Bøker av Charles Elton

The first biography of critically acclaimed then critically derided filmmaker Michael CiminoΓÇöand a reevaluation of the infamous film that destroyed his careerThe director Michael Cimino (1939ΓÇô2016) is famous for two films: the intense, powerful, and enduring Vietnam movie The Deer Hunter, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1979 and also won Cimino Best Director, and HeavenΓÇÖs Gate, the most notorious bomb of all time. Originally budgeted at $11 million, CiminoΓÇÖs sprawling western went off the rails in Montana. The picture grew longer and longer, and the budget ballooned to over $40 million. When it was finally released, HeavenΓÇÖs Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood''s auteur era.Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for HeavenΓÇÖs Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair. EltonΓÇÖs Cimino is a richly detailed biography that offers a revisionist history of a lightning rod filmmaker. Based on extensive interviews with CiminoΓÇÖs peers and collaborators and enemies and friends, most of whom have never spoken before, it unravels the enigmas and falsehoods, many perpetrated by the director himself, which surround his life, and sheds new light on his extraordinary career. This is a story of the making of art, the business of Hollywood, and the costs of ambition, both financial and personal.

The bestselling, Richard and Judy Book Club Pick, Mr Toppit is a darkly comic, enthralling story of a family shaped by their father''s literary legacy, exploring fame, fandom and long-buried secrets''An extraordinary debut, not only for its confident storytelling but for its nerdish familiarity with such an eclectic range of subjects . Dark, funny . jangly with secrets'' Sunday TimesWhen Arthur Hayman, writer of The Hayseed Chronicles, dies, a bizarre chain of events conspires to make his series of children''s books world famous. But buried deep inside the books lie secrets that begin to shake the fragile Hayman family - Arthur''s son, Luke, reluctantly immortalized as the young hero of the series; his daughter, Rachel, for whom the books are a hole through which her life has fallen; and his enigmatic wife, Martha, who knows that secrets are best kept well-hidden.For the rest of us, The Hayseed Chronicles are a fascinating mystery. And at their heart is the twisted, unknowable Mr Toppit, who will let neither Luke nor Rachel nor Martha out of his grasp.