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Scott Feinberg, “The Hollywood Reporter’s 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time” (2023)
00:55:05
An interview with Scott Feinberg
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- [00:00]
Scott Feinberg
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- [00:06]
Dan Moran
My second co design collection has new.
- [00:08]
Scott Feinberg
Shorts and tanks that keep up with all my in season workouts. And their new Restore collection is a game changer off the field too, because even pro athletes like me need rest days. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in the app, online and in stores, because your personal best is greater than anything.
- [00:30]
Marshall Poe
Hello everybody, this is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:37]
Dan Moran
Hi everybody. Welcome to New Books and Film, a podcast channel of the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dan Moran. I'm thrilled to be here today with Scott Feinberg. Scott is the executive editor of Awards at the Hollywood Reporter, and today I'm going to talk to him about his article on the October 12th edition concerning the 100 Greatest Film Books of all time. And I'm really glad to do this because Scott reached out to me to be a juror and I was just so happy to do that. And when the list came out, I couldn't wait to see which one of my picks made it and which one of them didn't. And I can't wait to discuss the results with him. So welcome, Scott.
- [02:10]
Scott Feinberg
Thank you, Dan. Good to be with you.
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Dan Moran
So before we start, I just have to ask you this I just. I just have to know this. What's it like to work for the Hollywood Reporter? I mean, is it. Is it wild? Is it, like, insane? Like, what is that gig like?
- [02:22]
Scott Feinberg
Well, I'll tell you what. It's. In some ways, it's like any other job. You, you know, you go to work every day, you got things you want to do and don't want to do, that both have to get done. And. But at the same time, if you're somebody like me who grew up really obsessed with film history and just the ins and outs of the business, it's. There's a lot of big footsteps you get to walk in, and it does open some doors. And so I'm grateful to be there. I've been there since 2011.
- [02:52]
Dan Moran
Great, great. So I want to start before we get to the actual list. I want to quote what you say in the beginning of your article. This is you saying this quote. There has long been an assumption that people in the movie business, and Hollywood specifically, aren't exactly well read. And you quote that, that famous 1926 telegram from Herman Makelewitz to Ben Hecht, where he said, millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. And you have. You have that quote from the. The book American Fiction, which is, quote, nobody in Hollywood reads. They get their assistants to read things and then summarize them. The whole town runs on book reports. And it's funny because those reminded me of William Goldman's famous line, nobody knows anything.
- [03:33]
Scott Feinberg
Right, Exactly.
- [03:35]
Dan Moran
So why this list? Do you think that people, people like us, read more about movies than the actual people who make movies or.
- [03:42]
Scott Feinberg
Well, so I, I wanted to do this list first and foremost because I am personally obsessed with film books. I think I. I would put my film book library up against almost anyone's. I. I recently was at Leonard Malden's house, and I saw his, and I think he's got me beat, but he's also got a few years on me, so I've got some time to catch up. But, no, I mean, I love film books. I think that, you know, it's a great way to learn about the industry, to better understand, you know, just every little facet of it. And so I've always wanted to highlight film history and film books, specifically in the Hollywood Reporter. But, you know, in normal times, it's. We're always fighting for space for anything in the magazine. And so when we. When it became clear that these dual strikes were going to, you know, make a lot of our normal coverage impossible, I kind of brought back up this idea and had more luck with it than I'd had in the past. And so, you know, then, you know, what I was signing up for though, was, was not even clear totally to myself, because in order to do this kind of a list and have it, have credibility, you got to bring in a lot of other smart people from different sides of the business. We, we reached out to filmmakers, film executives, actors, actresses, writers, animators, all kinds of people on the filmmaking side, as well as tons of the great authors and writers about film and just other cultural tastemakers. Among the jurors, you know, we've got David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, we've got Maureen Dowd and Roxane Gay from the New York Times, Brayden Carter, formerly from Vanity Fair, you know, on and on, Lawrence o' Donnell from msnbc, because I didn't want this to be. There have been greatest film book lists in the past where they exclusively pulled, let's say, critics or authors. But I wanted something that was more reflective of the community at large. Meaning it's not going to be something that totally satisfies academics. You know, there I, I have seen people from, you know, various film schools complain that some of these books are not as high brow as the ones they'd like to have included. But then you get the reverse. And to me that means we, we've succeeded because no list of the top 100 is going to please everyone. But I, I really, as these votes came in and we tallied them, I was very pleased and proud of the respondents for providing a list that covers a ton of genres, a ton of different eras, ton of topics. And I think that anyone, there's nobody who's read all 100, I would dare to say maybe they've heard of them. Very, very few people will have read all 100. So I hope that it inspires people. Ultimately, this is the main goal, to go and check out something, check out one of the books they, they haven't read, and maybe broaden their horizons a little bit.
- [06:42]
Dan Moran
Absolutely. And I love the fact that you include a checklist on the website so you can print it out and keep track of all of them.
- [06:47]
Scott Feinberg
Exactly. No, because I'll tell you what, Dan, the thing that got me into film in a serious way myself was the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest movies. And I know that I schlepped around a binder of lists and checklists and all of that until I got through them all, and then it was onto the list of Oscar nominees and winners, which is how I got into the award side of things of the business. So my, I want to make it as easy and fun as possible for people to get into these books now.
- [07:18]
Dan Moran
Yeah. And it's great because there's, of course, when you. And it's a very respectable list. I mean, I can't imagine too many people we might have little tiny squabbles about, you know, but in terms of if you handed, you know, somebody who had never read one book about the movies, this list, that's a great education.
- [07:34]
Scott Feinberg
I think so. And, and, and as you say, nobody who submitted a ballot, as far as I can recall, had had all of their picks make the list. And by the way, I should say we didn't go to people and ask for 100 picks from each juror. We asked, as you know, for 25, because I think 100 is, is too many, 10 or something is too few. And 25 is, up to 25 is doable. Nobody had to submit 25, but they couldn't go over 25. And for me, I can tell you, I. A lot of my favorites are not on the list. But, and again, that goes for everyone.
- [08:09]
Dan Moran
Yeah. And also, I love what you said about how it'll propel you into finding new books. Like, for example, when I was reading the list, there were ones I nodded at. There's ones I liked, there's ones, oh, I always wanted to read that. But then, for example, I never knew that Michael, Michael and Dacha wrote a book with Walter Murch. I'm like, who knew about, like. And of course, that's the kind of thing you'll read. And everybody else will say, oh, yeah, of course, that's really famous.
- [08:31]
Scott Feinberg
We all. Blind spots. And that's, that's the thing. I mean, a lot of people actually told me, and you may have been one of them. I forget that the ballot itself, which was more than 1200 titles, along with write in slots in case somebody felt we were missing something, but they, they wanted to print out the ballot and just begin combing through that because it's, it's, you know, the people like yourself and myself and probably a lot of others who voted, you know, we are, again, I'm not going to say that we've read every single one of these, but I think we've read most of them. And, and then it becomes a matter of, all right, let's go. We want new ones to read, too. And so the ballot serves that purpose. So one of the things that we haven't yet done, but I think we will do is probably, you know, release publicly the ballot as well as.
- [09:15]
Dan Moran
Oh, that's great.
- [09:16]
Scott Feinberg
In addition to the titles that were written in by different people, because, you know, the more the merrier, as far as I'm concerned.
- [09:22]
Dan Moran
Yeah. You can never have too many books about movies.
- [09:25]
Scott Feinberg
Exactly.
- [09:27]
Dan Moran
So let's now, let's dive into the list, and we're going to kind of cheat here because we're going to do what I did when I saw the list on the website for the first time, which is what I assume everybody would do, is I scroll to the number one. Yeah. I scroll to the top, and I'm like, all right, I'll get into the 90s and the 80s and. But I got to see. So what I want to do is I want to go in reverse order. I want to start with number five and go to number one and get your. Get your thoughts on each one. Okay, sure. So at number five, with 86 votes, we had Pauline Kale. I lost it at the Movies, 1965.
- [09:57]
Scott Feinberg
Right. So this is Pauline Kael's writing in longer form than her other entry. One of her other entries on the list. She also. We also have the 5,001 nights at the Movies, where it's sort of capsule reviews that ran at the front of the New Yorker. But a lot of people, what they love about Pauline Kael is when she really goes on in depth about how she feels. And so this is a collection of her writing in the years prior to her becoming sort of more of a household name at the New Yorker. And so you get a real taste of what she's about. Even again, before she had the spotlight on her, she was already thinking fiercely independently and often as a contrarian on things like west side Story, which was, you know, very embraced at the time of its release, won a ton of Oscars. And she is not a fan. So, you know, you can get. It's as much about reading great writing as it is the movies that she's writing about.
- [11:00]
Dan Moran
Yeah. And she reminds me very. You know, you have other people on the list, like Andrew Sarris and, you know, David Thompson, who I love, for the kind of the same reason. I mean, like, I think you read David. You have the New Biographical Dictionary film on there. That's how I discovered David Thompson. And I love reading him because even when he says things and you just laugh sometimes and you think that's not true, but he's so much fun to read.
- [11:23]
Scott Feinberg
Totally. And. And. And it's the Confidence with which they make these declarations. I think most of us are a little bit more careful or guarded about expressing a potentially divisive view. But, I mean, he. He will. He and she, Thompson and Kale, they will just, you know, go where. Go wherever they. They really feel, which is admirable.
- [11:47]
Dan Moran
Yeah, I'm. I'm paraphrasing this, but I know that in his entry on Cary Granted.
- [11:51]
Scott Feinberg
Yes.
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Dan Moran
In the dictionary film, the first sentence goes something like this. He says, you know, the first thing you have to understand about Cary Grant is he's the greatest actor in the history of the cinema.
- [12:01]
Scott Feinberg
Exactly, exactly. Which, you know, as if we're an idiot for not already knowing that. Yeah.
- [12:07]
Dan Moran
And that's his starting point from there. That's just the groundwork of his argument. So that's why those people are fun to read, as opposed. You know, you also have a lot of books in there by Roger Ebert, who's a lot more like. He's. He's much more of like an Obi Wan kind of hold your hand and show you what's great about movies.
- [12:22]
Scott Feinberg
Exactly.
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Dan Moran
But it was also good to see him represented on the list so often as well.
- [12:27]
Scott Feinberg
I love. You know, he was the critic who I turned to the most as a. As a grow, you know, young. Young film lover. And. And so, yeah, we do have. We. You know, a bit of a cheat here is that if there are books that are absolutely undeniably linked, we count them as one entry. So, for instance, Roger ebert wrote these four books called the Great Movies, you know, 1, 2, 3, and 4. We put those as one entry because. And even he says in the introductions to those, it's not like the first was his top 100 and the second are his next one. He's just highlighting great, great movies. And so we have those books from him. We also have Life itself, his memoir. And then we don't have one that I voted for, which is Two Weeks in the Midday sun about his experience at Can. It's a very. It's a very slim book. It's less about reviewing movies and more about just the beautiful way in which he wrote about anything, including, in this case, just what it's like to be a journalist covering the Cannes Film Festival. In. In his case, you know, however many years ago, when it was before we all had to come out of a movie and immediately file. You know, in those days, I think it was. It was, you know, once a day you faxed in your summary or whatever. But that was one that I was. I didn't expect it to make the 100, but I needed to at least give it my vote.
- [13:45]
Dan Moran
Were you like me? I'm just curious. Like, I remember distinctly, remember as a kid watching Siskel and Ebert on public tv and this is like pre Internet, you know, pre college, but I remember watching them, but they'd be on like 5:30 or something on Sunday afternoon and I remember thinking like, wow, like these, this is what I want to do. Like these guys that people do this.
- [14:03]
Scott Feinberg
It was, it was definitely something we all got a kick out of who remember that. And, and I think one of the poignant things about the Life Itself book is that he, you know, Siskel had died and Ebert was dying when he, when he wrote that book. And there was always this kind of sense that they hated each other. They were very passionately, you know, they would, they would go at each other and there's a beautiful part of life itself in which he, you know, kind of rebuts that notion. But they were like the Muppets up in the balcony when they did their, you know, their, their show.
- [14:39]
Dan Moran
Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's go to number four. So this is one. I got 123 votes. This was one of my picks. So I was glad to see this in there. This is Robert Evans. The kid stays in the picture.
- [14:50]
Scott Feinberg
Yes. I mean, Robert Evans is to me the ultimate Hollywood character. And I was very lucky, totally, you know, to get to know this guy late in his life and see for, see for myself that he was actually like this. This was not, you know, it's, it's a case where it's a totally, in a sense, self made mythology. Mythology, I guess you could say, where, who knows? I would say a large percentage of this, of this account is probably not true or heavily exaggerated. And yet he came to embody the character that he created. And he's just a total Hollywood only in Hollywood kind of person. The way he lived, the way he wrote and spoke. Nobody else talks like this. Nobody else. You know, I kind of did a winking reference to the style of the writing in our blurb about the book where it's like, you know, is this book entirely true? Absolutely. You know, not a chance. But, you know, does it keep you entertained from start to finish? You bet your ass it does. Because his whole book was sort of like question, answer. He's answering his own questions. He's, you know, hyperbolic about everything and everyone, the whole thing. You know, he, he was 64 years old when he wrote it and still kind of embraced being Called the Kid, or the Kid Notorious, because it was basically, it goes back to what he claims was this his kind of real start in the business where he had been given a part in 1957 film. He wasn't impressing too many people on the set. And then Daryl F. Zana comes by and says, you know, and they want to get rid of him. And Zanuck says, no, the Kid stays in the picture. And so that was. Again, who knows if any of that's true, but it was. It was very entertaining.
- [16:44]
Dan Moran
Yeah, that's a. That is such a good book that if you found out, like today it was a big fraud written by a little old lady, like, it's. You still tell people to read it.
- [16:51]
Scott Feinberg
Exactly. And, you know, it spawned. Well, first the audiobooks were just massive because you could hear this guy.
- [16:57]
Dan Moran
They're hilarious.
- [16:58]
Scott Feinberg
Yeah, hilarious. And then the documentary. So anyway, he was. He was quite a character.
- [17:03]
Dan Moran
Yeah. I've urged the documentary onto people, and they've said to me, well, I'm not into movies as much as you are. I said, you just watch it. It's an unbelievable psychological portrait of this guy. Let's go down to number three. So this is 139 votes came in for William Goldman. Adventures in the screen trade.
- [17:20]
Scott Feinberg
Exactly. And this is one that, again, would, I think, be of equal appeal to people in the business or trying to get in the business as well as just, you know, people who are completely removed from it, but want to want a good story and some entertaining stuff about how Hollywood works. This is the guy who, you know, wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men. He was as successful and highly paid a screenwriter as anybody. And as the kids say, he did not give any Fs about anything. It's not like they were going to ruin his career if he told the truth. And. And so he. He gives his various theories and opinions about how the business works or doesn't work well. And ultimately, the. The most famous line, of course, is, nobody knows anything where he's calling out the business for, you know, all these. All these rules, you know, you don't. For years, there was this silly notion they would say, black doesn't travel. Like a black film would not play abroad. And that was ridiculous. There was no basis for it, but it was just sort of, for many people in the business, conventional accepted wisdom. And, you know, a lot of people found out that was very wrong with Black Panther or any number of other movies. And so, you know, those are not specifically examples that he Tackles. But it's the idea that they're just, you know, it's a business built on rules. And in fact, many of the most successful people are the people who break those rules.
- [18:47]
Dan Moran
Right, that's. They just, you just reminded me that would be a great, like a quote unquote double feature in your book. Reading to read Robert Evans and then read William Goldman. They'd be good.
- [18:55]
Scott Feinberg
Perfectly.
- [18:56]
Dan Moran
They'd go together perfectly.
- [18:58]
Scott Feinberg
Exactly.
- [18:59]
Dan Moran
Okay, so moving to number two, another book that, that a lot of people have read. This came in with 140 votes. 1998. Peter Biskins, easy Riders, Raging Bulls.
- [19:09]
Scott Feinberg
Exactly. Biskin had been a writer and editor at Premier magazine and elsewhere. He had written other books before, but this one, it just hit the sweet spot. He looks at the new Hollywood, basically spanning, as the title suggests, somewhere around Easy Riders or, excuse me, Easy Rider from 1969. Really. He goes even earlier to Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 through again, a round raging bull, which would be 1980. And just looks at the people who totally changed Hollywood. They came in and sort of succeeded the, the studio system, the golden age structure of the business and turned it upside down. But at the same time, those people either, you know, it's a chicken egg situation. Did they have to have hubris in order to do that or did they get hubris because they did it? But basically how all of them in their own way were nuts and on drugs. And again, there are people who, who have serious questions about some of the claims in the book because it is not necessarily well cited, you know, or, or, and as he notes, you know, a lot of these people, it's amazing they remember anything given how many drugs they did in the, in the 70s. But very entertaining and enough of it is. Is true to, you know, make it just a book that's hard to put down.
- [20:27]
Dan Moran
Yeah, it is very hard to put down. And it reminds you of. And you, you know, this more than anybody from your position is every movie could have gone sideways in a thousand different ways. And that we, you know, you think about a movie like Easy or Raging Bull, like all the pieces that had to come together to get. To get what we just take for granted on the screen.
- [20:45]
Scott Feinberg
Totally. And you know, again, in the middle of that, you've got people like Spielberg and obviously, you know, just the drama that he went through trying to get Jaws made and then how Jaws totally changes the business. And again, some people argue for the better, some people argue for the worse. But there's no question that this generation of filmmakers who have Also been called the, you know, the movie brats. Many of them came out of film school, unlike their predecessors, all of that, you know, they, they absolutely made their mark on the business and in many cases continue to. Yeah.
- [21:15]
Dan Moran
And the book is so good. Like, I love how you said about Jaws because I've convinced my own, My own kids, you know, of course, that make them watch movies all the time, and they love Jaws as much as I do. But one thing they'll never understand is that, like, I remember being a kid when Jaws came out and what a big deal that was and how, like, that was kind of like invent. They grew up watching Marvel movies. So the idea of a blockbuster, that's just something that it's like. It's like the clouds or the, you know, the sun or the sky. But the idea of a blockbuster and how that was invented in the seventies is unbelievably told.
- [21:42]
Scott Feinberg
Absolutely. I mean, I think people forget that certainly, you know, just a few years before that, a movie would open in a single theater in, let's say, New York or elsewhere, but particularly in New York, and it could play there for a year if it was doing well. But, but there was not this idea that you, that you saturate a, you know, the, the movie going public in the way that you do now. And then it was sort of like, wait a minute. If we. I think it was a very much a financial calculation. Like, if we. We have to pay to promote these movies each time we roll them out somewhere, why don't we just roll them out everywhere and promote them heavily at that? I mean, there's. It's a lot more than, Than that, but that's. That's part of it. And again, that came, as you say, out of that. Out of that era.
- [22:27]
Dan Moran
Yeah. Which is why also kids, you know, like, you know, these kids today, but also like my kids and younger kids, they don't know what it's like when I tell them to stand in line all day to see the Empire Strikes Back.
- [22:38]
Scott Feinberg
Or that if, you know, how about that? If, let's say they love the wizard of Oz or something that wasn't a new movie. The only way you were going to see that was if it, you know, once a year when it came around on tv and then the next, be lucky if it wasn't cut to pieces for commercial reasons and all of that. So, yeah, it's weird that as movies have become more accessible in some ways, I think movie movie lovers take them for granted a bit more. It's like maybe because you were forced to seek them out. Maybe the type of movie lover from bygone years was just a little bit more obsessive. I don't know. I mean, then again, you have people on letterboxd, which. And things like that, where they're clearly very into it, so who knows?
- [23:25]
Dan Moran
Yeah. I wonder if I have a pet theory of mine. I wonder if that's the reason why you get more people like, talking during movies. When you go to the theater today, and they have to. The theaters will have these, like, warnings like, don't text her in the movie. But I wonder, like, if I just romanticize my movie going past or. Or now, I think, I wonder if more people don't. Don't revere going to the movies the way you had to 30 years ago.
- [23:47]
Scott Feinberg
I. I think it's got to be related to it. And it is. It is annoying to people like us who remember how you used to be able to. And we're not talking like ancient history. It wasn't that long ago. You know, I remember the first time it became an issue with people's outside technology being a problem was my friend's mother went to Titanic and her beeper went off. And that would. That pissed people off. But, you know, it's. It is now that you can't get through a movie without somebody's screen lighting up. And. And I think there's also just collective 80D in a way, throughout society. Nobody can focus. But anyway, I'm taking us off course.
- [24:24]
Dan Moran
No, that's all good. That's all good. Right, so let's look at number one. Number one. So this is, you know, when you see. When you scroll to number one and you see this book, at least I did. I thought to myself, right, that's. That. Okay, there you go. That's like, you know, the. The Citizen Kane of film book, so to speak.
- [24:37]
Scott Feinberg
But this is.
- [24:38]
Dan Moran
This is Francois Truffaut, his long interview with Hitchcock. People call. It's called Hitchcock, but people call it Hitchcock Truffaut. This is 1967. This got 143 votes. So talk about that one.
- [24:50]
Scott Feinberg
Yeah, I mean, it was basically from start to finish. The leader, as we, you know, voting was kind of rolling. We had ballots coming in through over a period of maybe two months. And at. I think at no time was Hitchcock Truffaut not in the lead. It was these others, as you saw, you know, some of the others we've been talking about that they came, you know, they got very respectable vote totals, but never more than Hitchcock Truffaut. Part of that, I think is that, you know, there, there are generations of people today who are in positions of power and influence in the business who grew up on that book. And maybe in, if we had gone back, you know, and done this whole 30 years ago, maybe it would have been one of these Arthur Mayer or you know, some of these other books that are now not really central to the conversation. But for people of a certain age, Hitchcock, Truffaut was, was special for a number of reasons. First of all, you've got the hot young French filmmaker at a time when the new wave's exploding. People are getting into it in America as well. He's, he's interviewing and by the way, a former film critic himself and journalist himself, so knows what he's doing interviewing, you know, the master of suspense, a British filmmaker who people you know in, had sort of been undervalued by the film intelligentsia up to that point and really going movie by movie, breaking down how Hitchcock did what he did so well. And also I think people really against come back to this idea that these movies were not instantly accessible elsewhere. Like if you were somebody who wanted to learn about film, you couldn't just go and flip on On Demand and find a movie or whatever. So here they have screen grabs of these scenes that they're talking about. And you can see in terms of just the mise en scene, in terms of just all of it, exactly how methodical Hitchcock was and how he did what he did. And so I think for that reason too, it was just, it opened up insight into how filmmaking works in a way that people had not had access to prior to that.
- [27:06]
Dan Moran
Yeah, it's such a patient book because so many interviews you read are, you know, 500 words or 600 words. But it's so patient. And it's great too. You also reminded me that, you know, there's that time when you said before about watching the wizard of Oz. Well now if you, if you tell some 16 year old you want to learn about movies, watch Vertigo and they'll say, okay, and they can go home and watch it 10 times in a row. But that was one of the lost Hitchcocks. And so this gave you this window into this, this whole idea that you can study this director totally.
- [27:31]
Scott Feinberg
And again, maybe the experience, when you know that you're going to see Vertigo and may not get a chance to do it again in the future, you're paying attention, you're not taking that opportunity for granted. And so, but, but Hitchcock, Truffaut, the Other thing that's kind of interesting is how many of the other books on this list are clearly. And in many cases it's acknowledged, influenced by Hitchcock, Truffaut. So you've got Hawks on Hawks, which is essentially, you know, a compilation of interviews. Same with Scorsese on Scorsese. But then you've got books like, you know, My Lunches with Orson or. Sorry, the.
- [28:10]
Dan Moran
This is Orson Welles.
- [28:11]
Scott Feinberg
Yeah, the one. My, my. What's the other Orson Welles one? Anyway, the point is there's. There's a number of these which are clearly structurally ripped off and not in a bad way. I mean, it's. It was a very smart way to. To present it. But again, a book that I think is of particular interest to people who are in the business maybe or want to be in the business, but would still be of interest to your average Joe, I think.
- [28:39]
Dan Moran
Yeah. And plus all those books, like you said, I think it's called My Lunches with Orson. But there's also the Peter Bogdanovich.
- [28:44]
Scott Feinberg
That is the other one, though. Yeah, the Bogdanovich one is where it's academic, the fun. Or My Lunch is with Orson's hilarious because it's just watching him bullshit about everything. But when it's more about like, let's go film by film. That was the Bogdanovich one. Exactly.
- [28:59]
Dan Moran
Yeah. And it's also reminds you that all of these characters who, like, I noticed that. So funny. One of my notes was that how many books there are, like you said, Hawks on Hawks and, and there's Cassavetes, there's a book of his interviews. And that all of these guys like Hitchcock and Orson Welles and Cats and they were, they were such great raconteurs and they would bullshit about things, but then all of a sudden Orson Welles will say the most like brilliant Shakespeare. And then I'll just keep going on.
- [29:21]
Scott Feinberg
About something else, actually. Exactly. And I don't know, you know, there, there. There are obviously some brilliant, articulate, smart filmmakers today. Like, I'd love to see something like this with David Fincher or Paul Thomas Anderson, but. But I guess that maybe it's just because people are more guarded or. I don't know what it is you don't get. We haven't had really a book of in depth interviews with, with the kind of this era's great filmmakers. In the same way, you know, there are some of these compilations of interviews that they've done with a zillion different sources, but it's not a methodical, you know, start to finish. We're going to take a few days. I mean, Hitchcock truffle. I think it was done over a week on the Fox lot where Hitchcock just understood, like, you know, he agreed we're gonna take as much time as we need to go as in depth as you want and that, you know, people just don't do that as much anymore.
- [30:17]
Dan Moran
Yeah. And those guys were so good at, like, they would just hold forth.
- [30:20]
Scott Feinberg
Yes. He was thrilled to have somebody that wanted to hear about, you know, all of his stuff. I mean, he. Especially knowing that it's, like, the top young guy in the business, you could argue that is worshiping him and trying. Trying to make the argument that he is underappreciated. You can imagine that a guy with his ego would like that. And I guess I'm just trying to think what the equivalent might be for. For, you know, if there was to be another one of these these days, maybe it would have to be something like a Fincher interviewing Scorsese.
- [30:54]
Dan Moran
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what. That would be a great combo. Fincher interviewing Fincher on Scorsese. So those are the top five. And, you know, I could do this all day, and so could you, I'm sure. But I want to do. So I want to kind of, like, skip a stone and, like, get gut reactions to some of the other ones on the list that, you know, books I forgot about, or I was like, oh, yeah, that's a good one. Or things I saw. So these are in no particular order, but I'm interested to hear your take on this. So one book that I saw on the list, and it's a. You have a couple novels on there. You have the. You have the Player, and you have Data Locust, but one novel that I. That I love, that I was so happy to see, this came in at number 47. This is Get Shorty, the 1990 novel by Elmer Leonard. Now, I love Elmore Leonard. He wrote me a letter once, which I treasure. Yeah. So he was. I just. I just. You know, it's hard to find people who don't like Elmer Leonard. What is it. What is it about the novel Get Shorty that you think as somebody who works there, like, that book, like, gets Hollywood.
- [31:50]
Scott Feinberg
So Elmore Leonard had worked in Hollywood as a writer for years and I think had, you know, kind of a cynical view about how it all works out. Just like, by the way, Fitzgerald, who has on the list, last Tycoon, just like Nathaniel west, who had written and struggled as a writer. You know, there's often great writers come to Hollywood because they can get paid sometimes, but they are, they've always been kind of looked at as sellouts for having done so. So I think Elmore Leonard got some of that dynamic personally on a very personal level. He also knows that there's nothing that people in Hollywood, you know, like more than having the mirror held up to themselves. The reason that the Artist and Argo and so many books or movies about the business are, are embraced by the business. So, you know, I think there was a lot of that. It's, it's just got his, it's a thriller. I think part of the unfortunate thing is that actually the film version which followed in 95 and then the more recent TV version, I don't think they necessarily enhance its, its standing. They weren't up to its level. There are very few movies, movie adaptations of these great books that, that do meet their love. I mean, look, the Last Tycoon movie wasn't great. We could go on with others. But I think that, yeah, it's just great mixture of crime in Hollywood in a way that people can't get enough of. Similarly, I, you know, I think I put as the, for each item on the list, we, I, I suggested another book that people who like that one might want to check out. And we have the Black Dahlia as another example of just, you know, kind of the underbelly of Hollywood people, People get a kick out of.
- [33:43]
Dan Moran
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So here's, here's a book that I was surprised to see on the list because I, I think it's been, it's been so widely discredited, but it keeps selling. Which is number 18. Hol Babylon.
- [33:53]
Scott Feinberg
Totally. I mean, so Kenneth Anger just died within the last year. I think this is an avant garde filmmaker, former child star who, I don't know what his deal was. I guess he was a pretty eccentric guy and he recognized that, you know, pre super supermarket tabloids, pre tmz, you know, there was, he somehow recognized that there would be an appetite for gossipy stuff. The, A lot of this book is just, you know, just. I don't even know how to, I think the New York Times called it without a redeeming, a single redeeming quality or something like that. I mean it's all bottom feeding stuff like. And by the way, much of it turns out to be bs. So he claimed Jane Mansfield was beheaded in the car accident that killed her. Not true. There was a wig that flew out of the car and was photographed next to the car. And so he reported, you know, there's no fact checking that happened here, but that did not deter people from buying the book, from buying its sequel, from, you know, running with a lot of these urban legends to this day. And, you know, he. He had no shame in terms of showing photos of. Of corpses and reporting, you know, scandals and things. So. So my gut is to not tell people to go read this one because I think it's disreputable and kind of gross. But on the other hand, it's on the list probably correctly, because it was absolutely widely consumed, widely influential, and again, the world that we live in today, where with social media people reporting stuff that's not checked out and whatever it does, I think in some ways trace back to this kind of a thing.
- [35:37]
Dan Moran
Yeah, it's very easy for people now to throw the stone into that glass house and say, well, we're not like that anymore. But I think he can look at us and go, you kind of are.
- [35:45]
Scott Feinberg
Exactly. Exactly.
- [35:47]
Dan Moran
So there's a trilogy of books on the list, and all three of them are terrific. I've read all three of them. And what's interesting about them is that one of the books that I nominated that did not make it, which. That's okay. There's a book called Space Odyssey by Michael Benson about the making of 2001. I think that's wonderful. And there's a lot of great books about the making of great movies, like Pulling Kale's. The Citizen Kane book is on there, where she goes to the whole authorship thing. And so we love those kinds of books. But there's three books on there that have something in common. And I want to get your reaction to these. This is Final Cut by Stephen Bach, the Devil's Candy and also Movie by Lillian Ross.
- [36:23]
Scott Feinberg
Yes. So the. The idea reminds. So you said a devil's candy.
- [36:30]
Dan Moran
Final cut.
- [36:31]
Scott Feinberg
Final cut, yeah. So these are examples of. Of books that. Where a person chronicles a movie going off the rails. Now I. I can take them one by one where the. The. Really. The original of these, as far as I know, is pictured by Lillian Ross from the New Yorker, who ends up embedded essentially with the red badge of courage of production from mgm. That it wasn't a disastrous movie, but it was. Was a troubled production. It kind of was emblematic of. Of what the issues were between Louis B. Mayer, who was still running the studio, and Dory Sherry, who would soon be running the studio, and this was Sherry's pet project. And just, you know, John Houston on. It's a. It was just the first of its kind, but Then you end up with a lot of these books that are act, you know, with acknowledgment of their author modeled on that one. And so, like Julie Salomon with Devil's Candy chronicled Bonfire, the Vanities, which. The difference was, in her case, she chronicled a movie that was an unmitigated disaster. And so in some ways, that's more interesting for the reader because it's not just showing you how a movie comes together, but how people handle increasingly bad news while you know the stakes of the movies. And then that is even more the case with. With Stephen Bach's book, where you get into Heaven's Gate, where you've got the guy, the director of the movie that had just won Best Picture and who was riding high, Michael Trimino, going on to his next thing with all kinds of arrogance and just being indulged way beyond the way anyone should have been with Heaven's Gate. And how that just completely fell apart. Now, in this case, Stephen Bach was, I don't think, on set every day or anything, but he was the. He was an executive at United Artists who was. Which was the. The backers of Heaven's Gate. And so he was documenting the train crash from. From start to finish. But I think in some cases, or some of the time, from the New York office offices of ua.
- [38:46]
Dan Moran
Yeah, I call. I called them. I called Lillian Ross's book Movie by mistake. It's Picture, of course. But what's interesting. What's interesting about that is, of course, you think if you're going to read a book about a John Huston movie, okay, do the Maltese Falcon or do the Dead or Under the Volcano or any number of them. But it's so interesting that. That you end up reading about the Red Badge of Courage, which really doesn't impress anybody, but it reminds you how many moving parts go into a movie that you might just even watch and be like, man.
- [39:08]
Scott Feinberg
Exactly. And, you know, I think part of it is that what these all speak to is the idea that kind of comes back to William Goldman. None of these people went into these movies thinking they were making, you know, either a mediocre or a disastrous movie. And the difference between a success and a failure is often not that large. You know, it's just a couple decisions that go the wrong way. And. And so I am trying to think as. As we speak. I mean, I guess you're talking about, correctly, that that Space Odyssey book, that's a movie where it came together. There were a lot of gambles, and it came Together. And certainly the Raising Kane portion of the Citizen Kane book, although that's different in the sense that it's retroactively chronicling what may or may not have happened to lead to that film. But the bottom line is that these are all interesting in their own way for anyone who wants to get into the process of just how a movie comes together.
- [40:06]
Dan Moran
Yeah, I was lucky. I got to interview Julie Solomon at one time. But I said, well. And she was. And she was very. She said she didn't go into it to write a hatchet job because I said to her, what's great about her book? And it's a. It's a substantial, you know, long book. And she's. I go. You really get a sense for what, like, the second assistant director has to do. And. And, you know, somebody's got to move a painting from one side of the country to another because that's what the art director wants. And she said, all these people go in with the best intentions. And I said to her, well, what's it like now when you watch Bonfire the Vanities? Like, what do you think? Because she was there with Brian De Palma, knew him, and. And she said, I can't watch it objectively. And I don't. I just can't watch it that way anymore because I know all the people that were involved and all the human beings that really thought they were making a great movie.
- [40:49]
Scott Feinberg
I think that that's. It's very interesting. And by the way, as you say, Brian De Palma was someone she knew who invited her onto the set. He. He's the one that brought this on himself, so.
- [40:58]
Dan Moran
Right.
- [40:58]
Scott Feinberg
Again, because he didn't think he was making a. A crappy movie. But they're. Yeah, it's. It's very interesting. And, And. And I think for anyone, you know, the. The magic of the movies gets a little bit lost when you. If anybody who spends a day on set watching a movie being made with people doing endless takes or going to their trailer or waiting for the light to be. You know, it's not. The. The process of making a movie is very removed from the magic that we see when. When we consume a movie. So. So these. These are both interesting and in some ways disillusioning to read these books because you. You know, you do realize this is. This is a job for the people who are making it and doesn't always go so well.
- [41:44]
Dan Moran
Yeah, it's instructive to us. The way that we said before about easy riders reading bulls is that we take, you know, we. We've all read those, those columns about like guess who almost had the part of, you know, Don Corleone or something. And now of course you take it for granted that Brando's Don Corleone done it was, it was ordained from heaven. But that could have gone a. I thought of that because in Bonfire, of course now it's very easy to say like why would you have Tom Hanks of all people play Sherman McCoy? Like it totally, totally doesn't fit. But Brian De Palma is not stupid and he knows how to make a movie. But at the time, you know, like Tom Hanks wasn't the Tom Hanks we know now. And you know, and that it's very easy to second guess and also how.
- [42:25]
Scott Feinberg
Many people have been rewarded for where they go against type in a part that that's often what they would with force. So you know, you sometimes you can't know until you try it.
- [42:34]
Dan Moran
Right. And of course, as we all know, the studio didn't want Brando for the Godfather.
- [42:38]
Scott Feinberg
Right, Right, exactly. I mean it's, there's so many cooks in the kitchen of, of these movies that you know, it can just be a matter of one voice that shouldn't be regarded more than the others getting, you know, it's just, it's a fluke sometimes.
- [42:54]
Dan Moran
Yeah, so. So one of the categories that, that really fascinated me on the list was there's a lot of memoirs and autobiographies. But what I great about the list was that it's, there's not a lot of these like ghost written books or like things that were churned out in a hurry. Like these are like substantial biographies. I'm sorry, autobiographies and memoirs. So what are some of your favorites on the list? Or maybe that didn't make the list.
- [43:16]
Scott Feinberg
Well, I'm glad you're asking now. I need to just think though, what I, what I, what I voted for. I will say that, yeah, there's, there's any number I, I trying to remember off the top of my head, but.
- [43:32]
Dan Moran
I will tell you if Kurosawas is on there. Kira Kurosawas is on there.
- [43:36]
Scott Feinberg
Yes, that was the nice. Yeah. If I can go beyond just autobiography and memoir and tell you a few others that I wish were on there. I know everybody thinks David Thompson's best book is the New Biographical Dictionary of Film. I actually think it's the whole equation, which is a book that's much more just kind of musings, but on very interesting assorted things that sort of. And by the way, it traces Back that title to the Last Tycoon, where there's this saying that there were only a handful of people in the history of Hollywood have known the whole equation of the business basically in their head. And so this is. Which was a reference to Thalberg. And anyway, it all. I just think David Thompson's a wonderful writer who knows so much, and I enjoy his reviews, but I'm less interested in his quirky takes than when he writes beautifully about just the way the business has evolved. And similarly, a book of essays of his called Beneath Mulholland I think was great. I had a professor at Brandeis University who's written some great books, which I voted for, that didn't make the cut. They didn't miss by a lot. But Tom Dougherty has written the biography of this guy, Joseph Breen, who was probably the most influential figure in Hollywood in the 30s. I mean, he was the censored and nothing got out without passing through Joseph Breen and his. And his office. Doherty also did a great book about Hollywood and Hitler, which to me was. Was fascinating. And, you know, we can go on and on. Every one of his has been great. I have a co worker, or once upon a time co worker at the Hollywood Reporter now at Chapman University, running the film school is Stephen Galloway, who's done nice books on Sherry Lansing. Yeah, so this is the problem. You know, I think a lot of people. I don't know how you tackled your ballot, but for me and others who I've talked to, what I initially did was I. I went through the. All the different candidates and checked off all the ones that could plausibly be on my list. And I think I probably had like 80. And then it becomes a matter of. And when I say on my list of my top 25, and then it's just. How do you whittle it down? It's. It's brutal. But I, I think a lot of us, what we try to do is have different eras, different, you know, genres of book represented. I, I think that, for instance, Donald Bogle, who's on the list with his book about the way that black people have been represented in film, his landmark book from the 70s, Tom's. It's a long, long title that I. I'm gonna butcher. But he's. He's great, but he could have been on there for his biography of Dorothy Dandridge or another book he wrote called Hollywood Black. And so I could go on and on forever about the ones that I love that didn't. And by the way, we all could Because Steven Spielberg, for instance, sent us his ballot. One of his picks was a book about David Lean that, that didn't make it. You know, we have David Zaslav, Ava DuVernay. Just I think what's fun is. And we're going to add more of the actual ballots of high profile jurors to our website. But right now you can go on and see exactly what Spielberg voted for. Ava DuVernay, David Zaslav, Laura Dern. And we're going to add more because sometimes maybe you know, people are just very into Spielberg and they'd rather go through the 25 that he, he picked. And, and I think that's great if they do.
- [47:13]
Dan Moran
Yeah, that's. That, that's a great way to do it too because like, you know, like follows like exactly. I want to last question is, is what are some of the titles that, that you wanted that or that you hoped would get on there or ones that you just thought of like after you mailed that you must have had moments especially working on the project where you were done. Like I should have put that one on there. Oh, oh, that's a good one too. Because the.
- [47:33]
Scott Feinberg
From a lot of people. Yeah, they said, oh, I forgot to, you know, or you overlook. But I, I think that I can tell you another one that I would have that I had on my ballot that didn't make it where there. It's still, it's an author who's still on there with two books. So not, don't feel too sorry for her, but Janine Basinger is just a wonderful writer and chronicler of film. She, she founded and ran the Wesleyan Film Program. She has all of Clint Eastwood's papers. I mean she's great and she's on the list with both this book called the Star Machine about how the studio system worked. And then as a co author with Sam Watson of Hollywood the Oral History, a very recent book, I would have put her, I did put her on my ballot for a coffee table book that she did called American Cinema, which I am ashamed to admit when I was a kid I borrowed and did not return from my library. So the years later I mailed them a copy with an apology for it bothered me that I had done that. But it was such a great book that I couldn't bear to not have it and it was not easily locatable. But that is one that I had to put on my list. There are just so many. I mean. Yeah, we could go on for. How about you? What about yours? Which were the ones that you were.
- [48:58]
Dan Moran
The one that I. That I was surprised didn't make it was there's a book by Nick Davis called Competing with Idiots, and it's a dual biography of Herman and Joe Mankiewicz. And I've interviewed him as well. And he, you know, he's. He's the grandson of Herman Megawitz and the great nephew of Joe. And I thought that. I thought that was such a great portrait of. Of talent and. And wasting it and what the industry was like, and. And this family, this. This whole Make Itwicz family. Everyone else is an idiot. You had to compete with them.
- [49:27]
Scott Feinberg
It's a great book. And I think the thing, though, that may have hurt that and may have hurt the Space Odyssey book and certain others is they're just. They're relatively new, and so people are still catching up with them now. That said, somehow we still wound up on the list with Tarantino's new book, the book called Cinema Speculation. We have Hollywood the Oral History, which is also new. We have Sam Watson's book the Big Goodbye, about the making of Chinatown. So there are recent books, a few of them that made it. But I think it's very hard to break through the noise in the immediate aftermath of being released. But I have no doubt that if we did this list again in 10 years, some of the older ones that are on the list now will fall off and will be replaced by much newer ones because they're just fresher in your mind.
- [50:16]
Dan Moran
Yeah, it'll be like the BFI list, where it's every. You know, you see, like where Vertigo and Citizen Kane go up and down at the top five.
- [50:22]
Scott Feinberg
Exactly, exactly. And by the way, I was really happy to see the inclusion of the Making of the wizard of Oz, which is another book that I read as a kid. This is Al Jean Harmetz, who is still with us at 93 and is going to be joining us at an event which. I'm not sure where you're based, Stan, but you're certainly invited, as are your listeners. On October 28th. It's a Saturday, two. Well, now. Yeah, I guess two Saturdays from now at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood at 4pm Free admission if you RSVP in advance. We are gonna do a gathering, unlike any other in history of as many of the authors of these books as we can as. As are able to attend. Obviously, most of them are. I think probably 50% at least, of the authors are no longer alive. But the ones who are alive, from Ronan Farrow to Cameron Crowe to Sam Watson and Al Jean Harmetz, I Think it, I think we've got a total of about 17 coming and it's Eddie Muller, Dennis McDougall. I, I, I'm gonna, you know what I'm gonna do quickly while we're talking, if you don't mind. I want to send, I want to give you, I want to read to you this because it's like, like this is exciting to me to have this group of, of people in one place and my job is going to be to kind of treat it like speed dating. We're going to do a few minutes with each of them and then we're going to have everybody up together. So here is our list of who's currently confirmed and we may add some more, but we've got Carrie, Bo, I think some people pronounce, I'm not sure the correct pronunciation, but without lying down. Francis Marion and the Powerful women of Early Hollywood. So Carrie will be there. A. Scott Berg for Goldwyn, A Biography. Cameron Crowe for Conversations with Wilder. Ronan Farrell for Catch and Kill. Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters, my colleague at the Hollywood Reporter for Hit and Run, How John Peters and Peter Goober Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood. Al Jean Harmon, the Making of the wizard of Oz Leonard Malton, Leonard Maltin's movie guide. Dennis McDougall, the last mogul, Lou Wasserman, MCA and the Hidden History of Hollywood. James Andrew Miller for Powerhouse, the Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artist Agency, A great oral History. Eddie Muller for Dark City the Lost World of Film Noir. John Pearson for Spike Mike Slackers and dykes. George Stevens Jr. For both conversations with the Great Movie Makers of Hollywood's Golden Age at the American Film Institute and Conversations at the American Film Institute with the great movie makers the Next Generation. Michael Tolkien for the Player, Christine Vachon for A Killer Life. Mark A. Vieira for George Terrell's Hollywood and Sam Watson for both the Big Goodbye and Hollywood the Oral History. So this is going to be a heck of an event and I, I hope you're able to join us.
- [53:01]
Dan Moran
Yeah, that's great. You have to at least take a photo to be like your Sergeant Pepper's photo.
- [53:05]
Scott Feinberg
That's exactly. No, you know what we were saying, this is going to be, if you remember the old photo, I think it was MGM's 25th anniversary where they had all the great stars up there. That's, we're definitely getting that shot.
- [53:18]
Dan Moran
No, that's great, that's great. So, Scott Feinberg, we could do this all day, but I want to let you go. I just want to say it's been great talking to today. Everybody should check out the Hollywood Reporters list of the 100 Greatest Film Film books of all time and get the checklist. And plus more is going to be added to the website. It's it's a great, great film education for you wherever you dip in. So Scott, thank you so much. This was really fun.
- [53:39]
Scott Feinberg
Thank you man. I appreciate it. Take care. Of well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten.
- [53:55]
Dan Moran
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Scott Feinberg
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Dan Moran
So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year.
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Scott Feinberg
What do you have to lose? Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time.
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Dan Moran
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Scott Feinberg
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