Not only am I fascinated by old Hollywood history, I’m also interested in the creative processes that produce great art. Everyone approaches their craft a little differently, and it’s always illuminating to discover how different people do what they do. In my own work, I like to explore how creative people come to their Eureka! moments, and hope that I’ll be able to learn something from their experiences.
This book is about the early decades of animation history and the larger-than-life artists who created some of the most iconic characters of the pre-television twentieth century, including Felix the Cat, Bugs Bunny, Popeye, and Betty Boop. Ultimately, it’s a story about rival artists competing to outdo each other and set the standards for an emerging art form. Readers will discover the unique creative processes employed by such geniuses as Walt Disney, the Fleischer brothers, Chuck Jones, and many more. It’s a tale of business, art, and the rise and fall of creative empires.
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This book opens with an absolutely breathtaking passage, one of my favorite openings in any book ever. One imagines Niven narrating his memoir poolside, gripping a cigarette and a martini in the same fist, his pince-nez mustache dancing up and down while he describes, in sordid detail, old-school Hollywood at its most louche. If you want a book that brings alive the atmosphere of a bygone era, this is it.
This is a richly layered book that stacks stories upon stories, as if they were Russian nesting dolls. Using five films that were nominated for the 1967 Best Picture Oscar, Harris dissects a waterfalling cascade of cultural trends happening in America at that time—all of them somehow revealing themselves in these five movies. At the core of this book is a story about generational change, as old Hollywood was ushered out the door and new creative types took over the industry.
Sam Wasson is simply a good writer, crafting tight narratives that help this book read like a novel. The best part of this book is its examination of the creative process: in order for Chinatown to get made the way it did, a million (maybe two million) things needed to align in just the right way. The movie easily could have failed, but Wasson shows how the contributions of its many collaborators saved it.
Using detailed portraits of the moguls who built Hollywood, this book tracks the rise of an industry while also telling a unique story about American business and culture. It bristles with insights, particularly about how the moguls (almost all of them immigrants) helped create and amplify many of the popular narratives that Americans tell about themselves. It’s wonderfully written, scholarly but not dry, and serves as a time machine taking you back to a fascinating era in our national history.
This is a page-turner book that I can easily imagine being adapted into a movie of its own: one of those story-behind-the-story kind of affairs. At its heart, this book is about using stories to address current social and political issues (something that is often done with a ham fist). In the lead-up to WWII, most movie studios were too cowardly to offend Germany, Europe’s biggest market. But with Casablanca, Warner Bros. decided to fight back. It’s a lesson we could use again today, as American movie studios meekly cower before Chinese censorship demands. Their behavior is pathetic, but this book could help remind them what courage and integrity actually look like.
5,888 authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about Hollywood, film, and the film industry.
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From Carleton's list on what Hollywood is really like.
In my book club I’m known as Second Carl, since Carl Gottlieb has been a member far longer than I. In fact, I was still a lawyer in Washington, D.C. secretly dreaming about Hollywood but never suspecting I’d someday myself work on a Spielberg TV series, when I read this short, fast, now revered account of the filming of Spielberg’s breakout film. It proved to be a deeply accurate and comprehensive description – and warning – about what life and work on location and in Hollywood itself would be like. It’s also so engagingly readable and relevant, a Broadway musical based on the book is in tryouts as I write these words.
From Jon's list on 1960s Hollywood.
There have been plenty of books on counterculture Hollywood’s most impactful and arguably most famous figure, Charles Manson—plenty of films, too. For my money, the best book is one of the first, written by the former rock musician and antiwar activist Ed Sanders. Without the benefit of hindsight, the book captures the moment—that fateful summer of 1969—perfectly and poetically.
From Tom's list on real Hollywood and the movie industry.
Granted unlimited access to the film production of Tom Wolfe’s best-selling The Bonfire of the Vanities, Salamon serves up a fascinating portrait of one of Hollywood’s most notorious flops. Miscast (Tom Hanks as an arrogant Wall Street heel?) and tone-deaf, the resulting film ran roughshod over Wolfe’s satire and Salamon was there to record every juicy and head-scratching nugget explaining just how the disaster unfolded. Detailing the head-on collision between ego, money, and power in smooth, vivid prose, Salamon will keep any reader interested in Hollywood turning pages long into the night.
