For over 40 years I’ve been teaching and writing books for film and television professionals. Ever since childhood, storytelling has been my rescue and my spiritual path. As soon as I could read, I devoured books as though I’d been given water after a long thirst, and felt closer to the characters in books than I did to my family. In my twenties, I discovered in an acting class that playing characters took me even closer to my lifelong urgency to understand myself and the world around me. I love to share with the world everything I’ve learned about the centrality of storytelling to our humanity.
I wrote...
Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television
Make a list of great American movies of the 20th century—Sidney Lumet has directed a lot of them. 12 Angry Men. Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Network, The Wiz, The Verdict, and so many more. When his book came out in 1995, there had never been a book like it.
Sidney Lumet was giving away his secrets? Wow. I purchased it immediately. When I learned that Mr. Lumet was to appear at a book signing in my city, I arrived early, toting my precious, already dogeared volume, and stood in line to get it signed. For all these years since its publication in 1995, it has stood at or near the top of best-selling books about making movies.
“Invaluable.... I am sometimes asked if there is one book a filmgoer could read to learn more about how movies are made and what to look for while watching them. This is the book.” —Roger Ebert, The New York Times Book Review
Why does a director choose a particular script? What must they do in order to keep actors fresh and truthful through take after take of a single scene? How do you stage a shootout—involving more than one hundred extras and three colliding taxis—in the heart of New York’s diamond district? What does it take to keep the studio…
John Cassavetes is a kind of saint in the world of independent films. With his spouse, Gena Rowlands, he made films—A Woman Under the Influence, Faces, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie—that launched a revolution in American filmmaking.
This collection of Cassavetes’ writings and conversations opened my understanding of art and life at the deepest level. This is the quote that I’ve kept with me always: “[When you compromise your vision, you create] a lack of confidence in your innermost thoughts… These innermost thoughts become less and less a part of you and once you lose them then you don’t have anything else.”
John Cassavetes is the godfather of American independent cinema, saluted by virtually every US maverick who's followed in his stead, from Martin Scorsese to Sean Penn. Since his death in 1989, Cassavetes has become increasingly renowned as a cinematic hero - a loner who fought against the iniquities of the Hollywood system, steering his own creative course in a career spanning thirty years. Having first established himself as an actor, he bravely struck out on his own as a director in 1959 with Shadows, and proceeded to build up a formidable body of work. His major films include Faces, Woman…
No Color is My Kind tells the stories of the desegregation of Houston, TX, in 1960, the life of civil rights leader Eldrewey Stearns, and the author's relationship to Stearns.
They met in a psychiatric case conference while Stearns was hospitalized at the University of Texas Medical Branch. After his…
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s films pose the central human question—why must I, and everyone I love, die? And yet, his work is not dark or depressing but rather full of the joy of life. I happen to believe that connection to the knowledge of my mortality gives me a fuller life.
I respond deeply to his films—Decalogue, The Double Life of Veronique, and the Three Colours trilogy. Before his death, at 54, he collected these stories of his own life, offering insights into the history of his native Poland as well as thrilling glimpses into his unique creative process. Favorite quote: “I keep persuading younger colleagues to examine their own lives. The years in which you don’t work on yourself like this are, in fact, wasted.”
Decalogue, The Double Life of Veronique and his trilogy, Three Colours, earned Kieslowski his reputation as a world-class film-maker. Kieslowski was notoriously reticent, and even dismissive of his work and talent, but these frank and detailed discussions show a passion for film-making and a career which was often threatened by political and economic change within Poland. In the book he talks at length about his life: his childhood, disrupted by Hitler and Stalin; his four attempts to get into film school; and what Poland and its future meant to him at the time of writing, before his death in 1996.
As an American film revolutionary, before there was Cassavetes, before there was Tarrantino, before there was Scorsese or Coppola or Ridley Scott or Christopher Nolan or Jane Campion or Todd Field—there was Elia Kazan. He ushered in a new post-World War II era of naturalism in acting. He gave us James Dean and Marlon Brando.
This book is culled from the actual diaries he kept during rehearsal and production for his theater and film projects. Windows into his hopes, his strategies, his self-doubts. As a creative person myself, I felt given permission to take ownership of my own ambitions, ideas, and fears.
Elia Kazan was the twentieth century's most celebrated director of both stage and screen, and this monumental, revelatory book shows us the master at work. Kazan's list of Broadway and Hollywood successes—A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, On the Waterfront, to name a few—is a testament to his profound impact on the art of directing. This remarkable book, drawn from his notebooks, letters, interviews, and autobiography, reveals Kazan's method: how he uncovered the “spine,” or core, of each script; how he analyzed each piece in terms of his own experience; and how he determined the specifics of his…
"A rare combination of deep, clear, and accessible wisdom." -Tara Brach
Do you recall, as a child, being enthralled by a drifting cloud, a rain-soaked leaf, a wandering ladybug? Or suddenly having a sense of timelessness, contentment, and ease? If so, then you've already had a taste of natural awareness.
David Lynch was not a filmmaker of “weird.” He was a filmmaker of compassion. His chief artistic tool was to embrace his instinctive connection to his subconscious. This slim volume is impossible to summarize.
All I can say is that it relaxed me, centered me, and opened me to a deep permission to pay attention to the impulses of my subconscious mind.
Musical verse accompanies a milkman and his cranky kitty as they make their morning rounds. The milkman knows his hometown; he knows who needs ice cream for a birthday party, who just broke a leg, and who has a new baby. He even helps return a lost dog that's hiding along his route. This pitch-perfect, retro read-aloud's gentle sensibility is ideally matched with beautiful art that powerfully evokes an era of classic illustration.
For many film and television directors, collaborating with actors is the last frontier. The scariest part but also the part they long for—the human part. Directing Actors 25th Anniversary Edition brings into the 21st century the author’s groundbreaking 1996 publication. DA25 covers challenges of the actor-director relationship: the pitfalls of “result direction,” breaking down a script, preparing for casting sessions, how to rehearse, and whether rehearsal is even a good idea for your project.
The book’s intention is to help any storyteller—director, actor, or writer—navigate the terrifying, exhilarating depths of creating characters the world will not forget. It’s practical, human, and warm. It may even help you live your life. Bonus—it’s a fun read for anyone who loves movies.
2024 Gold Winner, Benjamin Franklin Awards, Health & Fitness Category
2024 International Book Awards, Winner, Autobiography/Memoir Category and Health: Women's Health Category
A memoir of triumph in the face of a terrifying diagnosis, Up the Down Escalator recounts Dr. Lisa Doggett's startling shift from doctor to patient, as she learns…
The Day Rachel Carson Invented Environmentalism
by
Bryant Wieneke,
Rachel Carson was an eminent scientist and the foremost nature writer in the United States when she stumbled - or rather crashed - into the realization of what the indiscriminate use of insecticides and pesticides was doing to water systems, plants, and animals, and ultimately the health of the American…
