100 Books Like Forbidden Hollywood

For those who don’t know, Errol Flynn was the “bad boy” of Hollywood’s golden era in addition to serving as the king of adventure pictures from 1935, when he appeared as Captain Blood, to 1953, when he made The Master of Ballantrae. In between, he starred in 40 other films, wrote two books, married three times, survived a spurious rape charge and trial, and debauched himself with booze and drugs.

Just a year before his death at age 50, Flynn sat down with a ghostwriter to create a memoir both candid and poignant. This book has gone on to sell millions of copies since its release in 1959 and remains in print today—a testament to the power of Flynn’s personal history and narrative.

When a New York Times correspondent and Yale Fellow sits down to write a book about the making of Casablanca for its 50th anniversary, one expects quality, and Harmetz delivers by detailing the times and people who created and marketed the timeless classic.

This book served as a primary source during the writing of my book. The extensively researched and footnoted book was repackaged in 2002 as The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II and remains in print more than 30 years after its initial release.

Leonard Maltin shot to prominence as a youth publishing the annual Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide, with each new edition becoming an instant New York Times bestseller. Maltin also served a long stint as an on-air correspondent for Entertainment Tonight, where he earned backstage access to generations of movie stars.

His recently published memoir details his early obsession with the movies and then his slow but steady rise as one of Hollywood’s leading historians. I love this book most for its insights into the old stars that Maltin met—stars who knew him from his books and TV work and opened up about their own histories, making this book a valuable resource for film scholars.

The author was one of a platoon of young, bicycle-riding male messengers that roamed the sprawling Warner Bros. studio in Burbank before World War II, delivering scripts and memos to directors, writers, and stars like Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, and yes, Errol Flynn (who got a big thumbs-up from the messenger boys).

Jerome pulls no punches on the stars he liked and those he detested and provides graphic details to back up his rankings. This book shows the stars as real people, for better or worse, while also providing an invaluable look at the inner workings of one of the most successful studios of old Hollywood.

I recommend this book because it is one of the few works that systematically analyzes different facets of individual identity by illustrating how movie makers consciously and strategically prioritize the images they showcase onscreen.

Nothing we see is by coincidence nor accident and the authors remind me of the audience’s responsibility in remaining as active participants, constantly questioning rather than blindly accepting the images we see onscreen.

So, after the first things, you need some actual instruction, and the great Russian filmmaker lays it all out here. The book is his memoir about filmmaking, but it’s really about art making, written as large or small as you can imagine. I wrote a review by request a few years ago.

Allow the tools he discusses here to free you from the oppression of lazy filmmaking, as well as your own timidity and fear. It works. Ask me how I know.

We, female film critics, are still underrepresented in the critical world but Pauline Kael found success and respect at a time when our numbers were even fewer.

This collection showcases her talent for writing and her keen eye for what makes a movie or a performance great or terrible.

From Bonnie and Clyde to Last Tango in Paris, Kael’s compelling cinematic observations make you want to rewatch these films while also highlighting how even the best of critics can fall foul to unconscious biases (just check out her Othello review!).

We can learn much further we’ve come when it comes to checking those blinkered perspectives. 

When I decided to study Taiwan cinema more systematically, I tried to read as much on the subject as possible. I enjoyed this book because it offered me a broad overview of many kinds of questions that can be asked about and through Taiwan cinema.

For example, I realized that it is possible to try and understand Taiwanese domestic & international politics, cross-strait relations, colonial history, and the impact of globalization in a more relatable manner by reading films and documentaries as texts. It is also possible to analyze different festivals, genres, filmmakers, and individual films from the perspectives of the film industry and film artistry.

I was totally energized by the enormous potential the subject of Taiwan cinema can offer because of this book.     

This book coined the maxim far and away the most quoted in Hollywood to this day: “Nobody knows anything.” I first read it the year before I broke in. My copy is heavily annotated with yellow highlighter and red pen; a black paperclip still marks the second of Goldman’s two capitalized maxims, “Screenplays are structure.” The value of this book to anyone wanting to understand – or survive in – Hollywood is that, ironically, Goldman, one of the most successful screenwriters and novelists in Hollywood history, knew almost everything, not only about screenwriting, but also the psychology, cautious care, and perilous feeding of actors, directors, executives, and the rest of the Hollywood zoo. It’s both a textbook and survival guide, illustrated with a veteran’s vivid stories about life behind the tinsel.

I recognize that Allen has become a divisive figure, but the stubborn fact is that in the course of making a handful of masterpieces, Allen built a truly unique career—for half a century, the singular writer-director made a movie nearly every year with total creative autonomy.

This book took me inside that process, albeit during the production of a minor film (Irrational Man), and it was captivating to read how Allen approaches writing, fundraising, casting, production, and the rest of the process. On the plus side, Allen, at his peak, was answerable only to the limits of his imagination and skill. On the minus side, he operated within strict budgetary limitations.

What I found most consistently interesting about Start to Finish was its dual nature—on one level, it’s about Allen as an individual artist, and on another level, it’s about the inherent difficulties of transforming screenplays into cinema.… show more.