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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema > General
Hollywood Independent dissects the Mirisch Company, one of the most
successful employers of the package-unit system of film production,
producing classic films like The Apartment (1960), West Side Story
(1961), The Great Escape (1963) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
as irresistible talent packages. Whilst they helped make the names
of a new generation of stars including Steve McQueen and Shirley
MacLaine, as well as banking on the reputations of established
auteurs like Billy Wilder, they were also pioneers in dealing with
controversial new themes with films about race (In the Heat of the
Night), gender (Some Like it Hot) and sexuality (The Children's
Hour), devising new ways of working with film franchises (The
Magnificent Seven, The Pink Panther and In the Heat of the Night
spun off 7 Mirisch sequels between them) and cinematic cycles,
investing in adaptations of bestsellers and Broadway hits,
exploiting frozen funds abroad and exploring so-called runaway
productions. The Mirisch Company bridges the gap between the end of
the studio system by about 1960 and the emergence of a new cinema
in the mid-1970s, dominated by the Movie Brats.
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