A film blog about all aspects of filmmaking: screenplay, directing, editing, acting…
A few key books that will tell you how films are really made.
Bob McCabe wrote the book The Pythons’ Autobiography By The Pythons unveiling the behind-the-scenes of Monty Python’s artistic life. This post and the next will specifically deal with their 2 most successful movies, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and…
Continue reading Monty Python on Monty Python, Part I: THE HOLY GRAIL
Desperately Seeking Franchises. We continue telling the story of a Hollywood upside down. In our second post devoted to the very relevant book The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies by Ben Fritz, we will find out…
Continue reading What Happened to Hollywood? (PART II): Marvel, Disney & Netflix
The fight for the future of movies. Hollywood is upside down. The Hollywood of 2021 would never have been imagined in 2001. The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies is a great book, written by Ben Fritz,…
Continue reading What Happened to Hollywood? (PART I): The New TV, China & franchises
Oliver Stone is a film writer and a director with 3 Oscars on his shelf: Best Screenplay for Midnight Express (1978), and Best Director for Platoon (1986), and Born on the 4th of July (1989). After Midnight Express, his writing…
Continue reading Oliver Stone’s Great Autobiography is a Must
FUTURE NOIR, the book by Paul. M. Sammon, summarises with amazing detail how the classic sci-fi movie was made. Sammons’s book is a mammoth work on the making of a very unique film. I’ve read many “Making Of” books, but…
Continue reading Best “Making Of” Books: The Making of BLADE RUNNER
It’s Terrific!, Citizen Kane’s tagline insisted in every poster. For many years considered the best film ever (still now by many), paradoxically, if you were in the American film industry in 1940 most possibly you would think that Citizen Kane…
Continue reading Best “Making Of” Books: The Making of CITIZEN KANE
Darren Aronofsky is a prestigious American film writer and director with a very personal style of filmmaking. His career shows widely different movies, some highly distinguished ones, such as π, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler and Black Swan. Below,…
Continue reading The 5 Best Books on Making Movies, by Darren Aronofsky
From the book Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade, the basic rules of pitching. In case you are not familiar with William Goldman (1931-2018), he’s been one of the best screenwriters Hollywood has seen. He was…
Continue reading William Goldman’s Ten Commandments of Pitching
And How the Classic Western High Noon Became a Response to the Wave of Extreme Anti-Communism which Swarmed the American Film Industry. What we Mean by Red Scare? National Geographic summarises it very well here and below: The Red Scare…
Continue reading Witch Hunt in 50s Hollywood: The Second Red Scare
How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror. Jason Zinoman‘s Shock Value is a seminal book on modern horror films if ever there was one. In the same way that I would recommend you…
Continue reading SHOCK VALUE, the Essential Book about America’s 70s New Horror Films
