The Best American Movie Writing 1998

by George Plimpton (Editor), Jason Shinder (Editor)

Presents essays, profiles, reviews, and interviews on the subject of movies by screenwriters, cultural commentators, and novelists

265 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1998

About the author

George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, actor, and gamesman. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.

He was the grandson of George A. Plimpton.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing melange of entertainment journalism and more aspiring academic commentary, with most of the individual selections undeserving of book memorialization.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as part of 2022's Read Harder challenge. The prompt was "Read a book in a "Best of" series." Since I had this book on my TBR shelf (along with the 1999 and 2001 editions), I opted to read it. The title pretty much says it all. Editor George Plimpton relies heavily at first on articles from "Parnassus," also inexplicably includes an essay from (the pseudonymous) Libby Gelman-Waxner, as well as a self-aggrandizing essay about his encounters with Warren Beatty.

Those criticisms aside, it was wonderful to revisit some films and filmmakers I have neglected since '98. Kathleen Murphy's "Film Comment" essay on Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady is a particularly timely reminder of how astonishing a filmmaker Jane Campion has always been in light of her win as Best Director at this year's Oscars. Bonnie Friedman's interrogation of the ultimately confining definitions of what home and happiness are for young women in the Wizard of Oz took me back to my undergraduate days, teaching the same film as a seminal "road movie." These are only two of the outstanding essays in this collection and honestly reminds me of the essential truthfulness of the book's epigraph: "The next best thing to seeing movies is reading about them."