Paul on Mazursky

Paul on Mazursky
Author: Sam Wasson
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 081957144X

Paul Mazursky's nearly twenty films as writer/director represent Hollywood's most sustained comic expression of the 1970s and 1980s. But they have not been given their due, perhaps because Mazursky's films—both sincere and ridiculous, realistic and romantic—are pure emotion. This makes films like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, An Unmarried Woman, and Enemies, A Love Story difficult to classify, but that's what makes a human comedy human. In the first ever book-length examination of one of America's most important and least appreciated filmmakers, Sam Wasson sits down with Mazursky himself to talk about his movies and how he makes them. Going over Mazursky's oeuvre one film at a time, interviewer and interviewee delve into the director's life in and out of Hollywood, laughing, talking, and above all else, feeling—like Mazursky's people always do. The book includes a filmography and never-before-seen photos.

Show Me the Magic

Show Me the Magic
Author: Paul Mazursky
Publisher:
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1999
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

One of Hollywood's most admired filmmakers reveals the magic of a career boasting such triumphs as "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" and of working with zany, bigger-than-life stars such as Peter Sellers and Bette Middler. 36 photos.

A Splurch in the Kisser

A Splurch in the Kisser
Author: Sam Wasson
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2011-07-21
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0819569771

With one of the longest and most controversial careers in Hollywood history, Blake Edwards is a phoenix of movie directors, full of hubris, ambition, and raving comic chutzpah. His rambunctious filmography remains an artistic force on par with Hollywood's greatest comic directors: Lubitsch, Sturges, Wilder. Like Wilder, Edwards's propensity for hilarity is double-helixed with pain, and in films like Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and Roses, and even The Pink Panther, we can hear him off-screen, laughing in the dark. And yet, despite those enormous successes, he was at one time considered a Hollywood villain. After his marriage to Julie Andrews, Edwards's Darling Lili nearly sunk the both of them and brought Paramount Studios to its knees. Almost overnight, Blake became an industry pariah, which ironically fortified his sense of satire, as he simultaneously fought the Hollywood tide and rode it. Employing keen visual analysis, meticulous research, and troves of interviews and production files, Sam Wasson delivers the first complete account of one of the maddest figures Hollywood has ever known.

Improv Nation

Improv Nation
Author: Sam Wasson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2017
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0544557204

A sweeping yet intimate--and often hilarious--history of a uniquely American art form that has never been more popular

Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.

Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.
Author: Sam Wasson
Publisher: Aurum
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2011-09-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1845136551

Before Breakfast at Tiffany’s Audrey Hepburn was still a little-known actress with few film roles to speak of; after it – indeed, because of it - she was one of the world’s most famous fashion, style and screen icons. It was this film that matched her with Hubert de Givenchy’s “little black dress”. Meanwhile, Truman Capote’s original novel is itself a modern classic selling huge numbers every year, and its high-living author of perennial interest. Now, this little book tells the story of how it all happened: how Audrey got the role (for which at first she wasn’t considered, and which she at first didn’t want); how long it took to get the script right; how it made Blake Edwards’ name as a director after too many trashy films had failed to; and how Henry Mancini’s soundtrack with its memorable signature tune ‘Moon River’ completed the irresistible package. This is the story of how one shy, uncertain, inexperienced young actress was persuaded to take on a role she at first thought too hard-edged and amoral – and how it made Audrey Hepburn into gamine, elusive Holly Golightly in the little black dress - and a star for the rest of her life.

Brutal Intimacy

Brutal Intimacy
Author: Tim Palmer
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2011-07-21
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0819570001

Brutal Intimacy is the first book to explore the fascinating films of contemporary France, ranging from mainstream genre spectaculars to arthouse experiments, and from wildly popular hits to films that deliberately alienate the viewer. Twenty-first-century France is a major source of international cinema—diverse and dynamic, embattled yet prosperous—a national cinema offering something for everyone. Tim Palmer investigates France's growing population of women filmmakers, its buoyant vanguard of first-time filmmakers, the rise of the controversial cinema du corps, and France's cinema icons: auteurs like Olivier Assayas, Claire Denis, Bruno Dumont, Gaspar Noé, and stars such as Vincent Cassel and Jean Dujardin. Analyzing dozens of breakthrough films, Brutal Intimacy situates infamous titles alongside many yet to be studied in the English language. Drawing on interviews and the testimony of leading film artists, Brutal Intimacy promises to be an influential treatment of French cinema today, its evolving rivalry with Hollywood, and its ambitious pursuits of audiences in Europe, North America, and around the world.

Creativity in Product Innovation

Creativity in Product Innovation
Author: Jacob Goldenberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2002-01-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521800897

Creativity in Product Innovation describes a remarkable new technique for improving the creativity process in product design. Certain "regularities" in product development are identifiable, objectively verifiable and consistent for almost any kind of product. These regularities are described by the authors as Creativity Templates. This book describes the theory and implementation of these templates, showing how they can be used to enhance the creative process and thus enable people to be more productive and focused. Representing the culmination of years of research on the topic of creativity in marketing, the Creativity Templates approach has been recognized as a breakthrough in such journals as Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change.

The Big Goodbye

The Big Goodbye
Author: Sam Wasson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2021-10-07
Genre:
ISBN: 9780571370269

Fosse

Fosse
Author: Sam Wasson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 757
Release: 2013
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0547553293

The authoritative and endlessly revealing biography of renowned dancer, choreographer, screenwriter, and director Bob Fosse, written by a bestselling pop culture historian.

The Accidental

The Accidental
Author: Ali Smith
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2007-04-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307279758

Filled with the bestselling, award-winning author's trademark wordplay and inventive storytelling, here is the dizzyingly entertaining, wickedly humorous story of a mysterious stranger whose sudden appearance during a family’s summer holiday transforms four variously unhappy people. Each of the Smarts—parents Eve and Michael, son Magnus, and the youngest, daughter Astrid—encounter Amber in his or her own solipsistic way, but somehow her presence allows them to see their lives (and their life together) in a new light. Smith’s narrative freedom and exhilarating facility with language propel the novel to its startling, wonderfully enigmatic conclusion.