Film History

With the television hits The Odd Couple, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and Mork & Mindy, and movies like The Flamingo Kid, Beaches, Pretty Woman, and The Princess Diaries under his belt, Garry Marshall was among the most successful writers, directors, and producers in America for more than five decades. His work on the small and big screen delighted audiences for decades and has withstood the test of time.

Shit, Actually is a love letter and a breakup note all in one: to the films that shaped us and the ones that ruined us. More often than not, Lindy finds, they're one and the same.

Who invented reality television, the world’s most dangerous pop-culture genre? And why can’t we look away? In this revelatory, deeply reported account of the rise of “dirty documentary”—from its contentious roots in radio to the ascent of Donald Trump—Emily Nussbaum unearths the origin story of the genre that ate the world, as told through the lively voices of the people who built it. At once gimlet-eyed and empathetic, Cue the Sun! explores the morally charged, funny, and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake.

No celebrity rivals Elizabeth Taylor’s glamour and guts or her level of fame. She was the last major star to come out of the old Hollywood studio system and she is a legend known for her beauty and her magnetic screen presence in a career that spanned most of the twentieth century and nearly sixty films. But her private life was even more compelling than her Oscar-winning on-screen performances. During her seventy-nine years of rapid-fire love and loss she was married eight times to seven different men.

The definitive book on the TV show Ted Lasso, written by New York Times journalist and editor Jeremy Egner, celebrating the show’s improbable rise and cultural impact while never losing sight of the heart, friendship, and passion that have made it an enduring favorite for the ages.

Friedkin Connection takes listeners from the streets of Chicago to the suites of Hollywood and from the sixties to today. William Friedkin offers a candid look at a thrilling era of Hollywood cinema, 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.

A full-speed-ahead oral history of the nearly two-decade making of the cultural phenomenon Mad Max: Fury Road—with more than 130 new interviews with key members of the cast and crew, including Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, and director George Miller, from the pop culture reporter for The New York Times, Kyle Buchanan.

In this intensive, intimate, and anything-but-glamorous behind-the-scenes account, film insider and cinephile Paul M. Sammon explores how Ridley Scott used his creative genius to transform the work of science fiction's most uncompromising author into a critical sensation, a commercial success, and a cult classic that would reinvent the genre.

On a cold Saturday afternoon in 1975, two men (who had known each other for eight years before they’d ever exchanged a word) met for lunch in a Chicago pub. Gene Siskel was the film critic for the Chicago Tribune. Roger Ebert had recently won the Pulitzer Prize—the first ever awarded to a film critic—for his work at the Chicago Sun-Times. To say they despised each other was an understatement.

In this New York Times best seller, legendary actor and star of the acclaimed documentary Val shares the stories behind his most beloved roles, reminisces about his star-studded career and love life, and reveals the truth behind his recent health struggles in a remarkably candid autobiography.

Raconter une histoire ne s'improvise pas. La narration est un artisanat qui, avant de pouvoir prétendre à l'art, exige le respect de règles que John Truby a rassemblées dans cette Anatomie du scénario. Sa méthode unique nous fait entrer dans les secrets de fabrication de ce qui constitue la condition première de la réussite d'un film - une bonne histoire - et nous guide pas à pas dans la construction des personnages, de l'intrigue, de l'univers du récit, des dialogues, en détaillant les vingt-deux étapes incontournables dans l'écriture d'un scénario réussi.

On stage and screen, we know a great performance when we see it. But how do actors draw from their bodies and minds to turn their selves into art? What is the craft of being an authentic fake? More than a century ago, amid tsarist Russia’s crushing repression, one of the most talented actors ever, Konstantin Stanislavski, asked these very questions, reached deep into himself and emerged with an answer.

Orlando Whitfield and Inigo Philbrick met in 2006 at London’s Goldsmiths University where they became best friends. By 2007 they had started I&O Fine Art. Orlando would eventually set up his own gallery and watch as Inigo quickly immersed himself in a world of private jets and multimillion-dollar deals for major clients. Inigo seemed brilliant, but underneath the extravagant façade, his complicated financial schemes were unraveling. With debt, lawsuits, and court summonses piling up, Inigo went into a tailspin of lies and subterfuge.

Believe it or not, America's fascination with celebrity culture was thriving well before the days of TMZ, Perez Hilton, Charlie Sheen's breakdown, and allegations against Woody Allen. And the stars of yesteryear? They weren't always the saints that we make them out to be. Part biography, part cultural history, the stories contained in this book cover the stuff that films are made of: love, sex, drugs, illegitimate children, illicit affairs, and botched cover-ups.

While scores of books have been written about Elvis Presley, this is the first meticulously researched biography of Tom Parker written by someone who knew him personally. And for anyone truly interested in the performer many consider the greatest and most influential of the 20th century, it is impossible to understand how Elvis came to be such a phenomenon without examining the life and mind of Parker, the man who virtually controlled Elvis' every move.

From grand follies to misunderstood masterpieces, disastrous sequels to catastrophic literary adaptations, Box Office Poison tells a hugely entertaining alternative history of Hollywood, through a century of its most notable flops. What can these films tell us about the Hollywood system, the public’s appetite–or lack of it–and the circumstances that saw such flops actually made? Away from the canon, this is the definitive take on these ill-fated, but essential celluloid failures.

When did you last hang out with Jim, Pam, Dwight, Michael, and the rest of Dunder Mifflin? It might have been back in 2013, when the series finale aired...or it might have been last night, when you watched three episodes in a row. But either way, long after the show first aired, it’s more popular than ever, and fans have only one problem - what to watch, or listen to, next. Fortunately, writer Andy Greene has that answer. In his brand-new oral history, The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, Greene takes listeners behind the scenes.

Film historian and acclaimed New York Times best-selling biographer Scott Eyman has written the definitive, “captivating” (Associated Press) biography of Hollywood legend Cary Grant, one of the most accomplished — and beloved — actors of his generation, who remains as popular as ever today.

Authors John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky provide a captivating decade-by-decade exploration of the Oscars. For each decade, they examine the making of classic films, trends and innovations in cinema, behind-the-scenes scandals at the awards ceremony and who won and why. Twenty films are reviewed in-depth, alongside 10 detailed 'making-of' accounts and capsule reviews of every single Best Picture winner in history. In addition, each Best Picture winner is carefully scrutinised to answer the ultimate question: 'did the Academy get it right?'

From its first publication in 1992, Men, Women, and Chain Saws has offered a groundbreaking perspective on the creativity and influence of horror cinema since the mid-1970s. Investigating the popularity of the low-budget tradition, Carol Clover looks in particular at slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Although such movies have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasures to their mostly male audiences, Clover demonstrates that they align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the females tormented.