Hollywood Book Club: Accidental Genius: How John Cassavetes Invented the American Independent Film

I'm a lot more familiar with John Cassavetes the film legend than I am with his actual work, but having read Marshall Fine's 2006 book Accidental Genius - which strikes a nice balance between straight biography and an assessment of the filmmaker's work - I think I'm going to have to make a better effort to catch up with the films I haven't seen yet. A thorough behind-the-scenes accounting of Cassavetes' work both in front of and behind the camera (in addition to providing the same treatment for some of his stage work) and a just the facts accounting of his life (the book had Gena Rowlands' blessing but not her participation), Accidental Genius is a fascinating look at one of the most important American filmmakers of all time, a man who made a point of doing it his own way, even when doing so apparently meant getting in his own way.

Hollywood Book Club: Leni Riefenstahl: The Seduction of Genius

Leni Riefenstahl is one of the most controversial filmmakers of all time, if not the most controversial. Because of the circumstances under which she made her most famous films, and because of her almost sociopathic refusal (or inability) to acknowledge any level of wrongdoing by making propaganda for one of history's most famous villains, any assessment of her work naturally invites a host of other questions: can art be separated from the artist? Can a film be considered "good" even if its subject matter and intent is evil? Is it possible to actively work with a dictatorship while remaining "unpolitical"? Beyond film specific questions, discussion of Riefenstahl also invites broader questions about the act of passive collaboration, levels of guilt, and the appropriate ways to engage with those who have collaborated, either actively or passively, with a dictatorship in the aftermath of that dictatorship's end. Riefenstahl is a complex figure, nearly impossible to consider on her own, which is why it's all the more impressive that author Rainer Rother manages to pack such a detailed and thorough accounting of her life and career into such a slim volume. The Seduction of Genius is a great book about a troubling figure which charts both the evolution of Riefenstahl the woman, and the evolution of her public image.

Hollywood Book Club: Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939

From the perspective of 2014 it can be sort of hard to imagine a time when people took a "wait and see" attitude to Hitler and the Nazis. Objectively, of course, one understands that such attitudes existed, given that Hitler was in power for 6 years before the commencement of World War II and the policy of appeasement that resulted in, among other things, the Munich Agreement; but because those of us living now have the benefit of hindsight, it's nevertheless difficult to imagine what it would have been like to live through a time when Hitler was treated as just another world leader and the Nazi party as just another political party rather than symbols for the depths of evil. Even more difficult to imagine, given the sheer number of Hollywood films in which the Nazis have appeared as the villains, is a time when filmmakers were reluctant, and even afraid, to alienate Germans by acknowledging the evils of the Nazi party. Thomas Doherty's Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939 is a fascinating book about a bizarre period in the history of Hollywood (and the world) and the ways that film can be a powerful medium for what it does and for what, unfortunately, it sometimes does not do.

Hollywood Book Club: Clark Gable: Tormented Star

This book is garbage. Even by the astonishingly low standards of trashy celebrity biographies, Clark Gable: Tormented Star stands out as particularly seedy and exceedingly worthless. This isn't a biography. It's a work of fan fiction which imagines that all the stars of yesteryear, but particularly the men, were only ever incidentally heterosexual, padded out with multi-page synopses of several of Clark Gable's films. The best thing I can say about the book is that, even with all that padding, it's a slim volume that runs to only 259 pages in paperback form, so at least it doesn't waste too much of your time. But, rest assured, that even though it won't waste "too much" of your time, it will waste your time, unless you like your books full of errors so brazen that they practically jump off the page and smack you in the face.

Hollywood Book Club: Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin's career is (hopefully) far from over, but William Beard's Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin will probably stand the test of time as the definitive study of his work. An incredibly thorough exploration of Maddin's features (with an appendix in which his short films are discussed) both in terms of the process of how the films came together and in terms of the detailed analyses Beard offers on each, this is definitely a book worthy of one of the most interesting and original filmmakers working today. The more familiar you are with Maddin's work going in, the more you're likely to enjoy Into the Past, but even if you're only familiar with a few of Maddin's titles, finding out how he achieves his unique aesthetic is worth the read.

Hollywood Book Club: The Wes Anderson Collection

Since making his debut with 1996's Bottle Rocket, Wes Anderson has emerged as one of the most distinctive filmmakers of his generation. He's one of those filmmakers whose signature can be identified from nothing more than a still from one of his films because the look and feel of his work is so uniquely his. Examining Anderson's films from Bottle Rocket to Moonrise Kingdom (but, sadly, not including this year's The Grand Budapest Hotel), critic Matt Zoller Seitz's "The Wes Anderson Collection" is a combination of essays about each of the films and an interview with Anderson in which each film is visited and discussed at some length. As a casual read, "The Wes Anderson Collection" is great, as it is full of little odds and ends such as behind the scenes pictures, art work, storyboards, and shot to shot comparisons of scenes from Anderson's work with the work that inspired it. But those looking for insights from Anderson into his work may well end up a bit disappointed, as the collection is really far less revealing about Anderson's thoughts on his own work than it is about Zoller Seitz's experience of the films as a fan, critic, and friend.

Hollywood Book Club: Which Lie Did I Tell?

Many books about Hollywood written by "insiders" are thinly veiled score settlers, behind the scenes stories which pull skeletons out of closets and tell all about where the bodies are buried while casting the writer as, perhaps not a "victim," exactly, but as a sort of noble spirit who's goal was to make quality movies, putting him or her at odds with the corrupt forces of Hollywood for whom "quality" is the least concern (a prime example of this type of book is the notorious You'll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again). Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade starts out as though it's going to be that kind of book as writer William Goldman relates the anecdote which gives the book its title. However, though it features some of those behind the scenes, gossipy tidbits, for the most part Goldman seems to view his book as a potential teaching tool about the art of screenwriting and offers up in depth analysis of what does and what does not work when it comes to writing a screenplay, a fact which helps Which Lie Did I Tell? to stand out from the crowd of "inside Hollywood" books.

Hollywood Book Club: Room 1219

It was the original Hollywood scandal, and it had everything: booze, sex, death, and one of the biggest box office stars of the era. It took three trials and a media circus before a verdict was rendered, but the decision rendered in the court of justice didn't much matter compared to the decision in the court of public opinion, out of which a legend would grow which bears little resemblance to the actual facts in the case. Greg Merritt's Room 1219: The Life of Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood is part biography, part true crime account, and wholly engrossing from beginning to end.

Hollywood Book Club: Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, the Mob (and Sex)

While plenty of books (a few of them great ones) have been written about Hollywood in the late 60s/early 70s, a period of radical creative freedom and risk taking, few can claim to come from a perspective as deep inside as Peter Bart's Infamous Players. As Vice President of Paramount Pictures from 1965 to 1975, Bart had a front row seat to some of the major films of the period, including the first two Godfather films, Chinatown, and Don't Look Now, and was privy to some of the goings on behind the curtain involving Charles Bluhdorn, whose company owned Paramount during the period and whose sometimes "creative" business practices seemed to keep Paramount forever on the verge of being shut down; and given that Bart was a reporter before he became a film executive, he might be expected to have written an incisive portrait of that era. Unfortunately, Infamous Players, though very readable and entertaining, doesn't really contain much in the way of depth, and prefers to offer what mostly amounts to thin sketches of anecdotes that have already been related in more detail in other books.

Hollywood Book Club: Let Me Off At The Top!

Okay, so maybe this isn't a "book," as such. "Let Me Off At The Top: My Classy Life & Other Musings," the memoir of Ron Burgundy (who frequently refers to it as a "novel," but also refers to it as a "brobalia" and "braknopod" when unable to remember the word "biography") is a movie tie-in, so you can't really judge it by the same standards as a normal book and have to give it at least a little bit of leeway. Even doing so, however, you'll come to the conclusion that the Ron Burgundy persona is best deployed through Will Ferrell rather than through the page, as the more offensive aspects of the Burgundy character are softened just enough by Ferrell's performance that it leaves no doubt of the intention behind it, whereas on the page some of it just reads as... well, offensive.

Hollywood Book Club: Merchant of Dreams - Louis B. Mayer, M.G.M. and the Secret Hollywood

Well, that was... kind of a waste of time. I knew going into this one that its author, Charles Higham, was a controversial biographer (his biography of Errol Flynn, in particular, came under fire for its claims that the actor was a spy for the Nazis), but I still thought that the "biography" part would trump the "controversy" part. Merchant of Dreams starts out as a fairly straight-forward, albeit surprisingly sentimental, biography of M.G.M. legend Louis B. Mayer, then branches out to become what reads more like a series of collected anecdotes about the studio with Mayer as the connecting tissue, but not necessarily the subject. It's an odd book, dry as hell despite some of its more salacious (and, to be honest, not always believable) claims, and in which its central figure manages to come across as a jerk despite the author's very frequent assertions to the contrary and attempts to defend his sometimes bizarre, sometimes just mean behavior.

Hollywood Book Club: Down and Dirty Pictures

Although I quite enjoyed Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, one of the criticisms I had of it was that it drifted a little too far into gossipy territory, devoting more time than necessary to the bed-hopping that accompanied the filmmaking of Hollywood's brief auteur era. His follow-up book, Down and Dirty Pictures, does not expend a lot of time going into the romantic ins and outs of its sprawling cast of characters, which is to its credit, but it is lacking in something that made Easy Riders so successful: the advantage of hindsight. Easy Riders was written well over a decade after the end of the era it explored, while Down and Dirty Pictures tells a story that isn't quite finished yet, which makes parts of it - particularly the somewhat gleeful tone charting Harvey Weinstein's fall from grace - seem a bit shortsighted.

Hollywood Book Club: Nicholas Ray - The Glorious Failure of an American Director

Was he an under appreciated genius betrayed by the Hollywood system, or was he a talented but over praised artist who made two bad films for every good film and sabotaged his career at every turn? If you listen to the French (Godard famously said, "The cinema is Nicholas Ray"), you'll come away thinking its the former, but Patrick McGilligan's biography will leave you leaning towards the latter. Though the book can be a bit dry and gets a repetitive towards the end, when the director's demons really start to take over, it is also a meticulous accounting of not just how Ray made his films, but the filmmaking process in Hollywood in the 1950s - with all its frustrating backstage politics - in general.

Hollywood Book Club: Rebels on the Backlot

Six directors, by any measure amongst the most important of the last twenty years: Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson, David O. Russell, and Spike Jonze. Sometimes allies, sometimes enemies, but all, apparently, with mother issues. Sharon Waxman's Rebels on the Backlot sometimes strains to create a true sense of community and connection between them (and other directors who are only mentioned briefly, included as part of what Waxman believes to be the "rebel" directors of the 1990s, but who presumably wouldn't grant her as much interview time as the six who make up the bulk of the book), but the behind the scenes looks she provides at the directors' works throughout the 1990s are invaluable. It sometimes drifts a little further into gossip than it absolutely needs to, but Rebels on the Backlot is nevertheless a largely entertaining and informative work.

Hollywood Book Club: The Prince, the Showgirl and Me

Colin Clark's account of his time spent on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl is probably best known as one of the two books on which the Michelle Williams starring (and Oscar nominated) My Week with Marilyn is based. It's a set diary kept by Clark as he worked on the film, detailing some of the minor adventures of filmmaking and the minor and major dramas that play out during the course of getting a production off the ground. Interestingly, what isn't covered in the diary is what's covered in the other book that inspired the film, Clark's "My Week with Marilyn," written 40 years after the fact and detailing nine days during which he conveniently didn't keep a diary and allegedly had a (platonic) romance with Marilyn Monroe - because, if you were a 24 year old, heterosexual guy in 1956 who got to have any kind of intimacy with Marilyn Monroe, of course you'd wait 40 years to tell anyone about it.

Hollywood Book Club: Swanson on Swanson

The great thing about an iconic performance is that it will live forever, becoming a part of pop culture that will not be forgotten. The bad thing about an iconic performance is that the character can become so melded with the image of the actor, that the two become inseparable in the eyes of the public. Because she had some surface similarities to Norma Desmond, some considered (and still do consider) Sunset Blvd. in the light of autobiography, to the point where Gloria Swanson felt it necessary to point out, “I’ve got nobody floating in my swimming pool.” Gloria Swanson was Norma Desmond, but Norma Desmond was not Gloria Swanson. Which isn’t to say that Gloria Swanson wasn’t just a little bit crazy, but that she was crazy in more ordinary, typical ways than was Norma Desmond.

Hollywood Book Club: Lulu in Hollywood

Books about Hollywood rarely characterize it as a kind place, but it seems particularly cruel to women, who are generally treated as disposable commodities by the money-making machine. Silent star Louise Brooks was a woman who might have been said to have been chewed up and spit out by Hollywood, except that she never really appears to have cared much about being in Hollywood in the first place. Being a film star was something she did for a time, but not something she seems to have been particularly passionate about, at least that’s the impression given by her book, Lulu in Hollywood. This isn’t the story of an insider kicked out, but of an outsider who never wanted in in the first place.

Hollywood Book Club: The Making of the African Queen

Katherine Hepburn’s The Making of the African Queen, or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind is sparing when it comes to the technical details of filmmaking, but it is nevertheless one of the most entertaining “making of” books ever written. Put to pen in 1987, some 36 years after the events it relates, the story is told with a mixture of nostalgia and wonder, as if Hepburn herself can’t quite believe that it happened, but remains eminently fond of the memories. It’s an absolutely delightful read from beginning to end.

Hollywood Book Club: You'll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again

Julia Phillips' You’ll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again is a book with a score to settle. Scores, actually. When it was first published in 1991, it was considered a scandalous, career ending book. Read 22 years after the fact it seems, not tame exactly, but certainly not measurably worse than any other book about Hollywood in the 1970s and 80s. The worst offenders in her book are protected by pseudonyms and the revelations about those she does name aren’t exactly shocking – particularly when you take into account that these are the memories of a crackhead. The only truly shocking thing about Lunch is that for all the posturing Phillips does about her importance to the “New Hollywood” era, she doesn’t actually do much to explain what she actually did to think she deserves that distinction.

Hollywood Book Club: Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood is where the serious study of cinema and the less serious (but no less fun) gossipy memoir meet. Focusing on the brief period of time from the end of the 1960s through the mid-1970s when Hollywood was unlike anything it had been before or anything it has been since – a haven for intelligent, artistically driven pictures – Biskind examines the impact of the men and women (mostly men) whose passion for film breathed new life into the industry, while peppering his narrative with tidbits of gossip (this is usually where the women come in) that help make it so compulsively readable.