Showing posts with label dead souls and dark alleys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dead souls and dark alleys. Show all posts

The Godfather Legacy: The Untold Story of the Making of the Classic Godfather Trilogy Featuring Never-Before-Published Production Stills Review

The Godfather Legacy: The Untold Story of the Making of the Classic Godfather Trilogy Featuring Never-Before-Published Production Stills
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The Godfather Legacy: The Untold Story of the Making of the Classic Godfather Trilogy Featuring Never-Before-Published Production Stills ReviewThis book makes an *excellent* supplement The Godfather films. It's full of interesting behind-the-scenes info, anecdotes, and recollections. The book is even a bigger "must have" now since the trilogy is finally now out on DVD.
There are some minor discrepancies between what this book says and Coppola's commentary on the DVDs. For instance, the book mentions that Al Pacino twisted his ankle in the scene following the shooting of McClusky and Sollozo, but Coppola believes it happened outside the hospital scene after Michael visits his father. Also, the book claims Clemenza's role was cut from Part II because Richard Castellano (the actor) wanted too much money. Coppola says Castellano wanted to have an associate write Clemenza's dialogue.
There's a wealth of production photos, and great inside stories of a troubling production. Coppola was almost fired several times, and he got into heated disagreements with his crew many times. Pacino had problems during the production (the studio wanted to fire him) and had a rocky road to stardom at this time. He was paid a measily $35,000(!) for the first film. And he never saw any of this money because of legal expenses from a lawsuit. For Part II, his paycheck was $500,000 plus a percentage of the gross.
If you're a movie fan and of this trilogy in particular, get this book!The Godfather Legacy: The Untold Story of the Making of the Classic Godfather Trilogy Featuring Never-Before-Published Production Stills OverviewHere is the official companion to Francis Ford Coppola's masterful trilogy, revised and updated, and packed with more than 100 photographs. The director was a renegade filmmaker who'd never made a profitable picture. The producer was hired because he could stay below budget. The star had a reputation for being difficult. A formula for disaster? No, the makings of one of the greatest films of all time. The Godfather Legacy explores the fascinating behind-the-scenes intrigue and uproar during the making of all three films: The clashes between Coppola and the studio chiefs during the filming of The Godfather, the pressurized production schedule, and the project's near cancellation The real story behind the cooperation of the Mafia in the creation of The Godfather The worldwide acclaim and stunning financial success following the release of The Godfather -- a triumph that set the stage for the film industry's renaissance The production of The Godfather Part II and the rise of Coppola, Al Pacino, and others to the loftiest heights of power in Hollywood The creation of The Godfather Part III two decades after the original film and the completion of video projects that unified the three films for the first time Featuring production records, credits, reviews, and interviews with many of the principals involved, The Godfather Legacy is a rare and vivid peek into the making of three of the most compelling films in Hollywood history.

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The Pat Hobby Stories Review

The Pat Hobby Stories
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The Pat Hobby Stories ReviewPat Hobby, once a successful Hollywood screenwriter, is nothing more than a pathetic has been. Broke, tired, and scrambling to find work, Pat takes on some unconventional methods to fill his pockets and put his name back on the big screen. But things don't turn out as smooth as Pat hopes. After all, as Pat himself repeatedly states, "I'm just a writer," and, "it's a dog's life." Pat's antics backfire and in almost every story he is left with nothing but humiliation.
The Pat Hobby stories were written between 1939 and 1940, when Fitzgerald himself was struggling to keep afloat in Hollywood. Fitzgerald paints the Hollywood scene as cold, calculating, and manipulative. A place where kissing up is more important than the quality of your talents, a place where the writer gets no respect, and a place that most likely today harbors the same attitude that Fitzgerald so deftly described in his final days.
In reading the Pat Hobby Stories, one can feel Fitzgerald's own sense of poor self-worth, despair, and hopelessness. Yet ironically, a twist of dark humor is thrown into the stories, evoking in the reader an ambiguous response of laughing at Pat Hobby while pitying him at the same time. This collection is not only entertaining and easy to read, but is one that will give you broader insight into the late great F. Scott Fitzgerald.The Pat Hobby Stories OverviewA fascinating study in self-satire that brings to life the Hollywood years of F. Scott Fitzgerald The setting: Hollywood: the character: Pat Hobby, a down-and-out screenwriter trying to break back into show business, but having better luck getting into bars. Written between 1939 and 1940, when F. Scott Fitzgerald was working for Universal Studios, the seventeen Pat Hobby stories were first published in Esquire magazine and present a bitterly humorous portrait of a once-successful writer who becomes a forgotten hack on a Hollywood lot. "This was not art" Pat Hobby often said, "this was an industry" where whom "you sat with at lunch was more important than what you dictated in your office." The Pat Hobby sequence, as Arnold Gingrich writes in his introduction, is Fitzgerald's "last word from his last home, for much of what he felt about Hollywood and about himself permeated these stories."

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The Doors Review

The Doors
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The Doors ReviewBen Fong-Torres has demonstrated journalistic brilliance in the way this book is organized. Each section is laid out like a conversation; interspersed among comments and reflections by Densmore, Krieger and Manzarek, as well as members of the Morrison and Courson families, is just enough narrative for clarity. Fong-Torres smoothly inserts quotes from interviews with Jim Morrison, and the result is a unified presentation of The Doors as an entity. Inevitably, it is the Morrison persona that dominates, but this book does a credible job of portraying all of the Doors. The descriptions of the studio experience, particularly challenges of the technology of the late 60s, are fascinating. There is a great deal of insight into the creative process of the band. While Morrison's rampant alcohol and drug abuse is not the focus of the book, there is ample evidence of the ripple effect it had on his bandmates. The photos from the band's private collection justify the cost.The Doors Overview

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Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend Review

Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend
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Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend ReviewDon't be fooled by this book. These are all second- and third-hand accounts of events. This guy did zero-null-nada extra research to write a book about Jim Morrison. He took all of it from all the other books (Manzarek, Densmore, Sugarman/Hopkins, etc.) written about Morrison. On top of that the book could be organized better. Story after story are strung together with no connection to each other. Davis takes some literary license making it read like a polished novel: he seems to know every facial expression that was exchanged between people and exactly how many drinks Jim had wherever he went.
1. Didn't go into the full conversation that Ray and Jim had discussing the full meaning behind naming the band "The Doors".
2. Made a passing comment that Ray and his wife and Jim may have had a menage a trois.
3. Stated that The Doors were first on a list of bands at Columbia Records that were being dropped by the company. According to Ray or John's book the Doors were in the middle of the list.
4. He said that after Jim hosed down the studio after recording "The End" that Jim had jumped the studio fence and Paul Rothchild grabbed him as Jim tried to run away. Patricia Butler ("Angels Dance and Angels Die") states that Jim scaled the fence and returned to Pam waiting in her car by climbing back over the fence and getting his boot caught in the fence. The boot was then found the next day and later traced to Jim. (Mrs. Butler actually did some research in her book if you read her bibliography).
5. Davis states that the boyfriend of the girl that Jim was making out with backstage in New Haven had asked the Police to look for her which is how the Police stumbled upon Jim and maced him. According to Ray Manzarek, that's not why the Police were backstage before the show.
6. States that the Doors' Buick commercials ran in the South and Midwest. In Manzarek's or Densmore's book it states that Buick pulled the plug after making the deal and never ran the ad.
7. States that Robby took Spanish Caravan from Isaac Albeniz Partido No. 1. He took it from Albeniz Spanish Suite 1. (There is no such work in classical music called a "Partido"!)
8. He called "The End" Robby's "Andalusian goat song". Yeah, I always picture a goat in the Spanish Andalusian Mountains when I listen to that song.
9. He says in The Lost Paris Tape (Paris) that Jim "launched into an astounding version of Orange County Suite". Sadly, the most amateur, unprofessional poet or musician wouldn't be caught associating themselves with a recording (if you want to call it that) like this. There is no semblance of poetry or music on this embarrassing piece of short sleepy, childlike tape. The most interesting moment on this tape is when Morrison comments on the beautiful Cuban cigar he has and tells his buddy that he doesn't have to bite the tip off.
10. He says that Jim and Pam saw the movie "Pursued" on the night of July 2. Later in the book he writes that Pam said the movie they saw was "Death Valley". He makes no reference to the contradiction.
I made these observations after a few days of reading this book. Too bad Mr. Davis didn't pay attention to these subtleties after devoting part of his life writing it. The more I read in this book the less credence I gave to it. I wonder if Stephen Davis even knows what song featured the words "I'm the lizard king. I can do anything!"? I highly doubt it. I think I remember his book "Hammer of the Gods" also came under heavy scrutiny when it was released. This is a good starter kit to get familiar with Morrison. When you're finished with this get the other books and start connecting the dots.
Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend OverviewAs the lead singer of the Doors, Jim Morrison's searing poetic vision and voracious appetite for sexual, spiritual, and psychedelic experience inflamed the spirit and psyche of a generation. Since his mysterious death in 1971, millions more fans from a new generation have embraced his legacy, as layers of myth have gathered to enshroud the life, career, and true character of the man who was James Douglas Morrison.In Jim Morrison, critically acclaimed journalist Stephen Davis, author of Hammer of the Gods, unmasks Morrison's constructed personas of the Lizard King and Mr. Mojo Risin' to reveal a man of fierce intelligence whose own destructive tendencies both fueled his creative ambitions and brought about his downfall. Gathered from dozens of original interviews and investigations of Morrison's personal journals, Davis has assembled a vivid portrait of a misunderstood genius, tracing the arc of Morrison's life from his troubled youth to his international stardom, when his drug and alcohol binges, tumultuous sexual affairs, and fractious personal relationships reached a frenzied peak. For the first time, Davis is able to reconstruct Morrison's last days in Paris to solve one of the greatest mysteries in music history in a shocking final chapter.Compelling and harrowing, intimate and revelatory, Jim Morrison is the definitive biography of the rock idol in snakeskin and leather who defined the 1960s.

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