A poetic, behind-the-scenes retrospective of an L.A. cinema classic.

Akin to The Godfather in its scope and themes, Blood In Blood Out, which turned 30 this year, stumbled at the box office but was saved from obscurity by fervent Latino audiences, who reclaimed it as a cornerstone of their representation in cinema, wrote Carlos Aguilar in the LA Times earlier this year.

Oscar winner Taylor Hackford's film, released as Bound by Honor in 1993, tells the story of three members of the fictional East L.A. gang Vatos Locos over 10 years during the 70s and into the 80s. Then up-and-coming Latino actors Jesse Borrego, Benjamin Bratt, and Damian Chapa play the leading roles, their characters inevitably forming a tight bond, yet ultimately embarking on starkly different paths. Borrego's Cruz is a painter who develops a tragic drug addiction, Bratt's Paco, a boxer turned police officer, gets viewed as a traitor, and Chapa's Miklo, an Anglo kid with some Mexican ancestry desperate to fit in, ends up in prison where he becomes an important member of a dangerous Chicano prison gang.

Credit for the lived-in sensibilities of the film goes to Jimmy Santiago Baca, a New Mexico poet who honed his craft in la pinta (slang for prison). Chapa refers to him as a 'modern-day Chicano Oscar Wilde, ' while Borrego calls him 'the Chicano Shakespeare', writes Aguilar.

The film's wide-ranging portrayal of East Los Angeles Chicano sensibilities and powerful identity struggles have earned it a place in classic L.A. cinema. This limited-edition book is a 30th anniversary tribute to the cult classic film, and features production materials with hundreds of unseen behind-the-scenes photographs and film stills shot by photographer Merrick Morton, paintings by the late San Antonio artist Adan Hernández, whose mural Carnalismo is shown in the film's final scene, and original poems by screenwriter Jimmy Santiago Baca. Blood In Blood Out is a book companion to the film but also a love letter to Los Angeles and the cast and crew of this seminal motion picture classic.

To quote Baca in Aguilar's LA Times piece, It's a beautiful panoramic view of who we are as a people, in our abundance rather than our exclusivity.

Named by The Hollywood Reporter one of the 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time!

Dark City expands with new chapters and a fresh collection of restored photos that illustrate the mythic landscape of the imagination. It's a place where the men and women who created film noir often find themselves dangling from the same sinister heights as the silver-screen avatars to whom they gave life. Eddie Muller, host of Turner Classic Movies' Noir Alley, takes readers on a spellbinding trip through treacherous terrain: Hollywood in the post-World War II years, where art, politics, scandal, style -- and brilliant craftsmanship -- produced a new approach to moviemaking, and a new type of cultural mythology.

From actual murder to magazine fiction to movie, the history of Double Indemnity is as complex as anything that hit the screen during film noir's classic period. A 1927 tabloid sensation crime of the century inspired journalist and would-be crime-fiction writer James M. Cain to pen a novella. Hollywood quickly bid on the film rights, but throughout the 1930s a strict code of censorship made certain that no studio could green-light a murder melodrama based on real events. Then in 1943 veteran scriptwriter and newly minted director Billy Wilder wanted the story for his third movie. With tentative approval from the studio he hired hardboiled novelist Raymond Chandler to co-write a script that would be acceptable to industry censors.

Director Wilder then cajoled a star cast into coming aboard: the incomparable Barbara Stanwyck in her unforgettable turn as the ultimate femme fatale; alongside Fred MacMurray, going against type as her accomplice; and Edward G. Robinson as a dogged claims investigator. Wilder kept Chandler on for the entire shoot, and other key collaborators were cinematographer John Seitz, costume designer Edith Head, and composer Miklôs Rôzsa. With all these talented contributors, the final film became one of the earliest studio noirs to gain critical and commercial success, including being nominated for seven Oscars. It powerfully influenced the burgeoning noir movement, spawned many imitators, and affected the later careers of all its cast and crew. Double Indemnity's impact on filmmakers and audiences is still felt eight decades since its release.

Authors Alain Silver and James Ursini tell the complete, never-before-told history of writing, making, and marketing of Double Indemnity in their latest and most provocative work on film noir: From the Moment They Met It Was Murder.

Here for the first time is the incredible true story of the making of Chinatown--the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema.

IN Sam Wasson's The Big Goodbye, the story of Chinatown becomes the defining story of the most colorful characters in the most colorful period of Hollywood history.

Here is Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers, as compelling a movie star as there has ever been, embarking on his great, doomed love affair with Anjelica Huston. Here is director Roman Polanski, both predator and prey, haunted by the savage death of his wife, returning to Los Angeles, the scene of the crime, where the seeds of his own self-destruction are quickly planted. Here is the fevered dealmaking of The Kid Robert Evans, the most consummate of producers. Here too is Robert Towne's fabled script, widely considered the greatest original screenplay ever written.

Wasson for the first time peels off layers of myth to provide the unvarnished account of its creation.

Between 1980 and 1989, Los Angeles was the world's most popular location for thriller movies, providing the perfect setting for gritty neo-noirs, buddy cop actioners, cautionary tales, vigilante flicks and apocalyptic science fiction. During this ten-year period, over two hundred L.A. Thrillers were produced and released, including Hollywood blockbusters like Die Hard and The Terminator, crime dramas like To Live and Die in L.A. and 52 Pick-Up and exploitation epics like Vice Squad and Savage Streets.

Brad Sykes' Neon Nightmares: L.A. Thrillers of the 1980s is the first comprehensive study of the City of Angels' most outrageous cinematic decade. Hundreds of films, from studio megahits to cult obscurities, receive in-depth reviews. The book also examines the L.A. Thriller's origins and development while focusing on key production companies, actors and filmmakers. Written with insight gleaned over twenty-five years living and working in Hollywood and filled with rare stills, Neon Nightmares sheds new light on some of the most popular and controversial movies ever made.

BRAD SYKES BIO

Brad Sykes is the award-winning screenwriter and director of more than 20 feature films, including Plaguers, Goth and Camp Blood. He is the author of Terror in the Desert: Dark Cinema of the American Southwest and has penned articles for Fangoria, Midnight, Route and Indie Slate. Sykes lives with his wife/producing partner Josephina in Los Angeles, California, where they own and operate Nightfall Pictures.

Fritz Lang's first sound feature, M (1931), is one of the earliest serial killer films in cinema history and laid the foundation for future horror movies and thrillers, particularly those with a disturbed killer as protagonist. Peter Lorre's child killer, Hans Beckert, is presented as monstrous, yet sympathetic, building on themes presented in the earlier German Expressionist horror films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Hands of Orlac. Lang eerily foreshadowed the rising fascist horrors in German society, and transforms his cinematic Berlin into a place of urban terror and paranoia. Samm Deighan explores the way Lang uses horror and thriller tropes in M, particularly in terms of how it functions as a bridge between German Expressionism and Hollywood's growing fixation on sympathetic killers in the '40s. The book also examines how Lang made use of developments within in forensic science and the criminal justice system to portray a somewhat realistic serial killer on screen for the first time, at once capturing how society in the '30s and '40s viewed such individuals and their crimes and shaping how they would be portrayed on screen in the horror films to come.

After a little known suburb of Los Angeles named Hollywood became the center of the American film industry beginning in the 1910's, huge numbers of people poured into the southern California area. They came in all shapes and sizes, from every corner of the United States and the world, from every religious and ethnic background, and all economic groups. No one's reason for coming was identical, but the vast majority of the new Hollywood immigrants harbored a desire to find employment in the ever expanding industry of making movies. Many were chasing a dream of cinematic stardom which for most, would soon end in disillusionment.
The twelve individuals profiled in this book: Nancy Carroll, Gloria Dickson, Claire Dodd, Richard Greene, John Hodiak, Marian Marsh, Karen Morley, Edward Norris, Jean Parker, Paula Raymond, Zachary Scott, and Gloria Stuart were among the tiny, elite group of new immigrants who achieved their initial goal of becoming successful actors on the silver screen. In fact, all twelve won major studio contracts, achieved fame, fortune, and acclaim. Yet, despite their achievements, all twelve failed to ascend to the very top of the professional ladder, never attaining their ultimate goal: superstardom. Given their abilities, ambition, and other significant assets, how could this be? With the invaluable assistance of major studio and library archives, recollections of the actors themselves and/or those who knew them, this book traces the lives and careers of the twelve in an attempt to determine what went right and what went wrong. The essays herein, (originally published in two acclaimed magazines, Classic Images and Films of The Golden Age), are also opportunities to offer a tip of the hat to twelve extremely gifted, hardworking, and unsung actors who coulda been contenders

A Michigan native, author, biographer Dan Van Neste has been chronicling vintage entertainment history for over thirty years. His work has appeared in innumerable newspapers, magazines, and film journals including Classic Images and Films of the Golden Age. He is the author of two acclaimed books: The Whistler: Stepping Into the Shadows (2011), and The Magnificent Heel: The Life and Films of Ricardo Cortez (2017). The latter was named one of the Best Film Books of 2017 by The Huffington Post, and was a nominee for the 2018 Richard Wall Memorial Award given by the Theater Library Association to honor English language books of exceptional scholarship in the field of recorded or broadcast performance.

WITH A FOREWORD FROM STEVEN BAUER

How many movies in the history of film have truly shaken society? Scarface did it twice.

When Brian DePalma's operatically violent and profane Scarface debuted in 1983, the film drew almost as much fire as the relentless gunfire in the film itself. Starring Al Pacino as Cuban refugee-turned-crime-boss Tony Montana, Steven Bauer as his best friend Manny, and rising star Michelle Pfeiffer as an Eighties gangster's moll, the movie was a remake of 1932's Scarface--revamped for a new era of drugs, sex, and graphic violence. Attacked as both a celebration of cocaine-fueled excess and a condemnation of it, the film's reputation only grew as the years went by. But the real story of its success started nearly a century ago--when Hollywood first fell in love with the American gangster . . .

Hollywood's infatuation with money, power, and organized crime has captured the public's imagination and made Scarface one of its most enduring modern myths. From a 1912 gangster film by D.W. Griffith to the 1932 hit Scarface starring Paul Muni, to Brian DePalma's 1983 shocker, the antihero's rise and fall exposes the dark side of the American Dream--whether it's Prohibition Era bootleggers or modern-day drug dealers. When actor Al Pacino got the idea of doing a remake of Scarface after screening the original, a legend was (re)born--and the rest is history.

Filled with behind-the-scenes anecdotes, untold tales from Old and New Hollywood, and sixteen pages of eye-popping photos, Say Hello to My Little Friend is the ultimate guide to everything Scarface. With guns blazing and chainsaws whirring, movie biz writer Nat Segaloff tears into this pop culture phenomenon with fascinating insights, stunning revelations, and a true fan's glee. This is a must-have book for movie buffs, crime lovers, and culture vultures everywhere.

Brilliant. One of my favorite films. So many ways to look at it. So much I didn't know. Nat Segaloff is that rare film scholar: as entertaining as he's informative. --David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of First Blood (Rambo) on Say Hello to My Little Friend

The Greatest Gangster Movie You've Never Seen delves deep into the shadows of cinema to unearth the buried gem that is Abel Ferrara's The Funeral. Through a captivating blend of interviews, analysis, and exploration of the gangster genre, this book offers an unparalleled look into the making of a film often overlooked but undeniably powerful.

At its heart, the book presents a comprehensive examination of The Funeral, dissecting its narrative intricacies, thematic resonance, and visual aesthetics. Through exclusive interviews with the key creative minds behind the film, including filmmaker Abel Ferrara, cinematographer Ken Kelsch, production designer Charlie M. Lagola, and costume designer Mindy Eshelman, readers gain invaluable insights into the artistic choices that shaped this cinematic masterpiece.

Ken Kelsch provides illuminating commentary on the film's striking cinematography, detailing the techniques employed to capture the gritty essence of the narrative. Charlie M. Lagola offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the creation of the film's immersive world, from meticulously crafted sets to atmospheric details that transport viewers to 1930s New York City. Meanwhile, Mindy Eshelman sheds light on the sartorial choices that define the characters, enriching their personalities and grounding them in the era's distinct aesthetic.

In addition to its focus on The Funeral the book widens its scope to explore the broader landscape of the gangster genre and Abel Ferrara's influential career. Drawing parallels between The Funeral and other iconic gangster films, the book examines recurring motifs, narrative tropes, and thematic preoccupations that define the genre's enduring appeal. Through insightful analysis, readers gain a deeper understanding of Ferrara's unique vision and his contributions to the cinematic landscape.

The Greatest Gangster Movie You've Never Seen is more than just a tribute to a forgotten masterpiece; it's a celebration of cinema's power to captivate, provoke, and endure. With its blend of scholarly rigor and cinematic passion, this book offers an indispensable resource for cinephiles, scholars, and anyone intrigued by the art of storytelling on the silver screen.

After a little known suburb of Los Angeles named Hollywood became the center of the American film industry beginning in the 1910's, huge numbers of people poured into the southern California area. They came in all shapes and sizes, from every corner of the United States and the world, from every religious and ethnic background, and all economic groups. No one's reason for coming was identical, but the vast majority of the new Hollywood immigrants harbored a desire to find employment in the ever expanding industry of making movies. Many were chasing a dream of cinematic stardom which for most, would soon end in disillusionment.
The twelve individuals profiled in this book: Nancy Carroll, Gloria Dickson, Claire Dodd, Richard Greene, John Hodiak, Marian Marsh, Karen Morley, Edward Norris, Jean Parker, Paula Raymond, Zachary Scott, and Gloria Stuart were among the tiny, elite group of new immigrants who achieved their initial goal of becoming successful actors on the silver screen. In fact, all twelve won major studio contracts, achieved fame, fortune, and acclaim. Yet, despite their achievements, all twelve failed to ascend to the very top of the professional ladder, never attaining their ultimate goal: superstardom. Given their abilities, ambition, and other significant assets, how could this be? With the invaluable assistance of major studio and library archives, recollections of the actors themselves and/or those who knew them, this book traces the lives and careers of the twelve in an attempt to determine what went right and what went wrong. The essays herein, (originally published in two acclaimed magazines, Classic Images and Films of The Golden Age), are also opportunities to offer a tip of the hat to twelve extremely gifted, hardworking, and unsung actors who coulda been contenders

A Michigan native, author, biographer Dan Van Neste has been chronicling vintage entertainment history for over thirty years. His work has appeared in innumerable newspapers, magazines, and film journals including Classic Images and Films of the Golden Age. He is the author of two acclaimed books: The Whistler: Stepping Into the Shadows (2011), and The Magnificent Heel: The Life and Films of Ricardo Cortez (2017). The latter was named one of the Best Film Books of 2017 by The Huffington Post, and was a nominee for the 2018 Richard Wall Memorial Award given by the Theater Library Association to honor English language books of exceptional scholarship in the field of recorded or broadcast performance.

Mention Shaft and most people think of Gordon Parks' seminal 1971 film starring Richard Roundtree in a leather coat, walking the streets of Manhattan to Isaac Hayes' iconic theme music. But the black private dick who inspired the blaxploitation film genre actually made his debut on the printed page as the creation of a white novelist.

Ernest Tidyman was a seasoned journalist down on his luck when he decided to try his hand at fiction. Shaft was the result, giving Tidyman the break he was looking for. He went on to become an Academy Award winning screenwriter and respected film producer.

Based on extensive research of Tidyman's personal papers, this book tells the story of Shaft from the perspective of his creator. The author provides new insight and analysis of the writing of the Shaft novels, as well as the production of the films and TV series. First-ever coverage of the forgotten Shaft newspaper comic strip includes previously unseen artwork. Also included is Shaft's recent reappearance on the printed page, in both comic book and prose form.

With the Senate's organized crime hearings and the brighter-than-bright myth of the American Dream as a backdrop, Miklitsch examines the style and history, and the production and cultural politics, of classic pictures from The Big Heat and The Asphalt Jungle to lesser-known gems like 711 Ocean Drive and post-Fifties movies like Ocean's Eleven. Miklitsch pays particular attention to trademark leitmotifs including the individual versus the collective, the family as a locus of dissension and rapport, the real-world roots of the heist picture, and the syndicate as an octopus with its tentacles deep into law enforcement, corporate America, and government. If the memes of gangster noir remain prototypically dark, the look of the films becomes lighter and flatter, reflecting the influence of television and the realization that, under the cover of respectability, crime had moved from the underworld into the mainstream of contemporary everyday life.

Watch a video of the author speaking about this topic: https: //goo.gl/Xr9RFD
And also: https: //www.dropbox.com/s/mkqw3mplruf7jje/Detective%20Talk%20Full.mp4?dl=0 (https: //www.dropbox.com/s/mkqw3mplruf7jje/Detective%20Talk%20Full.mp4?dl=0)

This insightful and entertaining book offers a historian's perspective on James Bond. Tracing Bond's evolution since his appearance in 1953, Black follows the fraught course of the final Daniel Craig movie, No Time to Die, looks to the post-Craig years, and considers the continuing cultural significance of Bond in the modern world.

John Garfield was, and remains, one of the most impactful actors of 20th century American cinema. A towering influence on so many screen performers who came along afterward, Garfield managed to create a lasting image, despite living a life that was marked with tragedy, including the loss of a child. When he left the studios and began doing independent films, his politics informed his projects and he was blacklisted by Hollywood, leading to his early death of a heart attack at only 39 years of age. This book is a film-by-film look at his work, from the brash characters he played in his studio productions, to the tormented antiheroes of film noir that he later portrayed. His work continues to resonate into the 21stcentury.



John Garfield was, and remains, one of the most impactful actors of 20th century American cinema. A towering influence on so many screen performers who came along afterward, Garfield managed to create a lasting image, despite living a life that was marked with tragedy, including the loss of a child. When he left the studios and began doing independent films, his politics informed his projects and he was blacklisted by Hollywood, leading to his early death of a heart attack at only 39 years of age. This book is a film-by-film look at his work, from the brash characters he played in his studio productions, to the tormented antiheroes of film noir that he later portrayed. His work continues to resonate into the 21stcentury.



Corporate Wrongdoing on Film: The 'Public Be Damned' provides a unique and ground-breaking analysis of corporate wrongdoing depictions, identifying, describing, and categorizing harms perpetrated by corporations.

The book provides a history of corporate wrongdoing in film, from the silent film to the present day. Early films are summarized and discussed within the historical, social and political contexts in which they were released. Examining films produced after 1979, the book classifies them by corporate harms to the environment, workers, consumers, and the economy. The book includes a discussion of well over 100 films, from obscure television movies to Hollywood blockbusters. Finally, the book concludes with a narrative analysis exploring the depiction of the protagonists, antagonists, and victims within the corporate wrongdoing film.

Detailed and accessible, Corporate Wrongdoing on Film: The 'Public Be Damned' will be of great interest to scholars and students of Criminology and Film and Media Studies.

Thanks to Jason Isralowitz for finally writing a book about Hitchcock's most under-appreciated movie. Isralowitz brilliantly contextualizes the movie and the true-life story of Manny Balestrero, preceded by an eye-opening prologue detailing the justice system's long history of indicting 'the wrong man' (and, in a few cases, 'the wrong woman'). A must for both cinephiles and true crime buffs. Bruce Goldstein, Repertory Artistic Director, Film Forum, New York.

Nothing to Fear is a fascinating history, not only for fans of Hitchcock but for anyone interested in how our justice system works (and sometimes doesn't). The story of 'the wrong man' continues to resonate well into the twenty-first century, and will make you question your assumptions about innocence and guilt. Dawn Raffel, author of The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, named by NPR as one of 2018's Great Reads and winner of a 2019 Christopher Award.

Alfred Hitchcock is not often associated with a social justice movement. But in 1956, the world's most famous director focused his lens on an issue that cuts to the heart of our criminal justice system: the risk of wrongful conviction. The result was The Wrong Man, a wrenching and largely overlooked drama based on the real-life arrest of Queens musician Christopher Manny Balestrero for two robberies he did not commit.

With documentary-like authenticity, Hitchcock and his team meticulously re-created Manny's journey through the corridors of justice and the devastating effect of the arrest on his wife, Rose. In so doing, the director cast a damning light on New York's history of mistaken identity cases. The Balestreros fell victim to the same rush to judgment and suggestive eyewitness identification procedures that had doomed innocent defendants in earlier cases. Their ordeal is part of a larger story of the state's failure to reckon with its role in other wrongful prosecutions in the first half of the twentieth century.

Attorney Jason Isralowitz tells this story in a revelatory book that situates both the Balestrero case and its cinematic counterpart in their historical context. Drawing from archival records, Isralowitz delivers a gripping account of Manny's trial and new insights into an errant prosecution. He then examines how Hitchcock fused striking visual motifs with social realism to create a timeless work of art. The film bears witness to issues that animate the contemporary innocence movement, including the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, the need for police lineup reforms, and the dangers of investigative tunnel vision. Given the hundreds of exonerations of the wrongfully convicted in recent years, The Wrong Man remains as timely as ever.

This book explores contemporary American true crime narratives across various media formats. It dissects the popularity of true crime and the effects, both positive and negative, this popularity has on perceptions of crime and the justice system in contemporary America.