British Columbia’s billion-dollar film industry trails behind only those of California and New York. This book recounts the story of British Columbia’s rapid rise from relative obscurity in the film world to its current status as " Hollywood North." Gasher positions the industry as a model for commercial film production in the twenty-first century -- one strongly shaped by a perception of cinema as a medium, not of culture, but of regional industrial development. He addresses the specific economic and geographic factors that contribute to the province’s success, such as the low Canadian dollar and BC’s proximity to Los Angeles. Hollywood North is an important book that brings into focus the tension between globalization and localization in the film industry.
“Libling’s assured, quietly menacing debut [is] based on his World Fantasy Award–nominated novella of the same title. . . . Fans of Stand by Me and the like will find much to enjoy.” —Publishers Weekly It’s the 1960s, and Gus Berry is coming of age in Trenton, a small town on the north shore of Lake Ontario. The place isn’t known for much—unless you count the menacing stray dogs, plant explosions, plane collisions, and regular drownings. The adults seem to take it all in stride, but Gus can’t shake the feeling of impending doom. His friend Annie Barker doesn’t share Gus’s dark thoughts; she believes in things. So Gus goes about his days, surviving school, trying to live up to his widowed mother’s expectations, and growing increasingly obsessed with movies and TV shows. Indeed, he scripts his life to make it way more exciting and adventurous than it actually is. Gus is clearly a boy who wants things, which makes Jack Levin the perfect friend. He’s a local hero famous for finding stuff : a message in a bottle, a meteorite, a long-lost wedding ring. And when Jack makes his most mysterious discovery yet, Gus and Annie are drawn with him into an investigation of Trenton’s past. Guided by their curiosity, they soon uncover a malignant darkness behind the town’s senseless tragedies. In Hollywood North, World Fantasy Award–nominated author Michael Libling “spins a tale of movies and memories, nightmares and nostalgia, with such a frightening secret at its core, that you’ll understand why, even though you can go home again, you might end up wishing you didn’t” (Ian Rogers, author of Every House Is Haunted). “[A] fine first novel . . . Bradbury might have sketched out this mode in the darker parts of Dandelion Wine and the entirety of Something Wicked This Way Comes, but contemporary authors such as Libling are showing us refinements of sensibility and sense of wonder that the old Waukeganian never dreamed of.” —Locus
A history of the Hollywood film industry as a modern system of labor, this book reveals an important untold story of an influential twentieth-century workplace. Ronny Regev argues that the Hollywood studio system institutionalized creative labor by systemizing and standardizing the work of actors, directors, writers, and cinematographers, meshing artistic sensibilities with the efficiency-minded rationale of industrial capitalism. The employees of the studios emerged as a new class: they were wage laborers with enormous salaries, artists subjected to budgets and supervision, stars bound by contracts. As such, these workers--people like Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, and Anita Loos--were the outliers in the American workforce, an extraordinary working class. Through extensive use of oral histories, personal correspondence, studio archives, and the papers of leading Hollywood luminaries as well as their less-known contemporaries, Regev demonstrates that, as part of their contribution to popular culture, Hollywood studios such as Paramount, Warner Bros., and MGM cultivated a new form of labor, one that made work seem like fantasy.
Vancouver is now North America’s third largest center for film and television production, recently witnessing the filming of Halle Berry’s Catwoman and Will Smith’s I, Robot, among others. But Vancouver has been hosting filmmakers for years, coming into its own in the early 1970s when Robert Altman, Warren Beatty and Julie Christie made McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Mike Nichols, Jack Nicholson and Candice Bergen filmed Carnal Knowlege. Dreaming in the Rain tells the story of how Vancouver became North by Northwest, from its early days as a Hollywood studio backlot to its becoming home to a vibrant indigenous scene that is among the most acclaimed, provocative, independent filmmaking communities anywhere. But with Hollywood’s growing concern over “runaway” productions, Vancouver’s growing filmmaking scene is wrought with controversy. The city’s American-based film industry is powerful enough to inspire loathing and threats from Hollywood. Along with tracing the art and commerce of Vancouver filmmaking, Vancouver Province movie critic David Spaner brings to life the flamboyant film personalities who left their marks. From visitors like Errol Flynn and Robert Altman, to local heroes such as The Matrix’s Carrie Anne Moss, who grew up in Vancouver, and Kissed star Molly Parker and director Lynne Stopkewich, vital players in the groundbreaking Vancouver indie scene. Includes more than 40 black and white photographs. “. . . [Spaner] has . . . scrupulous attention to detail and an obvious curiosity and passion for both Vancouver and its film industry.”—Entertainment Today David Spaner is a movie critic for the Vancouver Province.
Offers reviews, comments, and production credits for films about rock music, musicals with rock scores, movies featuring rock stars as actors, rock documentaries, and films with influential rock soundtracks.
The Film Studio sheds new light on the evolution of global film production, highlighting the role of film studios worldwide. The authors explore the contemporary international production environment, alleging that global competition is best understood as an unequal and unstable partnership between the 'design interest' of footloose producers and the 'location interest' of local actors. Ben Goldsmith and Tom O'Regan identify various types of film studios and investigate the consequences for Hollywood, international film production, and the studio locations.
A History of Hollywood’s Outsourcing Debate: Runaway Production provides a critical history of runaway production from its origins in postwar Hollywood to its present uses in describing a global network of diverse television and film production communities. Through extensive archival research, Camille Johnson-Yale chronicles Hollywood’s postwar push for investment in European production markets as a means for supporting the economy of America’s wartime allies while also opening industry access to lucrative trade relationships, exotic locations, and inexpensive skilled labor. For Hollywood’s studio production labor, however, the story of runaway production documents the gradual loss of power over the means of television and motion picture production. Though the phrase has taken on several meanings over its expansive history, it is argued that runaway production has ultimately served as a powerful, metaphorical rallying cry for a labor community coming to terms with a globalizing Hollywood industry that increasingly functions as an exportable process and less as a defined, industrial place.
All histories of Hollywood are wrong. Why? Two words: Colonel Selig. This early pioneer laid the foundation for the movie industry that we know today. Active from 1896 to 1938, William N. Selig was responsible for an amazing series of firsts, including the first two-reel narrative film and the first two-hour narrative feature made in America; the first American movie serial with cliffhanger endings; the first westerns filmed in the West with real cowboys and Indians; the creation of the jungle-adventure genre; the first horror film in America; the first successful American newsreel (made in partnership with William Randolph Hearst); and the first permanent film studio in Los Angeles. Selig was also among the first to cultivate extensive international exhibition of American films, which created a worldwide audience and contributed to American domination of the medium. In this book, Andrew Erish delves into the virtually untouched Selig archive at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library to tell the fascinating story of this unjustly forgotten film pioneer. He traces Selig’s career from his early work as a traveling magician in the Midwest, to his founding of the first movie studio in Los Angeles in 1909, to his landmark series of innovations that still influence the film industry. As Erish recounts the many accomplishments of the man who first recognized that Southern California is the perfect place for moviemaking, he convincingly demonstrates that while others have been credited with inventing Hollywood, Colonel Selig is actually the one who most deserves that honor.
