For more than 20 years, I relied on Schickel for guidance when determining which films to see; also, for gaining a better understanding of the films I had seen. In this volume, he provides interviews with eight great directors: Hitchcock, Capra, Minimill, Cukor, Hawks, Wellman, Vidor, and Walsh. In recent weeks, I have also read Robert J. Emery's two The Directors (Take One and Take Two) and Bogdanovich's Who the Devil Made It which also offer interviews and conversations with various great directors. Don't worry about duplications; that is, what Cukor, Hawks, Hitchcock, Walsh, and Wellman have to say. Bogdanovich, Emery, and Schickel have different questions to ask, different nuances of film making to explore, and approach the directors from quite different perspectives. The responses they obtain from the same directors differ. For that reason, I strongly urge fellow film buffs to purchase all of these volumes. The order in which they are read is unimportant.

What differentiates Schickel from Bogdanovich and Emery is the fact that, for many years, he wrote film reviews for Time magazine and thus had an immense audience with which to share his opinions about more than a thousand films. Also, he is the author of more than 20 books about film making which include biographies of Marlon Brando, Cary Brando, and James Cagney. Over the years, he has earned and richly deserves his reputation as one of the most thoughtful and knowledgeable of film authorities. In this volume, he interacts with eight of the greatest film directors. At no time does he seem intimidated by them nor does he ever disrupt the flow of information exchanged with self-serving observations. He guides each director into subject areas which are probably of great interest to most film buffs but he also allows each director to ramble, digress, etc. when reminiscing or when sharing specific opinions about films and actors with whom they were associated. Sure, there is some delicious gossip. And yes, some insights not otherwise available. However, for the most part, Schickel sets up various subjects and then allows each director (many of them a personal friend) to proceed wherever he may wish, at whatever pace he may prefer. His brilliant orchestration of responses ensures their scope and depth. That is to say, he did not merely turn on the recorder and then let each of the eight take it from there. On his reader's behalf, Schickel remains actively involved, indeed engaged in the exchange of information but at no time is intrusive. Within its genre, this is indeed a "classic."

This film critic's survey of eight of Hollywood's finest directors and their works uses the interview process to explore the work of American filmmakers over the last decades. Hitchcock, Capra, Cuckor and others share their achievements in a revealing set of interviews covering special challenges and observations.

In the introduction to his autobiography, Vincente Minnelli apologises. He has an insecurity about writing of his life since he believes he has "tip-toed" through it, and he isn't interested in serving up gossip about the people he has encountered. He says he would rather be remembered for his knowledge of rococco furbelows than for anything else. This soon clues you into what kind of book you are getting, one written by a man whose notions of taste and discretion are going to provide an anaemic experience. After a painfully hyperbolic forward by Alan Jay Lerner, and a scripted conversation between his daughter Liza and himself in preparation for the production of A Matter Of Time (the book was written in 1974), Minnelli goes through his past. His transition from window dresser to costume designer to theatre then Hollywood is catalogued, but requires one to have seen the end result to appreciate the detail. And his damnable "discretion" gives it all a reserved and waxed tone. Also those looking for any evidence of his reknowned bisexuality will be disappointed, not surprisingly. Minnelli's reluctance to settle in Hollywood is based on his belief that American films up to that time had no style - the camera rarely moving. This argument is clearly coloured by his initial unsuccessful venture in Hollywood, and is as spurious as the idea that Lerner proposes that it takes a true artist to create something really bad. Minnelli provides an interesting prefiguring of his soon to be wife Judy Garland and her drug addiction when he mentions he was given amphetamines and sedatives to get through the long working hours, but the trial so exhausted him that he soon disposed of this method of endurance. One might then consider Garland's choice, and he makes it clear that she made a choice to continue with the drugs after the years when she began at MGM and she was required to put in 14 hour days, as either foolhardy or admirable in a perverse sort of way ie she was more of a man than he could be. He mentions her pathological desire for approval and the negative influence of her mother who he quips must have been the inspiration for Mama Rose in Gypsy, who was incapable of giving Judy the loving words she so desperately needed to hear. Minnelli may attribute himself with helping Garland's evolution from child-star to woman in her films, and giving her an appreciation of "beautiful things" but ultimately he feels he failed her. "I thought I had a bottomless reservoir of love to offer, but Judy found me lacking". He adds though that any man would, because of the deep-rooted and open wounds of her childhood, and her depressive notion that self-destruction would "pay them back", a revenge on those at the studio who had wronged her. It is ironic in their A Star is Born relationship that after a brief shared success, his stock would rise and hers would fall, leading to her departure from MGM and his greatest triumphs. More interesting though is the perceived failures - Brigadoon which he blames on Gene Kelly's lack of enthusiasm, and Kismet, his own reluctant commitment. He lost the chance to direct the film of My Fair Lady because he wanted a percentage, and had planned to direct Marilyn Monroe in Goodbye Charlie before she died. I also liked the mention of projects abandoned - the life of Bessie Smith with Tina Turner, and Liza as Zelda Fitzgerald!