Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "A few dozen reporters, wire-service men, studio publicity department employees, gossip columnists, and personal managers were gathered on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood outside the locked..." (more)
Key Phrases: studio movies, New York, Mark Harris, The Graduate (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. While one might think that the films discussed in this book have been thoroughly plumbed (The Graduate; Bonnie and Clyde; In the Heat of the Night; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?), Entertainment Weekly writer Harris offers his take in this thorough and engaging narrative. Instead of simply retelling old war stories about the production of these five Best Picture nominees at the 1968 Oscars, Harris tells a much wider story. Hollywood was on the brink of obsolescence throughout the 1960s as it faced artistic competition from European art films and financial implosion due to an outdated production system and rising budgets. Harris doesn't shy away from complexity in favor of easy answers, and the personalities that he profiles—among them Sidney Poitier, Mike Nichols, Warren Beatty and Richard Zanuck—are certainly worthy of the three dimensional approach. Harris also peppers his narrative with moments that capture the rising cultural tide that broke in the late '60s: chipping away at the moralistic Production Code, and Hollywood's inconsistent engagement with the Civil Rights movement are continuous sources of interest throughout this fascinating book. (Feb.)
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From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Charles Matthews

Oscar plays it safe. You can trust the Academy to pick a "Forrest Gump" over a "Pulp Fiction," an "Ordinary People" over a "Raging Bull," a "Kramer vs. Kramer" over an "Apocalypse Now."

Or a well made, socially conscious melodrama like "In the Heat of the Night" over groundbreaking movies like "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Graduate." That's part of the story that Mark Harris tells in his richly fascinating book, Pictures at a Revolution, which focuses on the five nominees for best picture in 1968 -- the other two were "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "Doctor Dolittle."

The conventional way of writing about five movies would be to devote a section of the book to each. But Harris does something more difficult and far more illuminating: He weaves together the stories of how each movie was conceived, crafted, released, critiqued and received. He writes about the five or six years in which the filmmakers, some of them old pros and some of them rank novices, struggled with a studio system in collapse, an audience whose tastes and enthusiasms seemed wildly unpredictable, and a culture being transformed by volatile social and political forces.

A few figures dominate Harris's narrative -- writers Robert Benton, David Newman and Robert Towne; actor-producer Warren Beatty; producers Lawrence Turman, Stanley Kramer and Arthur P. Jacobs; studio heads Jack Warner and Richard Zanuck; directors Mike Nichols, Norman Jewison and Arthur Penn; actors Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Dustin Hoffman, Rod Steiger, Rex Harrison and Sidney Poitier. The book has what Hollywood publicists used to brag about: a cast of thousands.

Poitier figures in the stories of three of the movies -- "In the Heat of the Night" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," in which he acted, and "Doctor Dolittle," in which he was cast in a featured role until its chaotic filming led to his being written out of the script. He had become an unexpected star: In 1967, Harris tells us, "Box Office magazine . . . rated Poitier as the fifth biggest star in Hollywood, ahead of Sean Connery and Steve McQueen. His drawing power was a shock to an industry that had, until recently, treated his employment in movies as something akin to an act of charity." But at the same time, a "rift . . . had grown between Poitier and a younger, more militant black cultural intelligentsia" that mocked him as an Uncle Tom. The author of one of these denunciations, Clifford Mason, now admits that he "jumped all over Sidney because I wanted him to be Humphrey Bogart when he was really Cary Grant," but he persists in his criticism of the "role that Sidney always played -- the black person with dignity who worries about the white people's problems -- you don't play that part over and over unless you're comfortable with that kind of suffering."

Racial tensions and the protest against the war in Vietnam played a large role in shaping these movies. Harris, a writer and former editor for Entertainment Weekly, not only demonstrates how the filmmakers responded to social and political change, but he also has a working knowledge of the film industry that allows him to elaborate on how a colossal flop like "Doctor Dolittle" came about (and how it could be nominated for a best picture Oscar over "In Cold Blood," "Cool Hand Luke" and "Two for the Road"). Its producers were inspired by the smash success of "My Fair Lady," "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music."

"Historically," Harris comments, "the only event more disruptive to the industry's ecosystem than an unexpected flop is an unexpected smash, and, caught off guard by the sudden arrival of more revenue than they thought their movies could ever bring in, the major studios resorted to three old habits: imitation, frenzied speculation, and panic."

Imitation was the first impetus behind "Doctor Dolittle" -- Alan Jay Lerner, Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews were the talents the producers sought for the film, but they wound up with only one of them. The panic came later -- a good deal, but not all, of it caused by the irascible and demanding Harrison, whom Harris presents as a man filled with "anger and paranoia." Among other things, Harrison was an anti-Semite, which led to confrontations with his co-star Anthony Newley, whom he disparaged "sometimes to his face, as a 'Jewish comic' or a 'cockney Jew.' "

Harris has created what seems likely to be one of the classics of popular film history, useful to dedicated students of film and cultural historians, and also to trivia buffs. (Did you know that Beatty's original choices to play Bonnie and Clyde were his sister, Shirley MacLaine, and Bob Dylan?) Harris writes with a wit that's sly, not show-offy. He can encapsulate the woes of shooting "Doctor Dolittle" in four words: "The rhinoceros got pneumonia." And he can slip in a bit of insider humor with a reference to Newley's then-wife, Joan Collins, who "reentered the Hollywood social scene she loved with the vigor of an Olympic athlete" -- the syntax leaving it up to the reader to decide whether the prepositional phrase modifies "reentered" or "loved." Indeed, almost the only complaint about Pictures at a Revolution is that, except for an "Epilogue" that briefly sums up the later careers of the major figures, it ends at the Oscar ceremony. You want Harris to go on, to talk about how the success of "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Graduate" also caused the studios to resort to their old habits of "imitation, frenzied speculation, and panic."

And there were other consequences: "Kramer vs. Kramer" now seems like little more than a well made domestic drama, while the film that it defeated for the best picture in 1979, Francis Ford Coppola's audacious mess of a movie, "Apocalypse Now," is regarded as a classic. "Kramer vs. Kramer" also won Oscars for its writer and director, Robert Benton, one of the writers of "Bonnie and Clyde," and for Dustin Hoffman, who had become a movie star in "The Graduate." In 11 years, Benton and Hoffman had gone from being icons of a film revolution to pillars of the establishment. That's the way things work in Hollywood. If you can't beat 'em, assimilate 'em.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (February 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594201528
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201523
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #58,595 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A cultural and film making revolution dissected, February 24, 2008

By	Bill Pullman "Book reviewer" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am a bit of Hollywood history buff and it is wonderful having a number of books on the subject out right now (check out Misfits Country). In this well written and excellently researched book the author takes the reader back to 1967 and analyzes the five nominees for best picture and there reflection and effects on society in at that momentous time of change. The Movies are: "The Graduate (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition)," "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (40th Anniversary Edition)," "Bonnie and Clyde," "In the Heat of the Night (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition)" and "Doctor Dolittle." Aside from being a great walk down memory lane it is also full of insightful social commentary. The sixties were a special time of social change and the movies and the movies of that decade reflected and effected this change on so many levels. I would love to see the author expand on this in another book that might take on the best movies of the decade. And do try Misfits Country an excellent read that is a behind the scenes look at the making of the classic movie The Misfits!

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Year 1967 in Movies, February 16, 2008

By	C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Mr. Harris has taken the five Best Picture nominees for the 1967 Oscars and pin-point that year as the fall of the studios. Two films dealt with racism ("Guess Who's Is Coming To Dinner," and "In the Heat of the Night") in very differnet ways, one with sexuality and changing morals ("The Graduate"), another with amoral violence ("Bonnie and Cycle") while the last picture attempted to be another Hollywood musical ("Dr. Dolittle.") This was the year that independent film-making and European influences reached a critical mass against the static studio machine.

Ironically Sidney Poitier was shut out for a Best Actor Oscar with three brilliant performances, two of them in the Best Picture category. These little tidbits are found in the book that follows the five movies from pre-production to the Oscar. The narrative is quite readable and the behind the scenes stories are interesting and amusing. Mr. Harris should pick out other landmark years and repeat the process. This book is a must for any movie fan.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Look at Hollywood's Turning Point When Five Films Marked the Past and the Future, March 1, 2008

By	Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

1939 may have been Hollywood's high watermark for classic filmmaking, but 1967 was ostensibly the year Hollywood grew up, the turning point when the old guard faced off with the new mavericks in dominating not only the year's box office but also the year-end critical accolades. Entertainment Weekly columnist Mark Harris cleverly and incisively looks at the five diverse films that made up the Best Picture Oscar race that year and dissects each one from development to the Oscar ceremony the following spring - The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Doctor Dolittle, and the eventual winner, In the Heat of the Night. His meticulous research feels thorough, lending a surprisingly cohesive picture of an industry in flux between the aging, out-of-touch moguls unable to forecast film-going tastes and the revolutionary novices, influenced by the European New Wave, abandoning a studio system in collapse.

Instead of tracing these films individually, the author looks more holistically at the middle of the decade when a diverse array of people concurrently faced a multitude of challenges in getting their pictures made. Many have been interviewed extensively for the book, and it becomes readily apparent why these five films epitomize the revolution when you see who the directors behind them. Mike Nichols and Arthur Penn, who directed "The Graduate" and "Bonnie and Clyde" respectively, were relative neophytes who challenged studio thinking with their groundbreaking films. On the other side of the spectrum were two veterans - Stanley Kramer, who reunited legendary icons Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in their final pairing, the superficially controversial "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"; and Richard Fleischer, who tried to replicate the success of My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music, with his big-budget disaster, "Doctor Dolittle". In between them was Norman Jewison, a studio journeyman with aspirations to become a more serious director. He found his opportunity with the racially-charged crime drama, "In the Heat of the Night", which among the five movies, best represented a balance between the two ends of the filmmaking spectrum.

Other key figures dominate Harris' narrative, such as screenwriters Robert Benton, David Newman and Robert Towne, who turned "Bonnie and Clyde" from a conventional gangster picture into an incisive character study that fluidly alternated laughs with visceral moments of violence. Obviously, actor-producer Warren Beatty figures prominently with that seminal film, especially in removing Clyde's bisexual orientation from the script and in casting his co-star, which became a Scarlett-level search among Hollywood's hottest actresses at the time. Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda, Tuesday Weld and even Beatty's sister Shirley MacLaine were under serious consideration before a relatively inexperienced Faye Dunaway landed her breakthrough role. Fleischer, producer Arthur P. Jacobs and an especially irascible Rex Harrison could not help but be weighed down by all the setbacks that befell "Doctor Dolittle" from uncooperative animals to wrong-headed studio thinking resulting in an overly grandiose 2 ½-hour epic presented with fanfare in road-show engagements.

Casting on "The Graduate" turned out to be one of the biggest challenges as the original choices for Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin Braddock were, believe it or not, Doris Day and Robert Redford. While curious in hindsight, it was fortunate that Nichols and producer Lawrence Turman finally selected Anne Bancroft and a then-unknown Dustin Hoffman for the roles. Tracy's frail health was the ongoing concern during the production of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", as Kramer was able to maneuver around studio concerns over a movie about a pending interracial marriage. Intriguingly, Sidney Poitier turns out to be an important figure in three of the five films. He stars in "In the Heat of the Night" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", and he was also being lured to play a minor role in "Doctor Dolittle" until it became apparent that ongoing production delays eliminated this possibility. An unexpected box office draw at a time when racial tensions were escalating, Poitier turned into a lightning rod for both whites and blacks in terms of what was expected of him as a role model.

Old gossip and silver screen trivia are not Harris' priorities here as he provides a thoughtful overview of the industry from a business and societal standpoint. He vividly shows a country engrossed in racial tensions and agitation over the war in Vietnam. The author also brings to light the antiquated censorship tool of the Production Code. Nonetheless, it's the focus on the fascinating personalities involved that makes the book a must-read for cinema-philes. A prime example is his detailed description of a 1965 Fourth of July party hosted by Fonda and her husband-to-be Roger Vadim. Old and new Hollywood were in attendance and holding court in their respective corners, as her father Henry and Gene Kelly were mingling with the likes of Beatty and Dennis Hopper. Toying with Mussorgsky's famous multi-piece piano suite, Pictures at an Exhibition, to come up with the book's apt title, Harris has done a superb job of showing how movies are a true reflection of our cultural history.