99 Books Like Oscar Wars

I always like books that trace the origins of a political movement, because they almost always go farther back than we think.

This one follows the suppression of radical activity in Hollywood from the beginning of the Great Depression of the 1930s, a time that also saw the founding of the Writers’ Guild, a union that gave writers some actual power in an industry that ran on power and often regarded writers as disposable. But even the Writers Guild couldn’t defend those accused of communist sympathies by their government.

It is significant in our current era that no Hollywood Communist, even the real ones, was ever linked to espionage or sabotage, and that evidence of the supposed subversive indoctrination planted in films was nonexistent. 

In 1988, a book on film history became an unexpected cultural classic. This book tells how a handful of Jewish immigrants from a very small area of central Europe became Hollywood moguls, effectively creating the screen imagery depicting the American dream.

The moguls’ identity as migrants and marginalized people was crucial to their success. As Gabler writes, precisely because of their striving and desire to belong, a former peddler, cobbler, junk seller, and other impoverished transplants concocted the gilded fantasies of Hollywood’s Golden Age. As a group biography and industrial history of Hollywood illusion, An Empire of Their Own is not usually considered in the same vein as The Power Broker’s bricks-and-mortar history.

Yet, in today’s screen-driven world, the legacy of these early media titans is more obvious than ever. The movie moguls’ quintessentially American story of immigration, success, and reinvention is also a prescient, more fully inclusive history of… show more.

We believe you can learn more from failure than success. Misfires don’t come much bigger than the 1990 adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s blockbuster novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. The movie busted nary a block, which only makes director Brian De Palma’s willingness to open up the process to reporter/critic Salamon more remarkable.

This visits every department—including our favorite, costume design—and underscores that no one knows if a movie will be a smash or a flop while they’re making it, so cast and crew work just as hard on both. We love the story of second-unit director Eric Schwab seizing the opportunity to prove himself.

We’ll be honest. We don’t really remember the romantic drama Up Close & Personal (1996), starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. But we won’t forget this book by Dunne, who wrote the film with his wife, Joan Didion. This is a forthright look at the writer’s lot in Hollywood. It’s a manual for massaging egos and dealing with conflicting notes, told with bracing honesty.

Sometimes, you take a job because you need health insurance. Sometimes, a movie that starts out based on the tragic true story of newscaster Jessica Savitch becomes a glossy sudser in which she lives. Sometimes, a troubled project becomes a hit despite itself. That’s always show business.

This book is an absolutely indispensable reference – Donald Bogle may well be dubbed the “godfather” of race studies in film as he meticulously chronicled and chartered black images in early film.

The book’s title alone already clues readers into the idea that Bogle will not pull any punches in describing popular black film caricatures that we now regard as problematic today.

If you want to read about how to make hype happen while making people happy, check out Shep Gordon’s autobiography. This book played a big part in making me realize that hype can be used as a force for good as well as evil. At the very least, it can add a whole lot of color to the world.

Shep Gordon had no connections and no money when he started out as a manager in the entertainment industry. But somehow, he managed to turn Alice Cooper into an international superstar, resurrect the career of a Vaudeville legend, and singlehandedly create the celebrity chef movement. This guy continues to inspire me. 

One of my favorite novels of any length, Nathanael West’s short 1939 classic is at the very least the most disturbing portrait of Golden Age Hollywood and its hangers-on ever written—hideous, poignant, horribly funny.

West himself wrote scripts for B-movies in the thirties. His death at thirty-three in a car crash was perhaps, in its awful and infuriating ridiculousness, fitting. And it was the day after F. Scott Fitzgerald died.

You may have seen There Will Be Blood, which won Daniel Day Lewis an Academy Award.

Sinclair’s novel (which inspired the film) satirizes the petroleum-fueled tycoons and preachers of Southern California a century ago. For an extra treat, follow this novel with Darren Dochuk’s Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America, which weaves together the stories of American oil, American religion, and the great schism within today’s Republican Party.

While I had seen the film adaptation with Meryl Streep and Shirley MacClaine in my teens, I only came to read Carrie Fisher’s extremely funny autobiographical book at the recommendation of the writer Lou Sarabadzic, who rightly thought I’d be amused that the rehab clinic inhabitants are not so focused on not doing drugs as they are on doing not drugs.

Carrie and her friends spend thirty days talking and thinking of such things as quitting, stopping, committing to not doing drugs, not playing an instrument, giving it up, and ‘using up all the Not Cry.’ The whole thing made me re-think how human agency, willpower, and control work.

This book is not directly linked with my research, but it shows how financial interests can influence artistic works. It especially shows the critical role of the producer in the messages brought by a film.

The Collaboration reveals a hidden chapter of Hollywood's past. Ben Urwand shows the complex relationship between Hollywood and Nazi Germany during a time when cinema was at its zenith. The book discovers a very disturbing reality. Major Hollywood studios, despite many of them being led by Jewish executives, made secret agreements with Nazi authorities to avoid depicting Germany unfavorably or addressing the persecution of Jews.

Urwand's diligent research, backed by letters, memos, and historical accounts, paints a picture of compromise on the part of Hollywood producers during that period of history, which preferred their financial interests over their moral duties.