Rebel without a Crew


Book Description

Named One of The Hollywood Reporter’s “100 Greatest Film Books of All Time” Famed independent screenwriter and director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Spy Kids, Machete) discloses all the unique strategies and original techniques he used to make his remarkable debut film El Mariachi on a shoestring budget. This is both one man's remarkable story and an essential guide for anyone who has a celluloid story to tell and the dreams and determination to see it through. Part production diary, part how-to manual, Rodriguez unveils how he was able to make his influential first film on only a $7,000 budget. Also included is the appendix, "The Ten Minute Film Course,” a tell-all on how to save thousands of dollars on film school and teach yourself the ropes of film production, directing, and screenwriting. A perfect gift for the aspiring filmmaker.




Live Fast, Die Young


Book Description

The complete story behind the groundbreaking film Rebel Without a Cause is vividly revealed in this fascinating book as provocative as the film itself. The revolutionary film Rebel Without a Cause has had a profound impact on both moviemaking and youth culture since its 1955 release, virtually giving birth to our concept of the American teenager. And the making of the movie was just as explosive for those involved. Against a backdrop of the Atomic Age and an old Hollywood studio system on the verge of collapse, four of Hollywood's most passionate artists had a cataclysmic and immensely influential meeting. James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and director Nicholas Ray were each at a crucial point in their careers. The young actors were grappling with their fame, burgeoning sexuality, and increasingly reckless behavior, and their on- and off-set relationships ignited as they engaged in Ray’s vision of physical melees and psychosexual seductions of startling intensity. Through interviews with the surviving members of the cast and crew and firsthand access to both personal and studio archives, the authors reveal Rebel's true drama: the director’s affair with sixteen-year-old Wood, his tempestuous “spiritual marriage” with Dean, and his role in awakening the latent sexuality of Mineo, who would become the first gay teenager to appear on film. This searing account of the upheaval the four artists experienced in the wake of Rebel is complete with thirty photographs, including ten never-before-seen photos by famed Dean photographer Dennis Stock.




The Making of Rebel Without a Cause


Book Description

In 1954, troubled director Nicholas Ray chatted at a dinner party about his controversial plan for a film about middle-class juvenile delinquents. He was told of a book, written by a prison psychologist and owned by Warner Bros., called Rebel Without a Cause. Though he was initially unimpressed, Ray adapted the book into his own screenplay and Warner Bros. hired him to direct what would become a classic. From the backgrounds of the many players to the pre-production, production, and post-production of the film, this complete history recounts every aspect of Rebel Without a Cause from its rudiments to the 1955 Academy Awards: the selection of cast and crew, legal fights, changing screenwriters and the many variations of the story, location scouting, auditions, script readings, difficulties with the censors, romances and fights, the editing, test screenings, and, of course, the death of its star. Dozens of intimate anecdotes, from wardrobe decisions to James Dean's pranks, add rich detail. An epilogue discusses the possible sequels, rights conflicts, documentaries, musicals, and spin-off attempts, and offers concluding words on the cast and crew.




Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids


Book Description

During the 1990s, Austin achieved "overnight" success and celebrity as a vital place for independent filmmaking. Directors Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez proved that locally made films with regional themes such as Slacker and El Mariachi could capture a national audience. Their success helped transform Austin's homegrown film community into a professional film industry staffed with talented, experienced filmmakers and equipped with state-of-the art-production facilities. Today, Austin struggles to balance the growth and expansion of its film community with an ongoing commitment to nurture the next generation of independent filmmakers. Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids chronicles the evolution of this struggle by re-creating Austin's colorful movie history. Based on revealing interviews with Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, Mike Judge, Quentin Tarantino, Matthew McConaughey, George Lucas, and more than one hundred other players in the local and national film industries, Alison Macor explores how Austin has become a proving ground for contemporary independent cinema. She begins in the early 1970s with Tobe Hooper's horror classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and follows the development of the Austin film scene through 2001 with the production and release of Rodriguez's $100-million blockbuster, Spy Kids. Each chapter explores the behind-the-scenes story of a specific movie, such as Linklater's Dazed and Confused and Judge's Office Space, against the backdrop of Austin's ever-expanding film community.




Make Your Own Damn Movie!


Book Description

Lloyd Kaufman, the writer/producer/director of such cult-classic films as The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke 'Em High, and Tromeo and Juliet, offers a guide to movie-making unlike any other available anywhere. In 25 years, Kaufman, along with partner Michael Herz, has built Troma Studios up from a company struggling to find its voice in a field crowded with competitors to its current--and legendary--status as a lone survivor, a bastion of true cinematic independence, and the world's greatest collection of camp on film. As entertaining and funny as it is informative and insightful, Make Your Own Damn Movie! places Kaufman's radically low-budget, independent-studio style of filmaking directly in the reader's hands. Thus we learn how to: develop and write a knock-out screenplay; raise funding; find locations and cast actors; hire a crew; obtain equipment, permits, and music rights (all for little or no money); make incredible special effects for $0.79 each; charm, schmooze, and network while on the film-festival circuit; and, finally, make a bad actor act so bad it's actually good. From scriptwriting and directing to financing and marketing, this book is brimming with utterly off-the-wall, decidedly maverick, yet consistently proven advice on how to fully develop one's idea for an independent film.




Spike Lee's Gotta Have it


Book Description

Including Spike Lee's advice on independent filmmaking, excerpts from the production journal Lee kept throughout the making of She's Gotta Have It, and much more, Spike Lee's Gotta Have It is a unique document in film literature. 30 black-and-white photographs.




Making Movies


Book Description

Why does a director choose a particular script? What must they do in order to keep actors fresh and truthful through take after take of a single scene? How do you stage a shootout—involving more than one hundred extras and three colliding taxis—in the heart of New York’s diamond district? What does it take to keep the studio honchos happy? From the first rehearsal to the final screening, Making Movies is a master’s take, delivered with clarity, candor, and a wealth of anecdote. For in this book, Sidney Lumet, one of our most consistently acclaimed directors, gives us both a professional memoir and a definitive guide to the art, craft, and business of the motion picture. Drawing on forty years of experience on movies that range from Long Day’s Journey into Night to Network and The Verdict—and with such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino—Lumet explains how painstaking labor and inspired split-second decisions can result in two hours of screen magic.




The Power Filmmaking Kit


Book Description

Think big, spend little! Everything you need to make your movie is in this complete resource kit. The Power Filmmaking Kit is a comprehensive, multimedia book and DVD package that empowers you to produce your own Hollywood-quality movie. Emmy-award winning director Jason Tomaric produced an independent film using only local resources for under $2,000 that not only got picked up for distribution, but is also used as a case study in top film schools. This book shows you how to do the same, regardless of your budget or location. You'll learn how to achieve professional quality on a microbudget, using the resources you have at hand. The book includes: * Coverage of the entire filmmaking process. It's all here, from writing, directing, and cinematography, to acting, editing, and distribution. * Step-by-step instructions, tips, diagrams, charts, and illustrations for how you can make a Hollywood-caliber movie on a next-to-nothing budget with little upfront money and access only to local resources. The DVD includes: * Time and Again, the profitable, award-winning, internationally distributed independent film made for under $2,000 * One hour of video tutorials unveiling how the movie was made...interviews and behind-the-scenes case studies on directing, production, and editing * Complete rough footage from a scene for editing practice * Forms, contracts, and more resources *The Producer's Notebook includes scripts, storyboards, schedules, call sheets, contracts, letters from the producer, camera logs and press kits from "Time and Again." See how the production was scheduled and organized, read the script, follow the storyboards and watch the production unfold from beginning to end. * Blank contracts and forms that you can print out to use on your own film




My First Movie


Book Description

Nobody forgets their first time--and film directors are no exception. In these vivid and revealing interviews, a collection of filmmakers as diverse as the Coen brothers and Ken Loach, Ang Lee and Kevin Smith, Anthony Minghella and Gary Oldman, Neil Jordan and Mira Nair talk in extraordinary detail and with amazing candor about making their first films. Each chapter focuses on a director's celebrated debut--be it "Angel or "Blood Simple, "Clerks or "Diner, "Muriel's Wedding or "Truly, Madly, Deeply--and tells the inside story: from writing the script to raising the money, from casting the actors to assembling the crew, from shooting to editing, from selling the movie to screening it. Along the way, every aspect of the movie industry is explored: from dealing with agents and moguls for the first time to pitching your movie as a debutante director, from languishing in development hell to confronting test audiences from hell. The questions have been posed by Stephen Lowenstein, a young director with two acclaimed short films to his credit. Remembering the struggle to launch their careers, the directors have opened up about their first films and themselves to an unprecedented degree. Each chapter is not only a memoir of a particular movie, but also an emotional journey in which the director relives the pain and elation, the comedy and tragedy, of making a first feature. For anyone who wants to direct movies, these tales of triumph and disaster, of sleepless nights and nail-biting days, will be enthralling and terrifying in equal measure. For all other film fans, the interviews provide fascinating and entertaining insights into filmmakers who have become household names.




How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime


Book Description

In these pages Roger Corman, the most successful independent filmmaker in Hollywood relates his experiences as the director and/or producer of such low-budget classics Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Raven, The Man with the X-ray Eyes, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Night Call Nurses, Bloody Mama, Piranha, and many others. He also discusses his distribution of the Bergman, Fellini, and Truffaut movies that later won Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category. Corman alumni—John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Vincent Price, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Fonda, Joe Dante, and Jonathan Demme, among others—contribute their recollections to give added perspective to Corman's often hilarious, always informative autobiography.