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Good Behind the Scenes books

Started by Johnny Textface, November 03, 2017, 11:31:36 PM

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Johnny Textface

I recently read The Disaster Artist and really enjoyed it. What are you guys fave books of interesting angles and commentary of something being made like a film or other stuff?
I do have the Bladerunner one and the one about The Bonfire of the Vanities (shame about not getting to see Uma Thurman in that roll shwing)

touchingcloth

Is the Blade Runner one Future Noir and, if so, have you read it? I ask because that's the book that sprang to mind when I saw this thread title, and it's well worth a read.

Richard E Grant's With Nails is a smashingly candid and juicy read. Captures the madness of film sets and general Hollywood dealings in a way that a lot of books shy away from.

Been a while since I read it but the sections on Hudson Hawk and Dracula alone make it worthwhile.

Serge

Scenes From A Revolution by Mark Harris, which I read earlier this year, would probably fit the bill here. It takes as its subject the five films that were up for Best Picture Oscar in 1967 - 'Bonnie & Clyde', 'The Graduate', 'In The Heat Of The Night', 'Guess Who's Coming For Dinner' and, er, 'Dr. Dolittle', and recounts the twisted routes that each one took from genesis to finally appearing onscreen. The first three were groundbreaking in their own way, and at least the first two part of the New Hollywood, and it does a good job of contrasting them with the more old school methods of 'Dolittle' (with 'Dinner' getting caught somewhere in between.)

I suppose the Faber series in which various directors are interviewed at length about the careers are also worth recommending, though I've only read a couple. Gilliam On Gilliam is the only one I really remember, which was published not long after 'Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas', so cuts off there, but of course, Gilliam doesn't exactly hold back with his opinions in the making of every film up until then.

studpuppet

Taking the 'Other Stuff' angle, there's a great book called Backroom Boys by Francis Spufford which is potted history of amazing technological breakthroughs made by British boffins since WW2.
It has heroic failures like Britain's rocket programme, Concorde, and the Beagle Mars probe,  but also has the stories of the conception of the Elite computer game, the method Vodafone came up with to switch mobile phone calls between different masts without the users even realising it, and sequencing the human genome. It's the sort of book that makes you proud to be British without having to resort to buying a poppy or joining Ukip.