A thoroughly entertaining look at how artistic visions, strong personalities and business acumen can create great films.
A major motion-picture executive tells stories of his work on some of the 20th century’s most famous films.
Picker, a former president of United Artists, was born into a family renowned for its substantial contributions to the film industry. His father worked as chief booker and buyer for the Loew’s New York City theater chain, affording young Picker complete and free access to all movies released in its theaters. After spending his college years studying and working in the film industry, the author joined his uncle, a film executive, at United Artists in 1951. Picker humbly describes his quick ascent from intern to assistant to executive and then describes his experiences on various major films, including stories about industry people, business transactions and production. Throughout, Picker’s passion for movies, and his respect for the artists who create them, is endearingly evident, and he frequently states how thankful he is for his experiences. He even reflects positively, if a little remorsefully, about movies that United Artists didn’t pick up, calling them “the ones that got away,” such as The Graduate (1967) and Planet of the Apes (1968). At times, the abundance of business and financial details may be confusing to readers who aren’t well-versed in film industry jargon. However, most will likely enjoy Picker’s insider stories about the production of such films as Midnight Cowboy (1969), the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and the James Bond franchise. His appropriately cinematic tone carries readers through fast-paced, dramatic stories, and his colorful, opinionated descriptions of those he encounters are highly entertaining. Funny anecdotes about such luminaries as Woody Allen, Steve Martin and Ingmar Bergman, for example, provide readers with rare glimpses of these famous figures’ unique personalities.
A thoroughly entertaining look at how artistic visions, strong personalities and business acumen can create great films.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482649925
Page Count: 332
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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