38 results for "History"

Welcome to Dunder Mifflin The Ultimate Oral History of the Office

Brian Baumgartner,Ben Silverman,Benjamin Silverman
"The definitive history of The Office. Spills all of the tea on NBC's iconic sitcom." -E! News Join the entire Dunder Mifflin gang on a journey back to Scranton: here's the hilarious and improbable inside story behind the beloved series. Based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with the cast and creators and illustrated with 100 behind-the-scenes photographs, here, at last, is the untold inside story of The Office, featuring a foreword by Greg Daniels, who adapted the series for the U.S. and was its guiding creative force, and narrated by star Brian Baumgartner (aka "Kevin Malone") and executive producer Ben Silverman.. In Welcome to Dunder Mifflin, the entire Office gang reunite after nearly a decade to share their favorite inside stories, spill untold secrets, and reveal how a little show that barely survived its first season became the most watched series in the universe. This ultimate fan companion pulls back the curtain as never before on all the absurdity, genius, love, passion, and dumb luck that went into creating America's beloved The Office. Featuring the memories of Steve Carell, John Krasinkski, Jenna Fischer, Greg Daniels, Ricky Gervais, Rainn Wilson, Angela Kinsey, Craig Robinson, Brian Baumgartner, Phyllis Smith, Kate Flannery, Ed Helms, Oscar Nunez, Amy Ryan, Ellie Kemper, Creed Bratton, Paul Lieberstein, Ben Silverman, Mike Schur, and many more.
HarperCollins Publishers 2021-11-16 224 pages

The Mayor of MacDougal Street [2013 Edition] A Memoir

Dave Van Ronk,Elijah Wald
Dave Van Ronk (1936-2002) was one of the founding figures of the 1960s folk revival, but he was far more than that. A pioneer of modern acoustic blues, a fine songwriter and arranger, a powerful singer, and one of the most influential guitarists of the '60s, he was also a marvelous storyteller, a peerless musical historian, and one of the most quotable figures on the Village scene. Featuring encounters with young stars-to-be like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, The Mayor of MacDougal Street is a vivid evocation of a singular time and place--a feast not only for fans of folk music and blues, but for anyone interested in the music, politics, and spirit of a revolutionary period in American culture.
Hachette Books 2013-10-15 272 pages

Springfield Confidential Jokes, Secrets, and Outright Lies from a Lifetime Writing for The Simpsons

Mike Reiss,Mathew Klickstein
One of Vulture's Top-10 Comedy Books of 2018 A "Must" pick by Entertainment Weekly An A.V. Club "Best Books of June" selection A "New and Noteworthy" selection by USA Today In celebration of The Simpsons thirtieth anniversary, the show’s longest-serving writer and producer offers a humorous look at the writing and making of the legendary Fox series that has become one of the most revered artistic achievements in television history. Four-time Emmy winner Mike Reiss—who has worked on The Simpsons continuously since episode one in 1989—shares stories, scandals, and gossip about working with America’s most iconic cartoon family ever. Reiss explains how the episodes are created, and provides an inside look at the show’s writers, animators, actors and celebrity guests. He answers a range of questions from Simpsons fans and die-hards, and reminisces about the making of perennially favorite episodes. In his freewheeling, irreverent comic style, Reiss reflects on his lifetime inside The Simpsons—a personal highlights reel of his achievements, observations, and favorite stories. Springfield Confidential exposes why Matt Groening decided to make all of the characters yellow; dishes on what it’s like to be crammed in a room full of funny writers sixty hours a week; and tells what Reiss learned after traveling to seventy-one countries where The Simpsons is watched (ironic note: there’s no electricity in many of these places); and even reveals where Springfield is located! He features unique interviews with Judd Apatow, who also provided the foreword, and Conan O'Brien, as well as with Simpsons legends Al Jean, Nancy Cartwright, Dan Castellaneta, and more. Like Cary Elwes’ As You Wish, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s Seinfeldia, and Chris Smith’s The Daily Show: An Oral History, Springfield Confidential is a funny, informational, and exclusive look at one of the most beloved programs in all of television land.
HarperCollins 2019-04-23 320 pages

A Paper Life

Tatum ONeal
A real Hollywood-style tell-all, this is the extremely candid and highly explosive autobiography of one of the movie industry's most talented and troubled young stars. At age ten, Tatum O'Neal became the youngest Oscar winner in history for her performance in the film classic Paper Moon. As the sidekick to her father, the flamboyant star and man-about-town Ryan O'Neal, she became a fixture at the most glamorous Hollywood parties and counted celebrities ranging from Cher to Stanley Kubrick among her childhood friends. Yet behind the glittering façade of Tatum's life lay heartbreak: abandonment, abuse, neglect, and drug addiction. She reveals the most intimate secrets of her dysfunctional relationships with her father, Ryan O'Neal, and stepmother, Farrah Fawcett, as well as her alcoholic mother, Joanna Moore, and ex-husband, tennis pro John McEnroe. After the collapse of her marriage and with no real family to turn to, Tatum succumbed to the demons of her past that would nearly kill her. Now she has emerged clean and sober, rediscovering herself as an actress, mother, and wonderfully vibrant woman in what she considers the prime of her life.
Harper Collins 2005-10-04 336 pages

Howard Stern comes again

Stern, Howard
Rock stars and rap gods. Comedy legends and A-list actors. Supermodels and centerfolds. Moguls and mobsters. A president. Over his four-decade career in radio, Howard Stern has interviewed thousands of personalities -- discussing sex, relationships, money, fame, spirituality, and success with the boldest of bold-faced names. But which interviews are his favorites? It's one of the questions he gets asked most frequently. Howard Stern Comes Again delivers his answer. Tracy Morgan opens up about his near-fatal car crash. Lady Gaga divulges her history with cocaine. Madonna reminisces on her relationship with Tupac Shakur. Bill Murray waxes philosophical on the purpose of life. Jerry Seinfeld offers a master class on comedy. Harvey Weinstein denies the existence of the so-called casting couch. An array of creative visionaries weigh in on what Stern calls "the climb"--The stories of how they struggled and eventually prevailed. Interspersed throughout are selections from the Howard Stern Show archives with Donald Trump that depict his own climb: transforming from Manhattan tabloid fixture to reality TV star to president of the United States. Stern also tells of his Moby Dick-like quest to land an interview with Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the 2016 election. He speaks with extraordinary candor about a variety of subjects, including his overwhelming insecurity early in his career, his revolutionary move from terrestrial radio to SiriusXM, and his belief in the power of psychotherapy. As Stern notes in the introduction: "The interviews collected here represent my best work and show my personal evolution. But they don't just show my evolution. Gathered together like this, they show the evolution of popular culture over the past quarter century."
Simon & Schuster 2019 549 pages

There's No Bones in Ice Cream Sylvain Sylvain's Story of the New York Dolls

Sylvain Sylvain
There's No Bones in Ice Cream, by Sylvain Sylvain, is the inside story of glam heroes the New York Dolls - outrageous, defiant, sleaze kings, transgender posers, drug casualties and victims, not just of their own excess but of an unsympathetic music industry that simply didn't know how to process them. Sylvain, one of only two surviving members of the original New York Dolls, offers a fly-on-the-wall, sincere and often hilarious account of the rise and fall of the Dolls, the group that flew so close to the sun that they exploded in a fireball that lit the touch paper under punk rock. Though their brief, sensation-filled yet doomed career produced just two albums, the Dolls exerted an influence on rock that changed it forever. A cross between the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols, the Dolls became the link in the chain between them, offering a crash course in mischief, cross-dressing and anarchy, but like unheralded prophets of Biblical times they were cast aside until the world finally caught up. "Other people turned the New York Dolls into legends. We just went along for the ride."
Omnibus Press 2018 256 pages

Kate Remembered

A. Scott Berg
For seven decades Katharine Hepburn played a leading role in the popular culture of the twentieth century - reigning as an admired actress, a beloved movie star, and a treasured icon of the modern American woman. She also remained one of the most private of all the public figures of her time. In 1983 - at the age of seventy-five, her career cresting - the four-time Academy Award winner opened the door to biographer A. Scott Berg - then thirty-three - and began a special friendship, one that endured to the end of her illustrious life. From the start, Scott Berg felt that Katharine Hepburn intended his role to be not just that of a friend but also of a chronicler, a confidant who might record for posterity her thoughts and feelings. Over the next twenty years, Kate used their many hours together to reveal all that came to mind, often reflecting on the people and episodes of her past, occasionally on the meaning of life. Here are the stories from those countless intimate conversations, and much more. In addition to recording heretofore untold biographical details of her entire phenomenal career and her famous relationships with such men as Spencer Tracy and Howard Hughes, Kate Remembered also tells the amusing, often emotional story of one of the most touching friendships in her final years. Scott Berg provides his own memories of Katharine Hepburn offstage - quiet dinners in her town house in New York City, winter swims (she swam, he watched) in the Long Island Sound at Fenwick, her home in Connecticut, weekend visits with family members and dear friends...even some unusual appearances by the likes of Michael Jackson and Warren Beatty. Finally, Kate Remembered discusses the legendary actress's moving farewell, during which her mighty personality surrendered at last to her failing body - all the while remaining true to her courageous character. Kate Remembered is a book about love and friendship, family and career, Hollywood and Broadway - all punctuated by unforgettable lessons from an extraordinary life.
Penguin Publishing Group 2004-09-07 384 pages

The Making of Some Like It Hot My Memories of Marilyn Monroe and the Classic American Movie

Tony Curtis
A Special Memoir for a Special Moment in Hollywood History . . . Some Like It Hot occupies a unique place in American culture. This beloved classic showcases five comic geniuses: Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, I. A. L. Diamond, Billy Wilder, and Marilyn Monroe. It has been honored by the American Film Institute as the ""Funniest Film of All Time"". It has contributed quotes, styles, and stories to film lore. Yet the full story of its making has never been told--until now.
John Wiley & Sons Canada, Limited 2009-09 248 pages

By Myself and Then Some

Lauren Bacall
The epitome of grace, independence, and wit, Lauren Bacall continues to project an audacious spirit and pursue on-screen excellence. The product of an extraordinary mother and a loving extended family, she produced, with Humphrey Bogart, some of the most electric and memorable scenes in movie history. After tragically losing Bogart, she returned to New York and a brilliant career in the theatre. A two-time Tony winner, she married and later divorced her second love, Jason Robards, and never lost sight of the strength that made her a star. Now, thirty years after the publication of her original National Book Award–winning memoir, Bacall has added new material to her inspiring history. In her own frank and beautiful words, one of our most enduring actresses reveals the remarkable true story of a lifetime so rich with incident and achievement that Hollywood itself would be unable to adequately reproduce it.
HarperCollins 2006-10-31 512 pages

Rembrandt's Eyes

Simon Schama
For Rembrandt as for Shakespeare, all the world was indeed a stage, and he knew in exhaustive detail the tactics of its performance; the strutting and mincing; the wardrobe and the face paint; the full repertoire of gesture and grimace; the flutter of hands and the roll of the eyes; the belly laugh and the half-stifled sob. He knew what it looked like to seduce, to intimidate, to wheedle, and to console; to strike a pose or preach a sermon; to shake a fist or uncover a breast; how to sin and how to atone; how to commit murder and how to commit suicide. No artist had ever been so fascinated by the fashioning of personae, beginning with his own. No painter ever looked with such unsparing intelligence or such bottomless compassion at our entrances and our exits and the whole rowdy show in between. More than three centuries after his death, Rembrandt remains the most deeply loved of all the great masters of painting, his face so familiar to us from the self-portraits painted at every stage in his life, yet still so mysterious. As with Shakespeare, the facts of his life are hard to come by; the Leiden miller's son who briefly found fame in Amsterdam, whose genius was fitfully recognized by his contemporaries, who fell into bankruptcy and died in poverty. So there is probably no other painter whose life has engendered more legends, nor to whom more unlikely pictures have been attributed (a process now undergoing rigorous reversal). "Rembrandt's Eyes," about which Simon Schama has been thinking for more than twenty years, shows that the true biography of Rembrandt is to be discovered in his pictures. Though a succession of superbly incisive descriptions and interpretations of Rembrandt'spaintings threaded into his narrative, he allows us to see Rembrandt's life clearly and to think about it afresh. But this book moves far beyond the bounds of conventional biography or art history. With extraordinary imaginative sympathy, Schama conjures up the world in which Rembrandt moved -- its sounds, smells and tastes as well as its politics; the influences on him of the wars of the Protestant United Provinces against Spain, of the extreme Calvinism of his native Leiden, of the demands of patrons and the ambitions of contemporaries; the importance of his beloved Saskia and, after her death (Rembrandt was later forced to sell her grave, so complete was his ruin), of his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels; and, above all, the profound effect on him of the great master of the immediately preceding generation, the Catholic painter from Antwerp, Peter Paul Rubens: "the prince of painters and the painter of princes" with whom Rembrandt was obsessed for the first part of his life, and whose career was the shaping force that drove Rembrandt to test the farthest reaches of his own originality. "Rembrandt's Eyes" shows us "why" Rembrandt is such a thrilling painter, so revolutionary in his art, so penetrating of the hearts of those who have looked for three hundred years at his pictures. Above all, Schama's understanding of Rembrandt's mind and the dynamic of his life allows him to re-create Rembrandt's life on the page. Through a combination of scholarship and literary skill, Schama allows us to actually see that life through Rembrandt's own eyes. In overcoming the paucity of conventional historical evidence, it is the most intelligently true biography of Rembrandt that has ever beenwritten, and the most dazzling achievement to date of the art historian whose work has been hailed as "marvelously rich and eloquent" ... "rare, imaginative" ... "provocative" ... "astoundingly learned with verve, humor, and an unflagging sense of delight" ... that of "a master storyteller ... and a master of history."* Quotes from the "New York Times Book Review, Time," the "New York Times, The Independent on Sunday," and "Nature," respectively. "From the Hardcover edition."
Alfred A. Knopf 1999 750 pages

I Am Spartacus!

Kirk. Douglas
A "lively" memoir by the Hollywood legend about the making of Spartacus , with a foreword by George Clooney ( Los Angeles Times ). One of the world's most iconic movie stars, Kirk Douglas has distinguished himself as a producer, philanthropist, and author of ten works of fiction and memoir. Now, more than fifty years after the release of his enduring epic Spartacus , Douglas reveals the riveting drama behind the making of the legendary gladiator film. Douglas began producing the movie in the midst of the politically charged era when Hollywood's moguls refused to hire anyone accused of Communist sympathies. In a risky move, Douglas chose Dalton Trumbo, a blacklisted screenwriter, to write Spartacus . Trumbo was one of the "Unfriendly Ten," men who had gone to prison rather than testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee about their political affiliations. Douglas's source material was already a hot property, as the novel Spartacus was written by Howard Fast while he was in jail for defying HUAC. With the financial future of his young family at stake, Douglas plunged into a tumultuous production both on- and off-screen. As both producer and star of the film, he faced explosive moments with young director Stanley Kubrick, struggles with a leading lady, and negotiations with giant personalities, including Sir Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, and Lew Wasserman. Writing from his heart and from his own meticulously researched archives, Kirk Douglas, at ninety-five, looks back at his audacious decisions. He made the most expensive film of its era--but more importantly, his moral courage in giving public credit to Trumbo effectively ended the notorious Hollywood blacklist. A master storyteller, Douglas paints a vivid and often humorous portrait in I Am Spartacus! The book is enhanced by newly discovered period photography of the stars and filmmakers both on and off the set.
Open Road Integrated Media, Incorporated 2014-01-21 220 pages

Free for All Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Every Told

Kenneth Turan,Joseph Papp
Free for All is an irresistible behind-the-scenes look at one of America’s most beloved and important cultural institutions. Under the inspired leadership of founder Joseph Papp, the Public Theater and the New York Shakespeare Festival brought revolutionary performances to the public for decades. This compulsively readable history of those years—much of it told in Papp’s own words—is fascinating, ranging from a dramatic early showdown with Robert Moses over keeping Shakespeare in the Park free to the launching of such landmark productions as Hair and A Chorus Line. To bring the story to life, film critic Kenneth Turan interviewed some 160 luminaries—including George C. Scott, Meryl Streep, Mike Nichols, Kevin Kline, James Earl Jones, David Rabe, Jerry Stiller, Tommy Lee Jones, and Wallace Shawn—and masterfully weaves their voices into a dizzyingly rich tale of creativity, conflict, and achievement.
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2010-11-02 640 pages

I Blame Dennis Hopper And Other Stories from a Life Lived In and Out of the Movies

Illeana Douglas
From award-winning actress Illeana Douglas comes a memoir about learning to survive in Hollywood while staying true to her quirky vision of the world. In 1969 Illeana Douglas' parents saw the film Easy Rider and were transformed. Taking Dennis Hopper's words, "That's what it's all about man" to heart, they abandoned their comfortable upper middle class life and gave Illeana a childhood filled with hippies, goats, free spirits, and free love. Illeana writes, "Since it was all out of my control, I began to think of my life as a movie, with a Dennis Hopper-like father at the center of it." I Blame Dennis Hopper is a testament to the power of art and the tenacity of passion. It is a rollicking, funny, at times tender exploration of the way movies can change our lives. With crackling humor and a full heart, Douglas describes how a good Liza Minnelli impression helped her land her first gig and how Rudy Valley taught her the meaning of being a show biz trouper. From her first experience being on set with her grandfather and mentor-two-time Academy Award-winning actor Melvyn Douglas-to the moment she was discovered by Martin Scorsese for her blood-curdling scream and cast in her first film, to starring in movies alongside Robert DeNiro, Nicole Kidman, and Ethan Hawke, to becoming an award winning writer, director and producer in her own right, I Blame Dennis Hopper is an irresistible love letter to movies and filmmaking. Writing from the perspective of the ultimate show business fan, Douglas packs each page with hilarious anecdotes, bizarre coincidences, and fateful meetings that seem, well, right out of a plot of a movie. I Blame Dennis Hopper is the story of one woman's experience in show business, but it is also a genuine reminder of why we all love the movies: for the glitz, the glamor, the sweat, passion, humor, and escape they offer us all.
Flatiron Books 2016-10-25 304 pages

The Facts of My Life

Charlotte Rae,Larry Strauss
"It's about time a book came out about one of the most talented and beloved performers in the American theater. Charlotte is the consummate actress, comedienne, entertainer. Her work on stage and screen is always hilarious and somehow also gets you right in the gut. Her story is every bit as brilliant. Read it and smile." -Comedy Legend, Carl Reiner "To think of Charlotte Rae is to smile. Consequently, when I began to read "The Facts of My Life," I was unprepared for the emotional impact it would have on me. By the time I finished the first chapter, dealing as it does with her severely troubled son Andy, I was in tears. "As an old friend of Charlotte's, I thought I knew her fairly well. But as I read on, I discovered that the 'facts of her life' were constantly surprising (as well as amusing and engrossing)! There is so much that I don't know about Charlotte and so much that I now want to know, when the book is finally completed and published, I'll be first in line to get my copy!" -Sheldon Harnick (Composer, Fiddler on the Roof) Charlotte Rae's career spans more than seventy years, from the golden age of television to Shakespeare in the Park, the New York Cabaret scene of the late 1940's and 50's to her hit series, The Facts of Life and well beyond. Off stage and screen, Charlotte's life has been one of joy and challenge, raising an autistic son, coming to terms with alcoholism, the heartache of a broken marriage, the revelation of a gay husband and the sudden challenge of facing middle-age with financial and emotional uncertainties-an crisis she ultimately turned into the determination that brought her stardom. The Facts of My Life is the first opportunity for Charlotte fans to explore the fascinating story of her extraordinary life: poignant and hilarious, a story of courage and triumph, one that speaks for a generation of women breaking barriers, taking on challenges, overcoming personal tragedy, and paving the way for others.
BearManor Media 2015-11 266 pages

Tales of a Road Dog The Lowdown Along the Blues Highway

Ron Levy
"Wow, Ron Levy's book is AMAZING! Wonderful reading, entertaining, fun, educational and, well, AMAZING!" - Norman Darwen - Blues Matters! - UK "I want everyone to know, Ron Levy is one of the very best musicians I've ever played and worked with. Now, he's even written a great book! I'm so proud of my 'son'." B.B. King 4/13/13 "Ron Levy endures as an ingenious Blues keyboardist -- touring most notably with B.B. King for 7 years -- and he was there when B.B. played Muhammad Ali's private parties, as well as stadium shows in Africa and throughout the world. He was the ultimate road warrior, also tickling the ivories for Albert King, Roomful of Blues and his own Ron Levy's Wild Kingdom, while meeting everyone from Elvis Presley to Nina Simone. He distills it all in his lively, remarkably honest book (NOW IN PAPERBACK), 'Tales of a Road Dog.' Nearly everything is unique in these gritty and humorous stories of survival with some of music's great pioneers and the musicians who powered them on stage. If you thought you knew about music history, trust me that you'll know even more when you delve into Levy's rich and colorful text. This guy can write as well as he can play." - STEVE MORSE - Boston Globe, Billboard and Rolling Stone. A download link to Levy's critically acclaimed album "FUNKY FIESTA!" is included. - Also available as a Web-book & eBook!
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2013 512 pages

You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again

Julia Phillips
“The Hollywood memoir that tells all . . . Sex. Drugs. Greed. Why, it sounds just like a movie.”— The New York Times Every memoir claims to bare it all, but Julia Phillips’s actually does. This is an addictive, gloves-off exposé from the producer of the classic films The Sting, Taxi Driver, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind —and the first woman ever to win an Academy Award for Best Picture—who made her name in Hollywood during the halcyon seventies and the yuppie-infested eighties and lived to tell the tale. Wickedly funny and surprisingly moving, You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again takes you on a trip through the dream-manufacturing capital of the world and into the vortex of drug addiction and rehab on the arm of one who saw it all, did it all, and took her leave. Praise for You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again “One of the most honest books ever written about one of the most dishonest towns ever created.” — The Boston Globe “Gossip too hot for even the National Enquirer . . . Julia Phillips is not so much Hollywood’s Boswell as its Dante.” — Los Angeles Magazine “A blistering look at La La Land.” —USA Today “One of the nastiest, tastiest tell-alls in showbiz history.” —People
Random House Publishing Group 2017-02-14 688 pages

May I Kiss You On The Lips, Miss Sandra?

Sandra Bernhard
Fragile, raw, daring, brilliant...Sandra Bernhard rocks. The actress, philospher, comedian, and cult goddess is definitely back -- and feeling fabulous -- with a labor of love that'll knock her followers off their feet and draw new ones to her like a magnet. Stage, film, music, television -- in every performance, Bernhard has shocked and amused, titillated and broken every rule. With her first two books, Confessions of a Pretty Lady and Love, Love, and Love Bernhard's electrifying talent took to the page and burned it up with flashes of true brillance -- the kind of writing that separates the powerful from the good. And now, in this new book, Sandra returns with a deeply personal collection of spicy tales, fiercely witty riffs, and sweet doses of wisdom. Here is Sandy as we know and love her -- and as we've never quite seen her before: heartrenderingly honest, with the mouth of a diva, the soul of a fighter, and the insight of a girl who has lived life big. Like a whisper in your ear, Sandy opens up her world: from her friendship with her loyal housepainter to her imagined history as as one of Jack Kennedy's lovers; from the sensual streets of Mogador to the comfort of her pristine L.A. bungalow; from her own poetry of romantic yearning and reflective prayer to dead-on truths brought to light in the heartbreaking and hilarious glow of fashion, celebrity, rock and spirituality. There is nothing Sandra Bernhard offers that doesn't deliver a pungent snap of truth and the surprise of unexpected emotion in this, her most revealing and entertaining book yet.
HarperCollins 1999-11-09 224 pages