Film History

Since it first opened on Broadway in September 1964, Fiddler on the Roof has constantly been onstage somewhere, including five Broadway revivals, four productions on London's West End, and thousands of schools, army bases, and countries from Argentina to Japan. Barbara Isenberg interviewed the men and women behind the original production, the film, and significant revivals.

When England went to war against Hitler in 1939, it mobilized its entire military and industrial resources. But there was no place in that vast army for legendary stage magician Jasper Maskelyne, whose family was renowned for creating modern theatrical illusions. Maskelyne was determined to fight the Nazis using his only weapon: he intended to apply the techniques of popular magic to the battlefield. Initially ignored and ridiculed by the staid military leadership, he eventually cajoled his way into the Camouflage Corps.

Millions of readers have thrilled to bestselling authors Bill O'Reilly and historian Martin Dugard's Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln, page-turning works of nonfiction that have changed the way we read history. The basis for the 2015 television film available on streaming. Now the iconic...

A moving father-son reconciliation told by a charismatic First Nations broadcaster, musician and activist. When his father was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Winnipeg broadcaster and musician Wab Kinew decided to spend a year reconnecting with the accomplished but...

Charlie Chaplin made an amazing 71 films by the time he was only 33 years old. He was not only known as the world’s first international movie star, but as a comedian, film director, and a man ripe with scandal, accused of plagiarism, communism, pacifism, liberalism, and anti-Americanism. He seduced young women, marrying four different times, each time to a woman younger than the next. In this animated biography of Chaplin, Joyce Milton reveals to us a life riddled with gossip and a struggle to rise from an impoverished London childhood to the life of a successful American film star.

Susie Bright, “The Pauline Kael of Porn” (SF Chronicle), rips open the history of erotic cinema before the internet— from the Golden Age of lavish 35mm hardcore, to the video-inspired “Porno Spring”, initiated by none other than punk, feminist, and lesbian video-makers.

Will we ever get tired of watching Cher navigate Beverly Hills High School and discover true love in the movie Clueless? As if! Written by Amy Heckerling and starring Alicia Silverstone, Clueless is an enduring comedy classic that remains one of the most streamed movies on Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes even 20 years after its release. In the first book of its kind, Jen Chaney has compiled an oral history of the making of this iconic film using recollections and insights collected from key cast and crew members.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK In Susan Orlean's mesmerizing true story of beauty and obsession is John Laroche, a renegade plant dealer and sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he is missing his front teeth and has the posture of al dente spaghetti. In...

A legendary fusion of science fiction and horror, Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) is one of the most enduring films of modern cinema – its famously visceral scenes acting like a traumatic wound we seem compelled to revisit. Exploring the ways in which Alien compels us to think about otherness, Luckhurst demonstrates how and why this interstellar slasher movie, this old dark house in space, came to coil itself around our darkest imaginings about the fragility of humanity.

The resurgence of viral clips from the long-running hit reality television show America’s Next Top Model left fans and foes alike wondering–how did a show so outrageous and at times offensive ever get on the air? For years, Americans dutifully watched as contestants faced uncomfortable situations regarding their race and gender, body-shaming, stereotyping, and problematic photoshoots. The show, which first premiered in 2003 and ran for 24 cycles, was helmed by supermodel Tyra Banks–the first Black female host of a smash network reality show.

Marvel Entertainment was a moribund toymaker not even twenty years ago. Today, Marvel Studios is the dominant player both in Hollywood and in global pop culture. How did an upstart studio conquer the world? In MCU, beloved culture writers Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards draw on more than a hundred interviews with actors, producers, directors, and writers to present the definitive chronicle of Marvel Studios and its sole ongoing production, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Most people think genres are simply categories on Netflix or Amazon that provide a helpful guide to making entertainment choices. Most people are wrong. Genre stories aren’t just a small subset of the films, video games, TV shows, and books that people consume. They are the all-stars of the entertainment world, comprising the vast majority of popular stories worldwide. That’s why businesses—movie studios, production companies, video game studios, and publishing houses—buy and sell them. Legendary writing teacher John Truby provides a guide to understanding the major genres of the story world.

In this brave and moving memoir, Corey Feldman is revealing the truth about what his life was like behind the scenes: His is a past that included physical, drug, and sexual abuse, a dysfunctional family from which he was emancipated at age fifteen, three high-profile arrests for drug possession, a nine-month stint in rehab, and a long, slow crawl back to the top of the box office.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The most famous true crime novel of all time "chills the blood and exercises the intelligence" (The New York Review of Books)—and haunted its author long after he finished writing it. On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the...

Based on years of forensic archaeology combined with interviews of more than two hundred survivors and their families, Ghosts of Hiroshima is a you-are-there account of ordinary human beings thrust into extraordinary events, during which our modern civilization entered its most challenging phase—a nuclear adolescence that, unless we are very wise and learn from our past, we may not survive.

From Dustin McNeill, co-author of TAKING SHAPE and REIGN OF CHUCKY, comes HOUSE OF REJECTS, an exhaustive new exploration of Rob Zombie’s controversial horror franchise. Go behind the scenes of the Firefly trilogy like never before with new insights, details, and anecdotes from the creation of House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, and 3 From Hell.

In this “riveting, atmospheric thriller that messes with your mind in the best way” (Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author), three residents of a secluded, seemingly peaceful commune investigate the disappearances of two outsiders. Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating...

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER Selma Blair has played many roles: Ingenue in Cruel Intentions. Preppy ice queen in Legally Blonde. Muse to Karl Lagerfeld. Advocate for the multiple sclerosis community. But before all of that, Selma was known best as … a mean baby. In a memoir that is as...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER of the 2022 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Non-Fiction SHORTLISTED for the 2023 Speaker's Book Award A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "Unreconciled is one hell of a good book. Jesse Wente’s narrative moves effortlessly from the personal to the...

The rock legend tells the story of his wild ride with Martin Scorsese—as friends, adventure-seekers, and boundary-pushing collaborators—with all the heart of his New York Times bestselling memoir Testimony. For four decades, Robbie Robertson produced music for Martin Scorsese's films, a...