From the late 1930s to the mid-1950s, five big movie studios-Paramount, Warner Bros., Twentieth Century-Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and RKO-dominated Hollywood's film industry. This "big studio system" operated primarily as a series of assembly-line production factories. Ideally, each churned out fifty-two movies a year, enough to supply showcase theaters across the country with a new lineup each week-with profit being the overriding goal.

Of this era, veteran screenwriter Julius Epstein ("Casablanca") said: "It was not called the motion picture industry for nothing. It] was like working at belts in a factory."

Studios assigned the majority of the lower-tier screenplays to directors under long-term contract and expected them to stick to the script and keep productions within the budget. These filmmakers, known as "house directors," often made films quickly, inexpensively, and with limited resources. "Just Making Movies: Company Directors on the Studio System" collects twelve interviews with house directors from this era, all conducted by the author during the 1980s. These previously unpublished interviews provide a clear picture of how the big studio system operated, as told by those who knew it best.

Despite limitations, house directors sometimes made enduring film classics, such as Charles Walters's "Easter Parade," Henry Koster's "The Bishop's Wife," George Sidney's "The Three Musketeers," and Vincent Sherman's "The Hasty Heart." In these interviews the filmmakers talk candidly about working with such superstars as Joan Crawford, Errol Flynn, Richard Burton, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Esther Williams, and Lana Turner.

Ronald L. Davis is professor emeritus of history at Southern Methodist University. He is the author of "Van Johnson: MGM's Golden Boy" (University Press of Mississippi) and "The Glamour Factory: Inside Hollywood's Big Studio System."

"Small Nation, Global Cinema" engages the effects of globalization from the perspective of small nations. Focusing her study on the specific cultural context of the international film market, Mette Hjort argues that the New Danish Cinema presents an opportunity to understand the effects of globalization within the culture and economy of a privileged small nation.
Hjort offers two key strategies underwriting the transformation and globalization of contemporary Danish cinema--the processes of cultural circulation and the psychological efficacy of heritage. Exploring the Dogma 95 movement initiated by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg as well as films by Erik Clausen, Gabriel Axel, Henning Carlsen, and Ole Bornedal, among others, Hjort examines means for cinematic globalization specific to Denmark, but then evolves her investigation into a truly comparative framework encompassing references to Hong Kong, Latin America, and Hollywood filmmaking. Providing a fresh way of looking at cultural influence in the era of globalization, Hjort's concept of "small" nation points as much to the dynamics of recognition, indifference, and participation as it does to more common measures of population size, economic strength, or linguistic reach.
Mette Hjort is professor of intercultural studies at Aalborg University.

Italian Cinema presents an overview and analysis of one of the most prolific and influential of national cinemas.Italian film has always drawn on a wide range of popular themes - from ancient history to the mafia, the family, the Risorgimento, terrorism, corruption and immigration - and on an equally diverse range of film genres - from comedy to westerns, horror, soft-porn, epics and thrillers. Commercial constraints, state and European funding, international competition, as much as cultural and political trends, have all influenced the sorts of film that get made and exported.Outlining the artistic, cultural, technical and commercial context of film, Italian Cinema presents a history from silent to contemporary film. As well as illuminating the work of classic directors such as Visconti, Fellini, Rossellini, Antonioni and Rosi, the book explores the interaction between art and popular cinema, visual style and spectacle, space and architecture, gender representations and politics.

Why is Hollywood so successful? Overwhelming almost every other national cinema and virtually extinguishing foreign cinema in the multicultural United States, Hollywood seems powerful around the globe. This book draws from political economy, cultural studies, and cultural policy analysis to highlight the material factors underlining this apparent artistic success.
This new edition brings the arguments completely up-to-date by taking into consideration important developments such as 9/11, shifts in the exchange rate, transformations in U.S. foreign policy, and significant developments in trade agreements, consumer technology, and ownership regimes. Each chapter has been substantially revised, and major new sections on India and China have been added.

In Screen Traffic, Charles R. Acland examines how, since the mid-1980s, the US commercial movie business has altered conceptions of moviegoing both within the industry and among audiences. He shows how studios, in their increasing reliance on revenues from international audiences and from the ancillary markets of television, videotape, DVD, and pay-per-view, have cultivated an understanding of their commodities as mutating global products. Consequently, the cultural practice of moviegoing has changed significantly, as has the place of the cinema in relation to other sites of leisure. Acland explores this transformation by investigating the generation and dissemination of a new understanding of Hollywood movies. examination of promotional materials, entertainment news, trade publications, and economic reports, Acland presents an array of evidence for the new understanding of movies and moviegoing that has developed within popular culture and the entertainment industry. In particular, he dissects a key development: the rise of the megaplex, characterized by large auditoriums, plentiful screens, and consumer activities other than film viewing. He traces its genesis from the re-entry of studios into the movie exhibition business in 1986 through to 1998, when reports of the economic destabilization of exhibition began to surface, just as the rise of so-called e-cinema signalled another wave of change. Documenting the current tendency toward an accelerated cinema culture, one that appears to arrive simultaneously for everyone, everywhere, Screen Traffic unearths and critiques the corporate and cultural forces contributing to the felt internationalism of our global era.

This is a major new study of British Cinemais formative years. Between 1918-1928 British film was poised between a Victorian past and a future marked out as American. Examining a cinema inextricably intertwined with notions of theatricality, pictorialism and literariness, in which the high cultural, middlebrow and popular intersect, this book re-evaluates the little known but interesting and often startling films of the 1920s.
Films such as the Blackpool melodrama Hindle Wakes, Guy Newellis Hardeyesque meditation Fox Farm, Graham Cuttsis exuberant adaptation The Rat (starring Ivor Novello as a Parisian apache!) Maurice Elveyis Comradeship, a haunting evocation of lives changed utterly after the First World War and Alfred Hitchcockis early works are all considered afresh within British cultural traditions and are related to a specifically British mode of perception distinct from the norms of European art or popular American cinema.
By challenging limited conceptions of British cinema the book shows how the oppositions of underplayed performances and theatricalised spaces; of private passion and public restraint, of pictorial composition and social document, made for a cinema both distinctive and conventional.
Through its recourse to adaptation and quotation and the exchange across media and social classes of different forms and representations, this cinema is revealed to be one that also had much to say about class, about the changing role of women and about a society in transition which had its own aesthetic practices with which to present its very varied set of stories.
Based on years of archival research Christine Gledhillis revisionist study extends our knowledge ofthis little known period of British film making. Through its re-evaluation of its relations to theatre, visual culture and literary tradition, this book will alter our sense of the origins and trajectory of British film in the twentieth century.

Iranian cinema is today widely recognized not merely as a distinctive national cinema, but as one of the most innovative in the world. Established masters like Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf have been joined by newcomers like Samira Makhmalbaf, Majid Majidi, Ja'far Qobadi and Bahman Qobadi, all directors whose films are screened to increasing acclaim in international festivals. This international stature both fascinates Western observers and appears paradoxical in line with perceptions of Iran as anti-modern. The largely Iranian contributors to this book look in depth at how Iranian cinema became a true 'world cinema'. From a range of perspectives, they explore cinema's development in post Revolution Iran and its place in Iranian culture.

" The new edition of this seminal work takes the story of the Production Code and motion picture censorship into the present, including the creation of the PG-13 and NC-17 ratings in the 1990s.

"Moviegoing in America" catalogs the social and cultural change that has attended America's favorite pastime from the days of the nickelodeon to the dominance of the multiplex. Bringing together an impressive range of historical scholarship, Gregory A. Waller charts the evolution of film exhibition and reception as a function of changing patterns of American community, identity, and consumption.

Pairing notable current research with extensive primary material - drawn from trade accounts, popular magazines, and exhibitor handbooks - "Moviegoing in America" deepens our understanding of the role of film in everyday life by exploring the movie theater as commercial venue, physical environment, public sphere, community centerpiece, and all-important site where audiences experience the movies and experience themselves as an audience.

While most people associate Japanese film with modern directors like Akira Kurosawa, Japan's cinema has a rich tradition going back to the silent era. Japan's "pure film movement" of the 1910s is widely held to mark the birth of film theory as we know it and is a touchstone for historians of early cinema. Yet this work has been difficult to access because so few prints have been preserved.

Joanne Bernardi offers the first book-length study of this important era, recovering a body of lost film and establishing its significance in the development of Japanese cinema. Building on a wealth of original-language sources -- much of it translated here for the first time -- she examines how the movement challenged the industry's dependence on pre-existing stage repertories, preference for lecturers over intertitles, and the use of female impersonators.

Bernardi provides in-depth analysis of key scripts -- The Glory of Life, A Father's Tears, Amateur Club, and The Lust of the White Serpent -- and includes translations in an appendix. These films offer case studies for understanding the craft of screenwriting during the silent era and shed light on such issues as genre, authorship and control, and gender representation.

Writing in Light helps fill important gaps in the history of Japanese silent cinema. By identifying points at which "pure film" discourse merges with changing international trends and attitudes toward film, it offers an important resource for film, literary, and cultural historians.

This work breaks down the film industry and lists exactly what it takes to crack into each market (except acting). It offers advice from industry insiders: screenwriters; directors; and production designers.

The reviewer of the Boston Globe said point blank: "Over the years, I've read hundreds of books on Hollywood and the movie business, and this one is right at the top." As the elusive, tyrannical head of the Music Corporation of America (MCA) until the 1990s, Lew Wasserman was the most powerful and feared man in show business for more than half a century. His career spanned the entire history of the movies, from the silent era to the present, and he was guru to Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, and Jimmy Stewart, and to a new generation of filmmakers beginning with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. For more than four years, Dennis McDougal interviewed over 350 people who knew the man with the giant dark horn-rimmed glasses-colleagues, relatives, rivals-and drew on tens of thousands of pages of documents to produce this extraordinary and first-ever portrait of a legend and his times, a book that the New York Times Book Review called "thoroughly reported and engrossing" and that the Daily News called, simply, "a bombshell."

An Essential Guide to Landing -- and Keeping -- Your first Hollywood Job

A position as an assistant to a producer, agent, director, studio executive, or star can be the path to a fabulous career -- or a one-way ticket to hell. How can the aspiring Hollywood assistant quickly learn the inside track to success while avoiding the land mines? It's All Your Fault is the answer. Written by two former Hollywood assistants who've been there and done that, It's All Your Fault is bursting with hard-earned advice, from figuring out who's who and who isn't to sex, drugs, and other work-related issues. Filled with outrageous anecdotes and countless celebrity stories, It's All Your Fault proves an indispensable addition to the nightstand of every wannabe Hollywood mover and shaker.

Johnny Depp. Marilyn Monroe. Marlon Brando. Leonardo DiCaprio. Woody Allen. Shanron Stone. What do all of these actors have in common? They're outrageous, receive huge salaries, have enormous agos, and have way too much spare time. Their out-of-control lifestyles prove that, as one Hollywood observer noted, "Hollywood is a trip through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat."
You'll learn which director was furious when he was misquoted as saying, "Actors are cattle." He clamed he had really said, "Actors should be treated as cattle."
You'll discover that Bruce Wilis ordered the final scenes in Striking Distance to be re-shot at a cost of over $750,000 because the original shots exposed his toupee.
You'll find that Melanie Griffith explained her ignorance of the Nazi holocaust by saying, "I don't know why I didn't know. Maybe I missed school that day...I'm not stupid."
Whether you're a fan of Hugh Grant, Dennis Hopper, or Whoopi Goldberg, you'll learn about all of the embarrassing moments in your favorite star's life. From young actors like Ben Affleck and Cameron Diaz to screen legends like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, "Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things" is proof that actors are more childish and impulsive than you've ever imagined.

Explores the reasons behind British cinema's failure to create its own stars. The text looks at the way theatre and music hall spawned their stars, and asks why so many of them found the transition to film so awkward. It compares the British star system with that of Hollywood. What sort of contracts were British stars offered? How much were they paid? Who dealt with their publicity? How did Britsh fans regard them?;There are essays on key figures (Novello, Fields, Formby, Dors, Bogarde, Mason, Matthews), and assessment of how British stars fared in Hollywood, an analysis of the effects of class and regional prejudice on attempts at British star-making, and a survey of the British comedy tradition, and some of the questions about how genre affected the star system.

The meteoric rise of "Killer Diller"

Barry Diller has been a major player in the entertainment industry for more than thirty years. Always on the cutting edge, he revolutionized television with such groundbreaking concepts as the movie-of-the-week and the miniseries. He greenlighted the megahits Raiders of the Lost Ark, 48 Hours, and Terms of Endearment. Now, industry insider George Mair takes you behind the scenes for a perceptive, penetrating, and completely captivating look at both the public persona and the private life of a legendary media mogul. Learn the truth about:

• The critical acclaim—and the controversy—behind The Simpsons and Married . . . With Children
• The abortive CBS-QVC merger: what went wrong and why
• Hardball and heartbreak on The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers
• Wheeling and dealing with Hollywood heavyhitters Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone, Marvin Davis, Michael Eisner, and many, many more!

"He taught movie executives to put some passion into their jobs. The business is a better place because of Barry."—the late Dawn Steel studio head and onetime Barry Diller protégé at Paramount

"He really is the brightest of the bunch." —Julia Phillips Academy Award(r)-winning producer bestselling author of You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again

"A wide-ranging inquiry into an important area of contemporary scholarly interest, and also an engaging, well written and intelligently conceived collection." -Eric Smoodin, author of Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons From the Sound Era

Despite the success of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and their Looney cohorts, Warner Bros. animation worked in the shadow of Disney for many years. The past ten years have seen a resurgence in Warner Bros. animation as they produce new Bugs Bunny cartoons and theatrical features like Space Jam as well as television shows like Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. While Disney's animation plays it safe and mirrors traditional cinema stories, Warner Bros. is known for a more original and even anarchistic style of narration, a willingness to take risks in story construction, a fearlessness in crossing gender lines with its characters, and a freedom in breaking boundaries. This collection of essays looks at the history of Warner Bros. animation, compares and contrasts the two studios, charts the rise and fall of creativity and daring at Warner's, and analyzes the ways in which the studio was for a time transgressive in its treatment of class, race, and gender. It reveals how safety and commercialization have, in the end, triumphed at Warner Bros. just as they much earlier conquered Disney.

The book also discusses fan parodies of Warner Bros. animation on the Internet today, the Bugs Bunny cross-dressing cartoons, cartoons that were censored by the studio, and the merchandising and licensing strategies of the Warner Bros. studio stores. Contributors are Donald Crafton, Ben Fraser, Michael Frierson, Norman M. Klein, Terry Lindvall, Bill Mikulak, Barry Putterman, Kevin S. Sandler, Hank Sartin, Linda Simensky, Kirsten Moana Thompson, Gene Walz, and Timothy R. White.

From getting the necessary training and understanding the intricate responsibilities of everyone behind or in front of the camera to getting your first break and avoiding career-specific pitfalls, All You Need to Know About the Movie and TV Business leads you topic by topic through

* A breakdown of job descriptions, from casting directors and key grips to stunt coordinators and film editors
* What kinds of deals actors, directors, writers, and producers make when they start out and when they hit the top
* How to protect and sell your creative work
* How movie deals are put together at studios and by independents
* The nuts and bolts of a boilerplate contract
* The notorious and mysterious world of profit participations, with a detailed explanation of why there's never any profit "net profit" deals

The entertainment industry can be an exciting, challenging landscape to negotiate. Having some valuable insight into how to make the most of your career in the movie or TV business can put you on the surest path to success.

In 1985, Universal Pictures released Terry Gilliam's film, Brazil, under protest. Gilliam had mounted the first director's guerilla campaign against a major Hollywood studio to circumvent his mo being sliced to bits or shelved. LA Times film writer and writer Jack Mathews was right in the th the battle, acting as intermediary between the President of Universal, Sid Sheinberg and Gilliam and producer Arnon Milchan. This is a blow-by-blow account of that epic and historic fight as it happene 1985 as well as from the more sober perspective of a dozen years after.

Mix one American director with a German producer on a period extravaganza, set the locations in Italy and Spain and start the cameras rolling without enough money to do the job. Then sit back and watch disaster strike. That is the scenario Andrew Yule has painstakiingly reconstructed. The more problems and reverses, the greater our interest: costly postponements, overwhelming language difficulties, elephants and tigers turning on their trainers, illnesses, sets not being ready, special effects breaking down and cameo stars (from Marlon Brando to Sean Connery) backing out of the project. You name it, Andrew Yule reports it!

Renowned psychotherapist and career counselor Linda Buzzell is the expert in knowing how to create and develop a career in Hollywood. With this book, she shows you how to look at your personality, your strengths, your weaknesses, your special skills, and your talents in order to target your personal goals and maximize your career success. She then explains all the jobs in Hollywood and how to find them, get them, and advance through each stage in your career.

How To Make It in Hollywood includes everything you need to know about agents, managers, lawyers, the casting couch, chutzpah, schmoozing, networking, Godfather Calls, rhino skin, Power Rolodexes, handling rejection, constant unemployment, and keeping yourself on the track to your dreams when real life keeps telling you to give it all up and move back to Cincinnati!

At a time when the studio system is making a stunning comeback, film historian Thomas Schatz provides an indispensable account of Hollywood's traditional blend of business and art. Highly acclaimed, from Variety to the New York Times, this book lays to rest the persistent myth that businesspeople and producers stifle artistic talent and reveals instead the genius of a system of collaboration and conflict. Working from industry documents, Schatz traces the development of house styles, the rise and fall of careers, and the making - and unmaking - of movies, from Frankenstein to Spellbound to Grand Hotel. Richly illustrated and highly readable, the Genius of the System gives the definitive view of the workings of the Old Hollywood and the foundations of the New.

Independent director and screenwriter John Andrew Gallagher, interviews 21 filmmakers on the craft of motion picture directing. Francois Truffaut, the late great French director, as well as Michael Cimino, Ulu Grosbard, Dennis Hopper, Alan Parker, Susan Seidelman, Joan Micklin Silver and many others reveal behind-the-scenes anecdotes about well known films and stars.

The big gamblers who spend millions per film as well as the colorful low-budget kings provide an intriguing look at the mechanics of filmmaking. Choosing and preparing the screenplay, working with actors and crew, dealing with the distributor, and advice to young filmmakers--all are covered in this book's illuminating interviews. Serious students of cinema, filmmakers, movie buffs, and people fascinated by film will find Film Directors on in this book's illuminating interviews.

This witty and fascinating study reminds us that there was animation before Disney: about thirty years of creativity and experimentation flourishing in such extraordinary work as "Girdie the Dinosaur" and "Felix the Cat." "Before Mickey," the first and only in-depth history of animation from 1898-1928, includes accounts of mechanical ingenuity, marketing and art. Crafton is equally adept at explaining techniques of sketching and camera work, evoking characteristic styles of such pioneering animators as Winsor McCay and Ladislas Starevitch, placing work in its social and economic context, and unraveling the aesthetic impact of specific cartoons.
""Before Mickey"'s scholarship is quite lively and its descriptions are evocative and often funny. The history of animation coexisted with that of live-action film but has never been given as much attention."--Tim Hunter, "New York Times"

After World War II, as cultural and industry changes were reshaping Hollywood, movie studios shifted some production activities overseas, capitalizing on frozen foreign earnings, cheap labor, and appealing locations. Hollywood unions called the phenomenon "runaway" production to underscore the outsourcing of employment opportunities. Examining this period of transition from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, Runaway Hollywood shows how film companies exported production around the world and the effect this conversion had on industry practices and visual style. In this fascinating account, Daniel Steinhart uses an array of historical materials to trace the industry's creation of a more international production operation that merged filmmaking practices from Hollywood and abroad to produce movies with a greater global scope.