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Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by [Harris, Mark]

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Mark Harris

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood Kindle Edition

by Mark Harris (Author)

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The epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967-Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Doolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde-and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood, and America, forever

It's the mid-1960s, and westerns, war movies and blockbuster musicals-Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music-dominate the box office. The Hollywood studio system, with its cartels of talent and its production code, is hanging strong, or so it would seem. Meanwhile, Warren Beatty wonders why his career isn't blooming after the success of his debut in Splendor in the Grass; Mike Nichols wonders if he still has a career after breaking up with Elaine May; and even though Sidney Poitier has just made history by becoming the first black Best Actor winner, he's still feeling completely cut off from opportunities other than the same "noble black man" role. And a young actor named Dustin Hoffman struggles to find any work at all.

By the Oscar ceremonies of the spring of 1968, when In the Heat of the Night wins the 1967 Academy Award for Best Picture, a cultural revolution has hit Hollywood with the force of a tsunami. The unprecedented violence and nihilism of fellow nominee Bonnie and Clyde has shocked old-guard reviewers but helped catapult Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway into counterculture stardom and made the movie one of the year's biggest box-office successes. Just as unprecedented has been the run of nominee The Graduate, which launched first-time director Mike Nichols into a long and brilliant career in filmmaking, to say nothing of what it did for Dustin Hoffman, Simon and Garfunkel, and a generation of young people who knew that whatever their future was, it wasn't in plastics. Sidney Poitier has reprised the noble-black-man role, brilliantly, not once but twice, in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, movies that showed in different ways both how far America had come on the subject of race in 1967 and how far it still had to go.

What City of Nets did for Hollywood in the 1940s and Easy Riders, Raging Bulls for the 1970s, Pictures at a Revolution does for Hollywood and the cultural revolution of the 1960s. As we follow the progress of these five movies, we see an entire industry change and struggle and collapse and grow-we see careers made and ruined, studios born and destroyed, and the landscape of possibility altered beyond all recognition. We see some outsized personalities staking the bets of their lives on a few films that became iconic works that defined the generation-and other outsized personalities making equally large wagers that didn't pan out at all.

The product of extraordinary and unprecedented access to the principals of all five films, married to twenty years' worth of insight covering the film industry and a bewitching storyteller's gift, Mark Harris's Pictures at a Revolution is a bravura accomplishment, and a work that feels iconic itself.

Length: 524 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
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Product details

File Size: 973 KB
Print Length: 524 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books (February 14, 2008)
Publication Date: February 14, 2008
Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B0010SKU5G
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

X-Ray:

Not Enabled

Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Screen Reader: Supported

Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #151,220 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #73 in Movie & Video History & Criticism
- #163 in Popular Culture
- #311 in Movie History & Criticism

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bearded academic

tracing a change of the guard in Hollywood

March 5, 2008

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

A highly readable account of how the five pictures nominated for best picture for 1967 came into being - with the thesis being that 1967 marked a transition as the last of the old Hollywood studio system came apart (e.g. Jack Warner sells Warner Bros and then retires) and the new Hollywood appears (e.g. Warren Beatty, 20-something rising new star decides to control his destiny by producing his own film).

One of the things the book makes clear is how small town much of Hollywood was -- and how, to some degree, it divided up by age (there's a story of a party that Jane Fonda holds and invites her father and his friends and her contemporaries -- and how the guests clustered in different places, and went home at different times, during the night). It also vividly explains the gestation of each move, and sketches how the movies represent various trends in Hollywood of the time.

The book is very readable and full of wonderful material. The only reason I don't rate it 5 stars is that it assumes that you've seen all five movies and remember them well enough to grasp why the discussion of a particular scene is important (I only remember three of the movies well enough and sometimes felt a bit lost in the discussions of the two [Bonnie & Clyde and Heat of the Night] that I didn't remember) and that you're film literate enough that a casual mention of a particular film title (Planet of Apes, Reds, etc.) will resonate and convey a message.

9 people found this helpful

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Robin

The start of modern Hollywood

February 26, 2010

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

It's common these days to look back on the old studio system with nostalgia. This book is about the year it crashed and burned. Five Pictures at a Revolution is the story of how new independent directors competed with some of the old hands in 1967. As the author aptly puts it, "Warren Beatty who looked like a movie star, was a producer. Dustin Hoffman who looked like a producer, had become a movie star." "Sidney Poitier, who looked like no movie star had ever looked," was the biggest box office in history, and Hollywood didn't know what to do with him.

If you are old enough to remember the sputtering end of "old Hollywood," you might remember some of the dreadful movies it produced in those final years. Restricted by censorship, the system went crazy producing big budget musicals, James Bond spy films and Bible epics. Movie executives were out of touch with the mood of the country--which was mired in an unpopular war, the civil rights movement and a host of other causes. Despite huge dissatifaction within American society, Hollywood movies reflected little change. Then, in 1967 Dr. Doolittle competed with In the Heat of the Night, The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and Bonnie and Clyde for Best Picture. What a year.

Mark Harris had access to many of the folks who worked on the five movies and he's a gifted storyteller and journalist. This is a great book for someone who wants to find out about how movies went from apolitical musicals, epics, thrillers and dramas to irreverent works by Woody Allen, Stephen Spielberg, Nora Ephron etc.

6 people found this helpful

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A. Langston

AUDIO CD UNABRIDGED IS PERFECT FOR IPODS!

December 15, 2009

Format: Audio CDVerified Purchase

This is a product review for the Audio Book Unabridged version of Mark Harris's Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. I greatly enjoyed the voice of the Lloyd James reading the book. His diction was excellent and his voice was pleasant on the ears. The story itself was well written and engaging. I especially enjoyed the analysis of the Sydney Poitier movies vis-a-vis the Civil Rights movement. But I want to tell potential buyers something about the actual CD's themselves. I sold this product used on Amazon and now I'm having to do a refund because the buyer says he is unable to play the CD's. So I returned to the actual listing and sure enough the Amazon listing for the product does not tell you what it says on the package. The audio CD's are "MP3 PLAYER READY" (I think the package may actually say IPOD READY. They do not play in regular stereo or walkman CD players. They are meant to be placed in a computer and ripped by Itunes for upload to one's IPOD. There are two CDs which have multiple duplicate files of the audio book on them. One file format is MP3, another is the file format used by Sony's PSP (I think), and another is for the file format used by ZUNE (I think). NONE of the file formats are WAVE formats, which is the format played by regular stereo CD players. The listing really should state this fact but since it does not I am putting it in the review. I hope this review assists people in making a decision about whether or not buying this very well written book in audio format is the best for them.

One person found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

damn this was good

February 17, 2008

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

i tore through this huge book in a couple of hours. god, the memories it brought back. i was 12 in 1967 but my very liberal parents took me to or let me see these movies and it was thrilling to read about them again. i loved them all except Doolittle and it was even fun in a Schadenfruede kind of way to read about that train wreck of a movie. Page after page of wonderful anecdotes about these movie that were able to derail the big studio system and for a brief while, Hollywood made strange and daring movies until Star Wars came around and destroyed the whole thing. But take a look at this years five nominees and you will have hope for movies as they are all worthy and good examples of smart movies getting made again. we need another revolution like the Graduate/Bonnie and Clyde thing and it might be happening with No Country/There Will be Blood movies.

8 people found this helpful

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M. Hickey

Excellent

May 19, 2008

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

As one who turned 17 in 1967 and who vividly remembers seeing all of the films discussed here (except "Dr. Dolittle") during their first theatrical runs, I found this book completely engrossing. It is a popular-culture time-capsule of America at a difficult moment, and of the movie business at an even more difficult one, with plenty of insight into the series of accidents and near-miracles by which any movie ever actually makes it to the screen; and a reminder that Hollywood, pre-conglomerates and certainly despite itself, once provided a breeding ground for the new. Rarest of all, it is extremely well-written.

One person found this helpful

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