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"It's the Pictures That Got Small": Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood's Golden Age (Film and Culture Series) Kindle Edition
Screenwriter Charles Brackett is best remembered as the writing partner of director Billy Wilder, who once referred to the pair as “the happiest couple in Hollywood,” collaborating on such classics as The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard. He was also a perceptive chronicler of the entertainment industry, and in this annotated collection of writings from dozens of Brackett’s unpublished diaries, film historian Anthony Slide clarifies Brackett's critical contribution to Wilder’s films and enriches our knowledge of Wilder’s achievements in writing, direction, and style.
Brackett’s diaries re-create the initial meetings of the talent responsible for Ninotchka, Hold Back the Dawn, Ball of Fire, The Major and the Minor, Five Graves to Cairo, The Lost Weekend, and Sunset Boulevard, recounting the breakthroughs and the breakdowns that ultimately forced these collaborators to part ways. In addition to a portrait of Wilder, this is rare view of a producer who was a president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Screen Writers Guild, a New Yorker drama critic, and a member of the Algonquin Round Table. With insight into the dealings of Paramount, Universal, MGM, and RKO, and legendary figures such as Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Edna Ferber, and Dorothy Parker, this book reveals the political and creative intrigue at the heart of Hollywood’s most significant films.
“A fascinating look at Hollywood in its classic period, and a unique and indispensable must-have for any movie buff.” —Chicago Tribune
“This feels as close as we can get to being in the presence of Wilder’s genius, and he emerges as the cruelest as well as the wittiest of men.” —The Guardian
“Not only rare insight into their often-stormy partnership but also an insider’s view of Hollywood during that era.” —Los Angeles Times
“Very entertaining.” —Library Journal
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherColumbia University Press
- Publication dateDecember 16, 2014
- File size8158 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Charlie was always very kind and friendly to me and I very much look forward to the publication of his diaries. -- Don Bachardy
This view from deep inside the studio system at its height is one of the best books ever about Hollywood, as well one of the finest on writing in years. ― Black Mask
Anyone interested in the golden age of film should enjoy this very entertaining and illustrative look at the film industry of the 1930s and 1940s. ― Library Journal
What we see in this volume is a writer much like Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard. At the end of a long day spent negotiating titanic egos, he simply wants to sit down and write the thoughts that race through his head like a dozen locomotives. -- James Hughes ― Film Comment
Fascinating passages are lightly sprinkled throughout.... The accounts of how Sunset Boulevard arrived on screen in its finished form are among the most entertaining in Brackett's diaries. -- David Gritten ― The Daily Telegraph
This is a book I was literally unable to put down once I began reading it, and I suspect everyone with a reverence for Hollywood in its glory days will feel the same. Here is a rare chance to read what was going on in Charles Brackett's mind and his world while he made so many of the movies we revere so highly today. -- Robert Osborne, Primetime host of Turner Classic Movies
While anecdotes... sustain readers across almost four hundred pages of diary entries, their value to scholars and historians lies in the ways they exemplify the daily working life of writers in the studio system. -- Mary Desjardins ― Film Quarterly
Slide has culled from Brackett's voluminous diaries a treasure trove of scenes and wit from Golden Age Hollywood.... A book to be skimmed and referenced―but primarily relished.... Recommended. ― CHOICE
Brackett's 1932-49 dispatches from Hollywood's front line, are crammed with sugar-free, often salty observations. The author's honesty is certified by the fact that he can admire a man one minute and put him down the next. When that man is Billy Wilder, which it often is, the result is a day-by-day, year-on-year, pointilliste portrait of a sacred monster, warts and all. -- Frederic Raphael ― Wall Street Journal
What is possibly most fascinating about the book is its insight into the operation of Hollywood in the golden years of the studio system. -- Douglas Allen ― Media Education Journal
A collection of Charles Brackett's diaries, expertly edited by Anthony Slide to paint a multifaceted portrait of Brackett's long-term collaborator Billy Wilder. This feels as close as we can get to being in the presence of Wilder's genius, and he emerges as the cruellest as well as the wittiest of men. -- Jonathan Coe ― The Guardian
Charles Brackett has always lived in the shadow of his high-profile writing partner, Billy Wilder. This valuable compendium of diary entries from 1933 to 1950, painstakingly edited by Anthony Slide, not only sheds light on that renowned collaboration but evokes the reality of daily life in the heyday of the Hollywood studio system. -- Leonard Maltin ― Indiewire
"It's the Pictures That Got Small": Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood's Golden Age edited by Anthony Slide, offers not only rare insight into their often-stormy partnership but also an insider's view of Hollywood during that era. -- Susan King ― Los Angeles Times
Brackett's diaries read like a funnier, better-paced version of Barton Fink. -- Sean Elder ― Newsweek
["It's the Pictures That Got Small"] reveals the conflicts that led to some of the best pictures of the last century. -- Robert Fulford ― National Post
Charlie would often talk about his diaries as I worked with him and Billy Wilder on the screenplay of. I am thrilled that those diaries are now published and gratified to be a part of them. -- Donald M. Marshman Jr.
Charles Brackett was an outstanding writer and producer of his era. Like him, I have served as the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and also like him, I had had a long association with Billy Wilder. I am therefore delighted that Charlie's diaries are being published, providing us with his unique insight into Billy and Hollywood's golden age. -- Walter Mirisch
Brackett's book is a fascinating look at Hollywood in its classic period, and a unique and indispensable must-have for any movie buff. -- Tom Moran ― Chicago Tribune
Reading Charles Brackett's diary entries is like stepping into a time machine. It provides a vivid and valuable account of day-to-day life in the heyday of Hollywood's studio system―and a bittersweet chronicle of his volatile relationship with Billy Wilder. I couldn't put the book down. -- Leonard Maltin
There are diamonds aplenty in Brackett's diary entries. -- Christopher Silvester ― Literary Review
The book is packed with revealing cameos from some of the greatest names of Hollywood's greatest era, and is a valuable record of the texture of life there in those years. -- Henry K. Miller ― Sight and Sound
The diaries give us a view of Brackett, Wilder, the collaboration, and life at the studio with an immediacy that memoirs don't have. -- Tom Stempel ― Creative Screenwriting
A fascinating look into the Golden Age of Hollywood from an insider's personal, unbiased point of view.... It's the Pictures That Got Small will find a permanent spot on many a film buff's bookshelf. -- Christopher Forsley ― PopMatters
Above all, "It's the Pictures That Got Small" is an indispensable guide to the complex, increasingly awkward relationship between two men who had next to nothing in common and yet contrived to make a fair number of the studio system's finest films. ― Commentary
This superbly edited and annotated book is a worthy testimony to a troubled individual in an industry he unjustly denigrated but which he undoubtedly enriched. -- Neil Sinyard ― Neil Sinyard on Film
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B00O0G15M2
- Publisher : Columbia University Press; Annotated edition (December 16, 2014)
- Publication date : December 16, 2014
- Language : English
- File size : 8158 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 464 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #603,995 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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