World Famous Comics: Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
By: Mark Harris Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Penguin Press HC, The Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 496 Publication Date: February 14, 2008
Product Description: An epic account of how the revolution hit Hollywood, told through the stories of the five films nominated for the 1967 Academy Awards
The year is 1963. The studios are churning out westerns, war movies, prudish sex comedies and overblown historical epics, but audiences whose interests have been piqued by an influx of innovative films from abroad are hungering for something more, something new. At Esquire, two young writers hatch a plan to create a movie treatment that they hope will attract the director Franois Truffaut: the story of the gangsters Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Mike Nichols, an improvisatory comedian turned neophyte theater director, gets his hands on an obscure first novel called The Graduate and wonders if he's ready to make the jump to Hollywood. Warren Beatty, just 26 years old and struggling through a series of flops after the success of Splendor in the Grass, decides to take his career into his own hands, but can't seem to settle on his next move. Dustin Hoffman, sleeping on friends' floors and scrounging for temp work in New York, struggles just to get an off-Broadway audition. Sidney Poitier, after two dozen movies, still yearns for something that seems completely unattainable: a good role. And 20th Century Fox, on the brink of financial catastrophe, puts all its hopes in a genre-the family musical-that will revitalize the company and then nearly destroy it again.
Pictures at a Revolution tracks five movies-the milestones Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, the popular hits Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, and the big-budget disaster Doctor Dolittle-on their five-year journey to Oscar night in the spring of 1968. It follows their fortunes through the last days of the studio system and the first sparks of a cultural upheaval that would launch maverick new stars and directors, topple more than one industry titan from his pedestal, and redefine what American movies could be. In 1967, moviegoers witnessed the arrival of taboo-shattering sex and violence on screen, the debuts of Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway, the return of Katharine Hepburn and the poignant farewell of Spencer Tracy, the audacious risks taken by Warren Beatty, Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols and Norman Jewison, and Hollywood's agonized attempt to grapple with an incendiary moment in American race relations, with results that would change Sidney Poitier's career forever.
By tracing the gambles, the stumbles, the clashes and the creative partnerships that produced these films, Mark Harris captures both the twilight of old Hollywood and the dawn of a new golden age in studio filmmaking. Based on unprecedented access to the actors, directors, screenwriters, producers and executives whose movies defined the era, as well a wealth of previously unexplored archival material, Pictures at a Revolution is an utterly original, revealing, and entertaining history of a true cultural watershed.
Worth it to Understand the Reasons Why "The Graduate" became such a classic movie I generally don't care for large tomes that hope to explain Hollywood's workings to the general reader--they are often so full of star struck gossip as to be difficult to get through. In the end the stars are usually not that interesting -that's why they have so much machinery to make them stars and the movies--well it is a rare critic that can make films that we have all watched at some time in our lives interesting enough to read about again. But given my reservations about that genre--Pictures manages to be a good read -with some provisos--you have to be good at skipping--otherwise the 426 pages is way too much content to manage as Harris wants to tell everything and I mean everything that can be told about five movies that changed Hollywood. It is not that I don't care for the other films Harris writes about --Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night (with the possible exception of the big budget flop Doctor Doolittle) it is that I find the film I am most personally interested in The Graduate seems to have the one narrative I could follow and clearly despite the multiple number of other narratives seeming to compete for my attention.
For more of this review and to see other reviews that relate to boomer cultural interests--check out www.babyboomreview.com
Excellent As one who turned 17 in 1967 and who vividly remembers seeing all of the films discussed here (except "Dr. Dolittle") during their first theatrical runs, I found this book completely engrossing. It is a popular-culture time-capsule of America at a difficult moment, and of the movie business at an even more difficult one, with plenty of insight into the series of accidents and near-miracles by which any movie ever actually makes it to the screen; and a reminder that Hollywood, pre-conglomerates and certainly despite itself, once provided a breeding ground for the new. Rarest of all, it is extremely well-written.
Transitions from Failure to Communicate This is an insightful book about the 5 movies nominated for Best Picture Oscar of 1967: Bonnie and Clyde - Ultimate Collector's Edition, The Graduate (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition), In the Heat of the Night (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (40th Anniversary Edition), Doctor Dolittle and the times from which they sprang.
If you are a movie insider, this may be too "Old Hat" for you. But, if you were busy being part of the solution, and not part of the problem, and really relate to The Big Chill, then here are some pictures from our revolution and one from the changing of the Old School guard. (In its sheer longevity and incorporation into the cultural venacular, this reviewer mourns the non-nomination and therefore non-inclusion of Cool Hand Luke)
Harris' well-researched and footnoted view tells the tales of the making and marketing of the movies, and the politics involved, in a manner accessible for the masses. See also The Academy Awards: The Complete Unofficial History.
Along the way, we encounter the moods of Minneapolis moviegoers, a 25 year old up-and-coming Roger Ebert, and Father Andrew Greeley in a former gig as reviewer for the National Catholic Reporter.
If it's news to you that Robert Redford was originally preferred over Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock, or that Mrs. Robinson's song started life as Mrs. [Eleanor] Roosevelt, this book's for you!
/TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer
Painstakingly researched, not painstakingly written Mark Harris did an amazing amount of work to prepare for this book. He interviewed names big and small, read books, journals, and magazines. However, this does not translate into a book that was interesting to read. The chapters are arranged somewhat chronologically, but it's not clear. There's a ton of information in each chapter and all of the stories are interwoven together about each movie. It's difficult to follow what is going on. The book lacked a table of contents, which would have made the store much easier to follow, as would thematic chapter titles.
But with that said, it was interesting to see how Hollywood has changed over the last four decades. It was worth my time, even if it was a challenge to keep everything straight.
excellent book A tremedously detailed book, kept my interest all the way through. Defintely worth 5 stars.
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