Recounts the life of two-time Academy Award winner, Ralph E. Winters, whose career spanned two-thirds of the 20th century. Drawing from his own ascent through MGM studio system, Winters guides the reader through a history of American film editing, beginning with its earliest days when film was torn by hand. An essential, entertaining nuts-and-bolts look at the mechanics of editing, as well as Hollywood life alongside such luminaries as Billy Wilder, Sam Zimbalist, and Blake Edwards--a must have for film buffs and moviegoers alike.

Richard Bare is primarily known as the sole director of the television series Green Acres, but his Hollywood career spanned over 40 years, starting with his USC student film, So You Want to Give Up Smoking, which resulted in a long-term contract at Warner Bros. He has directed over a dozen feature films and over 400 television shows, including Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, The Virginian, and the Twilight Zone. Follow Bare through his many years in the film industry, which brought him into contact with Hollywood's biggest stars, like Gary Cooper, Betty Hutton, Debbie Reynolds, Eva Gabor, Eddie...

This is the first overview of Schulberg's career 1937-2000 (his own autobiography, Moving Pictures, covers his life only to age 17). For more than six decades, Budd Wilson Schulberg has known success in virtually every category of American writing. Raised in the Hollywood of the 1920s as the privileged son of a pioneer studio mogul, Schulberg achieved fame as novelist, short story writer, playwright, Oscar-winning screenwriter and boxing historian. He also became a central figure in the entertainment industry's political turmoil of the 1940s and 50s, fleeing first from the Communist Party's...

At his peak, from the late 1960s through the early 1970s, Sam Peckinpah was hailed as one of the new masters of the Western film, while simultaneously becoming one of the most controversial American directors of the era. In a time of great social turmoil, Peckinpah's on-screen orchestration of physical and emotional violence drew adamant praise for what some considered fearless realism and vehement criticism for what others called tasteless gore and brutal misogyny. Debate over the violence and sexual themes of Peckinpah's films often eclipsed aesthetic appreciation of his work. A favorite...

Originally a Hong Kong-based director, John Woo is now considered one of the ten most successful directors working in American films, receiving world-wide attention for his highly stylized violence in films such as The Killer (1989), Hard-Boiled (1992), Face/Off (1997), and Mission Impossible 2 (2000). While Woo is widely regarded as a master action director, scant attention has been paid to the manner in which Woo's films reflect the director's religious and ethical concerns. Through an examination of representative films from the director's Hong Kong and American periods, Michael Bliss...

Steven Spielberg has fashioned an enviable career as a writer, producer, and director of American motion pictures, winning Academy Awards for Best Direction (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List), and for Best Film (Schindler's List). With David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg he founded Dreamworks SKG, already one of the most productive and respected studios in Hollywood. Despite Spielberg's notable successes, however, his films have not avoided controversy. The Films of Steven Spielberg provides for the first time a collection of critical writings by professional film critics about the...

Worms in the Winecup is the extraordinarily hard-hitting autobiography of John Bright, a screenplay writer who gained a major reputation with his first Hollywood script, Public Enemy, the classic gangster drama starring James Cagney. The book provides a vivid, often savage, commentary on Hollywood and the motion picture industry, with uncompromising portraits of Darryl F. Zanuck, Mae West, Errol Flynn, John Barrymore, B. P. Schulberg, Walter Wanger, John Howard Lawson, Elia Kazan, and countless others, including his writing partners, Kubec Glasmon and Robert Tasker. Bright writes of the...

Now in Paperback Ronald Neame's autobiography takes its title from one of his best-loved films, The Horse's Mouth (1958), starring Alec Guinness. In an informative and entertaining style, Neame discusses the making of that film, along with several others, including In Which We Serve, Blithe Spirit, Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, Tunes of Glory, I Could Go on Singing, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Scrooge, The Poseidon Adventure, and Hopscotch. Straight from the Horse's Mouth provides a fascinating, first-hand account of a unique filmmaker, who began his career as assistant cameraman...

Rungs on a Ladder looks at part of the movie industry from a unique perspective. Christopher Neame, son of director Ronald, started his career (in the early 1960s) at the very bottom, but determinedly made his way to the top. Neame fondly recalls his learning years at Bray Studios and beyond. Simply and often amusingly, he recounts his days with Hammer Films and observes many of the characters both in front of and behind the camera--names synonymous with those classic tales of Gothic horror: director Terrence Fisher, producers Anthony Hinds, Michael Carreras and Anthony Nelson Keys,...

Unlike other books on Martin Scorsese that favor the discussion of broad themes and plot summaries, Scorsese Up Close: A Study of the Films also looks at the cinematic text of the great director's films. With a scrutiny comparable to the detail Scorsese brings to the shooting and editing process, author Ben Nyce examines particular shots or sequences of shots in many of the director's works. By focusing on these key components, Nyce explains how the visual and aural elements of such scenes dramatize Scorsese's singular vision. Nyce first discusses several of the early works that established...