everybody comes to hollywood

[jlh]

I'm asking everyone for books or movies about movie making. Can be any period. Mostly I want that sort of behind-the-scenes of a production stuff, preferably Hollywood. Here's my own shortlist, but I'm sure you guys can add to it!

• What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg
  
• The Player dir. Robert Altman
  
• Singin' in the Rain dir. Stanley Donen and

Comments

[jlh]

Good call! Thanks.

omg I love that icon!

[sistermagpie]

It's funny that I was just commenting on the Killing Joke this morning. People give it also sorts of credit but it's pretty dreadful imo.

I love movies/books about Hollywood, though a lot of the ones I like might not be about the day to day stuff. Some of my favorites have been mentioned already. Hmm...

Entourage, definitely (that's a TV show, but still-very much so).
Sunset Boulevard
Mulholland Drive
Day for Night
The Blair Witch Project (heh--see what I did there?)
Shadow of the Vampire
Tropic Thunder
Sullivan's Travels
8 1/2
Gods & Monsters
Boogie Nights
Adaptation

I'll probably think of more...

[jlh]

I'm annoyed that Entourage isn't available for instant watch on Netflix! Guess I'll be quicker about Freaks & Geeks and plow through it. Good thing I've got HBO and can do the recent stuff.

ha, I did see what you did there. Lots of stuff that I had in the back of my mind but had forgotten about when writing my list this morning. What were the things I had that are your favorites?

Tell me about Shadow of the Vampire, because I don't like scary movies. Is it scary?

[sistermagpie]

I'm trying to remember SotV. I don't remember it as being scary, though in the end there is a horror element. Making a silent movie is kind of inherently funny--and Willem Defoe is amazing playing that vampire. (It's especially fun if you've seen Nosferatu and I used to do a monster parade at Halloween every year that showed a silent movie in a cathedral with an organ? And several years the movie they showed was Nosferatu so I know it really well.)

Singing' in the Rain is a big favorite of mine, so that one. And I also immediately thought of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (since I only saw that fairly recently) and The Player. And Ed Wood.

[cricketnyc]

There's a fab true crime book called "A Cast of Killers," by Sidney Kirkpatrick, which is all about 20s Hollywood and the murder of director William Desmond Taylor. The coolest part of it is that the book was published in the 80s, but the mystery was solved back in the 60s, by director King Vidor. Kirkpatrick discovered the documentation when he was researching for a King Vidor biography, and waited until all the involved parties were dead to finally publicly solve the mystery.

[jlh]

Wow, that sounds super interesting! Thanks!

[jlh]

I have read Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, it's pretty excellent! I sometimes have a knee-jerk reaction about 70s films as I do about pretty much anything having to do with Boomer pop culture but the film and the accompanying docu are really splendid.

I'm looking for fiction, though, in that I'm interested in the tropes and the structures of fiction that is about movie-making.

[trincesstiara]

Off the top of my head, The Last Tycoon by F Scott Fitzgerald? Even if it is unfinished...

[jlh]

A really good one, that I'd totally forgotten about! Thanks!