<![CDATA[Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood]]>

false <![CDATA[Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood]]> 2092154 7 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. 2097513 14 2 2008 Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood total:345|5:118|4:171|3:51|2:4|1:1| 345 1436 727 122 5 1 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Mar 01 10:15:00 -0800 2008 Wed Mar 05 19:28:55 -0800 2008
Harris untangles how we got to the Best Picture slate of 1967, a fine representative case study of a shift in Hollywood conventions. And also, obviously, situated in a time of significan...more...]]> 3 1 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Oct 27 00:27:16 -0700 2007 Wed Nov 14 13:58:49 -0800 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 13 20:32:10 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 13 20:46:06 -0800 2009
Other books I have read about the motion picture industry have, for the most part, been full of interesting and fun facts and anecdotes, but not particularly solid histories. This book scores on both accounts.

A fascinating history examining the production of each o...more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Feb 13 15:53:39 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 13 19:55:28 -0800 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Thu Feb 05 09:56:04 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 09:56:04 -0800 2009 Mark Harris, a former editor for Entertainment Weekly, combines his remarkable knowledge of film history with interviews and research that capture the Zeitgeist of the late 1960s, particularly the cloistered, changing world of Hollywood. The films that challenged the industry's expectations were, Ha...

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Stylistically, this is a pretty straight-...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jul 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 19 09:45:35 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 24 13:03:11 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon May 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue May 26 18:37:14 -0700 2009 Tue May 26 18:46:47 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun May 03 16:56:54 -0700 2009 Wed May 13 19:47:50 -0700 2009 Bonnie and Clyde, Doctor Dolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night. Those were the five movies nominated ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Jan 08 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 04 15:54:57 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 14:41:00 -0800 2009 Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Jan 08 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Dec 17 14:54:58 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 09 14:47:43 -0800 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 19 17:02:45 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 20 04:44:34 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Dec 30 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Nov 29 14:13:23 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 02 09:09:56 -0800 2009
I have only seen one of the five 1967 Best Picture Nominees which are the subject of this book -- and that ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 30 09:56:50 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 30 10:00:39 -0700 2009 Easy Riders, Raging Bulls How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood and The Studio. Wish Harris had talked a little bit more about what was going on in the larger world - particularly because he's so adamant that these movies were products of their...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Apr 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 21 17:49:18 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 26 17:04:51 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Sep 13 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 20 07:59:34 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 13 07:26:45 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jul 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 03 19:59:35 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 03 20:10:30 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Oct 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 01 17:02:33 -0700 2009 Fri Nov 20 16:49:33 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jul 08 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 23 14:52:45 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 08 14:46:56 -0700 2008
The author believes the five films nominated for the 1968 Academy Awards (Doctor Doolittle, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, The Graduate, and Bonnie & Clyde) represent a waters...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon May 26 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon May 05 20:20:54 -0700 2008 Wed May 28 14:48:33 -0700 2008 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=2092154