I love biographies, but I really love autobiographies, because its (hopefully) coming from the source, even if they might leave out a few details.
Or a book about Hollywood, or the movie-making process… I just bought one entitled, “Letters from Hollywood: Inside the Private World of Classic American Movemaking”
I have Marlon Brando’s autobiography “Songs My Mother Taught Me” and would highly recommend it.
Highly recommend
Conversations with Filmmakers Series
I’ll add more once I take a look… Please share any recommendations!
Charlie Chaplin’s My Autobiography is a great read, but he doesn’t really discuss his filmmaking.
Andrew Sarris’s The American Cinema is a great resource for directors pre-1968. Sarris is the king of the auteur theory, which has a bad rep these days, but mostly because people haven’t read it, where he explains what he means.
Donald Borst, Graven Images - Horror film posters
Leon Barsacq, Caligari’s Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions: A History of Film Design
Peter Bogdanovich,* Fritz Lang in America* - In which Herr Lang almost comes across as a reasonable man instead of the conniving fuck that he was (and who probably murdered his first wife)
Luis Buñuel, My Last Sigh - autobiography (co-written with his frequent writing partner Jean-Claude Carrière)
Larry Ceplair & Steven Englund,* The Inquisition in Hollywood* - The Blacklist Era in Hollywood
José de la Colina, Luis Buñuel, and Tomás Pérez Turrent, Objects of Desire: Conversations with Luis Buñuel
William K. Everson, Classics of the Horror Film and More Classics of the Horror Film
Patrick McGilligan (ed.), Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters, vols. 1-4 (but especially vols. 2 & 3)
Susan Pack, Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde
Michael Powell, A Life in Movies and Million Dollar Movie - Lengthy, but never boring 2-part autobiography
Mark Viera, Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood
Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art
Josef von Sternberg, Fun in a Chinese Laundry - autobiography
Michael Weldon, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film and The Psychotronic Video Guide
Orson Welles & Peter Bogdanovich, This is Orson Welles - Extensive interview
I’ve recently read two books by Mark Harris, which were both very good.
Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War - The story of five prominent directors and their wartime service.
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood - It’s centered on the five movies that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 1967 and how they reflect the changes in movie-making.
Two of my favorite books about Hollywood:
*
The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night *----backstage story of Johnny Carson’s retirement from The Tonight Show, andthe behind the scenes battle between David Letterman and Jay Leno to take it over.
The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy—backstage story of Conan O’Brien’s failed attempt to take ove the Tonight Show
I’m not finished, but “Bloody Sam: The Life and Films of Sam Peckinpah” is one I’d recommend. I like some of his movies, but always found him to be more interesting that his films.
Harpo Marx’s Harpo Speaks! is a terrific autobiography.
Surprisingly (to me; I was 13 or 14 when I first read it) he spends many more pages on Broadway in the 1920s, and his interaction with the other Algonquin Roundtablers, than on Hollywood in the 1930s. Clearly he considered the ‘20s the high point of his life.
And quite a bit of the 1930s-40s stuff is about his friendship with Oscar Levant.
Not a book, but PB’s doc Directed by John Ford is an at-times bewildering look at someone who (whom?) I thought completely came across as one unobliging fucking idiot.
Micheal Zuckoff - Robert Altman: The Oral Biography.
Comprehensive, excellent.
Beat me to it, he was one of my favorite actors. One thing I liked about his aurobiography is that he didn’t dis on other people, just to build himself up. I loved how he talked about his wife and kids too.