The Best Book about Movies

[HorseradishTree]

I've heard much dispute over this topic. One that most say is Making Movies by Sidney Lumet. I found this very enjoyable, but I'd still have to go with If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell. This one really got down and dirty with the facts that the majority of actors in the world have to face. I truly enjoyed it and am a fan of Bruce Campbell's stuff in the first place.

[Johann]

The best book I've ever read about the movies was Roger Ebert's Book of Film. I can't tell you what a treat it was to read each of those pieces-especially Kinski's & Quinn's.

Another book I feel every film buff should own and know by heart is Peter Biskind's "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls". This book gives up the whole skinny on the 70's movie brats-Spielberg, Milius, Schrader, Scorsese, Lucas, Coppola & Malick. Gossip as pop art, Biskind singes his subjects with scathing quotes, stories (Spielberg flipping out when he found out Fellini got the Best Director nomination instead of him was priceless) and tales of extreme excess-this is why good writing on film can be as good as film itself.

[Johann]

If you wanna read the most bizarre and self-indulgent excesses of a hack, read "High Concept"- a bio on the notorious Don Simpson (of the team Bruckheimer & Simpson). This guy is/was everything that's shit about the movie industry.

After I read it I swore off all of their "productions" until I happened to see Top Gun last year. "Flashdance" began an era that Caligula would have felt right at home in....

Don Simpson: The Clown Prince of Crap. He died on the toilet reading an Oliver Stone bio. How perfect is that?

[tabuno]

I definitely am not a cinephile, but I was curious enough about Blade Runner and wanted to learn a little more about it so I happened across a fabulous book on the making of this movie. It just so happens that this book entitled Future Noir The Making of Blade Runner by Paul M. Sammon, 1996, published by Harper Prism [PS1997.B569S26 1996] [ISBN 0-06-105314-7 (trade paperback)] $16.00 U.S. is one of the best books about movie-making in general. It goes into great detail from the source material, a sci-fi novel, to the optioning of the book, to the scriptwriting, searching for a producer, a director, and cast, the pre-production, production, and post-production, music, special effects, and the marketing, and even the re-release and director's cut. It's an amazing insiders look at what movies really consist of, with plenty of references and interviews and photos. Highly recommended for anybody interested in what goes on behind the scenes from beginning to beyond.

[miseenscene]

I haven't read them all, but I've thumbed through most of them. "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" is still my favorite, hands down -- no other book has made me want to make films as much as that one, tremendous energy -- but two others I'd recommend are "Everything I Needed to Know About Making Movies I Learned from the Toxic Avenger" by Lloyd Kaufmann, of Troma movie fame (insightful, hilarious, and very practical) and "You're Only as Good as your Next One" by Mike Medavoy, which I'm reading now (similar to "Easy Riders..." but more personal than it is a painting of a larger picture).

[dave durbin]

Others for your consideration: The Devil's Candy -about the making of Bonfire of the Vanities, With Nails -the diaries of Richard E. Grant, & The Prince, The Showgirl, and Me.

All are wonderful reads and provide an amazing amount of information and insight and gossip into the world of filmmaking and the life of an actor (and director).

[oscar jubis]

The most important book right now: MOVIE WARS: HOW HOLLYWOOD AND THE MEDIA LIMIT WHAT FILMS WE CAN SEE by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Most Fun Book: 5001 Nights at the Movies by Pauline Kael
Best book by a director: The Films in my Life by Francois Truffaut
Fave book about Directing: Between Mirage & History:The Films of Werner Herzog by T. Corrigan
Fave Biography: Jean Renoir:A Life in Pictures by Celia Bertin
Cinema 101: The Great Movies by R.Ebert
Cinema 102: Cult Movies:The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird, and the Wonderful by Danny Peary

[dave durbin]

Also: The Critics Were Wrong by ? & For Keeps by Pauline Kael

[miseenscene]

One thing that rankles me about "The Critics Were Wrong..." they weren't wrong! That was their opinion at the time! Sure, it may be some exercise in gloating to deride the critics of the day for thinking what we now consider classics were lousy upon first release, but that doesn't mean the original reviewers were in any way "wrong" for not liking the pictures at the time. History's written by the winners, as we all know by now, and there could just as easily be a book written about movies the critics praised upon release that are now forgotten. (It could also, ironically, be called "The Critics Were Wrong"...)

Regardless, I still own that book...

Two other good ones: The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans and the Steven Soderbergh/Richard Lester book whose title escapes me...

[dave durbin]

They may not have been wrong but some of them were terribly cruel: John Simon's trashing of women (Ann Margret especially) and their looks is disturbing, pathetic and borderline misogynistic.

What Soderberg book are you referring to? The journal he kept while making sex, lies, and videotape?

[miseenscene]

We have misogynistic and asinine reviewers nowadays, too. Especially thanks to the internet. God forbid anyone ever collect the Ain't It Cool News reviews together and analyze them as a whole in 20 years...

The Soderbergh book: Getting Away With It, I believe. His SLV diary was interesting, I've heard -- I bought it as a gift without reading it myself, years ago. GAWI sums up his influences leading up to and influencing "Out of Sight" onward pretty interestingly, and the interviews he conducts with Richard Lester make me wish Lester had directed more films.

[dave durbin]

Forgot about this one: Afterglow, a last conversation with Pauline Kael

A great last reminder of an intelligent, funny woman and a first-rate film critic.

ps- thanks for the Ain't It slam!

[miseenscene]

I'll be the first person to defend anyone's right to say anything about any subject, but the tone the Ain't It Cool folks use makes them come off like anal retentive, insular fanboys at times, which undermines some of their arguments. Then again, I think the same could be said for most critics, as far as their opinions being colored completely by their own backgrounds and interests. I will say I'm glad someone is sticking up for the fanboys of the world; I just wish they were making a broader case for themselves, but if they were, they wouldn't be fanboys, would they?

[Perfume V]

Originally posted by HorseradishTree
I've heard much dispute over this topic. One that most say is Making Movies by Sidney Lumet. I found this very enjoyable, but I'd still have to go with If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell. This one really got down and dirty with the facts that the majority of actors in the world have to face. I truly enjoyed it and am a fan of Bruce Campbell's stuff in the first place.

Bruce Campbell is a God Amongst Men. Or more specifically, a God Amongst Smart-Alecky Comic Actors With Big Chins.

This isn't specifically a film book - it's a book about a guy who made some films and lots of TV shows, so I'm cheating slightly, but it's a consistent favourite of mine. 'Peter Cook', a biography by Harry Thompson, traces the journey of the Greatest Englishman Ever from his early Cambridge revue shows through the glory days of the 1960s British satire boom and Swinging London scene through to his depression and alcohol-fuelled fall from grace. Each page reveals a staggering anecdote, it is funny, charming, affectionate, critical when it needs to be, well-paced and - most importantly - finds space for a generous selection of Cook's funniest lines. (A long improvised rant about Elizabeth Taylor's glands, never previously published, is a particular joy)

Picking out favourite stories is too difficult, but I always laugh when I think about Cook's claim that, after recording the notoriously offensive Derek And Clive albums in the 70s with Dudley Moore, he was surrounded by a gaggle of seven-year-old kids on scooters. Only instead of chorusing "'Ere, Pete, where's Dud?" as they used to, they were all shouting "'Ere, Clive, you're a c**t!"

It stands the test of all truly brilliant biographies - namely that if it was fiction, you wouldn't believe half of it.

[sansho]

These are the film books i've cherished most;

-Flickers (Gilbert Adair)
-A Biographical Dictionary of Film (David Thomson)
-The Film handbook (Geoff Andrew). The update, 250 Directors A-Z, is nicely illustrated but just a concise overview.
-A History of Narrative Film (David Cook)
-Kobal's Top 100 Movies (which introduced me to a whole world of great international films, in the 80's, turned me from a regular liker of films into a sadly zombified addict in darkened rooms and internet forums)

and; Time Out Film Guide, Radio Times Guide to Films, The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky (Mark Le Fanu), My Life and My Films (Renoir), Videohound's World Cinema (Elliot Wilhelm), Film:The Critics' Choice (ed Geoff Andrew), Japanese Film Directors (Audie Bock), Easy riders Raging Bulls (Biskind), Hitchcock (Truffaut) , The Cinema Book (ed Pam Cook), A History of Film (Robert Sklar), A Century of Cinema (Derek Malcolm), 100 Years of Japanese Film (Donald Richie), Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema (Rajadhyaksha, Willemen)