A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER: with a new bonus chapter

In this collection of personal essays, the beloved star of Gilmore Girls and Parenthood reveals stories about life, love, and working as a woman in Hollywood-along with behind-the-scenes dispatches from the set of the new Gilmore Girls, where she plays the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore once again.

In Talking As Fast As I Can, Lauren Graham hits pause for a moment and looks back on her life, sharing laugh-out-loud stories about growing up, starting out as an actress, and, years later, sitting in her trailer on the Parenthood set and asking herself, "Did you, um, make it?" She opens up about the challenges of being single in Hollywood ("Strangers were worried about me; that's how long I was single!"), the time she was asked to audition her butt for a role, and her experience being a judge onProject Runway ("It's like I had a fashion-induced blackout").

In "What It Was Like, Part One," Graham sits down for an epic Gilmore Girls marathon and reflects on being cast as the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore. The essay "What It Was Like, Part Two" reveals how it felt to pick up the role again nine years later, and what doing so has meant to her.

Some more things you will learn about Lauren: She once tried to go vegan just to bond with Ellen DeGeneres, she's aware that meeting guys at awards shows has its pitfalls ("If you're meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you've already set the bar too high"), and she's a card-carrying REI shopper ("My bungee cords now earn points!").

Including photos and excerpts from the diary Graham kept during the filming of the recent Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, this book is like a cozy night in, catching up with your best friend, laughing and swapping stories, and-of course-talking as fast as you can.

This fascinating text offers the first in-depth exploration of acting processes in British television. Focused around 16 new interviews with celebrated British actors, including Rebecca Front, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Ken Stott, Penelope Wilton and John Hannah, this rich resource delves behind the scenes of a range of British television programmes in order to find out how actors build their characters for television, how they work on set and location, and how they create their critically acclaimed portrayals. The book looks at actors' work across four diverse but popular genres: soap opera; police and medical drama; comedy; and period drama. Its insightful discussion of hit programmes and its critical and contextual post-interview analysis, makes the text an essential read for students across television and film studies, theatre, performance and acting, and cultural and media studies, as well as academics and anyone interested in acting and British television.

The Time Tunnel was by no means a superb product of Friday night entertainment. If the plot holes were not as large as the tunnel itself, viewers noticed the same props from Allen's other television programs popping up on the show. Fan boys to this day still debate whether the futuristic episodes involving space aliens were better than the historic adventures, but few would deny that Lee Meriwether made a lab coat look sexy. Meriwether herself recalled how the cast received letters from school teachers who used The Time Tunnel to stimulate interest in history in the classroom. This 546 page book documents the entire history of the program, the origin and conception of the series, why it never ran a second season, almost 200 never-before-published behind-the-scenes photographs, and a detailed episode guide including dates of production, music cues, episode budgets, salary costs, deleted scenes that were filmed, memories from cast and crew, bloopers, trivia and much more

This book explores the cycle of horror on US television in the decade following the launch of The Walking Dead, considering the horror genre from an industrial perspective. Examining TV horror through rich industrial and textual analysis, this book reveals the strategies and ambitions of cable and network channels, as well as Netflix and Shudder, with regards to horror serialization. Selected case studies; including American Horror Story, The Haunting of Hill House, Creepshow, Ash vs Evil Dead, and Hannibal; explore horror drama and the utilization of genre, cult and classic horror texts, as well as the exploitation of fan practice, in the changing economic landscape of contemporary US television. In the first detailed exploration of graphic horror special effects as a marker of technical excellence, and how these skills are used for the promotion of TV horror drama, Gaynor makes the case that horror has become a cornerstone of US television.

This timely collection of accessible essays interrogate queer television at the start of the twenty-first century. The complex political, cultural and economic milieu requires new terms and conceptual frameworks to study television and media through a queer lens. Gathering a range of well-known scholars the book takes on the relationship between sexual identity, desire, and television, breaking new ground in a context where existing critical vocabularies and research paradigms no longer hold sway in the ways they used to. The anthology sets out to confound conventional categories used to organize queer television scholarship, like "programming," "industry," "audience," "genre," and "activism." Instead, the anthology mobilizes three new terms - resonance, narrative affordance, and representational repair - creating new queer tools for studying digital television in the contemporary age. This collection is suitable for scholars and students studying queer media studies, television studies, gender studies and sexuality studies.

This book is about men I have known, in both the Platonic and Biblical senses. Some I knew only slightly, some quite well. Some I'll love always, some I no longer like very much, and there are a few I'd like to strip naked, tie to a Maypole, smear with sweet syrup near a beehive, then stand back and watch. I'll describe a goodly number of these hot dudes--and duds--keeping the nicest man for last because--if for nothing else--I'd like to leave you, dear reader, with a good taste in your mouth, and Hubbies #3 and #4 might make you want to rush to gargle. There were times I truly wondered, Lord, will I EVER get it right? Thank God I thrive on variety. --From My First Five Husbands . . . And the Ones Who Got Away People always ask me if I'm like Blanche. And I say, 'Well, Blanche was an oversexed, self-involved, man-crazy, vain Southern Belle from Atlanta -- and I'm not from Atlanta ' -- Rue McClanahan Who can forget Rue McClanahan as the sexy Southern vixen, Blanche Devereaux, on the Emmy-award winning series The Golden Girls? With her breezy sex appeal and sharp comedic timing, Rue infused her character with a sassy joie de vivre that captured the hearts of women everywhere. Now, the actress behind the magic reveals her life in and out of the spotlight in a laugh-out-loud funny memoir about love, marriage, men, and getting older that is every bit as colorful as the characters she plays. Raised in small-town Oklahoma in a house thirteen telephone poles past the standpipe north of town, Rue developed her two great passions--theater and men--at an early age. She arrived in New York City in 1957 with two-weeks worth of money in her pocket, hustledher way into a class with the legendary Uta Hagen, and began working her way up in the acting world against the vibrant, free-spirited backdrop of the sixties. That's when she met and married Husband #1--a handsome rogue of an aspiring actor who quickly left her with a young son. Still, she was determined to make it on the stage and screen--and in the years that followed, rose to the top of the entertainment world with a host of adventures (and husbands) along the way. From her roles on Broadway opposite Dustin Hoffman and Brad Davis, to her first television appearances on Maude and All in the Family, to the Golden Girls era and beyond, My First Five Husbands is the irresistible story of one woman's quest to find herself. Now happily married to her soul mate, Husband #6, Rue is proof that many things can and do get better with age--and that, if she keeps her wits about her, even a small-town girl can make it big. Told with Rue's saucy wit and Southern charm, My First Five husbands is a deliciously entertaining take on life and love from an irrepressible star.

Dreams in Television Narratives is the first comprehensive analysis of one of American television's most frequently utilized tropes, the dream. From its beginning, television has been a storytelling medium. Whether delivered to a live audience or played out on a sound stage, narratives and those who write them have always been the crux of the television program. While film can claim a long history of scholarly inquiry into the connection between film and dreams, no comprehensive research exists on the subject of television dreams. Locating its primary function as narrative, the author uses examples from American sitcoms and dramatic programs, analyzing the narrative functions of dreams using, as its frame, Carl Jung's narrative stages of the dream: exposition, development, culmination, and conclusion. While television dreams are analyzed throughout, case studies of the television programs The Sopranos and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are included to show in detail how dreams function throughout a television series. Includes a compendium of over 1000 television episodes that include dreams, a valuable tool for any television scholar or enthusiast.

Screen plays is a ground-breaking collection that chronicles the rich and surprising history of stage plays produced for the small screen between 1930 and the present. The volume opens with a substantial historical outline of how plays originally written for the theatre have been presented by the BBC and ITV, as well as independent producers and cultural organisations. Subsequent chapters utilise a variety of critical methodologies to analyse a wide range of outside broadcasts from theatres, screen adaptations of existing stage productions, along with original television productions of classic and contemporary drama. Making a compelling case for the centrality of the theatre to British television's past and present, Screen plays opens up new areas of research for all those engaged in theatre, media and adaptation studies. -- .

TV shows that retain their popularity over the years do so for obvious reasons: good production values, good acting, and compelling storylines. But detective stories in particular also endure because they appeal to the gumshoe in all of us. America is obsessed with crime solving. Nancy Grace on "CNN Headline News," Greta Van Susteren on Fox, and the seemingly annual recurrence of the courtroom sensation all testify to this fact. And these people and cases are able to reach their phenomenal status not simply because of the media-the media only demonstrates the enormous national appetite for this material. Rather, "Cold Case, CSI," and "Law & Order" have achieved their current popularity because they all respond to the same national craving for crime, and do so with great skill and creativity. "Round Up the Usual Suspects" provides a comparison of the crime fighting models and justice proceedings of each of these TV series.

Each series has its own special crime-fighting niche, and each approaches its job with a different set of values and different paradigms of discovery and proof. Their separate approaches are each firmly grounded in different components of human nature -- analytical reasoning, for instance, in "CSI," memory in "Cold Case," and teamwork in "Law & Order." After examining each of the individual series in depth, Ruble goes on to investigate some of the historical antecedents in classical TV detective series such as "The FBI "and "Dragnet." It is interesting to note that these crime fighting methodologies are extensions of the way we all process information about the world. Ray Ruble here aims to increase our appreciation for the ingenious manner in which fictional cases are broken and convictions convincingly secured, and also illuminates the deeper human elements that lie under a more implicit spotlight in these runaway hits.

In recent years, there has been a rise in diverse racial representation on television. In particular, Black characters have become more actualized and have started extending beyond racial stereotypes. In this collection of essays, the representation of Black characters in professionally defined careers is examined. Commentary is also provided on the portrayal of Black people in relation to stereotypes alongside the importance of Black representation on screen. This work also introduces the idea of Black-collar, a category which highlights the Black experience in white-collar jobs. The essays are divided into six parts based on themes, including profession, and focuses on a select number of Black characters on TV since the 1990s.

This timely collection examines representations of medicine and medical practices in international period drama television. A preoccupation with medical plots and settings can be found across a range of important historical series, including Outlander, Poldark, The Knick, Call the Midwife, La Peste and A Place to Call Home. Such shows offer a critique of medical history while demonstrating how contemporary viewers access and understand the past. Topics covered in this collection include the innovations and horrors of surgery; the intersection of gender, class, race and medicine on the American frontier; psychiatry and the trauma of war; and the connections between past and present pandemics. Featuring original chapters on period television from the UK, the US, Spain and Australia, Diagnosing history offers an accessible, global and multidisciplinary contribution to both televisual and medical history. -- .

This grimoire from the baddest witch around will teach potential slayers and aspiring wiccans everything they'll ever need to know about magic in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Every good witch has a grimoire, and Willow Rosenberg is no exception. The Official Grimoire is the first and only truly comprehensive collection of every magical moment from all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, humorously narrated by beloved resident witch Willow Rosenberg. Completely illustrated and annotated by the rest of the gang, this book of spells is a unique keepsake for fans of the Buffy-verse and an incredible celebration of the show's 20-year legacy.

This volume examines the shift toward positive and more accurate portrayals of mental illness in entertainment media, asking where these succeed and considering where more needs to be done. With studies that identify and analyze the characters, viewpoints, and experiences of mental illness across film and television, it considers the messages conveyed about mental illness and reflects on how the different texts reflect, reinforce, or challenge sociocultural notions regarding mental illness. Presenting chapters that explore a range of texts from film and television, covering a variety of mental health conditions, including autism, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and more, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, cultural and media studies, and mental health.

This is an exciting inside look at the professional careers of America's leading cultural TV directors. Merrill Brockway, Kirk Browning, and Roger Englander have directed some of television's most memorable programming, including Dance in America, the Arturo Toscanini concerts, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Live from Lincoln Center, and the Young People's Concerts with Leonard Bernstein. Together, they revolutionized the way television covers music, dance, opera, and theater. In interviews with TV historian Brian Rose, they offer an engaging survey of five decades of American television. The challenges they faced as cultural directors are brought vividly to life, particularly the difficult task of translating works created for one medium to another. They discuss what it was like to make concert music resonate for the home viewer, how to squeeze grand opera onto the small screen, and what steps to take in choreographing cameras to film ballet. The interviews in Televising the Performing Arts reveal the complexities of television production as seen from the vantage point of the director. In detailed examples, Merrill Brockway, Kirk Browning, and Roger Englander illustrate the formidable operations involved in shooting large-scale events like a live concert or staging an opera in the narrow confines of a TV studio. They also explore their collaborations with some of the great artists of our time, including George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Leonard Bernstein, and Gian Carlo Menotti. In addition to its analysis of the production process, Televising the Performing Arts also documents the pressures--both economic and creative--in network television and the significant changes over the years at CBS, NBC, PBS, and the cable networks. Through his critical introductions, Brian Rose provides a historical context to understanding the evolution of cultural programming and the lasting achievements of each of the three directors.

Gather your friends on your favorite couch and prepare over 50 recipes inspired by the iconic Central Perk cafe from the beloved hit sitcom Friends. Friends: The Official Central Perk Cookbook offers a variety of recipes for chefs of all levels. From appetizers and small bites to drinks and desserts, each chapter includes iconic treats from the show and cafe. The latest in Insight Editions' best-selling line of Friends products has more than 50 recipes and beautiful full-color photography, as well as classic stills and iconic quotes from the show. This will be the year's best home cooking companion for fans of the show that has always been there for you.

Stanley Baxter delighted over 20 million viewers at a time with his television specials. His pantos became legendary. His divas and dames were so good they were beyond description. Baxter was a most brilliant cowboy Coward, a smouldering Dietrich. He found immense laughs as Formby and Liberace. And his sex-starved Tarzan swung in a way Hollywood could never have imagined. But who is the real Stanley Baxter? The comedy actor's talents are matched only by his past reluctance to colour in the detail of his own character. Now, the man behind the mischievous grin, the twinkling eyes and the once- Brylcreemed coiffure is revealed. In a tale of triumphs and tragedies, of giant laughs and great falls from grace, we discover that while the enigmatic entertainer could play host to hundreds of different voices, the role he found most difficult to play was that of Stanley Baxter.

This book is the first to explore the composition of television ratings in a cross-cultural, comparative manner. Using both communication history and the sociology of quantification, Television Audiences Across the World illuminates why the whole television industry, and television audiences themselves, refer to ratings as the main way to represent the television-watching public. It shows how a specific technology, the peoplemeter, has become the 'state of the art' in very different cultural contexts, including major non-Western countries. It analyses how television audience measurement succeeds in homogenizing diverse ways of watching television among different populations, creating 'apparent nations', and at times ignoring entire regions or parts of the population. The chapters in this volume discuss why television audience measurement has become the dominant model for the evaluation of popularity in the post-modern world, the true 'voice of the masses', still powerful in supposedly fragmented societies.

From The Real Housewives of Atlanta to Flavor of Love, reality shows with predominantly black casts have often been criticized for their negative representation of African American women as loud, angry, and violent. Yet even as these programs appear to be rehashing old stereotypes of black women, the critiques of them are arguably problematic in their own way, as the notion of ""respectability"" has historically been used to police black women's behaviors. The first book of scholarship devoted to the issue of how black women are depicted on reality television, Real Sister offers an even-handed consideration of the genre. The book's ten contributors - black female scholars from a variety of disciplines - provide a wide range of perspectives, while considering everything from Basketball Wives to Say Yes to the Dress. As regular viewers of reality television, these scholars are able to note ways in which the genre presents positive images of black womanhood, even as they catalog a litany of stereotypes about race, class, and gender that it tends to reinforce. Rather than simply dismissing reality television as ""trash"", this collection takes the genre seriously, as an important touchstone in ongoing cultural debates about what constitutes ""trashiness"" and ""respectability"". Written in an accessible style that will appeal to reality TV fans both inside and outside of academia, Real Sister thus seeks to inspire a more nuanced, thoughtful conversation about the genre's representations and their effects on the black community.

An exploration of the many faces of televangelism in our world today, including Christian, Islamic and Hindu. The collection analyses the correspondences and major differences between global and local televangelism, focusing on the main individuals involved in televangelism, their practices and the social and cultural impact of their ministries.

Over twenty years since its low-profile debut and Friends is the most streamed show on UK Netflix. But has it stood the test of time? Are some parts of it more problematic than we remember? And who was the cast's least favourite guest star?

Join Kelsey Miller as she answers all of these questions and more. And as she relives the show's most iconic moments, examines some of its controversies, and shines a light on the many trends it inspired - from oversized coffee cups to the much-copied 90s haircut, `The Rachel'.

Weaving incisive commentary, revelatory interviews and behind-the-scenes anecdotes involving high-profile guest stars, I'll Be There for You is the most comprehensive take on Friends yet, and the ultimate book for fans everywhere.

Beginning from a poststructuralist position, "Constructing the Child Viewer" examines three decades of U.S. research on television and children. The book concludes that historical concepts of the child television viewer are products of discourse and cannot be taken to reflect objective, scientific truths about the child viewer. Widely disseminated constructs of the passive viewer, the active viewer, the interactive viewer, and the media literate viewer are seen as problematic. Nearly all academic studies published from 1948 to 1979 on the subject are included in this volume. Each receives close textual analysis, making this a useful bibliographic resource and reference book. Methodologically and theoretically, this is the first text of its kind to read the history of research on television and children as an archaeology of knowledge.

"Constructing the Child Viewer" is an extensive bibliographical resource, a preliminary introduction to Foucault's discourse theory, and an experimental application of that theory to one major strand of the discourse of mass communications research. Students of educational psychology, sociology, and communications/media will find this work invaluable.