100 books like Burn It Down

In 1988, a book on film history became an unexpected cultural classic. This book tells how a handful of Jewish immigrants from a very small area of central Europe became Hollywood moguls, effectively creating the screen imagery depicting the American dream.

The moguls’ identity as migrants and marginalized people was crucial to their success. As Gabler writes, precisely because of their striving and desire to belong, a former peddler, cobbler, junk seller, and other impoverished transplants concocted the gilded fantasies of Hollywood’s Golden Age. As a group biography and industrial history of Hollywood illusion, An Empire of Their Own is not usually considered in the same vein as The Power Broker’s bricks-and-mortar history.

Yet, in today’s screen-driven world, the legacy of these early media titans is more obvious than ever. The movie moguls’ quintessentially American story of immigration, success, and reinvention is also a prescient, more fully inclusive history of… show more.

We believe you can learn more from failure than success. Misfires don’t come much bigger than the 1990 adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s blockbuster novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. The movie busted nary a block, which only makes director Brian De Palma’s willingness to open up the process to reporter/critic Salamon more remarkable.

This visits every department—including our favorite, costume design—and underscores that no one knows if a movie will be a smash or a flop while they’re making it, so cast and crew work just as hard on both. We love the story of second-unit director Eric Schwab seizing the opportunity to prove himself.

Bukowski didn't thieve, solve crimes, or use high-tech. In fact, he worked hard and was poor and isolated most of his life. But he lived in the fringe of the noir world, and beat on his machines—manual typewriters, then an IBM Selectric, and finally, with some fame and money, a computer. He was South of his No North, real and genuine for so long that when Hollywood knocked, he was ready for them. This book is his first-hand account of the dumb ego and stupid money that goes into making a movie. Hilarious and dark at the same time. A poet's novel.

I read this book for the first time when I was in high school, and it made me realize that main characters aren’t always good people. Maria Wyeth is a selfish, broken actress who stumbles through a series of bad decisions. She cares about nothing, not even herself, but the language is so beautiful and evocative of a 1960s Los Angeles that you can’t help wondering what happens.

If nothing else, pick it up for the laissez-faire attitude of the extremely wealthy and beautiful before the age of social media.

As perfectly tragic as one of his Jazz Age characters, Fitzgerald drank himself to death before finishing this novel which in my opinion, could have been his best. Like Gatsby, Monroe Stahr is an eloquent, rich, and isolated character, pining for a mysterious woman. He is a hugely successful movie mogul in the golden age of Hollywood, and Fitzgerald’s contempt for the studio system’s treatment of writers is here on full satirical display. The sparse prose sparkles with diamond-like harshness and clarity as the doomed love affair plays out. I’m sure it's his least known novel since it is technically “unfinished,” but most editions publish Fitzgerald’s unfinished future chapters, his pass at the ending as well as his notes and outlines, making this a master class in novel writing.

If this beautifully illustrated collection of Hollywood tragedies were only kink, only lurid scandal like so many cheap TV potshots, it wouldn’t be the iconic masterpiece it has become. Kenneth Anger’s take on the faded and fallen Hollywood differs because he loves the place and its people with all his heart.

A child starling and renegade director in his own right (Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandoes), he oozes child-like wonder and horror on every page. As he puts it in the book’s equally stark sequel, Hollywood Babylon II, the movies “promise immortality, but don’t really deliver.”   

Only a small fraction of the millions of Americans in uniform during World War II were engaged in combat operations. Harris’s well-researched account zeroes in on the service of five Hollywood directors, who, like many other professionals, were asked to adapt their civilian skills to wartime needs.

Tacking back and forth between Washington and other stateside locales and posts far afield—from Midway and the Aleutian Islands to North Africa and Italy—the book’s carefully drawn action conveys the far-flung exploits of filmmakers during the war as well as how those experiences impacted their craft.

Anything to do with Jim Carrey, I’m in. In fact, when teachers would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d reply “Be Jim Carrey.” As a longtime fan, I was excited to learn that he would finally be charting his life in an autobiography. As it turns out, the book was mostly wild fiction. What’s so engaging about this book is how he blends real-life occurrences like his body of film work and relationship with Renee Zellweger with completely off-the-wall fantasy like mentor Rodney Dangerfield returning as a Rhino, Kelsey Grammar leading a cult, and Carrey struggling with his career as his entire essence goes virtual. It’s extremely experimental, but the inclusion of celebrities will leave you grinning.     

For me, this book had it all: a behind-the-scenes look at the incredible investigative journalism by NY Times journalists Jodi Cantor and Meghan Twohey, who exposed Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual assaults.

And the courageous journey of the survivors who chose to tell their stories—which ultimately ignited the #MeToo movement.

I’ve read this book a few times, and I honestly can’t tell if it’s a praise or a damning critique of Los Angeles. I think that West–like myself and so many others–is addicted to Los Angeles and is still a bit critical of it.

Tod Hackett is a trained artist who comes to Hollywood to work in set and costume design. Like most outsiders, he sees the city as a projection of all his dreams and nightmares. Set in the 1930s, this book is a moving carnival of outsized stereotypes and winning caricatures. The entire thing feels like a carnival. Read this if you love the Golden Age of Hollywood.