Good Minds Suggest—James Franco's Favorite Books About Hollywood
Posted by Goodreads on May 8, 2014
What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg
"Budd Schulberg's classic about the unscrupulous rise to power of one Sammy Glick, a man who uses the Hollywood machine against itself. Son of a Hollywood studio mogul, Schulberg used his own inside experiences to create a scathing indictment of the business side of show business while at the same time creating an indelible work of art."

I Should Have Stayed Home by Horace McCoy
"Horace McCoy wrote two of the most moving portraits of the desperate and despairing souls of old Hollywood. I Should Have Stayed Home reveals the sexual power games that undergird Hollywood while it follows two background players lost in the City of Angels, prepared to give almost anything for an entrance into the dream factory."

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy
"This is another portrait of McCoy's Los Angeles underdogs, or dogs at the absolute end of their leashes is more like it. The couple here is forlorn to the point of suicide, but before they turn their cards in, they sign up for an old-fashioned dance marathon. Like the asylum in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, or the slaughterhouse in The Jungle, here the dance contest becomes the 'combine,' the symbol for the machine that controls our lives and grinds us into dust."

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
"Of the famous novelists who worked in Hollywood (Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Huxley), Nathanael West was in some ways the most successful screenwriter, although that was partly because he was content punching the clock working on B pictures at the 'Poverty Row' studios. But of all the novelists who worked in Hollywood, he turned out the book that revealed the burning (literally) resentment the public has for its stars while at the same time desiring to be them."

Zeroville by Steve Erickson
"Steve Erickson's fictional treatment of the film industry in the '70s, the material that Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls covers—albeit in a way that turns movies into the dreams that they are, the fabric of our collective unconscious. We follow an editor, Vikar, who is so devoted to film, he has Monty Clift and Elizabeth Taylor tattooed on the back of his bald head. He gets involved with all the movie brats of the '70s (based on the actual dudes) and then gets sucked into film as if it were as thick and vital as life."

Vote for your own favorites on Listopia: Best Hollywood Novels
Comments Showing 1-22 of 22 (22 new)
date
newest »



Plus I don't know what the hell to give him for his birthday.

for the son's birthday, google Warner Brother Film Noir dvd set, a world like no other.
Watch the movies with him.

I reccomend:
"Temptation" - Douglas Kennedy...a fun fiction read.
"Adventures in the Screen Trade" and "Which Lie Did I Tell?" - William Goldman...Original and follow-up
"You'll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again" - Julia Phillips
"Final Cut" - Steven Bach
Anybody have any more recent Hollywood business books?

Paul Preuss

for the son's birthday, google Warner Brother Film Noir dvd set, a world like no other.
Watch the movies with him."
David wrote: "For the ins and outs book, google Rick Blackwood, say I sent you.
for the son's birthday, google Warner Brother Film Noir dvd set, a world like no other.
Watch the movies with him."
Thank you all for the rich and varied suggestions. I'll check them out! David, I'll also contact Rick Blackwood.

If you are looking for depressing books, try On the Beach. or chuck wendigs Blackbirds


for the son's birthday, google Warner Brother Film Noir dvd set, a world like no other.
Watch the movies with him."
"Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales of the NEW ABNORMAL in the Movie Business" by Lynda Obst. Published in 2014


1. About the craft of moviemaking: 'Thinking in Pictures' by John Sayles and 'Making Movies' by Sidney Lumet.
2. About Hollywood the business: 'Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes' by John Pierson. ANYTHING by Lynda Obst or William Goldman.
3. For the funny stories: 'With Nails: the film diaries of Richard E. Grant' or anything else he's written.
Yeah for film school & best of luck to your son :)

I just finished reading IF YOU BUILD IT... a memoir by Dwier Brown. He played Kevin Costner's young father in the final five minutes of FIELD OF DREAMS (which, in case you haven‘t seen it, is not a “baseball movie“ as much as it is a movie about a son longing for a chance to reconnect with his deceased father). The book was just published last month and is getting great reviews. I think it would be a perfect gift for your son. It is a thoughtful, moving, humorous memoir about making the movie (when he was starting out as a young actor from rural Ohio), about his relationship with his own father (who died just weeks before filming began), and about countless strangers who recognize him from his brief scene in the movie and want to share how the movie affected their relationships with their own fathers. I’ve recommended the book to several friends already and hope you will take a minute to Google the title or check out the reviews at Amazon.com.

It's a young industry so it's easy and important to master its history!



Comment #1 by Howard https://www.goodreads.com/interviews/...
I wonder what William Goldman author of Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade would write about Hollywood now? Great book and writer, would read anything he wrote about abuse and the Weinstein era.
He also wrote Good Will Hunting and the marketing stunt was to let Matt Damon and Ben Affleck pretend they wrote it. For shame. People still don't know the truth.

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN THIS (EASILY RESEARCHED), FROM GOLDMAN HIMSELF, RATHER THAN RUMOR OR MYTH:
“I would love to say that I wrote (Good Will Hunting). Here is the truth. In my obit it will say that I wrote it. People don't want to think those two cute guys wrote it. What happened was, they had the script. It was their script. They gave it to Rob [Reiner] to read, and there was a great deal of stuff in the script dealing with the F.B.I. trying to use Matt Damon for spy work because he was so brilliant in math. Rob said, "Get rid of it." They then sent them in to see me for a day - I met with them in New York - and all I said to them was, "Rob's right. Get rid of the F.B.I. stuff. Go with the family, go with Boston, go with all that wonderful stuff." And they did. I think people refuse to admit it because their careers have been so far from writing, and I think it's too bad. I'll tell you who wrote a marvelous script once, Sylvester Stallone. Rocky's a marvelous script. God, read it, it's wonderful. It's just got marvelous stuff. And then he stopped suddenly because it's easier being a movie star and making all that money than going in your pit and writing a script. But I did not write [Good Will Hunting], alas. I would not have written the "It's not your fault" scene. I'm going to assume that 148 percent of the people in this room have seen a therapist. I certainly have, for a long time. Hollywood always has this idea that it's this shrink with only one patient. I mean, that scene with Robin Williams gushing and Matt Damon and they're hugging, "It's not your fault, it's not your fault." I thought, Oh God, Freud is so agonized over this scene. But Hollywood tends to do that with therapists.
(from 2003 WGA seminar)”
― William Goldman
Have a look at Which Lie Did I tell by William Goldman - it is very very funny.
And for authors who worked on the lots - I love John Fante - try The Road to Los Angeles or 1933 was a bad year.