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Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
Audiobook17 hours

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

Written by Mark Harris

Narrated by Lloyd James

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

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 Dolittle, 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 such as Mary Poppins and 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 time the Oscar ceremonies roll around in 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.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 3, 2008
ISBN9781400176250
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
Author

Mark Harris

Mark Harris is a former environmental columnist with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. His articles and essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, E/The Environmental Magazine, Reader's Digest, and Hope. He lives with his family in Pennsylvania. Visit his website at www.gravematters.us.

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Five Movies and the Birth of New Hollywood is a very engaging look at one year of cinema and five now renowned films which were nominated for Oscars. This is written in an easy to read conversational style and generally avoids the poe faced jargon of so many other attempts to 'literise' film making. I enjoyed the way Harris looked at each movie charting the whole process from the writing of the script, to initial casting choices all the way up until the critics views of the films. Sometimes it was surprising to see how badly received some of these classics were. If I had any complaint about this it is that at times there is too much intercutting between different narratives about each film. This constant back and forth nature of retelling the pre and post production of the five movies makes it a difficult book to just dip into otherwise you lose the thread of each story. Overall though this is a great book for the person in your life who fancies themself as Mark Kermode.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of the most fascinating non-fiction books I've ever read. If you're a cinephile, you can't not read this book. Likewise if you're interested in the cultural changes of the 1960s, it's a sure thing. Harris blends rigorous scholarship, great first hand interviews (inciteful quotes from Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman in particular) with the narrative drive of a novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It was kind of fun to follow these five films from conception to awards. Probably more detail than most people may want, but I enjoyed getting the behind-the-scenes scoop on these classics.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Thoroughly enjoyable read taking a look back at the five movies nominated for best picture for 1968 Academy Awards. This book offers a lot of intriguing information regarding; Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night and Doctor Dolittle, five movies which give birth to a new Hollywood. Very interesting information regarding each movie and the actors and directors involved. I nice little Epilogue sheds light on their careers after these ground breaking movies were released.One downside is the fact that the information is scattered throughout the book and not in chronological order. Place a bookmark on the index for easy access as you'll refer to it often.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I completed a book that has been on the shelves for a while - Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of New Hollywood by Mark Harris. This is interesting stuff, as it not only tells the history of how the movies came to be made but also of how their cast came to be assembled. The five movies are: Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night and Doctor Dolittle. Fascinating in particular to me as the movies are all from 1967, which was my birth year. There is a bit of serendipity at work, too, since I recently read John Lewis' March trilogy - so again I read about how Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier traveled to Greenville, Mississippi "just days after the murder of three civil rights workers, to meet with Stokely Carmichael and members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at a small dance hall. The two performers were followed the entire time they were there by the Ku Klux Klan." In fact, these incidents scared Poitier so badly that he insisted that In the Heat of the Night be filmed above the Mason Dixon Line, which is why the movie was shot in Sparta, Illinois and not in Mississippi. Only the cotton field scenes were shot in the South (in Tennessee), and that experience was a very scary one for all involved, so they cut their time there short. The book follows the films all the way up through the 1968 Oscars, which were delayed that year because of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The five movies were each nominated for Best Picture of 1967 - In the Heat of the Night won. I liked that in the epilogue, the author provided the rest of the story for each of the key players in the book - just a brief overview of the rest of their careers. As further research, the kids and I have been watching the movies - a few nights ago we watched In the Heat of the Night, which we all really liked (the book is very good, too), and last night we watched The Graduate - the girls had not seen it before, and they loved it. Looking forward to viewing the rest of the films together - although probably not Dr. Doolittle, as it turns out Rex Harrison was a complete ass.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "As in the case with most Academy Awards ceremonies, there was less symbolism to be extracted from the evening than morning-after analysts might have imagined, and even that applied only to the Academy's taste in movies, not to the country's."-- Mark Harris, "Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood"The above quotation, found near the end of "Pictures at a Revolution," a fascinating 2008 book about the five movies nominated for best picture in 1968, seems like an odd thing for Mark Harris to say, given that his entire book focuses on the symbolism of those five movies and the 1968 Academy Awards. His thesis is that what he calls New Hollywood began to take over from Old Hollywood that year. All five movies nominated -- "In the Heat of the Night," "The Graduate," "Bonnie and Clyde," "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "Doctor Doolittle" -- were American-made, following a long period of British dominance at awards ceremonies. Younger, liberal, independent film makers, greatly influenced by European directors, began to replace older, conservative studio heads.The ceremony in 1968, which was delayed by the death of Martin Luther King, reflected the struggle of the two camps, according to Harris. "The Graduate" and "Bonnie and Clyde" very much represented New Hollywood, while "Doctor Doolittle," the only one of the five films to never break even, represented Old Hollywood. "In the Heat of the Night," which won the award for best picture that year, and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," were mostly Old Hollywood, but they both starred Sidney Poitier and both dealt with race relations, a timely topic even if the latter film was considered out of date by the time of its release.Harris goes into exhaustive detail about the making of all five of those movies. Much of his information may be gathered from other sources, yet much of it is also based on his interviews with those involved in the productions. Among the tidbits he shares:-- French directors Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard both considered directing "Bonnie and Clyde." Instead Arthur Penn made the movie and got a nomination for his efforts. It may be a good thing Godard didn't take the job because he wanted to make the movie, set in Texas and surrounding states, in New Jersey in January.-- Among actresses considered for the part of Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate" were Doris Day, Jeanne Moreau, Patricia Neal and Ava Gardner. Anne Bancroft ultimately got the part. And the Simon and Garfunkel song "Here's to You Mrs. Robinson" was originally written to mention Mrs. Roosevelt.-- Spencer Tracy's monologue at the end of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" took six days to shoot. Tracy was so ill at at the time he could work just a few hours each day. He died before the movie was released.--Bosley Crowther, the longtime New York Times movie critic, lost his job because he panned "Bonnie and Clyde" again and again and again. He loved "Cleopatra." Meanwhile, Pauline Kael got her job as film critic at The New Yorker because of an article she wrote praising "Bonnie and Clyde.""Oliver!," made in Great Britain, won the Academy Award for best picture the following year, but it was the last British film to win until 1982 ("Chariots of Fire"). New Hollywood had taken over.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This history of the change in the movie and film industry focused around the Best Picture nominees for 1967. As a fan of film, I found the stories behind the stories fascinating. It reads like story that brings the facts to life.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Harris takes a fascinating look at the making of five different movies. We see the wrinkles behind all the glossy stars of days gone by, such as Rex Harrison's racism, Warren Beatty's uneasy leap into producing, and Sidney Poitier's struggle against racism and fame in America.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Contains plenty of interesting snippets, and well written, but just didn't do it for me unfortunately
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Mark Harris' book is a chronicle of Hollywood casting off its Production Code-chrysalis and emerging as a completely different beast. With overlapping dialogue and storylines, the book moves much like the films foreshadowed in this singular cinematic year.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Full disclosure: I am not a non-fiction reader. You may have noticed this, since over the last five months I have read almost exclusive fiction, with only the exception of a few Holocaust memoirs. I am not sure why this is - maybe it is because I am of the internet generation, and so information is readily available with basically no effort on my part, or maybe it is because my many history classes at university subjected me to such dry textbooks that I have a natural aversion to non-fiction. Whatever the reason, it has taken me five months, and 53 books, before I finally read a non-memoir, non-fiction book. To my surprise, I loved it! Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood mixes quite a few of my favourite things. It deals with the 1960s, a decade that I find fascinating, and its focus is on the five movies nominated for Best Picture at the 1968 Academy Awards. I love movies, especially classic movies, and my favourite movie of all time, The Graduate, was one of the five movies up for Best Picture. Basically, if a non-fiction book could have been written with me as the target audience, it would be this book.Harris' basic thesis is that the five Best Picture nominees - The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and Doctor Dolittle - represent a moment of change in Hollywood, a transition from the old Hollywood of the 1940s and 50s, and the new Hollywood of the 1970s. Old Hollywood, represented by Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Doctor Dolittle, and actors like Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, meant black and white films that were director-focused. New Hollywood, epitomized by Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, and the teams responsible for the two movies, was influenced by French New Wave films, embraced colour, and wanted to bring serious change to American cinema.Pictures at a Revolution traces the five movies from their birth until the night of the Academy Awards, detailing scriptwriting, financial backing, casting, filming, and post-production. Harris is very thorough in his research and writing, yet the pace never lags. I was consistently interested in what I was reading, and found it easy to keep the hundreds of people straight in my mind. Harris doesn't judge, or really ever insert himself into the narrative, though he is of course making an argument. He stays away, for the most part, from Hollywood gossip, and gives near-equal consideration to all five films.Harris' book added to my knowledge of The Graduate, and introduced me to four other movies about which I knew very little. His commentary on the 1960s, and the massive cultural changes of the decade, added to his focus on film; Harris frequently remarkes that this change in film parallels the changes also occurring in music and fashion. Old Hollywood and new Hollywood represent the tension between generations in the world at large, a topic explored in The Graduate.Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood was my kind of non-fiction: written in a captivating manner, it explored one aspect of popular culture as a metaphor for the changing society of the 1960s. Harris' extensive notes have given me numerous books to read in the future, and four movies that are on my must-watch list. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in film, or in 1960s culture.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My first thoughts on reviewing this book were not terribly positive as I truly had a lot of trouble really getting into the book in the first place. So I set it down for a couple of months. With the arrival of the summer film season, I picked "Scenes From A Revolution" up again and found it a read into which I could more readily immerse myself.First and foremost, I have to say that this is a fascinating book. I don't often read historical books of any sort, let alone on the subject of film, so this was way outside my normal literary comfort zone. As a result, this book held a bit of quirky intrigue that makes it worth a read for those who love movies, like myself, but are not necessarily well educated with the history of cinema.From my perspective, this book provided a very interesting historical view of hollywood of the day. I was particularly fascinated by how much hollywood has changed over the years. Nowadays, the film industry seems almost without bounds. There are so many large and low budget companies producing everything from the great to the terrible. During the mid-60s in which this book is set, hollywood is presented in a much more finite view. This was particularly revealing and interesting to me.Now, am I convinced, as the author has presented, that the year in question was really such a crucially pivotal moment in film history, shifting from one type of flick to another? Honestly, not really. But I really believe that with as much as the author had to present about the time, I really personally lack the scope of knowledge required to agree or disagree. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great bits about this slice of film history presented by Mr. Harris.Lastly, this book did make me consider more specifically when I see a film today exactly how much the industry has changed over the years. I am sure that is a ridiculously obvious concept. But it's easy to overlook as you watch hour after hour of modern cinema.If I HAD to take any particular stance after reading this book, I would probably have to (if anything) choose to disagree with the author and believe that the great change in hollywood film making was a gradual one. Yes, there are years such as 1967 which made a big impact. But there are a number of those years and lots of overall change that occurred.So, final thoughts - pick this one up if you, like me, love going down to the cinema for a film. This book is guaranteed to take you on a journey through a captivating slice of american film history which will cause you to appreciate and enjoy the films of the day even more. At least, that is, if you are anything like me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fascinating look behind the scenes at the personalities and tribulations involved in the making of the five Oscar nominees for Best Film in 1968. As someone who knows little about film history, I was amazed by how quickly I was drawn into the behind the scenes intrigues and shenanigans. Mark Harris has put a lot of time into researching this book, and I loved the quotes from key players that have been incorporated throughout -- especially where the memories of the key players contradict one another. I enjoyed reading about Warren Beatty's struggle to get Newton and Benton's Bonnie and Clyde made, and, once made, to get movie studio Warner to publicize and promote it. I loved reading that Beatty and Penn (as producer and director respectively) agreed, in an effort to make the best film they could, to fight at least once a day, every day. As someone who has only ever known Dustin Hoffman as a movie star, I found it surprising to read of Dustin Hoffman's struggles to gain recognition as an actor of any note, and his nervousness about taking on his now classic role as Benjamin Braddock opposite Anne Bancroft's Mrs Robinson in The Graduate. I'm ashamed to admit I did not even know the name of director Mike Nichols, a multiple award winning director of Broadway shows, before reading this book, but he sounds like a man who knew exactly the film he wanted to make, and how to get the best performance out of his actors to make that vision come alive.I was kind of saddened to read about Sidney Poitier's struggles with being typecast as almost too-perfect characters in an attempt to offset his skin colour. Given the rise to greatness of men like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, who brought race relations to the forefront of American politics, it seems very sad that the end of the sixties also marked a downturn in Poitier's movie fortunes. In Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Poitier got the chance to play opposite Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, but he ended up stuck back in his typecast role of 'too perfect to be true'. A movie that should have been relevant in the sixties, with it's plot of inter-racial marriage, rendered safe by Poitier's so-perfect-he-could-be-white character. Poitier also played an African American detective, opposite Rod Steiger's slightly racist Southern police chief in another Best Film Oscar nominee in 1968: In the Heat of the Night. I haven't watched this film yet, but aftre reading everything this book has to say about it, I intend to change that state of affairs as quickly as possible. For the first time, it sounds as though Poitier was given a role in which he could allow at least some of his anger to shine through. And Steiger sounds like he did an amazing job.The end of the sixties coincided with the end of hugely costly old studio musical roadshows, and this was emphasized by the spectacular failure of Doctor Doolittle. And the troubles on Doctor Doolittle extended beyond the financial. Possibly its biggest liability was the film's star, Rex Harrison...All in all, a thoroughly absorbing and entertaining book that I'd recommend to anyone even vaguely interested in movies, and in what goes on behind the scenes.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Scenes from a Revolution: The Birth of the New Hollywood is traced through the events that lead to the production and nomination of “In the Heat of the Night", "Bonnie & Clyde", "Doctor Doolittle", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "The Graduate” for the best picture in the Academy Awards Ceremony of 1967. As you read it you become painlessly enmeshed in the practical nuts and bolts of movie making as well as the political, social and technological changes affecting their production and distribution. It is clearly based on meticulous research and interviews so you get both the contemporary take on things and the older and perhaps wiser reflections on events of many of the main characters.The context is that Hollywood in the mid 60’s was still mainly organised as factory-studios with the exception of United Artists that was a publisher-distributor (a producer put a creative package together and agree costs and profits and UA marketed and distributed.) But the whole system was in reality the walking dead. Before the mid 50’s back to the 30’s 5 of the 8 big studios also controlled the theatres. This link was broken by a 1948 Supreme Court ruling that required exhibition to be separate from distribution-production. This system had allowed the studios to do block booking which was usually a package of 5 films- one good and the rest a range of A and B stinkers. It was this practice that the judgement had ruled on. The solution was seen a divorcement which RKO as one of the weaker studio had jumped on for its own advantages so forcing a chain reaction of separation. Ironically, it was the first to be broken up by an outside conglomerate, stripped of its film assets and finally came out of the movie industry completely. The studio’s economic model was churning out colour, bright light big screen westerns, war and sex-comedies (think John Wayne, Doris Day) and the occasional musical aimed at families. TV was seen as the big competitor and a destroyer of its mass market so they resisted allowing films being distributed to TV. Directors would even sue them because the commercial breaks were affecting the artistic balance of the film. The big earner in this economic model was to have a road movie. This was a film that would open in the big theatres with booked seats charging above average prices and would only be released to the next range of theatres when the income started to fall. In this way a film could be an income stream for 2 years. However in the 60’s the big road movie had been the Sound of Music so the studios were falling over to produce the next big expensive musical most of which were to be box office turkeys and become the final nail in the coffin for the studio-factory system. Another factor in this light fare was the aftermath of McCarthyism with the Studios steering away from anything political despite the obvious major social revolutions taking place due to the Civil Rights movement, the growing anti war movement and the baby boom generational cultural revolutions. The production code also imposed self censorship and meant that films were increasingly at best out of touch or at worse reactionary. For example, afro-Americans appeared in films as servants and nowhere behind the scenes with the exception of Sidney Poiter as the “good Negro” had which itself reflected the racism of the time of which Sidney Poiter was fully aware.Yet by the 70’s this whole economic model had changed. All the studios had become distributor-producers with close links to TV’ production and distribution. They were all on they way of being absorbed into conglomerates. The summer blockbuster had arrived, and franchises (think Bond, Jaws, Planet of the Apes, StarTrek) were integral to profits. The key market was no longer families but the 15-21’s, censorship was replaced with ratings. Integration behind and in front of the camera took off as Hollywood realised the economic power of its black audience. And they embraced European film making and styles.Don’t think this is a dry history book as much of this context is woven into the real heart of the book which is to look at the twists and turns of the stages of the films production. The structure is like a novel in that you read so far in the events of a movie before switching to another often by following how the events in the one gave or frustrated opportunities in the other. This list gives you a flavour of the complexities of making a move and the serependity of the results.•Screenplay- Bonnie and Clyde by writers who wanted the film to be the start of American New wave. Or ones that started as novels adaptations such as the Graduate. What is hot or not then depends on what is seen as the next big book office which what drives the Doolittle project•The Producer-Doolittle and the Bonnie and Clyde film had a rocky ride before this became clear. What is hot is not depends on how well you did so Kramer could get a package for Guess who coming to dinner but Warren Beatty could not but his charm proved to be the winner•The Director. Bonnie and Clyde had a very bumpy two years before Penn agreed to come on aboard. And the graduate Director had never shot a film and had only just become known as a Theatre Director after years of being part of a famous comedy team. What is hot is not depends what was hot in the book office so knowing a turkey was on the way a number of projects were driven to get things moving before the money moved away.•Casting-biggest breaker and maker of the process as the bankable star could prove a disaster in making or distributing the film as Rex Harrison for Doolittle. Or make as in the case of Hepburn and Tracey in Guess who’s coming to Diner. You also see the turkeys that might have been- Doris Day as Mrs Robinson and Robert Redford as the boy in the Graduate•Production-pre, filming and post production. It becomes clear the importance of lighting, choosing locations, editing all had a powerful impact on the final films and how the decisions taken were shaped by the civil right struggle, the power of the studio, changes in the production code etc•Distribution and the critics- Warner Brothers tried to bury Bonnie and Clyde- it had got as far as it did because Jack Warner in the last few weeks of being the last old time Studio Boss had been distracted by the making of Camelot. But a powerful critic going into print acknowledging that he had been mistaken in his first review gave Warren the chance to start the year long campaign to get an eventual successful national releaseAnd before you now think that this is a nerd’s book, added to the film history, social and political context and analyses of how films actually get made (kills dead any auteur theory which holds that a director's films reflect that director's personal creative vision) a detailed biography of the key actors, producers, studio bosses directors, writers, technicians etc and their relationships to each other as the films finally get made and shown is woven into the story. For example:•Hepburn and Tracey may have been gay or bisexual and in a protective relationship- being adulterous being the better option!;•Rex Harrison and wife were very fun of the sauce- she when drunk would do flipovers wearing no knickers;•Sidney Poiter was used as an Uncle Tom by the film industry but his films shown on the TV( sold by the studios as worthless negro films) widened his audience appeal and encouraged TV companies to Black Actors in positive roles as in Mission Impossible and Startrek);•Dustin Hoffman went back onto welfare until the Graduate was released and capitulated him into and stardom and the Midnight Cowboy; and•David Webb the author admits how priggish he was in the film’s changing the scene so the wedding is distributed after the vows and not before the vows as in the bookThis was an extremely enjoyable book that enabled me to see these 1967 films and films in general in a new light. Its 500 pages flew by as I managed to read it over 4 days and was left begging for more. Highly Recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a work which covers a rarely covered period of Hollywood in the standard histories – the mid-Sixties between the hegemony of the old studio system and the rise of the director/auteur. American filmmaking of this decade has been less well catered for than the British industry, with its reflection of ‘Swinging Sixties’.The author’s approach is to focus in on 5 very different films, the Best Picture nominees of 1967 (In the Heat of the Night, Bonnie & Clyde, Doctor Dolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner), each of which represent a strand of filmmaking at that time, and hold them up the changes which are going on in society around them. The films themselves may seem tame today, but between them they reflected the impact of the Production Code, the Civil Rights Movement and the rise of counterculture. The argument the author makes that these are radical films which changed (or at least were a catalyst for change) is compelling.This is a meticulously researched and referenced work, and for any scholarly film historian would be critical reading, however it is also extremely accessible to anyone with a general interest in the history of film (or the Sixties in general). The stories of the five films, one weaving in and out of the other as their gestation occurs over a period of years keeps the reader interested. The principal characters are sharply depicted, almost wickedly so in some cases. Struggling actors and studio moguls alike could almost be stereotypes, but the author provides enough detail and background to create individuals. It’s the detail that impresses, based on interviews and original documents it makes the work fresh – Ranulph Fiennes attempting to sabotage Dr Dolittle, the trading of scripts and production rights, and perhaps most poignantly these days how filming of In the Heat of the Night was cut short in Tennessee by racism (only one hotel in the town would accept black people).I’ve read few works on behind-the-scenes Hollywood which attempt to give such a full context for the production, the process is as much the star as any of the actors.