Showing titles in Entertainment & Performing Arts

From grand follies to misunderstood masterpieces, disastrous sequels to catastrophic literary adaptations, Box Office Poison tells a hugely entertaining alternative history of Hollywood, through a century of its most notable flops. What can these films tell us about the Hollywood system, the public’s appetite–or lack of it–and the circumstances that saw such flops actually made? Away from the canon, this is the definitive take on these ill-fated, but essential celluloid failures.

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.

Legendary sitcom director James Burrows has spent five decades making America laugh. Here listeners will find never-revealed stories behind the casting of the dozens of great sitcoms he directed, as well as details as to how these memorable shows were created, how they got on the air, and how the cast and crew continued to develop and grow. Burrows also examines his own challenges, career victories, and defeats, and provides advice for aspiring directors, writers, and actors.

After bottoming out, being institutionalized, and getting sober all by the tender age of fifteen, Moshe Kasher found himself asking: “What’s next?” Over the ensuing decades, he discovered the answer: a lot. There was his time as a boy-king of Alcoholics Anonymous, a kind of pubescent proselytizer for other teens getting and staying sober. He was a rave promoter turned DJ turned sober ecstasy dealer in San Francisco’s techno warehouse party scene of the 1990s.

Dame Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer star as old flames Jean Pargetter and Lionel Hardcastle. Their love story was all set for a happy ending in the 1950s when Jean was a student nurse and Lionel, a young army officer. But he was posted abroad and they lost touch. Thirty-eight years later, Lionel has returned to London to publish his autobiography and, through a strange coincidence, he is reunited with Jean who has set up a secretarial agency.

Where do comedians come from? Why is it that one person is a funny bloke down the pub while another actually makes a living by standing up in front of an audience telling jokes? And where does all that material come from? Well, young Lee McKillop used to wonder that too. Growing up in his parents’ pub, small and wiry in a world of bigger and chunkier specimens, Lee quickly learned that cracking jokes was a way to get attention.

Harvey Fierstein’s legendary career has transported him from community theater in Brooklyn, to the lights of Broadway, to the absurd excesses of Hollywood and back. He’s received accolades and awards for acting in and/or writing an incredible string of hit plays, films, and TV shows.

With exclusive insights from the legendary cast, including Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Robert De Niro, and Talia Shire, and commentary from a diverse array of film experts and ardent aficionados, we dissect the film’s magnetic allure and its pervasive influence across our culture. Journey alongside Rebecca Keegan, acclaimed senior film editor at The Hollywood Reporter, as she explores the heart of this cinematic masterpiece through a new lens.

Adam Graham continues his journey through Old Time Radio Detective programs from their first available adventure to their final bow in Seasons 1-3 which were released between 2009 and 2012, featuring nearly 800 Old Time Radio episodes. You can listen to the current podcast feed of The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio here.In this volume, you'll hear:Alan Ladd playing Dan Holiday, a reporter-mystery writer who will go anywhere and do anything to those who send him a letter to Box 13.Jack Webb as Pat Novak for Hire, a Man Who Rents Boats and also ends up getting involved in murders in the most...

David Mitchell’s 2014 best seller Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse must really have made people think - because everything’s got worse. We’ve gone from UKIP surge to Brexit shambles, from horsemeat in lasagne to Donald Trump in the White House, from Woolworths going under to all the other shops going under. It’s probably socially irresponsible even to try to cheer up.

Interested in pursuing a career in VO? Curious what goes on behind the scenes in a business where people talk funny for money? This updated edition of the award-winning audiobook offers a fun and comprehensive look at what it takes, what goes on, and what it's like behind the mic from two (still) working pros who started from scratch.

From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly three thousand interviews, involving four hundred voices from the industry, Hollywood: The Oral History, lets a listener “listen in” on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera—Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd—to the biggest behind it—Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on screen.

Daniel Sloss' stand-up comedy engages, enrages, offends, unsettles, educates, comforts, and gets audiences roaring with laughter - all at the same time. In his groundbreaking specials, seen on Netflix and HBO, he has brilliantly tackled everything from male toxicity and friendship to love, romance, and marriage - and claims (with the data to back it up) that his on-stage laser-like dissection of relationships has single-handedly caused more than 300 divorces and 120,000 breakups.

Charlamagne Tha God - the self-proclaimed "Prince of Pissing People Off", co-host of Power 105.1's The Breakfast Club, and "hip-hop's Howard Stern" - shares his unlikely success story as well as how embracing one's truths is a fundamental key to success and happiness.

From age 11, in 1974, until she left the show, in 1981, Melissa Anderson literally grew up before the viewers of Little House on the Prairie. Melissa, as Mary, is remembered by many as the blind sister - and she was the only actor in the series to be nominated for an Emmy. In The Way I See It, she takes listeners onto the set and inside the world of the iconic series created by Michael Landon, who, Melissa discovered, was not perfect, as much as he tried to be. In this memoir she also shares her memories of working with guest stars like Todd Bridges, Mariette Hartley, Sean Penn, Patricia Neal, and Johnny Cash.

Blake Snyder's Save the Cat!, the world's top-selling story method for filmmakers and novelists, introduces The Last Book on Creating Binge-Worthy Content You'll Ever Need.

How many people would raise a baby in a zombie apocalypse? After finding an abandoned baby our hero deals with the inner turmoil of whether or not to save this life or raising it in a world full of chaos. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you are driving, pull over. If you are at work, close your door, unless you don't mind your colleagues seeing you doubled over, in tears, on your office floor. With this recording, taped before a delirious sold out audience at Carnegie Hall, you are there as David Sedaris performs new stories from his upcoming book. A parrot who mimics an ice maker, lovers quarreling over a rubber hand, and a Santa Claus who moonlights from his job as bishop of Turkey, the cast of characters is like no other.

In this brutally candid memoir, Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee Eric Roberts pulls no punches about the ups and downs of his career and his sometimes stormy relationship with his famous sister, Julia.

Settle in as comedy goddesses Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders do what they do best in season two of their smash hit podcast, exclusive to Audible. The award-winning double-act take six more important subjects and - quite literally - tit about with them. From unconventional advice on looking after pets to getting chewing gum stuck in your pants, Dawn and Jennifer leave no stone unturned in this thorough quest to entertain, inform and properly tit about.