Favourite books on Film/TV?

[Liam]

Simple really - what are peoples' favourite books about film or TV?

 

I'll add some choices in a bit.

[odessasteps]

Technical/criticism? Or about a specific film/show?

[Liam]

Technical/criticism? Or about a specific film/show?

 

Either. As long as it links to film or TV in some way.

[Brian Fowler]

Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes is fantastic.

[Jingus]

Looking at it from the point of view of the filmmakers:

-Sidney Lumet's Making Movies is simply the single best book I've ever read on the subject of directing, bar none. There's a lot of books out there about creative decisions and practical considerations, but few of those are written by a five-time Oscar nominee, the guy who made motherfuckin' Dog Day Afternoon and 12 Angry Men. He goes step-by-step through the process of making a film, in production and pre- and post- and everything, always painstakingly illustrating his theoretical points with specific examples from his huge filmography where he points out some particular thing he did and exactly why he did it.

-Robert Rodriguez's Rebel Without a Crew is a nice journal of the making of his debut film El Mariachi, throwing together an entire action film with nothing but passion, duct tape, and seven thousand bucks. In terms of pure underdog inspiration, I don't think I've seen a better one.

-Although, Lloyd Kaufman's books come first. All I Needed To Know About Filmmaking I Learned From The Toxic Avenger is his autobiography, and Make Your Own Damn Movie! is his magnum opus in the how-to section. Both are... well, if you're a fan of Troma movies, you know the kind of general tone and humor to expect here. They're a lot of fun. Kaufman's following book series, Direct/Produce/Sell Your Own Damn Movie, unfortunately involve a whole lotta repetition and diminishing returns; but they're still worthwhile to anyone who's seriously thinking about working in indie film.

-Speaking of autobiographies and entrepreneurs, Roger Corman's How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime is an interesting read, largely focusing on the movies that he directed in the 50s and 60s.

And from the audience:

-From a critical perspective, it's hard to beat the various bound collections of Roger Ebert's reviews. I'd especially recommend the ones devoted exclusively to his most negative reviews, like I Hated, Hated, HATED This Movie.

-For a sociological point of view: Kevin Murphy of MST3K and Rifftrax fame once wrote a book called A Year At The Movies which is absolutely fascinating. He set a challenge for himself: see a movie in the theater, every single day, for an entire year straight (and write a book about it). It's the best analysis I've ever read about the theatergoing experience, about why/where/how we go to see movies on the big screen in this communal ritualistic fashion.

-For those interested in older history, Kevin Brownlow's brilliantly-researched book Napoleon is a great look at the historical and archival side of film appreciation, centered around pioneering auteur Abel Gance's legendary silent masterpiece of the same name.

[Ace]

As You Wish by Cary Elwes

[Control]

Stephen Prince's Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies is worth a read.

[RazorbladeKiss87]

I will edit this post with more soon but one of my favorites was Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind. It was a source for a paper I wrote in school and I ended up reading it in one sitting.

[jaedmc]

Pictures at a Revolution

Was super cool. It talks about the Birth of "New" Hollywood by looking at the history of the five films nominated for best picture in 1968. Those would be Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd Dr. fucking Dolittle. Besides explaining the change in Hollyowood aesthetic and the death of the Hayes Code, it's also a good excuse to never give a flying fuck about the Oscars ever again.

 

From Reverence to Rape

Is a great interpretation of women in cinema and will certainly change how you view women's place in film. It goes from decade to decade and quite frankly gets a little redundant - which isn't really the fault of the author, because there's just a lot of shit out there and it all does the same goddamn thing.

 

The Stanley Kubrick Archives

A guy went through all of Kubrick's shit. He could probably make a billion of these books, but this is the one we got and it gives a really illuminating peak behind the curtain.

 

Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transitional Stardom

The book can be pretty repetitive but it's probably the only in depth look at the meteoric rise of Sessue Hayakawa, who was probably as famous as Chaplin or Douglas Fairbanks. It looks at where America was mentally to accept a Japanese star, and how that star crashed. Most people remember him as the evil dude from Bridge Over the River Kwai, but to really analyze his place in American culture requires a deep focus on racism and fetishism of the exotic. I'm working on some pieces about Hayakawa and this book has been incredibly helpful. I would probably go as far to call it life changing because it further clarified the relationship between AMerica and Japan cultures which has fascinated me for obvious reasons.

[odessasteps]

Hitchcock/truffaut

Bordwell and thomsons history of film

Robin woods from vientnam to reagan

Six gun mystique and adventure, mystery and romance by john cawelti

Magic world of orson welles by jim naremore

[sydneybrown]

Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops is a pretty great read.

 

And if we're talking television:  Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live is a down-and-dirty telling of the first ten seasons of SNL.  The chapters about the horrible 1980 season and the rise of Eddie Murphy (and his ego) are absolutely amazing.  WAY better than the book that came out a decade or so ago.

 

And I'll second the love for Spike, Mike and Rebel Without a Crew.  Those were my bibles back when I wanted to be a film major.

[Zimbra]

Live from New York is essential if you're at all interested in SNL.

[The Comedian]

Darius James' That's Blaxploitation!: Roots Of The Baadasssss 'Tude is one of my all-time favorites.

[jaedmc]

And if you're looking for film criticism/theory Robin Woods, Bordwell/Thompson, and Jonathan Rosenbaum are all tops of the field, and I recommend any collections of their work. A lot of their work is available online for free.

[Kuetsar]

Robert Evans "the Kid stays in the picture" is very good.  So is "On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder", by Ed Sikov. "Wired" by Bob Woodward, about John Belushi is good too. Indecent Exposure: a true story of Hollywood and Wallstreet", is a batshit crazy story about how forgery turned Columbia pictures into a mad house. Its more board room drama than anything, but it involves how hollywood works. "You'll never eat lunch in this town again" by Julia Philips is a good producers memoir. "When hollywood had a king" about Lew Wasserman of MCA is pretty good too. I'm sure I'll think of some more I've read. . . 

[Tromatagon]

Really want to second all of Jingus' choices on the production side of things, which are literally my recommendations.

But goddamn guys, nobody has mentioned the Jaws Log by Carl Gottlieb yet.  You always hear about all the fucked up shit that happened while they made JAWS, one of the greatest goddamned films ever made - now read it, man!

 

The Kid Stays in the Picture is great.  Be sure to listen to Patton Oswalt's bit on it as well.  I used to intern for Mr. Evans and that bit is fucking hilarious.

[nate]

Karloff & Lugosi: A Haunting Collaboration by Gregory William Mank.

[Reed]

Anything by Mark Kermode. I'm currently reading his latest book The Movie Doctors and it is amazing. Particularly his take on Don Corleone's downright bizarre moral compass.

 

"And then there are the drugs. You've been OK with prostitution, revenge, greed,  treachery and random violence and hideous murder.  But you know where to draw the line. You have standards."

 

His essay on the disaster that was Heaven's Gate, and its far-reaching implications, still felt today, is terrific too. He makes a shockingly decent argument that Cimino is part of the reason we're stuck with all the generic superhero film stuff these days. Studios just stopped trusting directors and their "artistic vision" after that.  . 

[pipGofern]

I second the Fiasco recommendation. Really fascinating behind the scenes stuff.

 

Shatner's two Star Trek Memories books are really great. You have to put up with the occasional bits of Shatner hubris but they're extremely detailed and researched about everything that went into making the original series (from before he was involved up through cancellation) and then the same with each of the movies.

 

Alan Sepinwall's The Revolution Was Televised is my favorite book about tv. He starts with Sopranos and takes every seminal show since (24, Buffy, Lost, The Wire, all the way up through Mad Men and Breaking Bad) and each chapter he takes one show and goes through everything from how it originally was pitched and cast all the way up through dissecting the various seasons.

 

Bill Carter's The War for Late Night is a bit dated by now but if you're fascinated by network politics or were into the whole Letterman/Leno feud, it's tremendous.

 

I really liked Tom Shales' Live From New York, An Oral History of SNL but I didn't read that other book somebody mentioned so I can't say which is better. I will say for being 600+ pages, I had no problem just blowing through it because it was like one crazy story after the other.

[(BP)]

I read Chris Gore's 50 Greatest Movies Never Made over and over when I was a kid. The book's almost 20 years old now, so it's interesting to see some of the movies that have gotten made in some manner since it was published.

[Kuetsar]

Really want to second all of Jingus' choices on the production side of things, which are literally my recommendations.

But goddamn guys, nobody has mentioned the Jaws Log by Carl Gottlieb yet.  You always hear about all the fucked up shit that happened while they made JAWS, one of the greatest goddamned films ever made - now read it, man!

 

The Kid Stays in the Picture is great.  Be sure to listen to Patton Oswalt's bit on it as well.  I used to intern for Mr. Evans and that bit is fucking hilarious.

Patton oswalt's 2nd book(about his movie addiction) is outstanding as well. . . . 

[Curt McGirt]

Danse Macabre by Stephen King opened me up in my younger years to a huge amount of film, TV, as well as literature and radio involving the horror genre. I still consider it a sort of bible of what was going on pre-1982. 

 

Thinking about it I also have to give a nod to Joe Bob Briggs' Profoundly Disturbing and Immoral Tales by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs. The former has a nice rundown of specific films that pushed the envelope in cinema in general and the latter is more in-depth about European horror and sex cinema than anything written. 

[Tromatagon]

There was a kind of sister book to Immorral Tales called The Sleaze Merchants that is pretty great too.

[Curt McGirt]

Huh, didn't know John McCarty did that. I've got his Splatter Movie Guide Vol. 1 and Psychos and Madmen books though. The things I picked up at bookstores when I was a kid...

[Reed]

Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops is a pretty great read.

 

 

That's a good read. And it doesn't just go over the obvious picks.  The Cotton Club, for example.

 

IMO, it is questionable whether stuff like Cleopatra and Waterworld really belongs in these type of books since pretty much everyone acknowledges now that they made money in the long run. And a fair amount too. It just took a white. I think Parish admitted that though, didn't he?