For over fifty years, the American Film Institute has flourished as one of America’s great cultural entities. Its graduates, faculty, supporters, and trustees have included such acclaimed individuals as Steven Spielberg, Maya Angelou, Gregory Peck, Meryl Streep, Les Moonves, Patty Jenkins, David Lynch, Jane Fonda, Edward James Olmos, Shonda Rhimes, James L. Brooks, Michael Nesmith, Sir Howard Stringer, and many other respected leaders in the worlds of film, television, digital media, and p...

Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her multi-award-winning talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and is currently North America's ...

A behind-the-scenes chronicle of a beloved American media empire and the men behind it, including Martin Goodman, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby.A New York Times–Bestseller"A definitive portrait of comics in American culture." — The Wall Street JournalIn the early 1960s, a struggling company called Marvel Comics presented a cast of brightly costumed characters distinguished by smart banter and compellingly ...

"The definitive history of the studio" created by the larger-than-life team of Spielberg, Geffen, and Katzenberg ( Los Angeles Times).For sixty years, since the birth of United Artists, the studio landscape was unchanged. Then came Hollywood's Circus Maximus—created by director Steven Spielberg, billionaire David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who gave the world The Lion King—an entertainment empire called DreamWorks. Now Nicole LaPorte, who cove...

Few jobs in Hollywood are as shrouded in mystery as the role of the producer. What does it take to be a producer, how does one get started, and what on earth does one actually do? In So You Want to Be a Producer Lawrence Turman, the producer of more than forty films, including The Graduate, The River Wild, Short Circuit, and American History X, and Endowed Chair of the famed Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California,...

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American business magnate, animator, cartoonist, producer, director, screenwriter, philanthropist and voice actor. A major figure within the American animation industry and throughout the world, he is regarded as an international icon, well known for his influence and contributions to the field of entertainment during the 20th century. As a Hollywood business mogul, he, along with his brother Roy O. Disney, co-founded Walt Disney Productions, which la...

A longtime industry insider and acclaimed Hollywood historian goes behind the scenes to tell the stories of 15 of the most spectacular movie megaflops of the past 50 years, such as Cleopatra, The Cotton Club, and Waterworld. He recounts, in every gory detail, how enormous hubris, unbridled ambition, artistic hauteur, and bad business sense on the parts of Tinsel Town wheeler-dealers and superstars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Clint Eastwood, and Francis Ford Coppola, conspired to engender som...

The Magic Kingdom sheds new light on the cultural icon of "Uncle Walt." Watts digs deeply into Disney's private life, investigating his roles as husband, father, and brother and providing fresh insight into his peculiar psyche-his genuine folksiness and warmth, his domineering treatment of colleagues and friends, his deepest prejudices and passions. Full of colorful sketches of daily life at the Disney Studio and tales about the creation of Disneyland and Disney World, The Mag...

During the heyday of the studio system spanning the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, virtually all the American motion picture industry’s money, power, and prestige came from a single activity: selling tickets at the box office. Today, the movie business is just a small, highly visible outpost in a media universe controlled by six corporations–Sony, Time Warner, NBC Universal, Viacom, Disney, and NewsCorporation. These conglomerates view films as part of an immense, synergistic, vertically integrate...

Action! Excitement! Transmedia! Step inside Comic-Con to discover the cultural trends that will shape our world“I’ve been in comics so long I sometimes think I invented ’em! But I just read Rob Salkowitz’s terrific new book and, y’know what? Even I learned new stuff! If you’re a comic book nut like me, miss it at your own risk!”—Stan Lee, Legendary Comic Creator and Publisher“Salkowitz tells it pretty much like it is: the good, the b...

Based on four years of intense research and exclusive interviews with numerous associates, friends and relations of Disney, Marc Eliot’s explosive book presents the dark side of Walt Disney. From his 25 year association with the FBI as an informant rooting our Communists, subversives and Jews, to his phobic behavior obsessive hand-washing, heavy drinking, sexual inadequacies, and his life long search for his real mother Eliot shows how these psycho-sexual conflicts drove him to despair and ...

This ultimate insider’s guide to selling a screenplay shows you how to crack open today’s movie and television markets.“An informative, engaging look at the inside of the dream factory. This is a terrific aid for screenwriters who are trying to gain insight into the Hollywood system.”—David Kirkpatrick, producer, former head of Paramount PicturesEverybody has a story to tell. Everybody wants to write the great American screenplay. But what ...