Presenting a rare look at American moviemaking through the eyes of one the living legends of the screen, "Charlton Heston's Hollywood" surveys postwar Hollywood--the actors and directors who have shaped the industry, the major historical events, and the ever-changing tastes of the movie-going public. 150 photos. 150 sketches by Heston.
ABOUT JEAN-PIERRE ISBOUTS
Jean-Pierre Isbouts is an author, historian and award-winning filmmaker. He is currently a Professor in two doctoral programs at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, CA. He has written extensively on art, biblical history and archaeology. He is also a musicologist who has produced classical music with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and ensembles in Amsterdam, New York and Los Angeles.
BACKGROUND
Isbouts was born in Eindhoven, Holland and studied Attic Greek and Latin before continuing in archeology, art history and musicology at Leyden University. He completed his doctoral research on the 19th century Beaux-Arts architectural firm of Carrère & Hastings at Columbia University in New York. He then joined the American Council for the Arts (ACA) in New York City, which advocated a strong continued role of the Federal Government in support of the arts.
MULTIMEDIA PUBLICATIONS
It was through ACA that Isbouts was introduced to North American Philips, which in 1981 commissioned him to write and direct the film "Van Gogh Revisited", starring Leonard Nimoy. This film was subsequently released on laserdisc by Philips in both the U.S. and Europe, and ranks as the world's first interactive entertainment program released internationally. Later, Dr. Isbouts was appointed head of the Authoring Group, a global software engineering firm owned by Philips Electronics, followed by his appointment as head of the ArtSpace Studio, a unit of Philips Interactive Media in Los Angeles, CA.
At ArtSpace, Isbouts was able to put his ideas about art and modern digital media in practice. In the span of less than two years, he produced nine award-winning multimedia programs, including "Harvest of the Sun: Van Gogh Revisited" (a re-make of the 1981 laserdisc); "The Renaissance of Florence"; "The French Impressionists"; "The World of Impressionism"; and "Art of the Czars". Most of these were subsequently translated and released in seven languages.
In 1994, Isbouts designed and produced one of Germany's first all-multimedia encyclopedias (the "Lexikon", for media publishing giant Bertelsmann), and also designed and produced the first multimedia encyclopedia in Dutch (the "Standaard Encyclopedie".) The latter was a run-away commercial success and is one of the few multimedia programs to be crowned with a Platinum CD.
In 1996, Isbouts co-wrote and directed "Hamlet: A Murder Mystery", a massive game based on the Castle Rock Entertainment epic starring Kenneth Branagh, followed by the acclaimed two-part program "Charlton Heston's Voyage Through the Bible", for Agamemnon Films and Jones InterCable.
FILM AND TELEVISION
In 1998, together with Sir David Frost and Porchlight Entertainment, Isbouts co-wrote and produced "Inside the Cold War", the acclaimed History Channel mini-series released both for television and on CD-ROM. This was followed by the feature-length film "Walt: The Man behind the Myth", also directed by Isbouts, which premiered in Monte Carlo in 2001 and was subsequently broadcast by ABC in prime-time.
His most recent films are "Miraculous Health", a 3-part mini-series for Public Television, and the acclaimed feature-length docu-drama "Operation Valkyrie", released by Koch Entertainment.
Dr. Isbouts was previously Professor of Media Studies at Los Angeles-based National University and is currently Professor of Media Psychology and Media Studies at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, CA.
BOOKS
His recent books include "Charlton Heston's Hollywood" (GoodTimes Publishing) and "Discovering Walt" (Hyperion). In 2007, National Geographic Society published his first book in his trilogy on the source and history of the three monotheistic faiths. This was the bestseller "The Biblical World", which explored the foundation of the Judeo-Christian tradition in the context of the Near East geography and archaeology.
This was followed in 2008 by "Young Jesus: Restoring the Lost Years of a Social Activist and Religious Dissident," which offered a forensic reconstruction of Herod Antipas' Lower Galilee and the socio-economic context of Jesus' New Kingdom program.
The third book in the trilogy is the upcoming "From Moses to Muhammad: The Extraordinary Shared History of Judaism, Christianity and Islam," which Francis Peters ("The Children of Abraham" calls "an exciting and scrupulously fair book.
"From Moses to Muhammad" tells the fascinating story of the shared origins of the three faiths as seen through the unique prism of both the Bible and the Koran (or Qur'an). In doing so, the book identifies striking parallels, producing a narrative that, in the words of Rabbi Peter Rubinstein, "is especially refreshing in our religiously charged times." These parallels, Isbouts argues, were caused to a great extent by the specific needs of their immediate socio-political context.
The result is a narrative that, while grounded in secular scholarship, makes an important contribution to understanding the shared vocabulary of the three great faiths - and particularly, the vernacular of their biblical narratives.
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