Bøker av Steven Bingen

Movies don¿t exist in a vacuum. Each MGM movie is a tiny piece of a large, colorful (although often black & white) quilt, with threads tying it into all of the rest of that studio¿s product, going forward, yes, but also backwards, and horizontally and three dimensionally across its entire landscape. Not necessarily a ¿best of¿ compilation, this book discusses the films that for one reason or another (and not all of them good ones) changed the trajectory of MGM and the film industry in general, from the revolutionary use of ¿Cineramä in 1962¿s How the West Was Won to Director Alfred Hitchcock¿s near extortion of the profits from the 1959 hit thriller North by Northwest. And there aere the studio¿s on-screen self-shoutouts to its own past, or stars, in films like Party Girl (1958), the That¿s Entertainment series, Garbo Talks (1984) Rain Man (1955) and De-Lovely (2004), or the studio¿s acquisition of other successful franchises such as James Bond. But fear not, what we consider MGM¿s classic films all get their due here, often with a touch of irony or fascinating anecdote. Singin in the Rain (1952), for example, was in its day neither a financial blockbuster nor crtitically acclaimed but rather an excuse the studio to reuse some old songs which the studio already owned. TheWizard of Oz (1939) cost almost as much to make as Gone With the Wind (also 1939) took ten years to recoup its costs. But still, the MGM mystique endures. Like the popular Netflix series ¿The Movies that Made Us,¿ this is a fascinating look behind the scenes of the greatest¿and at times notorious¿films ever made.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer¿s emblem, which has opened thousands of movies since 1924, is the most recognized corporate symbol in the world. Not just in the entertainment industry, it should be noted, but of any industry, anywhere, in the history of human civilization. But MGM has been a competitively insignificant force in the motion picture industry for nearly as long as it once, decades ago, dominated that industry. In fact, the MGM lion now presides not over movies alone, but over thirty world-class resorts, and is, or has been, also a recognized leader in the fields of real estate, theme parks, casinos, golf courses, consumer products, and even airlines, all around the world. But the MGM mystique remains. This book is a look at what made MGM the Mount Rushmore of studios, how it presented itself to the world, and how it influenced everything from set design to merchandising to music and dance, and continues to do so today.

In 1969 a man walked upon the moon, the Woodstock music festival was held in upstate New York, Richard Nixon was sworn in as the president of the United States, the Beatles made their last public appearance, as did, after a fashion, Judy Garland, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Boris Karloff, Joseph P. Kennedy, and Jack Kerouac, all of whom passed away that year. Something else passed away that year as well. In early July, just days before the moon landing, a low-budget exploitation movie, Easy Rider, was released. ItΓÇÖs astonishing and wholly unexpected success almost single-handedly destroyed the Hollywood studio system which had been controlling the entertainment industry for half a century. Its success would ultimately change the way movies would be made, and who made them, as well as how those movies looked and sounded, and which audiences those movies would be made for. Additionally, the filmΓÇÖs innovative techniques; including extensive location shooting, unexplained editing juxtapositions, improvised dialogue, and innovative use of popular music, would change the vocabulary and language of cinema forever. Easy Rider: 50 Years of Looking for America will tell the story of Easy Rider on the fiftieth anniversary of its explosive release. Through published interviews, previously undiscovered archival materials, and new reflections by the participants, the whole story of HollywoodΓÇÖs first true counterculture movie will be revealed for the first time ever.