Film historian Noah Isenberg separates the myths and realities behind the making of the beloved Michael Curtiz classic. The chapter on the drafting of the screenplay by the Epstein brothers and Howard Koch is a great look at how a story is molded by two differenct approaches to the same material.

The seventh volume in the Behind The Silver Screen Series focuses on the amorphous job of the producer. They secure the financing and shepherd a project from pitch to projection. The essays in this volume chart the changing role of the producer through the major eras of filmmaking, from Irving Thalberg to Jerry Bruckheimer.

Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey is the extraordinary story of the production of Orson Welles’ classic film, using previously unpublished material from studio files and the Hearst organization, exclusive interviews with the last surviving members of the cast and crew, and what may be the only surviving copies of the “lost” final script.

Creating the Illusion presents the history of fashion on film, showcasing not only classic moments from film favorites, but a host of untold stories about the creative talent working behind the scenes to dress the stars from the silent era to the present day.

The wartime experiences of soldiers and sailors as well as workers on the homefront are compared to their depiction in films including The Best Years of Our Lives, The Great Escape, and Windtalkers.

This is another great offering from Fantagraphics. Oversized, full-color reproductions of classic noir posters. Take a look at #53, "Crime Wave", and then check out the DVD and listen to the great commentary track by Eddie Muller and James Ellroy.

Director Henry Jaglom lunched weekly with Orson Welles at West Hollywood's Ma Maison. In 1983 Jaglom began recording thier conversations at Welles' request. Three years of trascripts have been pieced together by Peter Biskind, the author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Welles is at his most opinionated here, prompted by Jaglom and the famous faces who stop by their table. This is a fine campanion to Peter Bogdanovich's This is Orson Welles.

These transcripts of recorded conversations between Welles and "The Last Picture Show" director Bogdanovich are highly engaging whether you are a Welles fan or just enjoy listening to a man of many opinions. Arguably the most innovative American director of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Welles offers up nuggets that are as quotable as any line from his classic films.

In 1969, a low-budget biker movie, "Easy Rider", shocked Hollywood with its stunning success. Peter Biskind takes us on the wild ride that was Hollywood in the '70s, an era that produced such modern classics as "The Godfather", "Chinatown", "Shampoo", "Nashville", "Taxi Driver", and "Jaws". "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" vividly chronicles the exuberance and excess of the times. Based on hundreds of interviews with the directors themselves, producers, stars, agents, writers, studio executives, spouses, and ex-spouses, this is the full, candid story of Hollywood's last golden age.

This extraordinary book-a unique document of cinema-is a series of dialogues between Alfred Hitchcock, the director of such classics as “The Lady Vanishes” and “Vertigo”, and questioner Francois Truffaut, a former critic and director of the films “Jules and Jim” and “The 400 Blows”. This is the definitive study of a movie-maker who created his own genre.

Featuring interviews with Jane Campion ("The Piano"), Susan Seidelman ("Desperately Seeking Susan"), Lizzie Borden ("Working Girls"), and scores of other women filmmakers, this fascinating and comprehensive survey profiles the directors and producers who have changed the face of contemporary film by offering new and distinctly female images for the screen.

Written in a question-and-answer format, this interview with the legendary Hollywood writer-director shares his thoughts on screenwriting, cinematography, the studio system, the Golden Age of film, and the many stars with whom he worked.

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." This line comes from director John Ford's film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, but it also serves as an epigram for the life of the legendary filmmaker. Drawing on more than a hundred interviews and research on three continents, Scott Eyman explains how a saloon-keeper's son from Maine helped to shape America's vision of itself, and how a man with only a high school education came to create a monumental body of work, including films that earned him six Academy Awards -- more than any filmmaker before or since.

“David Lean” is a lively compendium about the 60-year career of one of the greatest moviemakers of all time. For the first time, this normally reticent director of such classics as “Brief Encounter”, “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, and “Lawrence of Arabia” has given his cooperation to a project documenting his life and work, and the result is a book as spectacular as his critically acclaimed films.

Close-Up On Sunset Boulevard tells the story of this extravagant work, from the writing, casting and filming to the disastrous previews that made Paramount consider shelving it. It's about the writing team of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett-sardonically called "the happiest couple in Hollywood"-and their raucous professional relationship. It's about the art direction and the sets, the costumes, the props, the lights and the cameras, and the personalities who used those tools to create a cinematic work of art.

The production of “Psycho” was unique in the filmography of Hitchcock. He used the crew from his television series and killed off his star early in the picture. Stephen Rebello looks at the adaptation of Robert Bloch’s novel, the detail of the shower scene design by Saul Bass, and the novelty of the publicity that turned the release of the movie into an event.

Provides behind-the-scenes information on the 1969 film directed by Stanley Kubrick, over seventy pages of reviews, and interviews with both Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke.

A look at the making of the 1938 movie classic and its forever-famous stars provides behind-the-scenes facts and a detailed look at how big-budget films were produced in Hollywood’s golden age.

Breaking with the old studio system, the New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard, Francios Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and others insisted on seeing the director as an author or “auteur”. This book looks at how such classics as “Breathless”, “Contempt”, “Jules and Jim”, and “Masculine/Feminine” laid the groundwork for today’s independent film industry.

“Cinema of Outsiders” is the first comprehensive chronicle of contemporary independent movies from the late 1970s up to the present. The book looks at the early work of mavericks David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, and Spike Lee to the contemporary Oscar-winning successes of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers.

Film noir is more than a cinematic genre. It is an essential aspect of American culture. Examining virtually the entire catalogue of film noir, Nicholas Christopher identifies the central motif as the urban labyrinth, a place infested with psychosis, anxiety, and existential dread in which the noir hero embarks on a dangerously illuminating quest.