As a playwright, screenwriter, and director, Arthur Laurents has a unique place in the history of theater. In this moving, exhilarating, and provocative account, he presents readers with a front-row look at the making of two of the greatest musicals of the American stage, West Side Story and Gypsy . He writes in rich detail about his new bilingual production of West Side Story , along with his most recent production of Gypsy , how it began as an act of love, and how that love spread through the entire company and resulted in a Gypsy unlike any other. Laurents offers behind-the-scenes details about the musicals he directed, including I Can Get It for You Wholesale , its producer David Merrick (the “Abominable Showman”), and its (very young) stars, Barbra Streisand and Elliott Gould. He dishes on Stephen Sondheim's Anyone Can Whistle , which starred Angela Lansbury and Lee Remick, marking the debut for each in musical theater. And he recounts the challenges and surprises that came with the making of La Cage aux Folles , the first big Broadway musical that was gay and glad to be. Throughout, the book is enriched by Laurents's two loves – his love for the theater and his love for his partner of fifty-two years, Tom Hatcher, who shared and inspired every aspect of his life and his work. Mainly on Directing presents an unforgettable portrait of an artist working with other artists, a unique close-up look at today's American musical theater by a man who's been at its red-hot center for more than five decades.

The music and mayhem behind the seminal sounds of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Models, The Go-Betweens, Hunters & Collectors, Cold Chisel, The Saints, The Cruel Sea and so many more 'The most obsessive, single-minded character I've ever seen, outside of the mirror' -Nick Cave 'I first met Nick Cave ... at Richmond Recorders in January. I appeared shoeless, red-eyed and late. As usual. The grand piano was overflowing with bits of metal, microphone stands, anything that wasn't nailed down. "That should sound interesting," I said. It was the start of a great love affair.' Maverick music producer-engineer Tony Cohen defined Australia's punk and rock sounds in the late '70s, '80s and '90s. His long and celebrated career took him from the studios of Melbourne and Sydney to West Berlin and London's Abbey Road, working with innumerable bands up until his death in 2017. In candid reflections, Tony shares details of his decades-long relationship with Nick Cave (The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) and provides behind-the-scenes access to recordings by Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, Cat Stevens, Jim Keays, Lobby Loyde, The Ferrets, Split Enz, Laughing Clowns, Models, Magazine, The Reels, The Go-Betweens, Hunters & Collectors, Cold Chisel, Beasts of Bourbon, The Saints, X, Michael Hutchence, The Cruel Sea, TISM, Paul Kelly and so many more. Half Deaf, Completely Mad is a hilarious, tragic and triumphant memoir that reveals a chaotic genius who lived hard and LOUD.

"The film Casablanca opens with the words, "With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas." Leslie Epstein's Hill of Beans is the story of how one nation, one industry, and in particular one man responded to that desperate hope. That man is Jack Warner. His impossible goal is to make world events--most importantly, the invasion of North Africa by British and American forces in 1942--coincide with the release of his new film about a group of refugees marooned in Morocco. Arrayed against him are Stalin and Hitler, as well as Josef Goebbels, Franklin Roosevelt, a powerful gossip columnist, and above all a beautiful young woman with a terrible secret. His only weapons are his hutzpah and his heroism as he struggles to bring cinema and city, conflict and conference together in an epic command performance. Hill of Beans is the novel that Leslie Epstein--the son and nephew of Philip and Julius Epstein, the screenwriters of Casablanca--was born to write"--

Legendary director Sergei Eisenstein has unquestionably emerged as cinema's most influential theorist and author of some of the most important aesthetic writings of the twentieth century. For the first time in one volume, The Eisenstein Reader presents in concise, chronological form his most significant work--including his famous theories of montage and articles on subjects as diverse as sound, film language, and Russian history. The selections range from early writings on his great silent masterpieces The Strike, October and The Battleship Potemkin, to later works, hatched in the increasingly hostile and paranoid environment of Stalin's Soviet Union. Drawn from the acclaimed four-volume Selected Works, this collection, which includes a new introduction and explanatory notes by Richard Taylor as well as many illustrations, further illuminates the startling originality, diversity, and power of the greatest and most flamboyant of all Russian filmmakers.

(Applause Books). "The best way I know to resuscitate the theatre is to produce dangerous new works." Stuart Ostrow. Producer Stuart Ostrow's manifesto of how intelligent life might be restored to the theatre is also a unique personal memoir of the producer-creator relationship and an evaluation of the essentials that can make a show fly, or remain earthbound. As a solo producer, Ostrow's many productions include M. Butterfly , which won the Tony Award for Best Play; Pippin ; and 1776 , which received both the New York and London Drama Critics Awards as well as the Tony Award for Best Musical. He produced the original Broadway production of the critically acclaimed La Bete , which won the Olivier Award in London for Best Comedy. Ostrow was brought in to fix the original production of Chicago , collaborated with Anthony Hopkins on a London production of M. Butterfly , that was not meant to be, and even had his own play, Stages , directed on Broadway by the avant-garde theatrical pioneer Richard Foreman. He riffs about the heroes and heels he's met along the way and that great cast includes Frank Loesser, Meredith Willson, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse, David Geffen, Andrew Lloyd Webber, David Henry Hwang, John Kander, Fred Ebb, and many more.

Documentary has never attracted such audiences, never been produced with such ease from so many corners of the globe, never embraced such variety of expression. The very distinctions between the filmed, the filmer and the spectator are being dissolved. The Act of Documenting addresses what this means for documentary's 21st century position as a genus in the "class" cinema; for its foundations as, primarily, a scientistic, eurocentric and patriarchal discourse; for its future in a world where assumptions of photographic image integrity cannot be sustained. Unpacked are distinctions between performance and performativy and between different levels of interaction, linearity and hypertextuality, engagement and impact, ethics and conditions of reception. Winston, Vanstone and Wang Chi explore and celebrate documentary's potentials in the digital age

Vicky and Charlie, 20-something, one the son of a vicar, the other daughter of a much loved Radio 4 and Times columnist, friends for years but never boyfriend/girlfriend, decide to make a hardcore porn movie. This is the hilarious story of their journey from a sofa in North London, through the heart of the sex industry in California, to their own film set in Amsterdam. What happens when a nice girl falls in love with a rent-boy, and a vicar's son attempts to film a gang-bang? Vicky and Charlie learned to see the world through new eyes, and the sex-workers learned how to play cribbage. And together they produced perhaps the most baffling skinflick in history.