William Friedkin is rightly considered a pioneer of the New Hollywood movement that exploded onto American screens in the late ’60s and ’70s.

In a business where you’re only as good as your last film, it is surprising to learn that the final works of cinema’s greatest directors are often shrouded in mystery and relegated to the outskirts of their oeuvres.

Each awards season, the Directors Guild of America’s nominees for best feature film gather for an in-depth discussion of their work at the annual Meet the Nominees Symposium.

Rabiger and Hurbis-Cherrier’s firsthand experience allows them to describe the day-to-day of directing in simple, uncomplicated terms, appealing to both the novice and seasoned pro.

His name does not conjure the almost automatic word association that comes with discussing film’s most legendary directors, but Rouben Mamoulian has remained something of a mystery. Until now.

In this fourth installment focusing on the craft of filmmaking, Mike Goodridge profiles 16 of the world’s most respected directors, as well as five influential filmmakers who shaped the medium’s first century.

Over the past 40 years, Clint Eastwood has gone from being ‘The Man with No Name’ to one of the industry’s most respected filmmakers.

An intimate appraisal of the films that made Steven Spielberg an icon.

A history of the motion picture industry—from its inception to Inception—an inspired study of its place in 21st century culture.

A straightforward, no-nonsense, hands-on television directors textbook which applies as much in the U.S. as the U.K.

An account of the genre's history as context for the current state of documentary films, while considering the future of non-fiction films.

A self-effacing portrait of Hollywood insider Tom Mankiewicz, loaded with vibrant anecdotes.

A memoir chronicling the five-decade career of film and TV director Garry Marshall.

A compilation of biographies, filmographies, and film-by-film analyses written by the who's who of film historians focusing on 30 key directors who helped shape the film noir genre.

A compelling study of Richard Donner, an ebullient, ballsy risk-taker who was a director even before he was aware of it.

In this series of conversations held at the American Film Institute all aspects of work are discussed with men and women working in pictures, beginning in 1950 to Hollywood today.

A magical dreamscape memoir of the acclaimed director's boyhood and coming-of-age as the son of movie star Geraldine Fitzgerald, and making his way in the worlds of theater, film, and television.

Closely analyzing his films to date, Insdorf links Kaufman's versatile cinema by exploring the recurring and resonant themes of sensuality, artistic creation, and manipulation by authorities.

A respectful and multileveled account of the generation of filmmakers spawned (in the main) by the Sundance Film Festival under the auspices of Robert Redford.

Mixing biographical information with an overview of each career, Women Directors & Their Films identifies the commonalities and distinctions between the many female directors who’ve come to prominence.

Written by two top female TV directors, this is an indispensable handbook for the aspiring TV director and should find its place in the curriculum of any film school in the land.

A nuanced take on the director, benefiting from personal access to the man himself and almost every co-worker that could find, as well as family members and people who’ve known him since he was a lowly effects and landscapes artist.

An account of black film in America, beginning with the movies of Melvin Van Peebles and Gordon Parks, among the first African-American films to be seen by a large national audience.

A multi-angle saga of the “once in a lifetime” making of Peter Jackson’s magisterial The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Autobiography from veteran feature and action TV director Guy Magar.

A history of the relationship between Hollywood and Politics.

A definitive biography of the larger-than-life career of legendary director John Huston.

A biography of maverick director, Raoul Walsh.

A snapshot of Hollywood at the high noon of the American New Wave, this is a delightful time machine of a book showing us what was actually there before the steady encrustation of myth had taken hold.

If there’s an emblematic career that showcases the entire history of television from its postwar inception to the late '80s, it must be James Sheldon's.

This epic, wide-ranging conversation between two people who together may know more about movies than anyone else in America offers nothing but pleasure

We get to see beyond Brooks' barking autocrat and observe what several friends and co-workers call "the mischievous twinkle in his eye."

The most acute and perceptive critical study of some of the finest films and directors of the Hollywood New Wave of the 1970s.

Nicholas Ray made movies about drug addiction, feminism, Mc-Carthyism, conservation, and ethnography years before anyone else.

The emblematic figure among the New York TV directors who made the journey to Hollywood in the 1950s, Frankenheimer refined his technique in live broadcasts before millions of viewers.

Former DGA president Delbert Mann was the first of the generation of Television directors to make a successful trek West to Hollywood.

The undisputed master of three genres—film noir, psychological Westerns, and big-budget historical epic—Mann accumulated a majestic body of work.

Rarely does a book fully live up to the promise of its title, but Lumet’s memoir-cum-manual tells us in vivid and splendid detail how he does what he does.

A landmark assessment of the independent sector of American filmmaking in the postwar decades, a teeming bestiary of risk takers, gore pioneers, and still-underrated auteurs.

Kazan’s epic account of the century and his life is as magnificent an achievement as many of his plays and movies, and possibly the best autobiography ever written by a movie director.

Renowned primarily for detonating the 1970s Hollywood Renaissance with 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, Penn’s life was full of achievements no less potent and pace-setting.

As the son of theatrical tent-show performers, former DGA president George Stevens truly grew up with Hollywood.

Nearly forty years on from its original publication, Kevin Brownlow’s The Parade’s Gone By... still packs quite the Proustian punch, with its chorus of then venerable, now long-dead legends of the silent era reminiscing on experiences that even then were 40 years in the past.

Originally published in 1985, Chaplin: His Life and Art offers a full immersion in the previously impenetrable method of Chaplin as a director.

A rollicking account of mid-century Hollywood, City of Nets opens with the movie industry at the pinnacle of its success (1939) and ends 10 years later with the chaos of the HUAC hearings, the rise of television, and the Supreme Court’s antitrust decision.

Drawing on three decades of research, Searching covers Ford's directing, history as a co-founder of the Directors Guild, politics, and his wildly contradictory personality, valiantly attempting to separate Ford’s many masks from his actual visage.

In his exhaustive biography of the shadowy, half-forgotten yet indomitable African-American film pioneer Oscar Micheaux, McGilligan deftly assembled the sterling research of scholars of early black filmmaking into a compelling account of a quixotic life.

Exiles in Hollywood looks at Fritz Lang, William Wyler, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, and Otto Preminger, analyzing the profound effect they had on American popular cinema after leaving UFA Studios.

For a personal insight into the buccaneering, freebooting youth of Hollywood, you can’t do better than the memoirs of the man behind the eye patch.

Hawks, a cofounder of the Directors Guild, was unusual in scrappy, knockabout early Hollywood; as an educated rich kid from Pasadena, he was slumming in what was still seen as a disreputable industry.

Merrill Brockway belongs to that bustling generation that returned from World War II, earned its education on the GI Bill (his at Princeton), and then moved into an optimistic postwar future where the maps were not yet drawn.

Eyman reminds us how DeMille's rise in early Hollywood not only paralleled the industry's ascent to global prominence, but was inextricably intertwined with it.

Just as it has transformed our ways of doing business, of communicating with one another, and entertaining ourselves, the Internet, says Carr, by reference to countless neuroscientific studies, is also changing our brains, and not necessarily for the better.

Luis Buñuel, like many great international filmmakers, still dwells, to a considerable extent, on the far side of a linguistic and cultural barrier. What we have until now lacked, however, is a study that relies primarily on Spanish-language sources, extensively researched and translated by the author.

Weighing in at 500 pages, this venerable compendium subscribes to the idea that noir pertains to tone and features profiles of a wide array of films.

Naremore's close-reading and contextualization of the film make Sweet Smell of Success seem like a heroic victory over its producers' own worst instincts and an even more remarkable achievement than we already believed.

Time and again, Ashby stresses his desire to remain hands-off in his direction of actors and their instincts. Ashby may have been hands-off but, in the end, only Ashby carried the entire movie in his head.

Edward Jay Epstein's The Hollywood Economist proves a more reader-friendly follow-up to his previous book on film economics, The Big Picture.

Peter Cowie celebrates Kurosawa's centenary with this exquisitely packaged, image-laden homage to the writer-director and his work.

Vincente Minnelli was a contradictory man, says Mark Griffin in his enlightening new biography of the director.

Gene D. Phillips’ Some Like It Wilder is a critical-historical biography, with Wilder’s work very much taking primacy over his personal life.

In Driven, author Vincent Brook traces the role Jewishness played in the movies and sensibilities of UFA Studios figures such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, Fred Zinnemann, Billy Wilder, and Edgar Ulmer.

You want an epic life story? Try Micky Moore's near-century of activity in the movie business, first as a child star in silent films, then 20 years later as an in-demand AD and second unit director for auteurs like Cecil B. DeMille, George Cukor, John Sturges, and Steven Spielberg.

Whereas many filmmakers would seek to play down the contradictions in their work, Lynch does just the opposite in this book of compiled interviews edited by Richard A. Barney.

Despite twelve best director nominations and three wins, Wyler resisted the title of "auteur," instead preferring to recognize the contribution of his collaborators. As the interviews in this book (which span from 1939 to Wyler's death in 1981) reveal, he felt the director should shape himself to the picture's needs.

Detailing the production history of Fitzcarraldo from the director's point of view, Conquest includes a history of the first, abandoned production, which featured Jason Robards, Mick Jagger, and Mario Adorf in its cast.

Resembling an Altman movie, dozens of figures (including the director himself) yak, yarn, kvetch, and carp in this epic oral biography put together by Zuckoff.

Finance and Zwerman have assembled an essential guide for both tyros entering the industry and established directors who want to feel more comfortable working in this brave new world of VFX.

Assistant director Tom Reilly's labor of love, a lifetime’s experience generously distilled into practical advice for assistant directors—tyros and old hands alike.

Throughout Phil Hall's survey, one is repeatedly struck by how many movies were independently produced: Griffith’s Intolerance, entire specialist markets ranging from “race movies” to Yiddish-language productions, and even James Cameron’s first Terminator.

Finally a biography of Hal Ashby, who made a series of remarkable movies during the 1970s before falling into disfavor and dying at 59. Ashby is the lost man of the Hollywood Renaissance.

In these interviews, well chosen by editor Steven Organ, Lean also addresses the perceived divide between his early, intimate British work and his later, expansive inter-national epics.

Including a foreward by admirer Martin Scorsese, this biography (written in 1993 but finally translated from French) rescues the early Hollywood director from obscurity.

Robert Cornfield edits Kazan on Directing, a deftly assembled collection of the great director’s instructions to his theater and film collaborators. Included are character biographies, costume suggestions and staging setups, as well as brutally frank postmortem examinations of his work.

Having been "on more sets than a lot of rental equipment," Bill is well-qualified to provide outsiders with this compendium of film lingo, made more complete with anecdotes involving names like Sinatra, Coppola, Malick and Spielberg.

A memoir by the man responsible for instant replay in sportscasting, Instant Replay includes some energetic score-settling with CBS as well as stories involving Mother Teresa, Presidents Reagan and Bush and Dick Clark.

Levy's in-depth biography makes a convincing case for a revival of interest in the maestro's glorious body of work.

Michael Sragow profiles the former auto racer, who Steven Spielberg once complimented as "one of the great chameleons. We honor his movies and don't know him - because he did his job so well."

Lovell's evenhanded biography of John Sturges fills yet another gap in our knowledge of postwar Hollywood, tracing the life and work of the director of such films as The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape.

The Rutgers film professor's richly detailed history is a New Yorker's passionate and unabashedly city-proud reclamation of film production in NYC, a ceaselessly eye-opening work of Gotham-based cultural anthropology and archeology.

The world is not short of books about David Lynch, but none till now matches Greg Olson's complex, keen-eyed but sympathetic biography.

A conundrum among independent filmmakers, Cox has always done things his way. Appropriately, then, X Films communicates a tangible sense of filmmaking as adventure, more how-to than autobiography.

Possibly the greatest movie-related bathroom book of all time, "Have You Seen...?" has 1,000 alphabetical entries, each with a well-honed five hundred words that will have you running to your Netflix queue or yelling in dissent.

In this bracingly foul-mouthed and highly compelling memoir, producer/AD Robert Relyea recalls the last gasp of buccaneering, big-budget Hollywood filmmaking.

An oddly assembled, highly entertaining mess of a book, John Landis drives you out to rent every last one of the director's movies.

The most satisfying and epic movie biography of 2008 thus far, Brody's Everything is Cinema divides Godard's career into distinct creative periods, integrating the oft-told stories of the Nouvelle Vague with new research.

Over the course of 50 years, legendary producer Walter Mirisch went from teenage theater usher to one of the most respected producers in Hollywood.

With over 60 reviews of books about film, Film on Paper offers a rich survey not just of the books, but also of the Time magazine critic's capacious and splendidly contrarian mind.

Containing interviews conducted between 1960 and 1983, Interviews demonstrates that Antonioni was, then as now, always one step ahead of his critics and interrogators.

David A. Price's well-researched history of Pixar is also a history of the long march of CGI, with stops along the way, including the war between Disney and Pixar, embodied here by Michael Eisner and Steve Jobs.

Harris' deeply researched account of the diverging fortunes of the five Best Picture nominees from 1968 provides a fascinating insider history of Hollywood in transition.

Deftly sorting out a complicated political and artistic saga, Mann concentrates on the business issues, the postwar political environment and the emblematic indies to trace how films reflect the often dissident circumstances of their creation.

Originally published in 1979, this reissue of Anthony Mann (now expanded, restored and updated) remains the only serious book-length study of Mann's work in English.

An enthralling academic detective story (with a marked resemblence to one of Chandler's novels), The Long Embrace is 2007's finest book about Los Angeles.

A welcome addition to the University of Mississippi series of interviews with directors, Mankiewicz: Interviews continually draws fascinating material from the director with a little help from interviewers like Andrew Sarris and Michel Ciment.

Spanning 35 years' worth of interview between author and filmmaker, Lax's easy, familiar rapport with Allen translates into unexpected detail regarding Allen's influences and body of work.

Despite Preminger's difficult reputation, author Foster Hirsch provides a judiciously balanced, three-dimensional biography of the director who helmed Laura and Anatomy of a Murder.

Though he never directed a millimeter of film footage, Joseph Breen left an indelible mark on every movie made from 1934 to 1954, essentially functioning as chief enforcer of the Hays Code.

A thoroughly researched critical survey of the former DGA President's five-decade career in Hollywood, Keenan's book contains clear and persuasive analyses of Wise's techniques, revealing an artist determined to let his material live and breathe.

Focusing on the improvisatory manner in which Disney and his partners turned a fledgling filmic entertainment into a global industry, Barrier's biography ultimately finds Disney an elusive figure beneath his workaholic tendencies and relentless optimism.

Written in readable, jargon-free prose, Naremore's On Kubrick is the state of the art in deep Kubrick appreciation.

Clocking in under 200 pages, Falk's succinct biography displays deft command of the material, delivering a compressed tour through the life and work of the owner of the most recognizble silhouette in film.

This posthumous memoir from the industry's dapper head of the MPAA details Valenti's eventful life, including his poor childhood in Texas, his time in the White House advising LBJ, and his stewardship of the (in)famous ratings association.

A compact yet comprehensive survey of one of the great careers in cinema history, Jean Renoir shows the director's life in one clear, wide-angle shot, with frequent close-ups when necessary.

Filled with shots from famous New York movies and including an interview with Martin Scorsese (as well as comments and anecdotes from New Yorkers like Nora Ephron and Woody Allen), Scenes showcases the city's many faces and the filmmakers who capture it.

Starting in the early '50s, Neupert situates the Cahiers graduates in a wider, richer portrait of French cultural history. The second edition includes a new chapter devoted to Left Bank filmmakers and a new afterword.

A trained jazz musician and veteran of live theater, Figgis aptly communicates in this short volume the excitement provided by digital technology in allowing more immediate expression.

Thoroughly researched and powerfully written, Women Filmmakers offers stirring revelations that illuminate a forgotten pioneering spirit among early women filmmakers.

An adjunct professor at UCLA, Schreibman presents an essential outline - culled from his own experience in theater, film, and TV - of what is needed to get the unbelievably complex job done.

Admirably well-sourced, consistently evenhanded, and remarkably succinct, A Life is now the authoritative biography of an appalling, albeit fascinating, figure of cinema.

In his biography of the half-forgotten yet indomitable African-American film pioneer, McGilligan deftly assembles the sterling research of several scholars into a compelling account of a quixotic life.

With in-depth interviews of Billy Wilder, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman and more, you can read this Playboy offering "for the articles."

This critical analysis of Mann's work by LA Weekly critic F.X. Feeney contains dozens of painterly frame enlargements as well as materials from Mann's own archive.

Richard Schickel's excellent selection of critical and biographical essays is a fine place to begin for readers interested in learning more about the seminal cinematic figure.

A worthy companion piece to the Schickel collection, the deliriously obsessive and bracingly thorough Silent Traces scours the backgrounds of Chaplin's films to point out their exact locations, past and present, through photographs.

Surveying Titanic flops, Himalayan egos and Vesuvian temper-tantrums, New York Times TV correspondent Bill Carter compiles a compelling portrait of the years leading up to the transformational 2004-2005 TV season.

A veritable Zelig of the industry, and an inexhaustible fund of good anecdotes (including one involving Shelley Winters and another involving a difficult Jerry Lewis), Rich remains fine company from first page to last in this chronicle of an epic life.

Written by Wellman's son, The Man and His Wings is part fond memorial, part family scrapbook, packed with previously unseen photos, mementos of Hollywood's Golden Age, and letters from the front.

The love-hate relationship between directors and actors is entertainingly dissected by veteran director John Badham and industry journalist Craig Modderno in this kiss-and-tell primer from the directing frontlines.

Spanning the years 1941-1947, Volume 2 traces the larger-than-life director's career from Kane to his never finished documentary, It's All True, about life in Brazil.

The film critic for Newsday (Anderson) and executive VP of marketing and publicity Warner Independent (Kim) throw a lifeline to young filmmakers and explain the film sales process.

If knowledge is power, then every player in Hollywood looking to gain the upper hand in dealmaking ought to dip into this book. Not that the book’s contents – like the studio accounting practices it depicts – will be fully understandable to anyone who’s not a CPA.

Even the most critic-averse director will find something to savor in this comprehensive anthology of intelligent, thoughtful writing on film.

With 5498 entries from 40 television seasons, this five volume collection is the definitive resource on movies for television, listing title, airdate, network, cast, crew, and short synopsis.

One part reminiscences, one part tricks of the trade, Conversations is a a must-read for those serious about directing and those who want to continue their film education.

Kezich seamlessly weaves together the life and work of this most autobiographical filmmaker, shedding new light on the films, and no doubt sending many readers straight to the video store to view Fellini's masterworks with fresh eyes.

The second edition of the Kagan-moderated seminars with directors nominated for the DGA Awards' Outstanding Achievement in Feature Film includes fascinating remarks from directors including Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, and Ang Lee.

The biography of the founder of "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayerland" illustrates how MGM took the studio system to its purest - and most infuriating - heights.

An invigorating addition to the "making-of" canon, Live Fast, Die Young is a well-researched portrait of creative minds navigating personal anguish to make great, iconic art.

Written by the producer of The Graduate, So You Want To Be provides anecdotes while establishing the producer's function as one who starts the ball rolling and keeps it rolling.

Jewison's honestly-titled memoir is of special interest to readers intrigued by the longevity of this particular genre-hopper.

Since the summer of 1978 David Fantle and Tom Johnson captured more than 200 performers and filmmakers on paper.

Alice Guy Blache is described as "a striking example of the modern woman in business ... succeeding in a line of work in which hundreds of men have failed."

Stressing the inner workings, motivations and artistic sensibilities of people who are passionate about film

As lively as its title, free of ham-handed analyses, academic jargon or smug theories — no small feat when examining movies of the world within the political, social and artistic context of the turbulent '60s.

Written by The New York Times film critics; edited by Peter M. Nichols; and with a new foreword by A.O. Scott

Colin MacCabe presents us with Godard's daring shooting, lighting and editing techniques—some of the innovations that inspired filmmakers from London to Hollywood.

Baseline Hollywood Film Director Directory, Edited by the Staff of Hollywood.com.

From a war-torn English childhood to dangerous locations for his movies, little about John Boorman's life and career could be called safe or comfortable.

Beginning in the early 1950s, Bob Willoughby became one of the most successful photojournalists in the film industry and the first "outside" photographer to work on Hollywood's closed sets.

Schickel, the author of more than 30 books, has written his most personal one, interweaving autobiography with film criticism, he examines the pictures that made an impact on him as a child and reassesses them with a professional's gimlet eye

Subdivided into parcels, a bit like Beverly Hills itself, David Weddle's study of a place, a concept, an idea, a dream; languidly unfolds, enveloping the reader in a gauzy, gaudy, seductive, sweet-scented cascade of words and weaving, twisting geography.

Unlike most "making of" film books, Pure Imagination, is straight from the maker's mouth, offering the intimacy of a director's own viewpoint.

Stating at the outset that he is uncomfortable with the new title of "the" rather than "a" biographical dictionary, Thomson encourages his readers to compose their own responses.

This hefty reference book looks at Hollywood's motion picture and television treatment of five ethnic groups: African-Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Jewish Americans, and Native Americans.

This hefty reference book looks at Hollywood's motion picture and television treatment of five ethnic groups: African-Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Jewish Americans, and Native Americans.

Most people today under 50 are unaware of Du Mont as a fourth network — or that multitudes watched programs on Du Mont TV sets.

Factual inconsistency is a recurrent feature of this dense text, but it matters not one bit really, as the facts and fiction here blur together into one seamless whole.