film writers

Hardcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 182 pages. The Reverend Howard Finster was twenty feet tall, suspended in darkness. Or so he appeared in the documentary film that introduced a teenaged Greg Bottoms to the renowned outsider artist whose death would help inspire him, fourteen years later, to travel the country. Beginning in Georgia with a trip to Finster's famous Paradise Gardens, his journey--of which The Colorful Apocalypse is a masterly chronicle--is an unparalleled look into the lives and visionary works of some of Finster's contemporaries: the self-taught evangelical artists whose beliefs and oeuvres occupy the gray area between madness and Christian ecstasy. With his prodigious gift for conversation and quietly observant storytelling, Bottoms draws us into the worlds of such figures as William Thomas Thompson, a handicapped ex-millionaire who painted a 300-foot version of the book of Revelation; Norbert Kox, an ex-member of the Outlaws biker gang who now lives as a recluse in rural Wisconsin and paints apocalyptic visual parables; and Myrtice West, who began painting to express the revelatory visions she had after her daughter was brutally murdered. These artists' works are as wildly varied as their life stories, but without sensationalizing or patronizing them, Bottoms--one of today's finest young writers--gets at the heart of what they have in common: the struggle to make sense, through art, of their difficult personal histories. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 541 pages. b&w illustrations. As Joel Dinerstein reveals in this book, cool began as a stylish defiance of racism, a challenge to suppressed sexuality, a philosophy of individual rebellion, and a youthful search for social change. Through portraits of iconic figures, Dinerstein illuminates the cultural connections and artistic innovations among Lester Young, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Marlon Brando, and James Dean, among others. We eavesdrop on conversations among John-Paul Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir, and Miles Davis, and on a forgotten debate between Lorraine Hansberry and Norman Mailer over the 'white negro' and Black cool. We come to understand how the cool worlds of Beat writers and Method actors emerged from the intersections of film noir, jazz, and existentialism. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Bonanza Books, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, price-clipped dust jacket. Reprint of the original Knopf 1968 edition with the same quality of binding and paper as the original. Classic book on the history of silent film. 598 pages including index. Illustrated with numerous b&w photos throughout. The magic of the silent screen, illuminated by the recollections of those who created it. A narrative and photographic history of the early days of the movies, combining fact, anecdote, and reminiscence in a critical survey of films, actors, directors, producers, writers, editors, technicians, and other participants and hangers-on. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Canada, Bond Street Books, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 378 pages. Published to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad is a brilliant and highly readable biography of a literary figure of world-wide reputation. Conrad's impact has been so profound and far-reaching that, eighty years after his death, he remains an essential cultural reference point. Such phrases as "heart of darkness" and "The horror! The horror!" have entered the language, often cited without an awareness of their original contexts. His popular legacy extends to Latin American fiction, to the spy novel, to the terrorist and anarchist character, and to film. The writers he has influenced range from T. S. Eliot to William Faulkner to V. S. Naipaul and John Le Carre. For a writer of "difficult" fiction he has enjoyed a remarkably wide impact, yet as Marlow proclaims in Lord Jim of the figure whose story he tells,"he was one of us," and so Conrad remains in fascinating ways.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two large hardcovers in a slipcase, 512 pages. The Story of Marvel Studios is the first-ever, fully authorized, all-access history of Marvel Studios' creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as told by the producers, writers, directors, concept artists, VFX artists, cast, and crew who brought it to life. Year-by-year, project-by-project, the studio's founding and meteoric growth are described through detailed personal stories, anecdotes, and remembrances of noteworthy challenges, breakthrough milestones, and history-making successes. Featuring archival materials, concept art, film stills, memorabilia from cast and crew, and rare promotional art, these volumes will take fans on a journey through Marvel Studios' creative challenges, breakthroughs, and successes of the past decade. These visuals are joined by exclusive interviews with key producers, studio heads, and core cast members such as Kevin Feige, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Evans, and more. Clean, bright set.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Studio, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This lavish, photo-laden tour of Tinsel Town's history is coffee-table condensation of 87 years of Vanity Fair coverage of the Hollywood scene. Visually, it's a thrilling compendium of images that have defined not only the film industry and its workers but how the American public has understood them. Ranging from Edward Steichen's iconographic black-and-white portraits of Louise Brooks, Norma Shearer and Irving Thalberg, and Gloria Swanson (which defined the "look" of Hollywood in its first half-century) to the contemporary and often shocking color photographs of Annie Leibovitz (of nearly everyone from Sylvester Stallone and John Travolta to Cate Blanchette and Johnny Depp)Dand peppered with shots by Bruce Weber, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Griege Hurrell and othersDthe book traces how these stars have come to embody pop mythologies of everyday life. The photos are interspersed among 13 (mostly short) essays by writers as diverse as Carl Sandberg, Patricia Bosworth, P.G. Wodehouse, Dorothy Parker, Peter Biskind and D.H. Lawrence, which range from the humorous to the illuminating. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Abbeville Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 408 pages, b&w illustrations. This remarkable collection of stories, hand-picked from the archive of legendary New York Post columnist Leonard Lyons by his son, film critic Jeffrey Lyons, will transport readers back to the sparkling peak of New York City nightlife. This was the time when notables of every sort--film producers and stars, writers, politicians, comedians, athletes, and artists--gathered nightly at such famed restaurants and nightclubs as Sardi's, the Stork Club, and the Copacabana. From 1934 to 1974, Leonard Lyons was a fixture at these clubs, befriending celebrities of all stripes and gathering exclusive tidbits for his syndicated newspaper column, The Lyons Den. What a Time It Was! offers candid portraits of stars and statesmen at work and at play--especially at play--but still, effortlessly, larger than life. Illustrated with snapshots and glamour shots, it offers a unique window onto the lives of iconic figures from Ethel Barrymore and Muhammad Ali to Tennessee Williams and Jackie Kennedy, as well as their favorite haunts. Here are four decades of popular culture seen from the front row, by a man who said, "Give me lights and sound and people, and music into the night. Late into the night!"