Heaven's Gate is probably the most discussed, least seen film in modern movie history. Its notoriety is so great that its title has become a generic term for disaster, for ego run rampant, for epic mismanagement, for wanton extravagance. It was also the film that brought down one of Hollywood’s major studios—United Artists, the company founded in 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith, and Charlie Chaplin. Steven Bach was senior vice president and head of worldwide production for United Artists at the time of the filming of Heaven's Gate, and apart from the director and producer, the only person to witness the film’s evolution from beginning to end. Combining wit, extraordinary anecdotes, and historical perspective, he has produced a landmark book on Hollywood and its people, and in so doing, tells a story of human absurdity that would have made Chaplin proud.
“Why do big projects go wrong so often, and are there any lessons you can use when renovating your kitchen? Bent Flyvbjerg is the ‘megaproject’ expert and Dan Gardner brings the storytelling skills to How Big Things Get Done, with examples ranging from a Jimi Hendrix studio to the Sydney Opera House.”—Financial Times “Entertaining . . . There are lessons here for managers of all stripes.”—The Economist A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Economist, Financial Times, CEO Magazine, Morningstar Finalist for the Porchlight Business Book Award, the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award, and the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant, new reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from a sketch to the jewel of New York’s skyline in twenty-one months, or how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to a product launch in eleven months. These are wonderful stories. But most of the time big visions turn into nightmares. Remember Boston’s “Big Dig”? Almost every sizeable city in the world has such a fiasco in its backyard. In fact, no less than 92% of megaprojects come in over budget or over schedule, or both. The cost of California’s high-speed rail project soared from $33 billion to $100 billon—and won’t even go where promised. More modest endeavors, whether launching a small business, organizing a conference, or just finishing a work project on time, also commonly fail. Why? Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life’s work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, dubbed “the world’s leading megaproject expert.” In How Big Things Get Done, he identifies the errors in judgment and decision-making that lead projects, both big and small, to fail, and the research-based principles that will make you succeed with yours. For example: • Understand your odds. If you don’t know them, you won’t win. • Plan slow, act fast. Getting to the action quick feels right. But it’s wrong. • Think right to left. Start with your goal, then identify the steps to get there. • Find your Lego. Big is best built from small. • Be a team maker. You won’t succeed without an “us.” • Master the unknown unknowns. Most think they can’t, so they fail. Flyvbjerg shows how you can. • Know that your biggest risk is you. Full of vivid examples ranging from the building of the Sydney Opera House, to the making of the latest Pixar blockbusters, to a home renovation in Brooklyn gone awry, How Big Things Get Done reveals how to get any ambitious project done—on time and on budget.
The Complete Guide To All Things Walken He’s been a dancer, a baker, a lion tamer, an award-winning actor, and a Hollywood legend. But Christopher Walken has never been the subject of a comprehensive biographical reference—until now. Here at last is a complete A-to-Z guide to this one-of-a-kind performer, featuring entries on everything from the Actors Studio (the legendary theatrical workshop where Walken spent eleven years as a janitor) to Zombie Movies (one of Walken’s favorite film genres). Along the way, readers will discover: • Acting secrets and behind-the-scenes trivia from each of Walken’s 100+ films—everything from Annie Hall to Hairspray and beyond. • Recipes and kitchen tips from “Chef Walken”—including a look at his short-lived TV show, Cooking with Chris. • Walken’s music videos for Madonna, Duran Duran, and Fatboy Slim. • The secrets of maintaining his extraordinary hair. • Observations and reminiscences from Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton, Woody Allen, Dennis Hopper, and countless others. Plus more bizarre B movies and Saturday Night Live appearances than you can shake a cowbell at! Complete with fascinating trivia and dozens of photographs, Christopher Walken A to Z offers the definitive look at a pop culture phenomenon.
Women who stormed the gates of Hollywood's "boy's club" over the past three decades tell their stories in this inside look at the new feminine face of the movie industry.
It Happened in Glacier National Park takes readers on a rollicking, behind-the-scenes look at some of the characters and episodes from the Park's storied past. Including both famous tales, and famous names--and little-known heroes, heroines, and happenings.
Consider this simple conundrum: is it possible to be a bad good designer or a good bad designer for that matter? If the answer is yes then which is preferable and what does this reveal about the relationship between ethics and design practice? Good: An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design seeks to answer these questions. Graphic design is in ethical flux. Good comes at a time of growing disenchantment with style-led design solutions and the pursuit of self-expression alone and yet vacuous design judgements are still made without any real analysis of the criteria used. The terms good and bad are repeatedly applied without qualification whilst the relationship between personal and professional ethics is far too contentious to do any more than give cursory consideration. Despite recent manifestos and themed publications on design for good graphic designers have yet to examine what such terms really mean: in a time of relativism it has been far too divisive to do so. Good takes philosophy as its starting point but is not a philosophy book. It seeks to marry abstract ideas with practical application, removing some of the mystique that surrounds philosophy and highlighting its relevance for us all. Designers are people. This book seeks to engage designers in a debate about their profession and in an analysis of their value and worth. The decisions we make define us, in our ethical choices we reveal who we are.
It's a typical summer Friday night and the smell of popcorn is in the air. Throngs of fans jam into air-conditioned multiplexes to escape for two hours in the dark, blissfully lost in Hollywood's latest glittery confection complete with megawatt celebrities, awesome special effects, and enormous marketing budgets. The world is in love with the blockbuster movie, and these cinematic behemoths have risen to dominate the film industry, breaking box office records every weekend. With the passion and wit of a true movie buff and the insight of an internationally renowned critic, Tom Shone is the first to make sense of this phenomenon by taking readers through the decades that have shaped the modern blockbuster and forever transformed the face of Hollywood. The moment the shark fin broke the water in 1975, a new monster was born. Fast, visceral, and devouring all in its path, the blockbuster had arrived. In just a few weeks Jaws earned more than $100 million in ticket sales, an unprecedented feat that heralded a new era in film. Soon, blockbuster auteurs such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and James Cameron would revive the flagging fortunes of the studios and lure audiences back into theaters with the promise of thrills, plenty of action, and an escape from art house pretension. But somewhere along the line, the beast they awakened took on a life of its own, and by the 1990s production budgets had escalated as quickly as profits. Hollywood entered a topsy-turvy world ruled by marketing and merchandising mavens, in which flops like Godzilla made money and hits had to break records just to break even. The blockbuster changed from a major event that took place a few times a year into something that audiences have come to expect weekly, piling into the backs of one another in an annual demolition derby that has left even Hollywood aghast. Tom Shone has interviewed all the key participants -- from cinematic visionaries like Spielberg and Lucas and the executives who greenlight these spectacles down to the effects wizards who detonated the Death Star and blew up the White House -- in order to reveal the ways in which blockbusters have transformed how Hollywood makes movies and how we watch them. As entertaining as the films it chronicles, Blockbuster is a must-read for any fan who delights in the magic of the movies.
Crossover Stardom: Popular Male Stars in American Cinema focuses on male music stars who have attempted to achieve film stardom. Crossover stardom can describe stars who cross from one medium to another. Although 'crossover' has become a popular term to describe many modern stars who appear in various mediums, crossover stardom has a long history, going back to the beginning of the cinema. Lobalzo Wright begins with Bing Crosby, a significant Hollywood star in the studio era; moving to Elvis Presley in the 1950s and 1960s, as the studio system collapsed; to Kris Kristofferson in the New Hollywood period of the 1970s; and ending with Will Smith and Justin Timberlake, in the contemporary era, when corporate conglomerates dominate Hollywood. Thus, the study not only explores music stardom (and music genres) in various eras, and masculinity within these periods, it also surveys the history of American cinema from industrial and cultural perspectives, from the 1930s to today.
Winner of 3 Oscars and the highest grossing film of its time, Jaws was a phenomenon, and this is the only book on how 26-year-old Steven Spielberg transformed Peter Benchley's best-selling novel into the classic film it became. Hired by Spielberg as a screenwriter to work with him on the set while the movie was being made, Carl Gottlieb, and actor and writer, was there throughout the production that starred Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss. After filming was over, with Spielberg's cooperation, Gottlieb chronicled the extraordinary year-long adventure in The Jaws Log, which was first published in 1975, generating 17 printings and selling more than 2 million copies. This paperback edition includes an introduction by Carl Gottlieb, an introduction by Peter Benchley, and 36 black and white photos.
Few figures in film and theater history tower like Elia Kazan. Born in 1909 to Greek parents in Istanbul, Turkey, he arrived in America with incomparable vision and drive, and by the 1950s he was the most important and influential director in the nation, simultaneously dominating both theater and film. His productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman reshaped the values of the stage. His films -- most notably On the Waterfront -- brought a new realism and a new intensity of performance to the movies. Kazan's career spanned times of enormous change in his adopted country, and his work affiliated him with many of America's great artistic moments and figures, from New York City's Group Theatre of the 1930s to the rebellious forefront of 1950s Hollywood; from Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy to Marlon Brando and James Dean. Ebullient and secretive, bold and self-doubting, beloved yet reviled for "naming names" before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Kazan was an individual as complex and fascinating as any he directed. He has long deserved a biography as shrewd and sympathetic as this one. In the electrifying Elia Kazan, noted film historian and critic Richard Schickel illuminates much more than a single astonishing life and life's work: He pays discerning tribute to the power of theater and film, and casts a new light on six crucial decades of American history.
