Going to the Movies: A Personal Journey Through Four Decades of Modern Film [Paperback]

Syd Field (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 9, 2001

Featuring insights ... analysis ... great films and filmmakers from “the most-sought-after screenwriting teacher in the world” (The Hollywood Reporter).

A life in film. An extraordinary career. An unforgettable story — from noted lecturer, teacher, and bestselling author Syd Field.

What makes a great movie great? ... An actor legendary? ... A screenplay extraordinary or just ordinary?

Syd Field has spent a lifetime seeking answers to these questions. His bestselling books on the art and craft of screenwriting have become the film industry’s gold standard.

Now Syd Field tells his own remarkable story, sharing the insight and experience gleaned from an extraordinary career. Using classic movies from the past and present — from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane to Andy and Larry Wachowski’s The Matrix — Field provides a guided tour of the basic elements common to all great films.

Learn what makes La Grande Illusion a groundbreaking, timeless classic ... how Casablanca teaches one of the most important elements of creating memorable characters for the screen ... why Pulp Fiction might be one of the most influential films of our time.

Discover the legendary filmmakers, films, and stars who shaped Field’s understanding of the medium.... Meet Jean Renoir, the great French director who steered his young Berkeley protégé away from medicine into film.... Watch a dazzling young Francis Ford Coppola as he directs his thesis film at UCLA.... Spend an amazing summer with Sam Peckinpah as he shares the screenwriting techniques behind his classic western The Wild Bunch.

Rich in anecdote and insight, Going to the Movies will both entertain and inform, deepening every moviegoer’s appreciation of the magic behind the silver screen.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Watching a movie is easy. But it's hard to figure out how its structure, images, acting, camera work and scripts can make us respond so powerfully. Writing in a chatty, informal manner, the author of several popular screenplay-writing manuals (including Screenplay, which is used in numerous college courses) turns to autobiography to meditate on what makes a movie great. Whether he is addressing his friendship with the great French director Jean Renoir, whose masterpiece La Grande Illusion Field considers one of the foundations of modern cinema, or about his classes with the great feminist film director Dorothy Arzner, Field conveys an enormous amount of technical and practical knowledge. Often delivering fascinating, miscellaneous bits of information (e.g., Jim Morrison named his band the Doors after Aldous Huxley's book about drugs, The Doors of Perception), Field centers his theoretical ideas on specific films and actors. He notes, for example, that the films of John Garfield almost always follow the mythic structure described by Joseph Campbell. His odd comparison of Resnais's obscure Last Year at Marienbad with the predictable Hollywood romance An Affair to Remember illustrates the difference between a subjective and an objective position in a film script. As head of the story department at Cinemobile, Field has read "more than two thousand screenplays and more than a hundred and fifty novels" and has worked with or known almost everyone in the industry since the late 1950s. Although cloaked in modesty, his illuminating, consistently entertaining memoir displays enough wit, intelligence and empathy to inspire a host of great films.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

"What makes a great movie experience?" asks Field (Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting) in this account, which traces his own lifelong involvement with the film industry as a documentary filmmaker, film critic, studio executive, screenwriter, and lecturer on screenwriting. Field attempts to isolate the underlying elements common to all "great" films by reflecting on some of his favorites which include La Grande Illusion, The Wild Bunch, and Chinatown and influential works like Pulp Fiction. His recollections and insights are worthwhile and occasionally moving as when he recounts his meetings with Michelangelo Antonioni. Field's passion for cinema shines throughout, and it helps to propel readers through encounters with a variety of types of film. The end result will likely please movie buffs and belongs in public libraries with film collections. Neal Baker, Earlham Coll., Richmond, IN
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Dell Publishing (October 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440508495
• ISBN-13: 978-0440508496
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #810,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Syd Field is a screenwriter, producer, teacher, international lecturer, and author of the bestselling books Screenplay, The Screenwriter's Workbook, Selling a Screenplay, and Four Screenplays. Published in 1982, Screenplay has been translated into sixteen languages, and is used in more than 250 colleges and universities across the country. At present he is creative consultant to the governments of Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Austria, and South Africa, and has been a script consultant for Roland Jaffe's film production company, for Alfonso Arau and Laura Esquivel on Like Water for Chocolate, and for Tri-Star Pictures. He lives in Beverly Hills, California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars He should stick to analysis . . ., April 25, 2002

By 

Michael K. Smith (South Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Going to the Movies: A Personal Journey Through Four Decades of Modern Film (Paperback)

Field is probably the country's current best analyst of screenplays and teacher of the theory and mechanics of screenplay-writing, and I own all his previous books. This one was a bit of a disappointment, though, being heavy on self-conscious, egocentric autobiography and light on analysis of the films he discusses as being "turning points" in his development. (And he uses that phrase way too often.) Though he purports not to believe in luck or coincidence, he does seem to have been in the right place at the right time far more than most of us -- a crawl-on role in _Gone With the Wind_ as an infant, nephew of one of the great cinematographers, student at Berkeley when Jean Renoir was Writer in Residence, buddies at the UCLA film school with the niece of Sam Peckinpah, first job at David Wolper Productions when it was just beginning, and so on. Oddly, in between the fits of ego and overwriting ("this is how I invented/discovered . . ."), there's also a lot of "aw shucks, little ol' me"-ness. For this kind of thing, I think William Goldman's two (so far) volumes of Hollywood autobiography are much better.

5.0 out of 5 stars Living history, May 14, 2007

By 

Juhani Luukkonen "Field's Man" (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Going to the Movies: A Personal Journey Through Four Decades of Modern Film (Paperback)

Going to the Movies is a wonderful journey with Syd Field trough decades of living history of movies. Syd Field writes in such a way that you almost hear him talking to you. His precense is wonderful.

3.0 out of 5 stars A Life in Film and A Screen Writers Guide, March 7, 2005

By 

Aco - See all my reviews

This review is from: Going to the Movies: A Personal Journey Through Four Decades of Modern Film (Paperback)

This is a pretty good book. While Field has been touched by beneficial timing, and influential relationships, he has developed through diligence a perspective and vision for film, screenplays in particular.
While the book begins as an autobiography: school, wanderings, discovering film, school, early work, etc., it developes into a book of analysis and technique. In that way it went from good to okay. His working at Wolper Productions, his relationship with Jean Renoir and Sam Peckinpah all are interesting views of film making and film makers. I wish there was more of that. In fact, after a half chapter plus on Citizen Kane, in a following chapter Field talks about working at Wolper on a series hosted by Joseph Cotton. But there is no regarding of Cotton's involvement in the most influential of films.
Through script reviewing at Wolper Productions he developes a style and level of efficiency which begins to translate itself into a writing career. He survives off of optioned scripts for several years before he begins teaching. From this point on he becomes more of an advisor, and leads up to his place today as a formidable screenplay expert.
Within this arc, from autobiography to technical manual there is interesting and insightful writing on film, it's brilliance, influence, form and power. A decision on whether or not to make this a technical book about writing a screenplay or a memoir about a life in the film business would have improved this book.