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Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood By Mark Harris ( Penguin Press HC, The )
Release Date: 2008-02-14
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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 Fran¨ois 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.
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 CD Review ( breffny98 )
This is a very impressive book. Great concept, great research, all very well woven together to create an engrossing picture of an industry and a period which are sometimes unfathomable to the layman. As an industry veteran, and as someone who was marginally involved in some of the movies discussed here, I congratulate Mr. Harris on a job well done.
HOWEVER: I am appalled a the sloppiness of the CD reading. Did anyone listen to it? Mr. Harris? Was there a producer? The numerous mis-pronunciations of names and places really made listening a very difficult experience:
Sidney Lummit?
Larry Tourman?
The Mad Woman of Shiloh?
Amy Archerd?
Cubby Brock-ohli?
And on and on. Numerous egregious errors. If only the reader had done his homework. And if only someone had listened to the finished product. Shameful - particularly because the reader has a very appealing voice and delivery.
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Great audio book except for...
Doesn't Sidney Lumet's name rhyme with "weigh"? Lloyd James pronounces it to rhyme with "dumb it" throughout! Or am I wrong and he's right?
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fascinating read - an exciting time in film history! ( jmcdonough12 )
I've been recommending this book to everyone I know . . . it's a well-written examination of the "changing of the guard" in American cinema, and it's an absolutely brilliant idea for a book.
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Bonnie & Clyde meet Dr. Dolittle In the Heat of the Night ( bellemeadebooksandmusic )
Despite a title too long for any marquee, "Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood" is 400 pages of often catty intrigue, missed opportunities, and lucky breaks that capture the confusion of the times as well as the resistance of the old Hollywood guard to American movies influenced by the new wave of European filmmakers. Race, murder, and generational confusion were suddenly topics for discussion, just as old taboos were being broken and outmoded rules discarded. Finally, in the summer of 1968, the old Production Code was done away with all together, making these five American films, produced in 1967, the last of a kind nominated by the Academy.
The book itself is presented in a kind of new-wave film style, without chapter titles or even a table of contents to guide the reader. Readers, like filmgoers to Antonioni, should be prepared: Harris confounds expectations of any conventional chronology. Confusion and uncertainty is the key here -- he jumps in with an Esquire writer's viewing of Truffaut's "Jules and Jim," and we're off.
For film fans, however, this approach to film history can be equally frustrating. Open the book at any page and you'll find something fairly interesting: Beatty tried to get Stanley Kubrick interested in directing "What's New Pussycat?" But the interwoven stories of five separate films can be inherently distracting -- I first tried to follow the disastrous history of "Dr. Dolittle" over the course of the book and finally realized I would have to read about Dustin Hoffman's shyness, the studio politics of Jack Warner, and Rod Steiger's southern accent as well.
With many Hollywood stories, the tales of disaster can be as fascinating as the successes. Dr. Dolittle seemed doomed from the start; Rex Harrison demanded constant rewriting of the script, and tried to replace the songwriter Leslie Bricusse with Alan Jay Lerner, his own original choice from "My Fair Lady". Location shooting in England was bedeviled by constant rain. Trained animals were quarantined. As the production and promotion costs reached $29 million -- Harris estimates final costs in 2007 dollars at an "astonishing" $190 million dollars -- nothing went right.
At one point, Harrison presented the film's producers with an ultimatum: "entertainer" Sammy Davis Jr. (already contracted) had to be be replaced with ... yes, Sidney Poitier. Neither Poitier nor Davis played the role in the end; so it goes. In one of those spectacular, old-Hollywood twists of fate, however, Sammy Davis sang "Talk to the Animals" -- the Academy's choice for Best Song of 1968, from "Dr. Dolittle" -- at the Oscar ceremony in all his Vegas-glitzy, Rat Pack hipster style. Presumably, Rex Harrison was not in attendance. Lots of research went on here; forty pages of notes and bibliography are included. Highly recommended for film buffs who want all the details -- but docked one star for lacking that table of contents. You're on your own.
For more about this book visit BellemeadeBooks at Blogger.com
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 Brillant! ( raspell )
The book traces standard form films, two films representing the new of age of filmography, and one film that shouldn't have been there, Dr. Dolittle. Let's put Dolittle to rest with a quick statement, Rex Harrison, comes across as a real @ss. With all the later year prima donnas, I wasn't aware there were any with such bad behavior from old school films. Think John McEnroe.
In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner are nice but flawed, films. This book really excels when discussing Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, two new age film lucky to be made that set the industry on its ears. Warren Beatty, like him or love him, shows his business acumen in getting this film made and establishing his persona for the rest of his career. The Graduate may have been the best movie and clearly the movie with the longest lasting legacy.
If there is a criticism of this book it is long and exhaustive. But, this is a critical transition year in the history of film and for me very much worth the attention. I strongly recommend this book for any film buff or student of the 60s.
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