in LA.The Friedkin Connection takes readers from the streets of Chicago to the suites of Hollywood and from the sixties to today, with autobiographical storytelling as fast-paced and intense as any of the auteur's films. Friedkin’s success story has the makings of classic American film. He was born in Chicago, the son of Russian immigrants. Immediately after high school, he found work in the mailroom of a local television station, and patiently worked his way into the directing booth during the heyday of live TV. An award-winning documentary brought him attention as a talented new filmmaker and an advocate for justice, and it caught the eye of producer David L. Wolper, who brought Friedkin to Los Angeles. There he moved from television to film, displaying a versatile stylistic range. In 1971, The French Connection was released and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and two years later The Exorcist received ten Oscar nominations and catapulted Friedkin's career to stardom. Penned by the director himself, The Friedkin Connection takes readers on a journey through the numerous chance encounters and unplanned occurrences that led a young man from a poor urban neighborhood to success in one of the most competitive industries and art forms in the world. In this fascinating and candid story, he has much to say about the world of moviemaking and his place within it.
Download or read book The Friedkin Connection written by William Friedkin and published by Harper. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-awaited memoir from the Academy Award–winning director of such legendary films as The French Connection, The Exorcist, and To Live and Die in LA, The Friedkin Connection takes readers from the streets of Chicago to the suites of Hollywood and from the sixties to today, with autobiographical storytelling as fast-paced and intense as any of the auteur's films. William Friedkin, maverick of American cinema, offers a candid look at Hollywood, when traditional storytelling gave way to the rebellious and alternative; when filmmakers like him captured the paranoia and fear of a nation undergoing a cultural nervous breakdown. The Friedkin Connection includes 16 pages of black-and-white photographs.
Download or read book William Friedkin written by Christopher Lane and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2020-03-18 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academy Award–winning director William Friedkin (b. 1935) is best known for his critically and commercially successful films The French Connection and The Exorcist. Unlike other film school–educated filmmakers of the directors’ era, Friedkin got his start as a mailroom clerk at a local TV station and worked his way up to becoming a full-blown Hollywood filmmaker by his thirties. His rapid rise behind the camera from television director to Oscar winner came with self-confidence and unorthodox methods. Known for his gritty and auteurist style, Friedkin’s films tell the story of a changing America upended by crime, hypocrisy, the occult, and amorality. Although his subsequent films achieved varying levels of success, his cultural impact is undeniable. William Friedkin: Interviews collects fifteen articles, interviews, and seminars spanning Friedkin’s career. He discusses early influences, early successes, awards, and current projects. The volume provides coverage of his directorial process, beliefs, and anecdotes from his time serving as the creative force of some of the biggest films of the 1970s and beyond—from his early days in Chicago to his run-ins with Alfred Hitchcock to firing guns on set and witnessing an actual exorcism in Italy. Through previously unpublished and obscure interviews and seminars, the story of William Friedkin’s work and life is woven together into a candid and concise impression for cinephiles, horror junkies, and aspiring filmmakers alike. Readers will gain insight into Friedkin’s genius from his own perspectives and discover the thoughts and processes of a true maverick of American cinema.
Download or read book French Connection written by Robin Moore and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a new introduction by the author. The true, absorbing and sometimes frightening documentary of the world's most successful narcotics investigation, The French Connection is one of the most fascinating crime accounts of our time. When New York City detectives Eddie "Popeye" Egan and his partner Sonny Grosso routinely tail Pasquale "Patsy" Fuca, after observing some wild spending at the Copacabana, they quickly realize that they are on to something really big. Patsy is not only the nephew of a mob boss on the lam but also a key negotiator in an impending delivery of narcotics from abroad. His incongruous connections are with several distinguished Frenchmen, including Jean Jehan, the director of the world's largest heroin network, and Jacques Angelvin, a star of French television. For many suspense-filled months, through opulent Manhattan nightclubs, dark tenements in Brooklyn and the Bronx, tree-lined streets of the genteel Upper East Side, and in Paris, Marseilles, and Palermo, the duel is on -- the prize 112 pounds of pure heroin, worth ninety million on the streets. Over three hundred investigators from local, state, federal, and international agencies are ultimately involved in the hours of weary surveillance, the skilled intuition, the luck -- both good and bad -- and the danger.
Download or read book William Friedkin written by Thomas D. Clagett and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academy Award-winning director William Friedkin, long recognized for his technical brilliance, has had a career marked by extremes of success and failure. Among his successes are 'The French Connection' and 'The Exorcist'. This book traces the evolution of his cinematic style.
Download or read book Hurricane Billy written by Nat Segaloff and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 1990 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is the person responsible for the millions of nightmares brought on by The Exorcist, To Live and Die in L.A., Cruising and Boys in the Band? Friedkin's films conjure some of the darkest images ever put on-screen. Photographs.
Download or read book Elia Kazan A Life written by Elia Kazan and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2011-10-16 with total page 1387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • In this amazing autobiography, Kazan at seventy-eight brings us the undiluted telling of his story—and revelation of himself—all the passion, vitality, and truth, the almost outrageous honesty, that have made him so formidable a stage director (A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tea and Sympathy), film director (On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Gentleman’s Agreement, Splendor in the Grass, Baby Doll, The Last Tycoon, A Face in the Crowd), and novelist (the number-one best-seller The Arrangement.) “This is the best autobiography I’ve read by a prominent American in I don’t know how many years. It is endlessly absorbing and I believe this is because it concerns a man who is looking to find a coherent philosophy that will be tough enough to contain all that is ugly in his person and his experience, yet shall prove sufficiently compassionate to give honest judgment on himself and others. Somehow, the author brings this off. Elia Kazan: A Life has that candor of confession which is possible only when the deepest wounds have healed and honesty can achieve what honesty so rarely arrives at—a rich and hearty flavor. By such means, a famous director has written a book that offers the kind of human wealth we find in a major novel.” —Norman Mailer Kazan gives us his sense of himself as an outsider (a Greek rug merchant’s son born in Turkey, an immigrant’s son raised in New York and educated at Williams College). He takes us into the almost accidental sojourn at the Yale Drama School that triggered his commitment to theatre, and his edgy, exciting apprenticeship with the new and astonishing Group Theatre, as stagehand and stage manager—and as actor (Waiting for Lefty, Golden Boy) . . . his first nervous and then successful attempts at directing for theatre and movies (The Skin of Our Teeth, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) . . . his return to New York to co-found the Actors Studio (and his long and ambivalent relationship with Lee Strasberg) . . . his emergence as premier director on both coasts. With his director’s eye for the telling scene, Kazan shares the joys and complications of production, his unique insights on acting, directing, and producing. He makes us feel the close presence of the actors, producers, and writers he’s worked with—James Dean, Marlon Brando, Tennessee Williams, Vivien Leigh, Tallulah Bankhead, Sam Spiegel, Darryl Zanuck, Harold Clurman, Arthur Miller, Budd Schulberg, James Baldwin, Clifford Odets, and John Steinbeck among them. He gives us a frank and affectionate portrait of Marilyn Monroe. He talks with startling candor about himself as husband and—in the years where he obsessively sought adventure outside marriage—as lover. For the first time, he discusses his Communist Party years and his wrenching decision in 1952 to be a cooperative witness before HUAC. He writes about his birth as a writer. The pace and organic drama of his narrative, his grasp of the life and politics of Broadway and Hollywood, the keenness with which he observes the men and women and worlds around him, and, above all, the honest with which he pursues and captures his own essence, make this one of the most fascinating autobiographies of our time.
Download or read book Chasing the Light written by Oliver Stone and published by HMH Books For Young Readers. This book was released on 2020 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate memoir by the controversial and outspoken Oscar-winning director and screenwriter about his complicated New York childhood, volunteering for combat, and his struggles and triumphs making such films as Platoon, Midnight Express, and Scarface. Before the international success of Platoon in 1986, Oliver Stone had been wounded as an infantryman in Vietnam, and spent years writing unproduced scripts while driving taxis in New York, finally venturing westward to Los Angeles and a new life. Stone, now 73, recounts those formative years with in-the-moment details of the high and low moments: We see meetings with Al Pacino over Stone's scripts for Scarface, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July; the harrowing demon of cocaine addiction following the failure of his first feature, The Hand (starring Michael Caine); his risky on-the-ground research of Miami drug cartels for Scarface; his stormy relationship with The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino; the breathless hustles to finance the acclaimed and divisive Salvador; and tensions behind the scenes of his first Academy Award-winning film, Midnight Express. Chasing the Light is a true insider's look at Hollywood's years of upheaval in the 1970s and '80s.
Download or read book Sorcerer written by Mark Wheeler and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Friedkin’s film Sorcerer (1977) has been subject to a major re-evaluation in the last decade. A dark re-imagining of the French Director H.G. Clouzot’s Le Salaire de la Peur (The Wages of Fear) (1953) (based on George Arnaud’s novel); the film was a major critical and commercial failure on its initial release. Friedkin’s work was castigated as an example of directorial hubris as it was a notoriously difficult production which went wildly over-budget. It was viewed at the time as th end of New Hollywood. However, within recent years, the film has emerged in the popular and scholarly consciousness from enjoying a minor, cult status to becoming subject to a full-blown critical reconsideration in which it has been praised a major work by a key American filmmaker.
Download or read book Conclusions written by John Boorman and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'What a life! What a career!' Harold Pinter'Boorman is one of the world's great directors, a master storyteller.' Paul AusterJohn Boorman is one of cinema's authentic visionaries whose travels have taken him from London in the Blitz to the pinnacle of Hollywood success: the man behind filmes such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, Hope and Glory, and The General. Conclusions continues the story of his life that Boorman began with Adventures of a Suburban Boyand shares what has happened since its publication: films made (such as the award-winning The General) and unmade; new knowledge about the craft of film-making; and, ultimately, the story of of his kith and kin, including the death of his cherished elder daughter.Wielding a metaphorical Excalibur, Boorman's career has been a continual search for the truth that only art can convey, and this memoir shows him at his finest.
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 512 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 Cruising written by Eugenio Ercolani and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-21 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the fading atmosphere of the New Hollywood era, William Friedkin – the wunderkind director with an Academy Award for his cop drama, The French Connection (1971) who then scored an even bigger success with The Exorcist (1973) – began work on what would prove to be the most controversial film of his career: Cruising (1980). In the process he established a template for a sub-genre, the serial killer thriller, that would thrive long after his film had left theatres, having caused widespread offence among the very audience he'd hoped to appeal to, via a campaign mobilised by the counter-culture press. As such, Cruising can be read as a bitter farewell to the seventies and its cinema and industry. This Devil's Advocate dives deep into the phenomenon that is Cruising, examining its creative context and its protagonists, as well as examining its ongoing popularity as it turns 40 in 2020.
Download or read book The World is Ever Changing written by Nicolas Roeg and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2013-07-10 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nicolas Roeg is one of the most distinctive and influential film-makers of his generation. The generation of film-makers who define contemporary movie-making - Danny Boyle, Kevin Macdonald ( The Last King of Scotland), Christopher Nolan ( The Dark Knight), James Marsh ( Man on Wire), and Guillermo Del Toro ( Pan's Labyrinth), all acknowledge their debt to the work of Nicolas Roeg. Roeg began as a cameraman, working for such masters as Francois Truffaut and David Lean. His explosive debut as a director with Performance, established an approach to film-making that was unconventional and ever-changing, creating works such as Don't Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bad Timing, Insignificance, and, more recently, Puffball. Having now reached eighty years of age, Roeg has decided to pass on to the next generations, the wealth of wisdom and experience he has garnered over fifty years of film-making.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Michael Mann written by Steven M. Sanders and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-04-17 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays exploring the philosophical themes and aesthetic vision behind blockbuster film including The Insider, Public Enemies,and more. Known for his finely crafted crime thrillers, American filmmaker Michael Mann has long been regarded as a talented triple threat capable of moving effortlessly between television and feature films as a writer, director, and executive producer. His unique visual sense and thematic approach are evident in the Emmy Award-winning The Jericho Mile, the cult favorite The Keep, the American epic The Last of the Mohicans, and the Academy Award-nominated The Insider, as well as more recent works such as Ali, Miami Vice, and Public Enemies. The Philosophy of Michael Mann provides a comprehensive account of the work of this highly accomplished filmmaker, exploring the director's recognizable visual style and the various on-screen and philosophical elements he has tested in his thirty-five-year career. The essays in this wide-ranging book will appeal to fans of the revolutionary filmmaker and to philosophical scholars interested in the themes and conflicts that drive his movies.
Download or read book Do the Movies Have a Future written by David Denby and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the movies, once America’s primary popular art form, have become an endangered species. Do the Movies Have a Future? is a rousing and witty call to arms. In these sharp and engaging essays and reviews, New Yorker movie critic David Denby weighs in on “conglomerate aesthetics,” as embodied in the frenzied, weightless action spectacles that dominate the world’s attention, and “platform agnosticism,” the notion that movies can be watched on smaller and smaller screens: laptops, tablets, even phones. At the same time, Denby reaffirms that movies are our national theater, and in this exhilarating book he celebrates such central big movies as Avatar and The Social Network as well as small but resonant triumphs like There Will Be Blood and The Tree of Life. Denby joyously celebrates what remains of the shared culture in romantic comedy, high school movies, and chick flicks; he assesses the expressive triumphs and failures of auteurs Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Pedro Almodóvar, and David Fincher. Refusing nostalgia, he mines the past for strength, examining the changing nature of stardom and the careers of Joan Crawford, Otto Preminger, and Victor Fleming, and the continuing self-invention of Clint Eastwood. And he recreates the excitement of reading two critics who embodied the film culture of their times, James Agee and Pauline Kael. Wry, passionate, and incisive, Do the Movies Have a Future? is both a feast of good writing and a challenge to fight back. It is an essential guide for movie lovers looking for ammunition and hope.
Download or read book Driven written by Craig Baxley and published by Bookbaby. This book was released on 2021-03-31 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Driven is a candid and entertaining personal story taking the reader through the little know world of the stuntman. Forty-five years of memories offer a fascinating look that chronicles the rise of a stuntman turned director. With behind the scenes tales from such films as Predator, The Warriors, Rollerball and James Bond, readers will experience the sheer determination it takes to maintain a career as a stuntman and climb the ranks of the film industry to become a director. Driven is a memoir of the never-before-behind the scenes look of the heroes that made Hollywood what it is today -- the stuntman.
Download or read book Fun City Cinema written by Jason Bailey and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 1206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A visual history of 100 years of filmmaking in New York City, featuring exclusive interviews with NYC filmmakers Fun City Cinema gives readers an in-depth look at how the rise, fall, and resurrection of New York City was captured and chronicled in ten iconic Gotham films across ten decades: The Jazz Singer (1927), King Kong (1933), The Naked City (1948), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Taxi Driver (1976), Wall Street (1987), Kids (1995), 25th Hour (2002), and Frances Ha (2012). A visual history of a great American city in flux, Fun City Cinema reveals how these classic films and legendary filmmakers took their inspiration from New York City’s grittiness and splendor, creating what we can now view as “accidental documentaries” of the city’s modes and moods. In addition to the extensively researched and reported text, the book includes both historical photographs and production materials, as well as still-frames, behind-the-scenes photos, posters, and original interviews with Noah Baumbach, Larry Clark, Greta Gerwig, Walter Hill, Jerry Schatzberg, Martin Scorsese, Susan Seidelman, Oliver Stone, and Jennifer Westfeldt. Extensive "Now Playing" sidebars spotlight a handful of each decade’s additional films of note.
