Though interviewees range from vaudevillians and songwriters to stars of Golden Age movie musicals (a favorite category), directors are heard from loud and clear through the voices of Mel Brooks, Frank Capra, Vincente Minnelli, George Sidney, Charles Walters and Robert Wise.

The boys date and describe the settings of each meeting, offer takes on their subjects' personalities and weave biographical information within a conversational text that gets down to business (Capra and Walters also get Q&As).

Minnelli, who "fulfilled the standing MGM commandment: 'Do it big, do it right, and give it class,' " showed Fantle and Johnson a bulging scrapbook of library clippings chronicling 40 years of clothing modes and interior designs. " 'By referring to these cutouts,' " Minnelli explained, " 'I was able to bring some measure of authenticity to each of my movies — whether they be costume epics or more modern stories.' "

George Sidney (DGA President 1951-59; 1961-67) described himself in his nascent MGM years as " 'a quiet and polite what-makes-Sammy-run type.' " Of the studio's Our Gang comedies on which he cut his directing teeth, Sidney admitted that it " '...was impossible working with those kids,' " and talked about what is probably his most famous musical number: Gene Kelly's dance with Jerry, the little cartoon mouse in Anchors Aweigh (1945). Running the sequence after it was put together, Sidney realized that while Kelly had a natural reflection that appeared on the floor, the mouse, being an animated cell laid onto the film, had none. " '... we had to go back and make 20,000 mouse drawing reflections.' "

Robert Wise (DGA President 1971-75) credited his early days as a film editor on two Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers pictures at RKO for demystifying musicals, which helped him direct Oscar winners, West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). "Wise's high watermark as a film editor," the boys believe, "was reached when he worked on Citizen Kane (1941)." As to the controversy stirred by film critic Pauline Kael about "who was really responsible for the film's greatness: Orson or Herman Mankiewicz, his co-scriptwriter," Wise said that he " 'never saw Herman on the set. It's Orson's film, no question about it.' "

The most extensive and lively interview is with Frank Capra (DGA President 1939-41; 1960-61) with whom the boys spent an adventurous day when they sort of "kidnapped" him away from a film festival. " 'I believe one man, one film is the only way to make a movie,' " Capra said at one point. " 'The director is the only person with an overall conception of the film. It is he who will take the disjointed bits and pieces of film footage and interrelate them into a cohesive whole, the finished product.' " When Fantle and Johnson returned Capra to his hotel, the venerable director protected them from the festival coordinator's wrath. "Nearly a quarter of a century after his retirement from directing films, Capra remained true to his credo of standing up for the little guy(s)."

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When that was written in 1912, Alice Guy Blaché had been making films for 16 years. The Film Encyclopedia by Ephraim Katz lists her as "The world's first woman director and possibly the first director of either sex to bring a story-film to the screen." Many feminist film historians would take "possibly" out of the discussion, naming her the world's first story-film director — period. But in Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema, intrepid author Alison McMahan honors her readers by offering a more nuanced, in-depth and ultimately enlightening approach. "[D]id Alice Guy direct the first fiction-film? The answer is not a simple yes or no."

McMahan's book, originally published in 2002 and available now in paperback, was 10 years in the making and began life as a doctoral thesis. It has the impressive scholarship and authoritative documentation that its subjects deserve. Yes, subjects, plural. For this is not only what must surely be the definitive biography of Guy (as she is called here), both person and filmmaker, it is also a valuable window into the evolution of film itself.

A little perspective: December 28, 1895 (the first time Louis and Auguste Lumiere showed their non-story films in Paris to a paying public), is generally accepted as the birthday of world cinema. Guy wrote, produced and directed her first film, La Fee aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy), "before May of 1896."

But McMahan, who includes liberal selections from Guy's own memoirs, is not obsessed with who's on first. She is more interested in exploring what Alice Guy's overall contributions were and what Guy might have to say to today's filmgoers and filmmakers. "Was she a feminist? Can she, in fact, serve as a guide for feminist filmmakers?"

Alice Guy directed about a thousand films (and produced even more); only 111 survived. McMahan doggedly traced as many of these survivors as possible — no easy feat as Guy's films are "spread out in archives all over the world," and often unavailable for viewing "even to scholars" and many are in desperate need of restoration. McMahan brings the fruits of her labors to us, scrutinizing the films here for their content as well as production.

Guy's career is fascinating on several levels. She was a pioneer in sound, directing more than 100 synchronized sound films between 1902 and 1906 — something, McMahan points out, that "is almost never mentioned." The French woman owned and ran her own studio, Solax, in Fort Lee, New Jersey, when, in 1912, it produced two one reelers (10-15 minute films) a week. Guy wrote and directed "at least half of these" and oversaw all production — a rate that equaled "that of D.W. Griffith, working at Biograph just a few miles away." (Guy also shot close-ups before Griffith did.)

McMahan supplies copious rare photographs and remarkable data, from a convenient timeline and multiple filmographies to appendices that include listings of extant films and where to find them. Through McMahan's astute descriptions of the films, we come away amazed at Guy's perspicacity and artistic imagination. Her 1906 film, La Passion ou la Vie de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ (The Passion or the Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ), "differs in many significant ways from the established genre of passion plays," particularly in its focus on the roles of women.

Guy's last film, Tarnished Reputations, was released in 1920 when she was 47.

When she died in 1968 at 95, "there was no obituary," McMahan writes, "and no indication on her tombstone that she was the first woman filmmaker and the only woman filmmaker for the first decade of the industry's history." McMahan, through these pages, makes amends for decades of neglect.

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Which is not to say that it isn't also practical. The authors do not suggest any "foolproof, surefire formula for great filmmaking" because, "of course, there is no such thing." They see the creative process of filmmaking as "mysterious ... and so it shall remain." Yet they believe there is something that can be learned, and that is what is emphasized on these pages: "how best to prepare yourself, and how to approach your work, so that your inherent creativity has the greatest opportunity to emerge and flourish."

The process is broken down into five chapters ("The Five Is"): Introspection, Inquiry, Intuition, Interaction and Impact. At each chapter's end are "Limbering Up" exercises — such as watching five or 10 minutes of a TV show or movie "that seems completely innocuous and uncontroversial," and looking for "every instance of embedded value you can spot..." A final sixth chapter, "Workouts," offers production guidance on such topics as turning ideas into scripts and "open-closed" casting — having "a clear idea of the qualities an actor needs to play a certain character, yet [to] remain open to being surprised."

Comments by 15 "outstanding" filmmakers (each introduced on a separate page and given extensive filmographies in the back) are interwoven throughout the book. The professionals represent "a wide range of creators:" writers, directors, producers (many hyphenates), production designers, cinematographers, editors, composers and actors.

Aspiring directors could enjoy reading about ways other artists perceive the role of a director. Editor Lisa Fuchs has found that " 'very talented directors' such as Francis Ford Coppola," with whom she worked on Apocalypse Now (1979) and The Godfather, Part III (1990), "can 'shoot the movie that allows room for things to happen, where they don't know exactly how it will go together. I don't consider that a limitation but rather a strength.'"

One theme predominates the authors' and their 15 interviewees' ideas about reaching satisfaction as filmmakers: the importance of harmonious collaboration. Writer-director Anthony Minghella "talks about the process of 'growing the movie' and recognizes that what he's hoping to achieve as a director 'is something much greater than any particular narrow scene that I can manage by myself. I want to have the greatest amount of brain power and creative energy working on the film. The cast and crew are filmmakers in their own right. They're not there to be my servant.'"

If, as Federico Fellini said, " 'the cinema ...ought to be in a state of combustion ... a journey toward the center of ourselves and the world,' " Creative Filmmaking From the Inside Out makes a good traveling companion.

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