Too long out of print, this paperback is a beauty. A compulsively readable book. Addie Pray and Long Boy take the South by storm. It's fun and fast, but also weighty and moving. The amazing movie was based just on the first third.

This is an excellent book. Having long been a fan of the movie, what a joy to discover the book that started it all. Addie Pray is a hilarious and charming narrator and her adventures pulled me happily along. A real treat. For anyone who likes stories of sassy girls growing up.

First of all, I was befuddled with everyone talking about a book titled "Addie Pray." I saw the film "Paper Moon" and later read a book with the same title and picture on its paperback cover, never realizing that Addie Pray was the original title of the book by Joe David Brown: they changed the title to coincide with the film in re-published versions of the book after the film became popular.

I love both the novel and film. As usual, the novel makes more of a social statement. If you check IMDb for the tagline to the film - "As P.T. Barnum put it, 'There's a sucker born every minute.'" - you get a sense of the difference between the point of view of the book's author as opposed to the producers of the film. The film producers are after the carnival-like novelty of a crooked bible salesman and his too cute daughter, who's also a thief at heart and, by the way, a better one than her father, who is basically a loser. The reason for this is clear: films are basically hi-faluted carnival acts. Apparently, the audience member is just another sucker.

The novel, on the other hand, carries a great deal more compassion for the human condition, particularly human frailty. Not to say that the film wasn't at all sentimental in this way. Ryan O'Neill's character, the loser father, was treated sensitively by director Peter Bogdanovich. But he (Bogdanovich) is unique, a prime example of the kind of compassionate intelligence that flourished to some extent during the Let It Be trend of the early 1970s, a trend that could do the human race well if it was allowed to continue forever. The producers/distributors reveal, with their tagline, a more Hollywood-typical ruthlessness. Like "Ha ha, people. You're all jsut a bunch of suckers ripe for the taking."

True, the overt theme of the story & film is basically about how hilarious it might be to watch such father/daughter con artists, especially when these con artists are working in 1930s territory where stupid, faithful Christian farmers etc. (middle America) dwelled. But the most important part of the story happens toward the end, when the thieves are confronted with their toughest mark: a more experienced thief (Mr. Robinson?, can't remember).

This character is far more developed in the novel. He's great fun in the film. But in the book he's downright Marxist. Indeed, one of the greatest anti-capitalist epigrams ever written, in the tradition of Wilde and Twain, is spoken by this succesfully affluent crook, in what is otherwise merely a silly/fun little dark comedy of a story (paraphrasing): "Anybody can make money. It doesn't take any great talent to do so. No, people who make money are merely people who can't do anything else. But it takes real talent to be a fine musician, or an artist..." Something like that (I don't have the book with me now). But you get the point.

Clearly, Joe David Brown, like John Steinbeck, was an author with an important, righteous opinion on the weaknesses of our capitalist system. He died a few ears after the movie was made. Too bad it wasn't Reagan who died and Mr. Brown, instead, the "great communicator" of the 1980s.

This book featured a broad range of styles and subject matter, written by the icons of film and literature. Essays by Stephen Spielberg, Martin Scorcese, Gore Vidal, and E.L. Doctorow fill this volume with breadth and depth often lacking outside the halls of Cineaste. The collection also features a review of Eve's Bayou from Cineaste by a writer named Mia Mask, a scintillating piece yet clearly rooted in the academy. I am sure we will hear more from this writer in the future. I view films differently after the perspectives gained from this accessible text.

This book of interviews with the German director Fritz Lang represents the best introduction to his career. Lang spells out what to work for the movies really means. Lang analyzes the magic of the Hollywood productions as well as the shadows of the star system. These interviews illustrate the nightmares and despair of a creative director struggling with the Hollywood tycoons. In this respect, Lang presents the Hollywood producters of the 1940s and 50s as being more interested in money than in cinema. His portrait of them is somewhat bitter but represents an essential guide to understand the very entrails of Hollywood's production.The book is an invitation to appreciate the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of Lang's cinema. The book will represent a source of inspiration for new directors.

As a critic and historian, Peter Bogdanovich has written about the talents behind the screen, including memorable studies on Orson Welles, Fritz Lang and Frank Tashlin. "Movie of the Week" is a fascinating series of critical and historic essays, ranging from masterworks ("Citizen Kane" and "Grand Illusion") to cult favorites ("Artists and Models" and "The Merry Widow"). His telling observations on influential silents such as "The Crowd" and "Steamboat Bill Jr." -- and lesser-known filmmakers like King Vidor and Allan Dwan -- make it a book worth having. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to disagree with Bogdanovich's 52 selections.

Regardless of one's feelings about the egomania of author Bogdanovich (and it certainly bleeds through every page), he provides the creative world a great service by sharing his many years of interviews with some of the masters of American Film.

Contained within these pages is a critical access to the creative process. Each director interviewed (obviously some more than others) provides invaluable insight into the nuts and bolts of film directing. Bogdanovich has compiled with this book, an indispensable historical document that does much to inspire, educate and guide any aspiring film director.

I particularly valued Alan Dwan's insights into the importance of communicating character relationships into the narrative. I have incorperated much of the late director's invaluable advice into my attempts at stage direction.

All in all a must have for anybody interested in directing or gaining insight into the creative process.

Peter Bogdanovich pioneered the director interview in English, and this wonderful collection will give endless pleasure to film buffs. The book-length interview with Allan Dwan alone is worth the price of admission. Bogdanovich always did vast amounts of study before sitting down to talk with his subjects, and his expertise and enthusiasm encouraged them to open up in a way they usually did not with other interviewers. Anyone writing about the careers of the directors Bogdanovich interviews has to start with his work on them. A fitting companion piece is Bogdanovich's encyclopedic interview book "This Is Orson Welles."

The title was suggested by Howard Hawks who once observed, "...I liked almost anybody that made you realize who in the devil was making the picture...Because the director's the storyteller and should have his own method of telling it." Hawks is one of the 16 "legendary film directors" represented in this volume. It is important to keep in mind that these are conversations rather than interviews such as those conducted by Robert J. Emery in The Directors: Take One and its sequel, The Directors Take Two, as well as interviews conducted by Richard Schickel in The Men Who Made the Movies. It is also worth noting that Bogdanovich is himself a distinguished director of films such as The Last Picture Show, What's Up, Doc?, They All Laughed (a personal favorite of mine), and Texasville. As a result of his own background, Bogdanovich's questions and comments reflect somewhat different interests and perspectives than do those of Emery and Schickel.

I rate all of these books Five Stars but probably enjoyed reading Bogdanovich's book the most because the conversations ramble along somewhat messily, as most of my own conversations tend to do, and also because Bogdanovich is more actively involved in the interaction than Emery and Schickel are. As a reader, I feel as if I were really an eavesdropper as 16 directors casually share their opinions, information about specific films and actors, gossip, "war stories," and overall evaluations of their careers' various successes and failures. At no time does Bogdanovich seem intrusive or manipulative. Moreover, perhaps to an extent he did not realize when writing this book, he also reveals a great deal about himself...much of it endearing and some of it admirable. His passion for film making and his appreciation of the great directors are almost palpable. Readers' interests about various directors and their respective films obviously vary. I include myself among those who are die-hard film buffs and so I enjoyed reading every chapter and every word in each chapter. Indeed, each conversation was for this amateur "gourmet" a feast to be consumed with delight and, yes, gratitude.

I received this book as a gift recently, and I got a lot out of it, despite the fact that I am not a Kane-ologist. Welles is revealed as a man who cared about his craft, and it details the inside story of many of his films, including the bastardization of the Magnificent Ambersons. As a director, Bogdanovich speaks the language, and does well to coax the reticent Welles to open up about various moments in his checkered career. Again, the serious film buffs get the most out of this book, but as a more than casual movie watcher I have read and re-read this book as I've discovered more of Orson's work.

I commend to the book above, an interview with Peter Bogdanovich.
Although I'm not a huge fan of the latter's movies (with the exception of "Paper Moon," which I loved ever since it came out when I was eight, and fell in love with tomboy Tatum O'Neill forthrightly), I have begun reading about half of this book over the past few days, and find it better than my previous favourite, the Hitchcock/Truffaut book. Of course, much favoured above Wilder/Crowe, namely because of Crowe's incessant name dropping of "Jerry Maguire" and "Tom Cruise" every other irritating sentence, which prevented the reader from finding out what
Wilder had on *his* mind.

What impresses me about the Welles/Bogdanovich volume is the raucous sense of humour Welles brings to the conversation, always as lively and as larger-than-life as Welles was. Also, Bogdanovich has laced the book with pertinent interviews, articles, anecdotes that elucidate certain points of the text, as well as Welles' lines cut from "Magnificent Ambersons" and the long memorandum he wrote to Universal studio chiefs and cc'd to Chuck Heston, trying to save what I consider his masterwork,
"Touch of Evil" from falling prey to overzealous editing by indifferent studio hacks.

But most of all, I am touched that when all the world was dumping on Welles, when he was being derided as a has-been and a spendthrift, that up-and-coming director Bogdanovich gave him his friendship and accorded him the respect he was so shamefully denied. Even Pauline Kael couldn't resist savaging Welles, and she wrote a particularly nasty and libelous article that Welles didn't write any of the screenplay to "Citizen Kane."

Of all Hollywood's sins (and I retain in memory a cross-indexed catalogue of them), the fact that even when Welles started getting "lifetime achievement" accolades, he still couldn't get any financing for his movie projects, on which he worked until his last days, leaves the bitterest taste in my mouth. There must be certain people destined to the lowest rungs of hell -- or at least purgatory -- for creating a world in which Orson Welles' last paid acting role was as the voice of the evil planet in a "Transformers" movie.

Of all books about Orson Welles, this one gives us the closest understanding of his genius. It contains a collection of interviews given to Welles by his good friend, Peter Pogdanovich. We are given a personal tour of Welles' thoughts and motivations behind some of his greatest or most notorious works, without the pompous guesswork of an independant biographer. At the same time, Pogdonavich acting as interviewer lends an air of honesty, as Welles isn't as free to reinvent history as he might have been if this were simply an autobiography. However, this interview format makes for a rough chronology, as conversations jump all over the place. The book does give some basic dates and highlights of Welles' life and careers, but the reader is still expected to know a little about Welles. You might want to suppliment this volumne with another Welles biography.

What entertained me the most was Welles' genius for story, which he not only used in such mastery on stage, radio, and film, but also in telling us of his own personal stories. I didn't realize the extent of Welles' accomplishments, which include some of theater and radio's finest moments, as well as film. Before making Citizen Kane at the ripe age of 26 (or 23?), Welles had a fuller, more distinguished life than most people manage to squeeze into a lifetime. Most importantly, this book can give a film fan some general insight to all those great "lost masterpieces", the films in which Welles often lost control over (which basically are the majority of his films). He explains his original visions and where the studios altered his work. Watching these films with this book as my guide, I noticed more of his touch and his genius than I would have without it. A great book and gift to filmmakers everywhere.

If you are interested in the life and death of 1980's slain Playboy Playmate of the Year, Dorothy Stratten, more than half of this book is devoted to her. Not only does it include the important role she played in Bogdanovich's life, but it is a descriptive "biography within a biography". I highly recommend this book on that account, even more so than Bogdanovich's biography of her, "The Killing of the Unicorn." The reason being that Andrew Yule uses unbiased evidence to describe the cirucumstanses of her incredibly amazing, but tragically short life. It also gives the LAPD account of her gruesome murder, which according to Mr. Yule is not accurate in the "Killing of the Unicorn". If you saw the recent television biography of Dorothy Stratten and you want to know more, I cannot recommend this book enough.

It's really a shame that Dorothy's entire life was spent searching for a father figure: she found plenty of them--Hef, Peter, Paul. She never had a chance to find herself. I am sure Peter loved her, in the way he could possibly love a little girl, so perfect and beautiful and adoring, but not yet a woman. Peter Bogdanovich is narcissistic and egotistical. Dorothy didn't need another man to mold her and make her the perfect woman. She needed to get away from all of them and discover HERSELF. Who SHE was. Spend time with her family--the sister who had her taken away too soon and then marries her sister's lover. The tragedy the Stratten family has endured is palpable, but I believe Peter Bogdanovich had as much a part in her death as Paul did. He was the lover who enraged Paul. Not that there had to be one--Paul had made up his mind any number of scenarios that Dorothy had no control over--and that weren't true. But instead of letting her get on with her life, Peter instantly sweeps her up into a romance she wasn't ready for and it probably cost her her life. She was manipulated her whole adult life for the pleasure of men. I'm sorry she never knew, as I have now, an adult, healthy loving relationship. I think about the horror she went through that last night of her life, and wonder how these "men" can wash her blood off their hands.

I did enjoy this book even though I thought it was hypocritical and biased. The reason I read it was due to my interest in Dorothy Stratten from the Pulitzer prize winning "Village Voice" article about her life & death by Teresa Carpenter. I also remember way back when she was a rising star, the infatuation of my teenage brother with her (along with many other males). At the time, she was the biggest thing to ever hit Playboy. Not since Pamela Anderson Lee, has a Playboy Playmate stirred such promise for a successful career. However, I think this biography is somewhat hypocritical and another reviewer here points that out as well.

From these writings, Peter Bogdanovich accuses the Playboy sex machine and Hugh Hefner of being a driving force in her death. I disagree, I think she was just discovered by the wrong person in the form of her sleazy future husband and murderer, Paul Snider. I wish a reputable modeling agency would have discovered her instead, not only would she probably still be alive, but I think she had the star quality that would have made her a huge celebrity. All of this would have come without the stigma of having posed nude for men's magazines; Bogdanovich points out that this leaves a blemish on you even after death. It is no wonder that even though she's been dead for nearly two decades, Playboy and others are still peddling her naked pictures. I appreciate that Bogdanovich did not publish any of these photos of her or Paul Snider out of simple respect. The photos of her that do reside in this book are when she has a most natural and angelic appearance, without the tons of makeup and hair bleach regulary used by Playboy. The cover photo is exemplary of this. It is sad to think what could have happened if a reputable modeling agency discovered her.

Although I thought Bogdanovich tried to respectfully preserve her memory, I think he exposes some pretty intimate sexual moments which is not in the best of taste. Also, what made him think that he was any different than any of the other male "Hef regulars" at the Playboy mansion that came on to her as well? He just succeeded where they didn't. Perhaps an 18 year old girl would respond to a man more than twice her age if he was rich, powerful and giving her a starring role in his upcoming movie. I do think he was madly and pathologically in love with her from these writings. However, I will also give him credit for trying to provide the essense of who she was. He made me realize that she was not just another blond bimbo posing nude for Hefner, but a very sensitive, shy, bright and unique young woman with an ethreal beauty that put her in extreme situations of great limelight to exploitation and eventually death.

I was so interested in reading this book that I couldn't put it down. Everything that happened to Dorothy was awful, her life was a shame and what happened after her life (how her baby sister married Peter) was, I think, pretty sick too. Of course, that's only my opinion, Peter seems to have loved her and Louise too, what happened between them happened between them. She was very very lucky to be able to be in Playboy and for that I'm sure she is admired by many. At least by me. Her brief life was over before it really began, for that I feel for her. The book was great, it made me really care about Dorothy and what happened to her. I'm very glad I read it and would recommend it to ANYONE. I also hope Peter feels as good and as fulfilled as he can after writing this book, because it really did explain the real Dorothy and introduced her to millions of people, even if it was too late. Her death was terrible and what happened to her was disgusting to even think about, but that's Hollywood for you.