|
| Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Harris
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $14.99
You Save: $12.96 (46%)
New (34) Used (19) Collectible (3) from $12.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 24809
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 1594201528
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43097309045
EAN: 9781594201523
ASIN: 1594201528
Publication Date: February 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! NEW Book! May have remainder mark. Most orders ship within 1 BUSINESS DAY with ORDER CONFIRMATION.
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
An epic account of how the revolution hit Hollywood, told through the stories of the five films nominated for the 1967 Academy Awards
The year is 1963. The studios are churning out westerns, war movies, prudish sex comedies and overblown historical epics, but audiences whose interests have been piqued by an influx of innovative films from abroad are hungering for something more, something new. At Esquire, two young writers hatch a plan to create a movie treatment that they hope will attract the director Franois Truffaut: the story of the gangsters Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Mike Nichols, an improvisatory comedian turned neophyte theater director, gets his hands on an obscure first novel called The Graduate and wonders if he's ready to make the jump to Hollywood. Warren Beatty, just 26 years old and struggling through a series of flops after the success of Splendor in the Grass, decides to take his career into his own hands, but can't seem to settle on his next move. Dustin Hoffman, sleeping on friends' floors and scrounging for temp work in New York, struggles just to get an off-Broadway audition. Sidney Poitier, after two dozen movies, still yearns for something that seems completely unattainable: a good role. And 20th Century Fox, on the brink of financial catastrophe, puts all its hopes in a genre-the family musical-that will revitalize the company and then nearly destroy it again.
Pictures at a Revolution tracks five movies-the milestones Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, the popular hits Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, and the big-budget disaster Doctor Dolittle-on their five-year journey to Oscar night in the spring of 1968. It follows their fortunes through the last days of the studio system and the first sparks of a cultural upheaval that would launch maverick new stars and directors, topple more than one industry titan from his pedestal, and redefine what American movies could be. In 1967, moviegoers witnessed the arrival of taboo-shattering sex and violence on screen, the debuts of Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway, the return of Katharine Hepburn and the poignant farewell of Spencer Tracy, the audacious risks taken by Warren Beatty, Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols and Norman Jewison, and Hollywood's agonized attempt to grapple with an incendiary moment in American race relations, with results that would change Sidney Poitier's career forever.
By tracing the gambles, the stumbles, the clashes and the creative partnerships that produced these films, Mark Harris captures both the twilight of old Hollywood and the dawn of a new golden age in studio filmmaking. Based on unprecedented access to the actors, directors, screenwriters, producers and executives whose movies defined the era, as well a wealth of previously unexplored archival material, Pictures at a Revolution is an utterly original, revealing, and entertaining history of a true cultural watershed.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 A cultural and film making revolution dissected February 24, 2008
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
I am a bit of Hollywood history buff and it is wonderful having a number of books on the subject out right now (check out Misfits Country). In this well written and excellently researched book the author takes the reader back to 1967 and analyzes the five nominees for best picture and there reflection and effects on society in at that momentous time of change. The Movies are: "The Graduate (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition)," "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (40th Anniversary Edition)," "Bonnie and Clyde," "In the Heat of the Night (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition)" and "Doctor Dolittle." Aside from being a great walk down memory lane it is also full of insightful social commentary. The sixties were a special time of social change and the movies and the movies of that decade reflected and effected this change on so many levels. I would love to see the author expand on this in another book that might take on the best movies of the decade. And do try Misfits Country an excellent read that is a behind the scenes look at the making of the classic movie The Misfits!
The Year 1967 in Movies February 16, 2008
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
Mr. Harris has taken the five Best Picture nominees for the 1967 Oscars and pin-point that year as the fall of the studios. Two films dealt with racism ("Guess Who's Is Coming To Dinner," and "In the Heat of the Night") in very differnet ways, one with sexuality and changing morals ("The Graduate"), another with amoral violence ("Bonnie and Cycle") while the last picture attempted to be another Hollywood musical ("Dr. Dolittle.") This was the year that independent film-making and European influences reached a critical mass against the static studio machine.
Ironically Sidney Poitier was shut out for a Best Actor Oscar with three brilliant performances, two of them in the Best Picture category. These little tidbits are found in the book that follows the five movies from pre-production to the Oscar. The narrative is quite readable and the behind the scenes stories are interesting and amusing. Mr. Harris should pick out other landmark years and repeat the process. This book is a must for any movie fan.
Superb! February 18, 2008
8 out of 14 found this review helpful
This is one of the best-written books on film I've read in a long time. It is detailed, entertainingly easy to read, and full of facts. Harris has taken 5 films and details them brilliantly. The only qualm I would have is that of the 5 1967 Best Picture nominees, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" seems to have been shortchanged in terms of space given in the book. Not to say he doesn't cover it, but we know "Bonnie and Clyde," "The Graduate," "In the Heat of the Night," and "Doctor Dolittle" backwards and forwards by the book's end, but to me, it seemed "Dinner"'s facts weren't as fully covered. This is minor, if you love Oscar-winning films and histories of filmmaking, READ THIS BOOK!
Fascinating Look at Hollywood's Turning Point When Five Films Marked the Past and the Future March 1, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
1939 may have been Hollywood's high watermark for classic filmmaking, but 1967 was ostensibly the year Hollywood grew up, the turning point when the old guard faced off with the new mavericks in dominating not only the year's box office but also the year-end critical accolades. Entertainment Weekly columnist Mark Harris cleverly and incisively looks at the five diverse films that made up the Best Picture Oscar race that year and dissects each one from development to the Oscar ceremony the following spring - The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Doctor Dolittle, and the eventual winner, In the Heat of the Night. His meticulous research feels thorough, lending a surprisingly cohesive picture of an industry in flux between the aging, out-of-touch moguls unable to forecast film-going tastes and the revolutionary novices, influenced by the European New Wave, abandoning a studio system in collapse.
Instead of tracing these films individually, the author looks more holistically at the middle of the decade when a diverse array of people concurrently faced a multitude of challenges in getting their pictures made. Many have been interviewed extensively for the book, and it becomes readily apparent why these five films epitomize the revolution when you see who the directors behind them. Mike Nichols and Arthur Penn, who directed "The Graduate" and "Bonnie and Clyde" respectively, were relative neophytes who challenged studio thinking with their groundbreaking films. On the other side of the spectrum were two veterans - Stanley Kramer, who reunited legendary icons Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in their final pairing, the superficially controversial "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"; and Richard Fleischer, who tried to replicate the success of My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music, with his big-budget disaster, "Doctor Dolittle". In between them was Norman Jewison, a studio journeyman with aspirations to become a more serious director. He found his opportunity with the racially-charged crime drama, "In the Heat of the Night", which among the five movies, best represented a balance between the two ends of the filmmaking spectrum.
Other key figures dominate Harris' narrative, such as screenwriters Robert Benton, David Newman and Robert Towne, who turned "Bonnie and Clyde" from a conventional gangster picture into an incisive character study that fluidly alternated laughs with visceral moments of violence. Obviously, actor-producer Warren Beatty figures prominently with that seminal film, especially in removing Clyde's bisexual orientation from the script and in casting his co-star, which became a Scarlett-level search among Hollywood's hottest actresses at the time. Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda, Tuesday Weld and even Beatty's sister Shirley MacLaine were under serious consideration before a relatively inexperienced Faye Dunaway landed her breakthrough role. Fleischer, producer Arthur P. Jacobs and an especially irascible Rex Harrison could not help but be weighed down by all the setbacks that befell "Doctor Dolittle" from uncooperative animals to wrong-headed studio thinking resulting in an overly grandiose 2 -hour epic presented with fanfare in road-show engagements.
Casting on "The Graduate" turned out to be one of the biggest challenges as the original choices for Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin Braddock were, believe it or not, Doris Day and Robert Redford. While curious in hindsight, it was fortunate that Nichols and producer Lawrence Turman finally selected Anne Bancroft and a then-unknown Dustin Hoffman for the roles. Tracy's frail health was the ongoing concern during the production of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", as Kramer was able to maneuver around studio concerns over a movie about a pending interracial marriage. Intriguingly, Sidney Poitier turns out to be an important figure in three of the five films. He stars in "In the Heat of the Night" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", and he was also being lured to play a minor role in "Doctor Dolittle" until it became apparent that ongoing production delays eliminated this possibility. An unexpected box office draw at a time when racial tensions were escalating, Poitier turned into a lightning rod for both whites and blacks in terms of what was expected of him as a role model.
Old gossip and silver screen trivia are not Harris' priorities here as he provides a thoughtful overview of the industry from a business and societal standpoint. He vividly shows a country engrossed in racial tensions and agitation over the war in Vietnam. The author also brings to light the antiquated censorship tool of the Production Code. Nonetheless, it's the focus on the fascinating personalities involved that makes the book a must-read for cinema-philes. A prime example is his detailed description of a 1965 Fourth of July party hosted by Fonda and her husband-to-be Roger Vadim. Old and new Hollywood were in attendance and holding court in their respective corners, as her father Henry and Gene Kelly were mingling with the likes of Beatty and Dennis Hopper. Toying with Mussorgsky's famous multi-piece piano suite, Pictures at an Exhibition, to come up with the book's apt title, Harris has done a superb job of showing how movies are a true reflection of our cultural history.
"The giraffe stepped on his c**k." February 26, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The ungraceful giraffe held up production of Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison, but it wasn't the reason Doctor Dolittle lost the Oscar for Best Picture in 1967. Neither was Harrison's drinking nor going over budget.
It lost because America and Hollywood changed that year. Mark Harris's Pictures at a Revolution is the best film book since Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties. Peter Biskind explained the interaction between Hollywood movies and American society in the fifties. Harris does it for the sixties.
Bonnie and Clyde changed movie style. The Graduate (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition) and In the Heat of the Night (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition) focused on the subject matter of two different revolutions - - youth and civil rights.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (40th Anniversary Edition) was the last time old liberal America (in the person of liberal director Stanley Kramer) congratulated itself on how socially advanced it was.
It was appropriate that the president of the Academy that year was Gregory Peck - - Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird (Collector's Edition) and the investigative journalist who exposes anti-Semitism in Gentleman's Agreement.
What surprised Stanley Kramer was that younger filmmakers didn't give him credit for having his heart in the right place. Instead he was mocked for being behind the times both in style and subject.
Kramer "was now certain he wouldn't be accused of irrelevance." But Richard Schickel of Life magazine said, "Kramer is earnestly preaching away on matters that have long since ceased to be true issues." Most critics (and audiences) thought that in making Poitier's character "a regular Albert Schweitzer" that Kramer was stacking the deck in his movie. There was no real conflict between the parents and their daughter, because Poitier's character was so perfect.
To be fair, no one ever took Guess Who's Coming to Dinner seriously as a study of race in America; it was just the last chance to see Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn together.
What moved me the most in Mark Harris's book was the story of Sidney Poitier, the human being and actor. Harry Bellafonte (who had criticized Poitier's professional choices) said it wasn't Poitier's fault he was Cary Grant and not Humphrey Bogart. (In other words, smooth and comforting on screen, instead of edgy and challenging.)
While In the Heat of the Night might not have gone far enough in telling the truth about America, it went farther than Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. When Poitier as Virgil Tibbs slapped a rich white man, the country recognized that it had already changed in an important way.
Katharine Hepburn comes off as something of a hypocrite. She lived with Tracy for decades while Tracy wouldn't get a divorce from his wife (that itself shows how times had changed), but made sure newspapers hinted at Hepburn and Tracy's relationship. "Her behavior represented an act of self-denial and dignified restraint that still managed to be conspicuous and public."
I haven't even mentioned many of the writers, actors, and directors Mark Harris writes about.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
