Film directors

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 272 pages, b&w illustrations. Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnes Varda (19282019) wrote and directed some of the most acclaimed films of her era, from her tour de force Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), a classic of modernist cinema, to the beloved documentary The Gleaners and I (2000) four decades later. She helped to define the French New Wave, inspired an entire generation of filmmakers, and was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards. In this lively biography, former Philadelphia Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey explores the "complicated passions" that informed Varda's charmed life and indelible work. Rickey traces Varda's three remarkable careers-as still photographer, as filmmaker, and as installation artist. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Berghahn Books, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 193 pages, b&w illustrations. With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish emigre from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Hyperion/Miramax, 1st, 1997, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 191 pages, b&w illustrations. Light waviness to some pages, otherwise clean copy. In an expert guide to the history of American film, enhanced by many wonderful full-color and black-and-white photographs and film stills, the acclaimed director takes a look at many American movies while exploring them from a both a professional and personal perspective. An academically trained filmmaker (NYU film school) who is among today's most innovative directors, Scorsese presents an engrossing, idiosyncratic memoir of his experiences with motion pictures, including recollections of his first boyhood journeys to movie theaters and the impressions the films made on him. In analyzing American film since the silent era, he especially highlights Westerns, musicals, and gangster movies, genres that originated in America. No markings.

London/NY, Faber & Faber, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright, edgeworn dust jacket that has a closed 2" tear along spine. 500 pages, b&w illustrations. Don Siegel was one of Hollywood's most controversial directors. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is one of the very few acknowledged science-fiction classics, and Magnum Force - with its catch-phrase 'Make my day' - has become part of our modern consciousness. Siegel's five-film collaboration with Clint Eastwood created a body of films that are as distinctive as they are different, and enriched the reputation of both of them. This autobiography has all the fun and energy one would expect from Don Siegel. From his first days as an assistant editor in the Warner Brothers cutting rooms, Siegel charts his rich and varied career. This is a wonderful book of reminiscences, told in a lively and vivid style, whose cast of characters includes John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen, Bogart and Bacall, studio head Jack Warner and other luminaries of the golden age of the Hollywood studios (including a fading film star called Ronald Reagan, whose last film, The Killers, was directed by Siegel).At the centre of the book is Siegel's relationship with Clint Eastwood, whose directing career was encouraged by Siegel, and who supplies an amusing and appreciative foreword to the book. No markings.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 592 pages, b&w illustrations. Samuel Fuller, independent director-producer extraordinaire, tells the story of his life, a life that spanned most of the twentieth century. His twenty-nine tough, gritty pictures made from 1949 to 1989 set out to capture the truth of war, racism, and human frailties, and incorporate some of his own experiences. He writes of his years in the newspaper business--selling papers as a boy on the streets of New York, working for Hearst's New York Journal American, first as a copyboy, then as personal runner for the famous Hearst editor in chief Arthur Brisbane. His film Park Row was inspired by his years as a reporter for the New York Evening Graphic, where his beat included murders, suicides, state executions, and race riots--he scooped every other New York paper with his coverage of the death by drug overdose of the legendary Jeanne Eagels. Fuller talks about directing his first picture (he also wrote the script), I Shot Jesse James . . . and how, as a result, he was sought after by every major studio, choosing to work for Darryl Zanuck of Twentieth Century Fox. We see him becoming one of the most prolific, independent-minded writer-directors, turning out seven pictures in six years, among them Pickup on South Street, House of Bamboo, and China Gate. He writes about making Underworld U.S.A., a movie that shows how gangsters in the 1960s were no longer seen as thugs but as "respected" tax-paying executives . . . about the making of the movie Shock Corridor--about a journalist trying to solve a murder in a lunatic asylum--which exposed the conditions in mental institutions . . . and about White Dog (written in collaboration with Curtis Hanson), a film so controversial that Paramount's then studio heads, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, refused to release it. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, paper-covered boards, 172 pages. One of the most innovative films ever made, Sam Peckinpah's motion picture The Wild Bunch was released in 1969. From the outset, the film was considered controversial because of its powerful, graphic, and direct depiction of violence, but it was also praised for its lush photography, intricate camera work, and cutting-edge editing. Peckinpah's tale of an ill-fated, aging outlaw gang bound by a code of honor is often regarded as one of the most complex and impactful Westerns in American cinematic history. The issues dealt with in this groundbreaking film-violence, morality, friendship, and the legacy of American ambition and compromise-are just as relevant today as when the film first opened. To acknowledge the significance of The Wild Bunch, this collection brings together some of the leading Peckinpah scholars and critics to examine what many consider to be the director's greatest work. The book's nine essays cover an array of topics. Explored are the function of violence in the film and how its depiction is radically different from what is seen in other movies, the background of the film's production, the European response to the film's view of human nature, and the strong sense of the Texas/Mexico milieu surrounding the film's action. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 336 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy. Black & white and color images throughout. Tight copy. Introduction by Martin Scorsese.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 333 pages. Hardcover with laminated boards. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to edges. Color pictures throughout. Photographs and ephemera, many from private family albums, and personal recollections of the director. Complete visual, historical, and critical narrative of Altman?s films and his process. Introduction by Martin Scorsese.

Hardcover. New York, Viking Studio, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 271 pages including an Index and a Chronology of Hanna-Barbera Animated Series. Color illustrations throughout. SIGNED BY BOTH HANNA AND BARBERA.

Metuchen NJ, Scarecrow Press, 1st, 1991, Hardcover, 242 pages, b&w photos. Extensive interview with a veteran assistant director (who actually started out as a cameraman) whose career stretched over six decades, from 1918 to 1970. During the studio era he worked largely at Paramount and then 20th Century-Fox. Fun fact: He was also one of Clara Bow's boyfriends. No dust jacket issued.

Hardcover. New York, Crown Publishers, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 463 pages, b&w illustrations. What do you need to make money making movies? The answer, according to cult hero, creator of the sexploitation film, and the man the Wall Street Journal once dubbed the King Leer of Hollywood, Russ Meyer, is: "big bosoms and square jaws." In the first candid and fiendishly researched account of the late cinematic instigator's life, Jimmy McDonough shows us how Russ Meyer used that formula to turn his own crazed fantasies into movies that made him a millionaire and changed the face of American film forever.

Hardcover. Taschen, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, yellow boards, without dj. as issued. (11" X 18") 384 pages, 843 color & b&w illustrations. Text in English, German & French. Wonderful homage to director Billy Wilder's classic comedy. Features ephemera loosely laid-in, including a facsimile of Marilyn Monroe's promptbook showcasing her original notes. Large and heavy production which requires extra shipping upon purchase. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Atria Books, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. In this genre-defying work of cultural history, the chief film critic of Slate places comedy legend and acclaimed filmmaker Buster Keatons unique creative genius in the context of his time. Born the same year as the film industry in 1895, Buster Keaton began his career as the child star of a family slapstick act reputed to be the most violent in vaudeville. Beginning in his early twenties, he enjoyed a decade-long stretch as the director, star, stuntman, editor, and all-around mastermind of some of the greatest silent comedies ever made, including Sherlock Jr., The General, and The Cameraman. Even through his dark middle years as a severely depressed alcoholic finding work on the margins of show business, Keatons life had a way of reflecting the changes going on in the world around him. He found success in three different mediums at their creative peak: first vaudeville, then silent film, and finally the experimental early years of television. Remainder mark on top edge, otherwise like-new.

Hardcover. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 7th pr., 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 336 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New Brunswick, Rutgers, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 340 pages. Illustrated with black & white stills. 1 of 500 copies in Hardcover. No dust jacket. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 525 pages, in a bright unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York , Time Warner International, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 286 pages, color and b&w illustrations. Foreward by Robin Williams. The director of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Road Runner cartoons discusses his childhood influences, gives advice on how to draw, and reveals how his characters were created.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The director Michael Cimino (1939-2016) is famous for two films: the intense, powerful, and enduring Vietnam movie The Deer Hunter, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1979 and also won Cimino Best Director, and Heaven's Gate, the most notorious bomb of all time. Originally budgeted at $11 million, Cimino's sprawling western went off the rails in Montana. The picture grew longer and longer, and the budget ballooned to over $40 million. When it was finally released, Heaven's Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era.Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven's Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair. Elton's Cimino is a richly detailed biography that offers a revisionist history of a lightning rod filmmaker. Based on extensive interviews with Cimino's peers and collaborators and enemies and friends, most of whom have never spoken before, it unravels the enigmas and falsehoods, many perpetrated by the director himself, which surround his life, and sheds new light on his extraordinary career. This is a story of the making of art, the business of Hollywood, and the costs of ambition, both financial and personal.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The first biography of critically acclaimed then critically derided filmmaker Michael Cimino--and a reevaluation of the infamous film that destroyed his career. The director Michael Cimino (1939-2016) is famous for two films: the intense, powerful, and enduring Vietnam movie The Deer Hunter, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1979 and also won Cimino Best Director, and Heaven's Gate, the most notorious bomb of all time. Originally budgeted at $11 million, Cimino's sprawling western went off the rails in Montana. The picture grew longer and longer, and the budget ballooned to over $40 million. When it was finally released, Heaven's Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven's Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair. Elton's Cimino is a richly detailed biography that offers a revisionist history of a lightning rod filmmaker.

Hardcover. Lexington KY, University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 448 pages. Greta Garbo proclaimed him as her favorite director. Actors, actresses, and even child stars were so at ease under his direction that they were able to deliver inspired and powerful performances. Academy-Award-nominated director Clarence Brown (1890-1987) worked with some of Hollywood's greatest stars, such as Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Mickey Rooney, Katharine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy. Known as the "star maker," he helped guide the acting career of child sensation Elizabeth Taylor (of whom he once said, "she has a face that is an act of God") and discovered Academy-Award-winning child star Claude Jarman Jr. for The Yearling (1946). He directed more than fifty films, including Possessed (1931), Anna Karenina (1935), National Velvet (1944), and Intruder in the Dust (1949), winning his audiences over with glamorous star vehicles, tales of families, communities, and slices of Americana, as well as hard-hitting dramas. Although Brown was admired by peers like Jean Renoir, Frank Capra, and John Ford, his illuminating work and contributions to classic cinema are rarely mentioned in the same breath as those of Hollywood's great directors. In this first full-length account of the life and career of the pioneering filmmaker, Gwenda Young discusses Brown's background to show how his hardworking parents and resilient grandparents inspired his entrepreneurial spirit. She reveals how the one-time engineer and World War I aviator established a thriving car dealership, the Brown Motor Car Company, in Alabama-only to give it all up to follow his dream of making movies. He would not only become a brilliant director but also a craftsman who was known for his innovative use of lighting and composition.

Hardcover. London, Richard Cohen Books, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, unclipped dust jacket. Monumental biography and critical study, 810 pages, 200+ photographs, 16 pages in color. Kevin Brownlow, a film editor in his own right and author of the seminal silent film trilogy initiated with The Parade's Gone By. . ., brings to Lean's biography an exhaustive knowledge of the art and the industry. The life and its biographer provide a landmark work on the cinema. Emerging from a childhood of nearly Dickensian darkness, David Lean found his great success as a director of the appropriately titled Great Expectations.There followed his legendary black-and-white films of the 1940s and his four-film movie collaboration with Noel Coward. Lean's 1955 film Summertime took him from England to the world of international moviemaking and the stunning series of spectacular color epics that would gain for his work twenty-seven Academy Awards and fifty-six Academy Award nominations. All are classics, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India. Ownership name on half-title page, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Disney Editions, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 365 pages illustrated in b&w and color. For film buffs, Disney fans, and animation enthusiasts, a fascinating and personal look at seven men who defined the craft of directing an animated film under the tutelage of Walt Disney. This untold history collection chronicles the progression of the animation director role during the 1920s through the 1970s. For students of film making and management, this book serves as go-to resource for a complex and sometimes technical role that demanded precision. For all Disney fans, these personal portraits of Walt's closest creative leaders offer a fuller picture behind the stories, characters, and magical realms in Disney's beloved and respected animated films. Clean copy.

Softcover. New York, Billboard Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 656 pages. Softcover with no dust jacket. Remainder mark on top edge, otherwise, clean, unmarked copy. Light edgewear to wrappers. Black and white pictures throughout. Mann, a novelist and author of books on film history, presents this biography of director John Schlesinger (1926-2003), based on interviews with the director and his family following his stroke in 2001, in addition to other primary source documents, articles, and reviews. He describes Schlesinger's childhood; his early days as a documentary director at the BBC; his films during the era of New Hollywood; and Midnight Cowboy, which won an Academy Award. His other films, such as Billy Liar, Darling, Cold Comfort Farm, and The Day of the Locust, are discussed, as well as his accurate depictions of homosexuality, and his personal and professional relationships.

Hardcover. NY, Thames and Hudson , 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, pictorial boards with a red cloth spine. Sergei Eisenstein is regarded as one of cinema's greatest revolutionaries; his use of montage, symbolic images and skilful editing transformed the possibilities of filmmaking and dramatically modernized the artform. Yet he was also a prolific graphic artist who sketched continuously throughout his life. This book chronicles his life and career. Num Pages: 320 pages, 500 color illustrations. Clean copy.