United Artists was a unique motion picture company in the history of Hollywood. Founded by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and director D.W. Griffith--four of the greatest names of the silent era--United Artists functioned as a distribution company for independent producers. In this lively and detailed history of United Artists from 1919 through 1951, film scholar Tino Balio chronicles the company's struggle for survival, its rise to prominence as the Tiffany of the industry, and its near extinction in the 1940s.
This edition is updated with a new introduction by Balio that places in relief UA's operations for those readers who may be unfamiliar with film industry practices and adds new perspective to the company's place within Hollywood.

Learn the secrets of successfully marketing and selling your film. In this competitive market, this book will give readers the edge. It includes a scratch-off card containing an access code to the author's secure festival database online. Learn the secrets of successfully marketing and selling your film at more than 1,000 film festivals around the world, including the best ones for indie, documentary, short, student, digital, animation and more. Chris Gore reveals how to get a film accepted and what to do after acceptance. The updated and revised 4th edition includes new filmmaker interviews with Morgan Spurlock of "Super Size Me", Jared Hess of "Napolean Dynamite", as well as actor/director Crispin Glover and Seth Gordon, a documentary filmmaker; full listings and contact information for all festivals; in-depth analysis of the Big Ten festivals; and, fresh, timely how-tos for marketing, distributing, and selling a film and using the Internet to build buzz. The book includes a scratch-off card containing an access code to the author's secure festival database online: a comprehensive listing of more than 1,000 film festivals worldwide, with all location and contact information, where up-to-the-minute updates to the listings can be found.

"East Asian Screen Industries" provides a guide to the film industries of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the PRC. The authors show how local cultural production has responded to global trends, especially those of American media, focusing on the effects of widespread de-regulation and China's accession to the World Trade Organisation. They use case study examples to demonstrate how each national screen industry has negotiated the crises of the 1990s to re-emerge as a flexible industrial and cultural force, able to respond vigorously to strenuous challenges in an age of global capitalism.

This volume contains twenty in-depth studies of prominent New Zealand directors, producers, actors, and cinematographers. ""New Zealand Filmmakers"" outlines and examines three major constituent groups who are responsible for the industry as it appears today: those involved in pioneering film in New Zealand, those associated with the New Wave of the 1970s and 1980s, and those post - mid-1980s visionaries and fantasists who have produced striking individual productions. A comprehensive introduction situates the New Zealand film industry in cultural, historical, and ideological contexts.The book displays the diversity of filmmaking in New Zealand and highlights the specific industrial, aesthetic, and cultural concerns that have created a film culture of international significance. With the majority of the contributions in the book containing analysis developed through dialogue with the filmmakers, ""New Zealand Filmmakers"" is an authoritative study of the film industry in New Zealand. Each essay also includes a thorough and definitive filmography, detailing the full nature of the work produced by each individual, with key titles highlighted.Filmmakers covered in this volume include Barry Barclay, David Blyth, Jane Campion, Roger Donaldson, Rudall Hayward, Peter Jackson, John Laing, Bruno Lawrence, Len Lye, Alison Maclean, Merata Mita, Ian Mune, Geoff Murphy, Leon Narbey, John O'Shea, Gaylene Preston, John Reid, Vincent Ward, Jennifer Ward-Lealand, and Peter Wells. This collection is illustrated with 50 film prints, many of which have never before been published. With the New Zealand film industry poised to become a center of film production and already a major topic of critical interest, this volume will find many interested readers among film scholars and educators.

Understanding Audiences and the Film Industry brings together an introduction to academic study of audiences as 'readers' of films and an investigation into how the film industry perceives audiences as part of its industrial practices. The approach draws on ideas from film, media and cultural studies in order to present new insights into a range of puzzling questions: what makes the biggest box office films attractive to audiences? Why do films that work well with audiences sometimes suffer poor distribution? And what is a 'cult film' and how do such films gain their status? Case studies of films, such as Donnie Darko, Ringu and Hero are included alongside discussion of film distribution and exhibition, and the growing importance of audience comments and discussion via internet forums. This book will help film and media students with their studies, and will provide the general reader with an accessible introduction to the international film industry.

Some of the most beloved characters in film and television inhabit two-dimensional worlds that spring from the fertile imaginations of talented animators. The movements, characterizations, and settings in the best animated films are as vivid as any live action film, and sometimes seem more alive than life itself. In this case, Hollywood's marketing slogans are fitting; animated stories are frequently magical, leaving memories of happy endings in young and old alike. However, the fantasy lands animators create bear little resemblance to the conditions under which these artists work. Anonymous animators routinely toiled in dark, cramped working environments for long hours and low pay, especially at the emergence of the art form early in the twentieth century. In Drawing the Line, veteran animator Tom Sito chronicles the efforts of generations of working men and women artists who have struggled to create a stable standard of living that is as secure as the worlds their characters inhabit. The former president of America's largest animation union, Sito offers a unique insider's account of animators' struggles with legendary studio kingpins such as Jack Warner and Walt Disney, and their more recent battles with Michael Eisner and other Hollywood players. Based on numerous archival documents, personal interviews, and his own experiences, Sito's history of animation unions is both carefully analytical and deeply personal. Drawing the Line stands as a vital corrective to this field of Hollywood history and is an important look at the animation industry's past, present, and future. Like most elements of the modern commercial media system, animation is rapidly being changed by the forces of globalization and technological innovation. Yet even as pixels replace pencils and bytes replace paints, the working relationship between employer and employee essentially remains the same. In Drawing the Line, Sito challenges the next wave of animators to heed the lessons of their predecessors by organizing and acting collectively to fight against the enormous pressures of the marketplace for their class interests -- and for the betterment of their art form.

Every college major has special qualities that equip students with valuable skills and training. This training is perfect for a wide range of careers. The Great Jobs series helps students to make the most of their major, with help to:

• Assess talents and skills for a job
  
• Target the perfect career
  
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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.

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."

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.

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.

In what kind of state is the European film business? This study is the first in a series that provides an accessible understanding of how the world's contemporary screen industries function. It looks at all the factors in play, from government regulation to the marketing strategies behind an international success like "Run Lola Run"/"Lola Rennt". Anne Jackel evaluates how Europe's film industries operate, their working practices and the region's place within the global business of cinema. Exploring trends in production, distribution and exhibition, the book considers a range of national and pan-regional developments. Key areas of critical debate are highlighted, including private and public financing, co-production, film policy, links between the film and television industries, and the threats to "art cinema" from within and without Europe.

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.

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.

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.

Film production in Latin America is as old as cinema itself, but local film industries have always been in a triangulated relationship with Hollywood and European cinema. This book situates Latin American film industries within the global circulation of film production, exhibition and distribution, charting the changes that the industries have undergone from the sound era to the present day. Focusing in particular on Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, Tamara Falicov examines commonalities among Latin American film industries, such as the challenges of procuring funding, competition from Hollywood, state funding battles, and the fickle nature of audiences, as well as censorship issues, competition from television, and the transnational nature of Latin American film. She addresses production, exhibition, and distribution contexts and financing and co-production with Europe and the United States, as well as the role of film festivals in funding and circulating films both within and outside of Latin America. Newer trends such as the revival of protectionist measures like the screen quota are framed in contrast to the U.S.'s push for trade policy liberalization and issues of universal concern such as film piracy, and new technologies and the role of television in helping and hindering Latin American cinema.

" 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.

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."

Still the most comprehensive analysis of the subject to have appeared in English, Magical Reels charts the development of Latin American film industries in a world increasingly dominated by the advanced technology and massive distribution budgets of the North American mainstream. John King sets up a historical framework to unfold the overlapping histories of cinema in the continent: the itinerant film-makers of the silent era who projected their films in cafes and village halls, the inventive use of vernacular music and local comedy in early sound pictures, the "golden age" of 1940s Mexican cinema, and the "new cinema"-oppositional cinema made "with an idea in the head and a camera in the hand"-of the late 1950s and beyond. A country-by-country account of this new wave allows detailed discussion of, for instance, Peronist cinema in Argentina, 1960s' revolutionary film-making in Cuba, state-sponsored cinema in 1970s' Brazil and Venezuela, and the struggle for democratization in Chile in the 1980s. A new chapter written for this edition examines Latin American cinema of the 1990s, raising issues such as globalization, new cinema audiences, film funding and distribution.

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.

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 Mad Max Effect provides an in-depth analysis of the Mad Max series, and how it began as an inventive concoction of a number of influences from a range of exploitation genres (including the biker movie, the revenge film, and the car chase cinema of the 1970s), to eventually inspiring a fresh cycle of international low budget 'road warrior' movies that appeared on home video in the 1980s. The Mad Max Effect is the first detailed academic study of the most famous and celebrated post-apocalypse film series, and examines how a humble Australian action movie came from the cultural margins of exploitation cinema to have a profound impact on the broader media landscape.

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.

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!

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.