The best books about movies
Books. They’re a right pain, aren’t they? They take absolutely ages to get through and they cost a fortune.
But without them we wouldn’t be able to read and we wouldn’t have some of the greatest movies ever made, movies like Die Hard and First Blood. Yes, both based on novels!
Books that inspired movie adaptations are wonderful, of course, but for me, the real gold has always been found in the books about what goes into making the movies.
I am always on the lookout for a good behind-the-scenes book about film, and the great ones are slightly harder to find these days, given that perhaps the market for new books about the filmmaking process doesn’t exactly rival fantasy romance.
However, over the past few years there have been a few literary gems in the movie-making category, books to throw on the pile with some of the greatest ever written.
With that in mind, I have decided to compile my own list of my favourite books about movies, just as I have added two more to my Kindle – Michael Douglas’s autobiography One Helluva Ride, and the brilliantly titled The Book Was Better by Louise Willder. Give me a few months – I am a notoriously slow reader – to see if those two find it on to the list below.
This list is in no particular order – all of these are terrific reads – and I hope it helps someone who loves movies as much as I do find their next book about film.
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood – Mark Harris
What a terrific book this is. Harris takes the five movies nominated for Best Picture at the 1968 Oscars – Bonnie and Clyde, Doctor Doolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and eventual winner In The Heat Of The Night – dissects the making of each and charts how they marked the end of one phase of Hollywood and the ushering in of its second golden age. His other books, Five Came Back, about the directors who contributed to the Second World War effort, and Mike Nichols: A Life, are both solid and packed with detail, if not quite as riveting as Pictures at a Revolution.
Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli – Mark Seal
Confession time. I did not watch The Godfather until two years ago. Should someone who hasn’t seen The Godfather be allowed to start a film blog? Probably not. Strangely, I watched The Godfather Part II when I was about 10, as Channel 4 screened it in the UK as part of their Robert De Niro season (remember when terrestrial TV used to show good movies?!), and I must have been confused as hell. Anyway, the thing that finally made me watch The Godfather – and its two sequels – was this hugely entertaining book by Seal, which is a lot more satisfying than The Offer, the kind of captivating but ultimately slight TV show about the making of the movie.
The Big Goodbye, Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood – Sam Wasson
Another rip-roaring read about a 70s classic, Chinatown, still the most exciting movie ever about the acquisition of water – sorry, Quantum of Solace.
The Kid Stays in the Picture – Robert Evans
You can’t read about The Godfather or Chinatown without coming across Evans, the self-styled super-producer who guided both to the screen. His hugely entertaining book remains one of the key texts of 70s cinema.
Heat 2 – Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner
When I saw the book cover for Heat 2 I thought it must be some kind of joke, like one of those fake movie trailers. And it’s not the kind of thing I usually read, but my word it zips along at a fantastic pace and gives a new dynamic to those iconic characters, so much so that Mann, undeterred by literally shooting himself in the foot recently, is prepping the film sequel with Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale and Adam Driver. What a cast!
Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood – Ed Zwick
Zwick isn’t what you might call a ‘name’ director – the marketing team don’t put ‘from visionary director Ed Zwick’ on the trailers for his films, but that’s okay, because he’s been quietly making fantastic movies his whole career. In this book from a few years ago, the guy who made Glory, Legends of the Fall, The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond rattles through his years in the business.
The Friday Afternoon Club – Griffin Dunne
This one is a bit different. I knew Dunne chiefly from his performance in An American Werewolf in London (he is also the star of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, and directed Practical Magic) but was unaware he came from US literary aristocracy – his aunt was author Joan Didion. The first part of this book depicts his attempts to break into the movie industry, alongside his good friend Carrie Fisher, while the second focuses on something horrifying – the murder of his 22-year-old sister Dominique, herself an actor having just appeared in Poltergeist. That Dunne manages to balance these two totally different strands is testament to his skill as a writer.
The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, And A Hit – Ron Shelton
Shelton wrote the script for Bad Boys II, but I can barely hold that against him when he directed Tin Cup, White Men Can’t Jump and the little-seen but great Dark Blue. Here he takes readers through the process of making arguably his most celebrated movie, the fabulous baseball flick Bull Durham, starring Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. How come baseball is so dull but movies and books about baseball are so engrossing?!
Blood Sweat and Chrome, The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road – Kyle Buchanan
Mad Max: Fury Road is one of those recent movies that already has so much lore around it, a classic tale of difficult shoot turns into cinematic dynamite. Buchanan covers every aspect of what went into making George Miller’s masterpiece of action theatre, including the on-set tension between its stars, Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy.
The Jaws Log – Carl Gottlieb
The story behind Jaws – mechanical shark doesn’t work, lead actors don’t get on, super over-extended shoot – are almost more well known than the actual movie at this point, and yet its screenwriter Gottlieb’s diary about what it took to bring the eventual blockbuster to the screen still holds up as something refreshing and lasting, not unlike the film itself.
The Devil’s Candy: The Anatomy Of A Hollywood Fiasco – Julie Salamon
I’ve not seen The Bonfire of the Vanities nor read the famous source novel that spawned it, but you don’t need prior knowledge to get a kick out of Salamon’s warts-and-all (and there are a lot of warts) telling of the decisions that went into making the Brian De Palma movie, starring the woefully miscast Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis, that was a critical and box office disaster.
Box Office Poison – Tim Robey
Speaking of box office disasters, The Telegraph’s film writer Tim Robey has compiled a book about a whole tonne of them – that lost an even bigger tonne of money. But while his book could easily have ended up a snide critique of some of the least-loved movies on their time of release, he actually finds real joy in reappraising some of these pictures. Some of them were downright terrible, but some of them have gone on to be loved by audiences in a way that no amount of box office cash can replicate.
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down And Dirty Pictures – Peter Biskind
Something of a bible for lovers of 1970s cinema, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls delves into the directors behind films such as The Godfather, The French Connection, Taxi Driver and Jaws, almost all of whom were unhappy with the book, published in 1998. Six years later he followed it up with Down And Dirty Pictures, which focused on the explosion of 90s independent cinema, a lot of it ruled over by sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein.
Cinema Speculation – Quentin Tarantino
Tarantino’s book about his time growing up watching movies is a riot, as he runs through the films that altered his life, from Bullitt to Deliverance, from Taxi Driver to Escape From Alcatraz. His novelisation of his own movie, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, is also a rollicking read.
Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tears – Michael Schulman
I’m not going to lie, the first chunk of this book, where Schulman outlines the history of the Academy and how the Oscars were formed, is a bit of a slog, but once it gets past that and into the various battles for those little statuettes over the years, the prose fizzes, especially anything involving Bette Davis and the notorious feud between Oscar-winning sisters Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland.
Adventures in the Screen Trade – William Goldman
If you want to be in Mötley Crüe, you have to read The Dirt, and similarly, if you want to become a film writer, you have to read Adventures in the Screen Trade. Not only does the legendary Goldman tell the reader what it was like to write classics like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man and All The President’s Men, he then goes through the steps of how to create a killer screenplay. His follow-up, Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade, is arguably even better, detailing what inspired him to write the scripts for The Princess Bridge and Misery, before he outlines four of his past movie ideas and why he didn’t follow through with them. It’s not a book at all really, more like gold dust.
Off the Cliff: How the Making of Thelma & Louise Drove Hollywood to the Edge – Becky Aikman
Gotta love the SPOILER ALERT title and cover of this one. A brilliant book about a brilliant movie, Aikman tells the underdog story of its making through its writer, Callie Khouri, a music video producer who would go on to win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for the film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis – after Michelle Pfeiffer and Jodie Foster (!!) both dropped out.
The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir – Paul Newman
Told in Newman’s own words from interviews that produced thousands of pages of transcripts, and published in 2023, 15 years after his death, this is a superb insight into a Hollywood icon, who, it turns out, was a lot more insecure and unsure of himself than it may have appeared to audiences who loved watching him peering down at them from the big screen.
The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood’s Kings of Carnage – Nick de Semelyn
If you grew up swapping VHS copies of Predator around your friends then you will get an extremely testosterone-fuelled kick out of The Last Action Heroes, written by current Empire magazine editor De Semlyen, which follows the 80s exploits of Arnie, Sly, Dolph, Jean-Claude, Chuck and Steven. Yes, even Seagal features. De Semlyen’s similarly-structured predecessor, Wild and Crazy Guys: How the Comedy Mavericks of the ’80s Changed Hollywood Forever, is also a really fun read.
Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing – Lee Server
After cracking Hollywood with her role as Kitty Collins in 1946’s film noir The Killers, Gardner would go on to star in a slew of classics and was nominated for Best Actress for 1953’s Mogambo. Server’s wonderful biography charts her career rise and her three marriages, the first to Mickey Rooney and the third to Frank Sinatra, just a few of the men spellbound by Gardner.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE THE BEST BOOKS ABOUT MOVIES? TELL US IN THE COMMENTS BELOW…
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