There's so much good stuff in this, I don't know where to start
to inform you about it. Let me try the bullet approach.
*The important movie critics, of course, are here. Pauline Kael
does a tango with Norman Mailer on the flick "Last Tango in Paris", Sarris and Tynan as well as Editor Ebert are included
here.
*There's a great Truman Capote piece where he and Marilyn Monroe
(in anti-Monroe drag) hang out and dish the dirt. Capote tries to get her to admit that she's seeing writer Arthur Miller.
*Julia Phillips tells of the coked up, spiked up, hyped up days before and after the time she won the Oscar for her producing The Sting.
*There's hilarious sections on WC Fields and Baby Leroy (WC spikes Leroy's orange juice bottle with gin--"the child was more or less restored to consciousness, but in the scene that followed Turog (the director) complained of his lack of animation.") and Groucho Marx' letters to Warners Bros. executives about what "A Night in Casablanca" entailed. (The executives took umbrage to the use of Casablanca in the title.
Groucho, took umbrage to how absurd these guys were so he took the absurdity to another level.)
*There's the Spike Lee "Do the Right Thing" notes which basically outlines the entire film, but are extremely interesting none the less, there's the infamous Gleave and Forest FAQ on Quintin Tarintino's "Pulp Fiction".
*John Waters dishes the dirt on the polyester, back door, wrapped in cellophane and tossed in the dumpster LA. Funny stuff
*Janet Leigh on Hitchcock and the infamous shower scene, Hitchcock on Hitchcock's style of directing, Mamet on Mamet's style of directing.
*Peter Bogdanovich does a excellent piece on Humphrey Bogart and the Bogey Mystique. You are gonna luv that one, trust me.
*Terry 'Waiting to Exhale' McMillian tells us what growing up in Michigan and having the "Wizard of Oz" come on television has meant to her and her family.
And I haven't even scratched the surface of the many pleasures of this great undertaking. There's Mae West, there's Doris Day, there's Orson Welles, there's Frederico Fellini, there's Cary Grant and there's essays from the great novels Hollywood Babylon, Get Shorty and The Player.
There's hours and hours of reading pleasure in this fantastic book. "For me, no other art form touches me the way movies do", says Ebert. I heartily concur and I appreciate that his love of the movies has inspired him to put together this collection.