Customer Reviews

Dogville vs. Hollywood: The Independents and the Hollywood Machine

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This book is really good. It traces the beginnings of independent cinema in Hollywood from the '50's on up to the present day. The author is strongly opinionated about which movies are bad and which are good. I didn't always agree with his opinions, but by reading the entire book, I felt I learned a lot about how film studios work, and just what directors have to go through to get their work onto the screen, without the interference of studios and corporate interests. Interspersed throughout the book are entertaining ancedotes about various directors, from Alfred Hitchcock, to Francis Ford Coppola, to Quentin Tarantino. I have taken some film classes, and felt I learned more from this book than from the classes. For example, in one class I took, we watched "Mean Streets" by Martin Scorcese. The professor told us that it was an innovative film, because of the camera techniques used. However, this book explained in greater detail just what the importance of the movie "Mean Streets" was; the thought behind the film, the dynamics of the '70's that affected the film, and the studio/director climate in which the film was made.