Television Books

DICK ENBERG DOES A GREAT JOB IN THIS BOOK ABOUT HIS BROADCASTING CAREER. HIS RELATIONSHIPS WITH AL MCGUIRE, BILLY PACKER, MERLIN OLSEN, DON DRYSDALE AND MANY MORE ARE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS IN THIS ENTERTAINING, INTERESTING AND WELL WRITTEN BOOK. HIS INSIGHTS ABOUT AL MCGUIRE IS ESPECIALLY NOTEWORTHY. I HAVE READ MANY SPORTS BOOKS BY BROADCASTERS, THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST I HAVE COME ACROSS. I ALWAYS RATED DICK ENBERG AS AN EXCELLENT SPORTSCASTER NO MATTER WHAT SPORT SUBJECT HE COVERED. ONE OF MY FAVORITES SHOWS HE HOSTED WAS SPORTS CHALLENGE (WHICH IS OCCASIONALLY ON ESPN CLASSIC CHANNEL). HIS COVERAGE OF COLLEGE BASKETBALL AND PRO FOOTBALL IS LEGEND. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS FOR ALL SPORTS FANS. A GREAT READ.

For anyone who has had the privilege of listening to the smoothest, most knowledgeable, and "easiest to take" sports broadcaster of them all, this book goes down as a must read. I devoured it in two sittings (which is rare for me) and the only reason I put it down the first time was because I had to go to work! Warm, insightful recollections from a wonderful gentleman (and as you will discover, sometimes prankster!) who has seen it all, and has the unique ability to make every amazing story come to life in the friendly and cozy style that anyone who has followed his remarkable career over the years has come to know and appreciate. (Now I look forward to viewing the bonus dvd!) Mr. Enberg, thank you so much!! (and Oh My!)

Dick Enberg has always inspired trust in me. I always felt that he really cares about what he is doing, and that he is just as excited about the event he is broadcasting as any die hard fan watching or listening at home. He calls each game with such grace and class, that it is easy to take his talent for granted. This book allowed me to get a broader look at the man himself, and to find out that I have not misplaced my trust.

There is not a dull moment in this book. It covers the gamut emotionally, from poignant stories about Al McGuire to hilarious fun with Don Drysdale and Bob Uecker. Throughout it all, more and more of Dick Enberg is revealed, and the reader is able to gain insight into Enberg's drive, honesty, sense of humor, competitive nature, and sincere desire to present the best possible product to his audience. Many different sports are covered and the tone of the book is one of respect for the sports, and for the sports community.

The broad scope of the book allowed me to read about a wide range of sporting events and the unique nature of each event, both satisfying me and leaving me thirsty for more. So, I'm hoping that there will be a sequel because I'm sure that this was just the "tip of the Enberg." There is something for everyone in this book and I'm sure you will really enjoy it.

Anyone who has watched sports has heard Enberg's classic "Oh My!" comment for great plays and recognizes him as one of the greats in broadcasting. Oh My is a fascinating tale of his life and adventures in sports from his early days in college through now. The stories he has are classic and it's always a joy to listen to him do a game whether it be football, basketball, etc.

Pick this book up and enjoy a classic tale through his days in broadcasting!

This is a fascinating book, and makes a wonderful Christmas gift. The story of Dick Enberg's life is inspirational, well-written, and a page-turner. And most important, for people like me - you do not have to be a sports fan to enjoy reading this. Anyone can appreciate the stories, from Enberg's insightful view of his humble Michigan childhood to his ardent dedication to his challenging craft. With a career of great success, including numerous Emmy's, awards, and accomplishments, Enberg also relates many humorous mishaps and anecdotes from the sports booth, while providing a realistic glimpse of the hard work going on "behind the scenes" in any network broadcast. Enberg's love of family, his honesty about personal problems, and his work ethic make reading this a treat. I highly recommend this book, for men AND women. And its great for teen-agers, because one of the secrets of this man's celebrated career was his preparation and effort to seize opportunity, along with a fervent appreciation of education. Thumbs-up for this one, you'll enjoy every page!!

Perfect book for a Dora lover. Pictures are inserted wtihin the sentences so your child can read along and particpate with you!

My daughter and I love to read this book together. It is nice and short. My daughter is also learning to spell because of the simple and repetitive words in the book.

My two daughters (ages 2 and 4) request this book be read--at least once a day (along with all the other "Ready-to-Read" books we bought for them). They especially get excited when it's time to go under the sea with Dora. I think this book is probably geared toward the preschool/beginning grade school set. It has big words and colorful pictures. The stories are simple and not too long.
Certain words have little "pictographs" with the word that it's for directly underneath it in smaller print. I suppose this is to help the child learn to read these certain words. Since my daughters are still pretty young (the oldest is now just learning the sounds different letters make; she already can recognize all the letters), we haven't really tried to use these little pictures in that way. Although, we've read this story so many times to them that they "read along" by reciting from memory certain parts of the story. All Dora the Explorer books are great fun for the kids because it involves them in the story much like the TV show does.
I highly recommend it.

My son absolutely loves this book and so does his 2-year old cousin. He enjoys looking at the pictures to "guess" the word and it makes him feel like he's really reading the book. This is his favorite book and wants to read it every day.

We like "Dora in the Deep Sea". My children like it because it has a pretty good story and because it is about Dora, Boots and Pirate Piggy. I like it because it is a good read-aloud, has lots to point out and talk about, and because it allows for a different sorts of interactivity depending on age.

In that regards, Amazon suggests this book for the 4 to 8 age range, but I think it is much more versatile than that. For example, for babies you can read the story and talk about what animals are in the picture and what color they are. [There are seagulls, a variety of silly fish, octopuses, sea anemones, eels, crab, starfish, clams, stingrays, turtles, lobsters, whale, squid, frog, snail, fox (Swiper) and sea horses. There are a great many colors to discuss as well.]

For older toddlers and preschoolers you can `enhance' the story experience by moving your finger over the text, stopping at the `icons' with the intent of letting them fill in the blanks. My children get excited by this because it gives them the sense that they are beginning to feel apart of the `reading'. And if our experience is any indication, they learn that text flows from left to right and top to bottom.

Advanced preschoolers and kindergarteners on up can then begin to use the book for its stated purpose. They can begin to read it themselves. Most words are small: I, am, this, sad, will, the, and help. Although there are harder words for sure: Hooray, swipe, friend, something, clownfish, pirate, and pinch.

Four stars. A pretty good story (see previous reviewers fine summary) about the popular characters from the "Dora the Explorer" TV show. It can be used for babies to beginning readers. It engages children in the flow and process of reading, i.e. how it is done.

My 2-year old daughter loves this book! We've read it every night for the past month and she's still entertained by it. The pages and cover are thick and durable.

My daughter is 22 months and LOVES Dora. She loves reading tis book before bedtime and saying good night to all the animals ans characters. This was an excellent buy!

My daughter is 16 months and this book is a bedtime must-have. The first story is great but the second is a bit long and wordy to keep her attention.

Wonderful book for bedtime! The stories are not too exciting that they work the children up. They teach lessons and are such fun to read. I enjoy this book as much as my Grandkids.

My 12 month old daughter loves this book, I bought it to read to her before bed and she loves it .. she especially loves the little owl in the second story. She has sat in her crib with this book and looked at it for over 20 minutes! quietly! and without noticing mommy got up and left. Excellent book!!

Anyone who has to hire film or video crews and other production personnel should consider this book. The author covers nearly every production category imaginable - so much so that it's like NAB in a book. With so many new digital and film products on the market today, this book makes it a lot easier to talk the right lingo with essential crew members and stay informed of what new and old options are available for any production budget.

Anyone who has to hire film or video crews and other production personnel should consider this book. The author covers nearly every production category imaginable - so much so that it's like NAB in a book. With so many new digital and film products on the market today, this book makes it a lot easier to talk the right lingo with essential crew members and stay informed of what new and old options are available for any production budget.

I purchased this book as a graduation gift for a friend in film school
and then I bought myself a copy. I've been using it in production
meetings to discuss equipment options with my crew and I plan to add it
to the list of required reading for all of my production interns.
This book really covers an incredible spectrum of production tools
available to filmmakers and video users alike.

This book is full of toys that I didn't even knew existed. I was really impressed with the depth of product and information that they gathered in this book. There is some great gear in this book that I have to get. It contained things that I never would have imagined. And they will help speed up and drastically improve my next film shoot. Good find.

I purchased this book as a graduation gift for a friend in film school and then I bought myself a copy. I've been using it in production meetings to discuss equipment options with my crew, and I plan to add it to the list of required reading for all of my production interns.
This book really covers an incredible spectrum of production tools available to filmmakers and video users alike.

If ever the First Amendment needed a life jacket, this is the time. Rowse tells how good newspapering, that is tough, honest reporting, is drowning thanks to the media giants and the corporate villains who control them. Whether its politics, economic disasters for the working poor, pollution or corruption, America is being denied a saving hand from the very institutions that the Founding Fathers provided us. Here is a lighthouse book offering a way out of our troubled journalistic waters. And it's a page-turner, as well.

It's quite alarming to learn how the failure of the press to report responsibly on government and politics (versus scandal, crime, and drama) is affecting the demise of a living democracy. Four out of ten Americans don't even know who the vice president is (although I have to believe in this year with the VP running for president, that might be different)! The book documents quite well how the press is methodically contributing to the decline of interest in politics and the power and political influence of the owners of media giants. A good read!!

Rob

In Drive-by Journalism, Arthur Rowse makes a convincing case that a lack of reliable news is crippling American democracy.

As a result of deregulation of the news and entertainment industries, a steady series of corporate mergers has concentrated the media into a five-firm oligopoly of unprecedented power. We may think we have a lot of channels to choose from, but they all come from the same handful of sources, all of which are more interested in satisfying corporate investors than in producing an informed electorate. Rather than compete, the media conglomerates collude like mafia bosses, divvying up the available markets, using every available second of air time to sell us products, services, and a consumer lifestyle. This does not speak well to the likelihood of our getting trustworthy news.

Rowse deftly slaps down the ridiculous yet pervasive myth that the mass media are liberally biased and demonstrates conclusively that quite the opposite is true. Although many reporters have liberal tendencies, they are not the ones who determine which stories get reported. News networks have become lap dogs for their parent companies, and these media giants are as conservative as they are powerful. Moreover, they respond to advertisers, not the viewing public. NBC, for example, wouldn't dream of reporting on General Electric, the most notorious polluter in the nation, because GE is now NBC's parent company. The same is true of ABC and Disney, CBS and Westinghouse. In fact, every major network is now owned by the biggest advertisers in the nation. Don't think that isn't affecting what gets reported on the 6 o'clock news.....

According to Rowse, about 40% of what we see on the news these days is not even the product of investigative journalism; it is pre-packaged propaganda "donated" to the networks by political and corporate public relations firms. By accepting these gracious handouts, the networks can reduce the number of expensive journalists they employ. The result, of course, is that networks no longer investigate; they merely serve as conduits through which powerful organizations deliver their pre-fab images to the public.

Perhaps Rowse’s most frightening point is the link he makes between poor news reporting and citizen apathy. With nothing but info-tainment and scandal stories on the news, Americans have no viable means to choose between one candidate and another, between one policy and another. So they don’t bother. With voters thus sidelined, well-funded corporate lobbyists have the undivided attention of our lawmakers, whom they outnumber 40 to 1.

This book is well-documented, well-organized, well-written, and vitally important in our times. Better still, it’s truly interesting. Rowse provides fascinating insider anecdotes that bring all his statistics to life. Very highly recommended.

In Drive-By Journalism: The Assault On Your Need To Know, Arthur Rowse sets for a compelling and persuasive argument that we are being lulled into political and social apathy by the steady beat of media produced "news-amuse" journalism. Rowse points out that media mergers are rapidly creating a huge news cartel with just five conglomerates controlling what most people see, read and hear in television news broadcasts and major urban center newspapers. Profit-at-all-costs pressures have created a kind of "drive-by" journalism with an emphasis on trivia and tragedy ("If it bleeds, it leads!). News producers must nowadays showcase information in a recreational or entertainment framework that prefers sensationalism over substance, sound bites over insights. That's why such critical matters as health care, gun control, tax equity, campaign reform, and the environment are made subservient to personality and horse race style coverage. Drive-By Journalism should be on the shelves of every community library in the country, and required reading for journalism students, media activists, and those charged with the responsibility for gathering, analyzing, and disseminating the news of the day.

"I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubator ... and left the children to die on the cold floor."

Casual news observers will recognize this quote, or at least the essence of it.

During the build-up to the Gulf War, this story, told by a teen-age Kuwaiti girl, was repeated again and again in the news media. As much as anything else, the anecdote softened public resistance to American intervention in Kuwait - a huge military undertaking that never completely shed its mercenary hue, but which enjoyed broad public support nevertheless thanks largely to a media that seemed ill-equipped or unwilling to get beyond the veneer of official proclamations and gee-golly techno-wizardry to the tough business of covering a war.

Less casual observers might know that the story was a pure fabrication. In fact, it took two curious reporters relatively little effort during the war's aftermath to discover what the entire Washington press corps had missed - not only was the story not true, but the girl who told it was the daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador.

What very few of us probably realize to this day, however, was that the tale was just one piece of a coordinated propaganda campaign conducted by PR flacks on behalf of the Kuwaiti royal family. All told, the Kuwaitis spent $11.5 million to win the hearts and minds of their American saviors, most of it paid to Hill & Knowlton, one of the largest public relations firms in the world. For that relatively modest sum, Kuwait was able to summon the sympathy and might of the world's most powerful democracy, despite Kuwait's own questionable commitment to human rights. And going along for the ride the whole way were the American media.

The victory of public relations over reportage prior to the Gulf War is just one of the fascinating nuggets found in Arthur E. Rowse's Drive-By Journalism: The Assault on Your Need to Know, a blistering indictment of the current state of American journalism. A veteran journalist and media critic who has worked for National Public Radio, U.S. News & World Report, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, Rowse writes like a man who knows how the sausage is made and isn't too pleased about his grandchildren having to eat it.

His book chronicles a spate of journalistic cardinal sins and exposes a rogues'gallery of media decision makers who have turned the sacred business of informing the public into a scramble for ratings and profits.

Elian, Monica, O.J. and JonBenet are just the tip of the iceberg, and, in Rowse's view, symptoms of a much more pernicious dynamic than just the public's demand for sensation and scandal.

At the heart of the media's current reliance on fluff, trivia and sensationalism, he argues, is the trend toward corporate ownership of media outlets. While journalism has always been a business, the profit motive was once far more balanced by - even subordinate to - journalistic standards.

In the 1960s, when CBS head Bill Paley was questioned by a member of his news division about the cost of his ambitious plans for news coverage, his response was more typical of that era: "Don't worry about that. I've got Jack Benny to make money for me. You guys cover the news."

Since then, says Rowse, mainstream media outlets have fallen all over themselves to slash staffs while favoring grislier, more sensational, more irrelevant coverage. Thus, crime reporting has become more frequent and more strident even as crime has dropped, while stories with emotional impact like the Elian Gonzalez saga supplant coverage of policy decisions that affect millions of Americans.

And instead of discussion about candidates' qualifications or stances on pressing national problems, campaign coverage is dominated by trivial horse race issues like who's raised the most money.

This hasn't just made us more uninformed, argues Rowse. We've also become much more susceptible to disinformation. Eager to fill the hard news gap left by the media have been special interest lobbyists, public relations flacks and think tanks - well-funded and well-organized groups with agendas to sell.

Rowse also explores the well-worn canard that our mainstream media are predominantly liberal. Not only does the prima facie evidence - that media are increasingly coming under the control of profit-driven corporations - suggest a conservative tilt, a look at the opinion pages of daily newspapers, where aggressive spin is encouraged, tells a different story as well. Of the top political columnists in the nation, the far-right Cal Thomas, with 537, is syndicated in the most dailies. George Will is second with 450. In fact, based on client numbers, Rowse counts a 3-to-1 advantage for conservative columnists over liberal ones. Add in talk radio, which is almost exclusively the province of right-wingers, and the liberal media myth explodes.

Other disturbing trends cited by Rowse are the increase in "gotcha" journalism; a snowballing, media-fueled cynicism about government's ability to address national crises; and a tendency to tilt reporting toward advertisers and affluent readers at the expense of broader coverage. (If the stock market is this strong then inflation-adjusted wages couldn't possibly have fallen in the last 20 years, right?)

If there's a criticism here it's that Rowse is woefully short on solutions, and those he does offer feel like spit in the wind. Perhaps the only real recourse, then, is for us as individuals to simply smarten up. Drive-By Journalism is a good first step down that path.

This book is very interesting and I recommend that you read it. You should read Dude Ranch because it keeps your mind thinking what is going to happen next. The Camden family is trying to plan a family vacation and Lucy hears about this dude ranch that has been around for a really long time. So they think about this, and Lucy asks her dad. He says that she needs to get her family interested in it. So she goes upstairs and talks to her brother and sister about this, and then she goes and talks to her mom about the dude. Her mom asks who will watch the twins? Mary and Matt volunteer to stay home and watch the twins and then the family goes to the ranch. When they get there they go upstairs and put their things away. Then they come downstairs and they eat dinner. Now that they are there they have to work until they leave, but they are working for a good cause. They are there because they are trying to clean up the ranch, so they can open it up to visitors. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys working for a good cause.

bmwgymnist

The Camden family goes to a ranch and the ranch has a few secrets, and the boy has a lost hand will lucy get to the botton of this? read to find out. I Love this book because I love 7th Heaven but also because Licy is a great person and I love the way she handels al the sichuations.

This story has a romantic twist to it. If you like the tv series 7th Heaven like me you will love it! It is the best one !

Dude Ranch is like the best book I've ever read. It has a lot of exciting parts in it. You just can't stop reading it. It's way too good. I couldn't keep my eyes off of it. There is also some romantic parts to it too. If you like 7th Heaven like me I know you'll enjoy it very much!! Dude Ranch is the best one out of like all of them.

Dude Ranch is an awsome book! If you like 7th heaven you should read it! There are new characters in it and it also isnt one of the episodes on tv! I read it in two days and I didn't want to put it down! I would give this book more then 5 stars! I cant wait till more new ones come out that are't from the tv episodes! 7TH HEAVEN ROCKS!!!!

Our 4- and 6- year-old children both love doing these puzzle books. Using the popular characters and stickers are a great way to introduce kids to sudoku--it is both fun and educational!

This is a good way to introduce the logic of Sudoku to young children.
I bought it for my five year old grandson but his three year old sister
enjoyed it too - on a different level (sticker fun).
The Dora theme is appealing to young children and the bright colored stickers
make it fun to solve the puzzles.
I am happy to see there is a second book (which I will purchase) so the
children can continue to enjoy the younger version of this adult game.
The only reason I gave it four stars rather than five was because it did not
include numerical examples.

We bought this product for our 4 1/2 year old daughter not sure if she would catch on like her 6 year old sister who does sudoku for kids. She really enjoys the puzzles and only needs some direction from her parents. More than enough puzzles and really appreciated that they provided extra stickers. A great deal for the money and we plan on buying more.

I picked up this book for my 3 year old daughter after she watched her dad doing Sudoku puzzles. Although it is a challenge, once she did a few with us and learned how to complete the puzzles she took off and started completing them on her own. The puzzles keep her attention. She will complete a few of them at a time. Occasionally 1 or 2 are in the wrong place but she definitely understands the concept and works at them well. I have searched but there are no other books like this out there. Would buy any other book that came out like this.

I was confused for a while. I thought Sudoku was mathmatical. I think it was all the numbers and grids that confused me.

But it's not. It's pure logic, numbers are typically used out of convenience but it could be any distinct set of symbols. Dora Sudoku is a good illustration of that point because it uses stickers with pictures on them instead of numbers.

This book is great. When I tell people that I've got my daughter doing Sudokus, they sometimes respond as if I've put my daughter to work at a sweatshop. I guess they see the obsessive way I've gotten into Sudoku and worry that I'm foisting it on her. But I think it's great. Now when I talk about Sudoku we can both get excited together and work on our puzzles. And I'm very impressed with her ability to do them, she's really picked up on it quite well. These are puzzles for kids, of course, two by two boxes within a four by four grid, so we aren't talking about anything too overwhelming. You only need to hold one or two bits of information in your head at a time to solve it. That being said, the logic required to solve the Sudokus is the same logic required to solve more complex ones, just on a smaller scale. Also, the pictures are sometimes similar enough that one would have to pay attention to detail carefully to avoid mistakes. In the easier ones, the four pictures are four different characters on different color backgrounds. But some of them feature the same character in four different poses.

Thumbs up for Dora Sudoku. Anything that gets kids to enjoy books, concentrate, think in steps, and focus on details must be a good thing.

Writing this book has been, obviously, a labor of love for William Mann, whose earlier books convinced me that henceforward, everything he writes is to be treated as the work of an immensely serious, politically committed and ethical scholar. And yet when all is said and done, and a hell of a lot gets said in this book, I remained singularly unconvinced. Unconvinced as to Schlesinger's talent--sure, he made some great movies, but he'd have to have made CITIZEN KANE for the scales of justice to swing back to normal in light of MADAME SOUZATCHKA or THE BELIEVERS. Unconvinced about the frame story, for it seems so pathetic to dwell and dwell and dwell on the miseries of Schlesinger's life after his debilitating stroke when he could hardly speak and seemed miserable in every encounter. Unconvinced even about the title, which seems to have been chosen to echo Schelsinger's greatest success, MIDNIGHT COWBOY, but in that acse why not just call it MIDNIGHT COWBOY? And then in the long run he seemed like a miserable man in every respect of life, looking back, he was never very happy nor does he seem capable of radiating either good will or basic charity. Added to this the contemptible misogyny which, in a Balzacian scene, Mann summons up by asking Schlesinger for his final, considered opinion of the late Penelope Gilliatt. It's unprintable here, and unpleasant even in context of whatever crime she was supposed to have committed.

Are authorized biographies ever a good thing? What's the point of advertising them in that way?

And yet taken as a whole the book is a splendid piece of work, and in giving us the extremely varied picture of a lot of filmmaking atmospheres, from the Angry Young Men scene of the late 1950s in England, to the New American Cinema that MIDNIGHT COWBOY may be fairly said to have begun, to a later day when stars and producers and test audiences made movie making difficult for directors, Mann excels. It's panoramic in sweep, extremely detailed. And maybe the "authorized" label encouraged many in Schlesinger's circle to speak with Mann, including--well, it seems just about everyone. A great story about Madonna's affectations begins the book, which I won't spoil here but it involves her belief that she had a shot in securing the lead role in MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA. Enough said, go for it!

Two lapses in sense made me doubt my hero Mann for a moment. In discussing the Austin Powers phenomenon, he pronounces that "We've come so far that rebels now go BACK in time rather than forward, when the youth culture borrows relics of the past and jumbles them together into a pastiche of expression and attitude." Surely this has been an attribute of youth culture at least since WWII? Blue jeans weren't invented in the 1960s, they were retrieved from a workingman's past in the 19th century.

And look at this sentence, which touches on the critical reception of MIDNIGHT COWBOY. "Stanley Kauffman in THE NEW REPUBLIC adored the film, using adjectives like 'dexterity,' 'intelligence' and 'perception' to describe John's direction." Okay, maybe I'm missing the forest for the trees, but on the other hand maybe "adjective" has a new definition: "noun"?

Edge Of Midnight: The Life Of John Schlesinger is the authorized biography of the filmmaker whose most famous works include "Midnight Cowboy", "Bloody Sunday", "Marathon Man", and "Day of the Locust". Written with the full cooperation of Schlesinger, his family, and his companion of 36 years Michael Childers, as well as with complete access to tapes, diaries, production notes, and correspondence, not to mention interviews with the actors, crew members, friends and colleagues who knew Schlesinger, Edge Of Midnight accurately traces the singularly amazing career of a dedicated and visionary man. Highly recommended for professional cinema researchers and intrigued lay readers alike.

Poor John Schlesinger. This gifted filmmaker never seemed happy, gave off more than a whiff of bitterness, and even seemed jealous of some of the people with whom he worked.

Most especially, the late Penelope Gilliatt, who authored his finest work, "Sunday Blody Sunday." There has been much misinformation regarding this film. Gilliatt was a brilliant film and theatre critic and a writer of fiction. She was orginally part of the greatly influential team of Kenneth Tynan and Gilliatt at the Observer (London). Schlesinger asked Gilliatt to write the sceenplay of Sunday Bloody Sunday. He thought she was the "right writer." Subsequently, the film was made and received rapturous reviews; it stands today as Schlesinger's finest work, along with his T.V. film, "An Englishman Abroad." The trouble started when Gilliatt received the vast majority of the praise for the film, back in 1971 -- I remember. Pauline Kael went so far as to say that Schlesinger had been inspired by the "delicate substance" of Gilliatt's script, which led him to do his finest work. (And Kael and Gilliatt were NOT friends.)
Perhaps, in addition to Gilliatt's brilliance as a fiction writer, Schlesinger chose the heterosexual Gilliatt to write the script because she had been a champion of civil rights for gays and lesbians in Great Britain in the 1950s, when she was only in her 20s, long before, say, Stonewall in the U.S.A., and fought so that GLBTs could have a place at the theatre and film tables of England under the repressive and homophobic Lord Chamberlain. At any rate, her much-honored script is what the film is remembered for. (Also, Sunday Bloody Sunday didn't get a Best Picture Oscar nod, whatever that silly thing is worth, not because of the subject matter, but because a major English studio was about to go bankrupt owing to the dreadful and dreadfully expensive movie bomb "Nicholas and Alexanda," so the Academy members rushed in to help, or at least tried to, with a Best Picture nomination for it to get the studio afloat.) On its release, SBS was not a commerical success.
Anyway, SBS was a major criticial success. The attention focused immediately on Gilliatt and her original screenplay. Schlesinger charged in one interview that Gilliatt had wanted him to film the scene in which Peter Finch and Murray Head kiss, in long-shot, with the two of them running toward each other in slo-mo and shot side-on. Gilliatt was a film critic of what has been described as sky-rocketing intelligence (at the Observer and at The New Yorker), who received threats for her theatre criticism in support of breakthrough playrights in England. I cannot believe that she ever, even once, suggested, as Schlesinger claimed, that she wanted Finch and Head to run toward each other in slow-mo longshot for their kiss. Read her dazzling reviews of Ingmar Bergman's The Passion of Anna and Face to Face to know that she was simply incapable of that sort of sentimentality. To my knowledge, Schlesinger never offered any proof of the charge, either. The problem was, as I remember the events, he and Gilliatt didn't get along and he simply seemed terribly jealous of the acclaim heaped on her. He called her an intellectual snob, apparently because she was largely self-educated and a genius. She had, according to her friends, a near-photographic memory, was the youngest person ever to pass the entrance exams to Oxford, spoke six or so languages, was a serious writer of fiction and criticism, and had a colossal knowledge of theatre and film. Schlesinger must have felt deeply intimidated. How could he hold his own with her?
The playwright Joe Orton, also gay, apparently had no problem with her erudition, as they were beloved friends, and Gilliatt had many, many loyal and faithful friends in the GLBT community. Anybody who has read her fiction will know the script is hers in its entirety, and she made changes only to repair some structural problems and to accomodate the line readings of the actors, with whom she worked closely throughout the film, especially Glenda Jackson. Peter Finch said her script was the most beautiful he had ever read. How all this must have galled Schlesinger, already a sometimes trying presence to those who knew him. At the end, he made one dreadful film after another, often blaming the result on the actors' interference, etc. In truth, Hollywood had become so infantilized that the work of serious filmmakers was largely abandoned long before Schlesinger's death. All the same, he made two magnificent works, Sunday Bloody Sunday and An Englishman Abroad, and one deeply flawed but beautifully acted film Midnight Cowboy. It's doubtful the rest of his work will survive. As for Gilliatt, her vast body of criticism (film and theatre) is used in university film and theatre classes around the world, many of her short stories will survive as masterworks of the form, her brilliant profiles of Bunuel, Godard, Renoir, etc., are among the best of their kind and will be read long after all of us are gone. And Schlesinger, apparently jealous to the end, will forever be indebted to Penelope Gilliatt for her contributions, and she made many, many more contributions to the film than her screenplay, for as long as he or his film is remembered.

I am lying in the sun in Hollywood and I have just devoured this splendid John Schlesinger biography. I recommend it to every movie fan the world over. It is a lovely book and worthy of its subject.

Being north of forty, it would be impossible to underestimate the importance of John Schlesinger's influence on my life as a gay man. Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday were seismic movie going moments for me. Truly great movies in their own right, both have fully-dimensional gay characters as well as homo-erotic moments that lodged in my young brain and stayed. Jon Voight is a luscious Ken Doll in Midnight Cowboy. And Murray Head could be the poster boy for sexy 70's male in Sunday Bloody Sunday. Glenda Jackson watching Murray's perfect physique as he showered was thunderous for me because every day in Catholic high school I stood next to beautiful boys in showers and I couldn't stop staring and also could not forget none of them would ever be mine.

And thank you John Schlesinger for Julie Christie! The movie-going public will be forever in John's gratitude for giving us Julie.

They say that the music one listens to in our teenage years becomes "our" passion music-wise for our entire lives. Certainly, my life-long allegiance to Joni Mitchell and Aretha Franklin attests to that.

I feel the same way about Julie Christie. I was too young for Billy Liar and Darling when they came out. But both movies mean a great deal to me now. As do McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Shampoo and Return of the Soldier and Afterglow. I love watching this creature on screen. Julie is sexy to me even though I have no desire for her. And I am as much a fan now as I ever was when I first laid eyes on her. More of a fan probably.

Bravo to William J. Mann for painting a vivid portrait of one of our greatest film directors. And bravo John for your illustrious career!

William J Mann is interviewing famed movie director John Schlesinger at his home in Palm Springs. John has just had triple bypass operation followed by a stroke which has left him paralyzed on one side, confined to a wheelchair, and almost voiceless. Although his brain is far from crippled and he can nod, shake his head, and sometimes answer questions in a brief, unexpectedly pointed whisper.

They spend their days together looking out at the mountains which edge the city, and William sometimes talks with Michael Childers, John's lover and partner for many years. Friends of John's occasionally pop in for a visit - Julie Christie, and Brenda Vaccaro, all tearful and upset at John's seemingly hopeless condition.

Mann uses this sense of immediacy to great effect in Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger. Each chapter begins with a sense of how John is declining and how the author is racing against time to find out as much as he can. By interweaving the present with the past, Mann traces richly varied accounts of John's early struggles and glory days.

The end result is of man who has led a creative, and artistically fuelled life, with Mann offering a poignant contrast between the figure who sits staring at the mountains beyond the window, adrift in silent internal exile, with the sound of his laughter on recorded tapes. John's creative energy and intuition, his penchant for mischievousness and naughtiness, and his willingness to take risks and really push the cinematic envelope for more than twenty years, are highlighted with a candid and sincere accuracy.

And John Schlesinger also gave us Julie Christie, whom Schlesinger chose for the character of Liz in Billy Liar. The world of cinema would indeed by dull without the gorgeous Julie. Much of the narrative talks about the tremendous international success of Darling, and how the movie, not only cemented Christie's stardom, but also allowed John to go on to make even riskier movies.

Mann talks about why Darling was so historically significant and the part it played in the cinematic sexual revolution, which in turn greatly affected the changing sexual habits and attitudes in much of the West. John was determined to raise the bar with onscreen frankness, and he often found himself stymied by the Hollywood old guard who were determined to promise their audiences "real stars looking glamorous in beautiful gowns in beautiful sets, no kitchen sinks, no violence, no messages."

But it was Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday that really pushed the cinematic envelope: Sunday Bloody Sunday, with film's first same sex kiss, boldly rejects "moral" judgment in its account of the middle-class London doctor and the professional woman's feelings and presents both kinds of love as equally natural.

In Midnight Cowboy, Jon Voight's naive hustler from Texas foresees a future for himself in New York as a stud for affluent lonely ladies, but failure plummets him to the city's harsh and seamy underside instead. Midnight Cowboy proved that films, which overthrew convention, that dared embrace radical form and content, could also make money.

Schlesinger admits that he wanted to tell stories that dealt with the human condition, human difficulties, and even the illusions of love. His films were all about adult themes - the difficulties of maintaining relationships, abortion, extramarital affairs, and homosexuality. He wanted to make films about "people pushed on to an edge," and also people who were regarded as the underdog, the outsider in society.

He believed that films needed to be relevant, and that they needed to reflect the changing society. He also wanted his audiences to think, but more importantly, he wanted them to "feel," be it terror or revulsion or compassion or pity. In later years when he couldn't set up the films he wanted to make, Schlesinger damaged his reputation, then his heart and his arteries, by accepting too many potboilers in the desperate, unfulfilled hope of a box-office success that would enable him to work on his own terms again.

Glenda Jackson had a filthy sense of humor. John played a terrible joke on Julie Christie, which involved a feminine sex aid during the making of Far From the Madding Crowd. Sean Penn, although enormously talented, was a nightmare to work with. At the last minute, Brenda Vaccaro refused to show her nipples when doing the love scene in Midnight Cowboy.

The Hollywood brass turned their back on John after the colossal failure of Honky Tonk Freeway, Rupert Everett and Madonna gave the poor man hell on his final disastrous movie, The Next Best Thing - Madonna begging him to do for her what he had done for Julie Christie, while Everett was more concerned with rewriting the script as they were shooting.

William J. Mann has indeed written a formidable account of one director's life, a wonderful patchwork of tidbits including interviews with the people he helped make famous - Alan Bates, Julie Christie, Glenda Jackson. Martin Sheen, Ian McKellan, and Dustin Hoffman.

What evolves is a fascinating biography of a man who desired success, and ambition, and even lots of money. It's a portrait of a tormented man who had a quirky pessimism not withstanding and lived a life relatively free of personal demons. Comfortable with his homosexuality, and totally committed to making movies, "his art came not from discontentment with life, but rather from a love of it." Mike Leonard October 05.

Mary Jane Alexander, I am a New York film critic and enthusiast.

Film historian and authority James Robert Parish has done it again! "The Encyclopedia of Ethnic Groups in Hollywood," like all of Mr. Parish's well-regarded books, is comprehensive, thoroughly accurate and immensely readable. The sheer research is astounding and Mr. Parish uncovers the many fascinating tidbits that enliven film history. This is a book that is a must not only for every film and media library, but also for the general reader and film fan who wants is interested in the careers, lives and place in film history of the many ethnic stars who have thrilled us on screen. Bravo.

Also recommended: The Hollywood Songsters; Hollywood Divaas; and Hollywood Bad Boys

This is a wonderfully concise, detailed, and helpful general reference source for anyone researching ethnicity in the major films, television shows and performers of the past century. The Encyclopedia of Ethnic Groups in Hollywood is easy to read, gives only the important highlights of each title and personality, and is well-indexed. The photographs in the book are nostalgic and illustrative. It's all in here -- the breakthroughs, the award winners, the important firsts, as well as other contributions that make Hollywood history and today's Hollywood unique.

The movies have always help guide and shape moviegoers into an an understanding of who they are, where they're from, and where they're going. But much of the vast American public has been virtually invisible on the screen -- which is why this book is so valuable. Our overlooked ethnic groups -- African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Jewish Americans, and Native Americans -- now have a wonderful reference source to help them understand who they are, where they're from, where they're going. This encyclopedia may be a bit pricey for average bookbuyers (where's the cheaper paperback edition?), but it will be criminal if every library in the country doesn't make it readily available.

Jim Parish has outdone himself with this voluminous, impeccably researched work which is a concept long overdue in the publishing world. With the fine work of Allan Taylor, he has created a wonderful tome and a reference book which will be quite useful as well as enjoyable to read. Well worth the money! Cough up! You'll be happy you did.

By Hollywood, I expected the author to concentrate his efforts on films, which would have been fine in and of itself. But I was surprised (pleasantly) to see the detail into which he looks at the presentation of ethnic groups on television as well. This is the book that should be required reference material on every course in pop culture and in film studies as well. But don't let that scare you away from reading it. The book is written in a style that everyone can enjoy. It's one of those books once you pick up and start flipping through, you spend hours going through.

This book sticks to the music, and what music it was, or should I say, what music *made* - sometimes from situational film material. But this work sticks mainly to A-list, non-soundtrack recordings.
Whether he stuck closely to the demo, or reference disc, or completely reworked the tune, he made it at least interesting and listenable, and those that didn't make that cut (like "Hey Jude") are given a fair chance.
Since '68, I still can't believe what he did with "You'll Never Walk Alone"; discovering years later it was he on piano working out a "head" arrangement on the spot, made it seem even greater. This book will remind you why you liked a particular track in the first place or why you should have. At age 17, I didn't appreciate the depth of this performance, which in this book is described with masterful strokes. Another revelation for me was in reading about "Crying In The Chapel". I've always enjoyed Elvis' record of it, but thought he could have put more *voice* on it. Roy and Aspell evaluated the number as a whole and brought out nuances which have caused me to realize that it, too, is A-list.
I would have been happy to find reviews of movie fluff entries like "Sand Castles" or "Shake That Tambourine", but let's hope we get an "alternate take edition" of this fine manuscript.

THIS NOVEL SHOULD GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS ONE OF THE GREATEST BOOKS TO EVER BE WRITTEN ABOUT THE KING OF ROCK -N- ROLL . IT'S REALLY GOOD . IT TELL'S THE STORY BEHIND 112 OF THE KINGS GREATEST AND NOT SO GREATEST SONGS .IT FOCUSES ON WHAT REALLY IS GREAT ABOUT ELVIS' LIFE HIS MUSIC !

"The Essential Elvis" is a thoughtful exploration of the King's music from 1954 until his death in 1977. It's an important and much-needed work that concentrates solely on Presley's artistry. Authors Samuel Roy and Tom Aspell break free from the ill-informed mythology of most Elvis publications by re-examining Presley's work in provocative, exciting ways. You may not agree with all of the writers' criticisms, but it encourages you to track down the 112 Elvis recordings listed in their book.

There have been 4,567 books written about Elvis, mostly by people who have never known him, but whose third cousin's sixth-removed niece might have once dated Elvis' former schoolteacher's third wife. Then there's "The Essential Elvis." What makes this book so different is that Samuel Roy and Tom Aspell trace Elvis' life and legacy through personal history as well as 112 of his most significant songs. The book doesn't proclaim to be an expose or definitive history (it's neither); what it is is a clear portrait of the Man Who Would Be King, told through behind-the-scenes knowledge that uncovers and pieces
together the story of a man, his times, talent and cultural influences. And the 20 photographs -- many of which have never been published --- add a nice touch.

This excellent book is about what was most important to Elvis and his fans: his songs and music. One of the most significant things the authors said about Elvis is the following words: «The first and best thing that can be done for Elvis Presley is to lessen the emphasis that has been placed on his later years and focus on the talent and genius that define the King.....one of the reasons for his demise was because he cared and felt too much...it got to the point that being Elvis Presley was one of the hardest jobs in the world». I agree completely with the authors and, as a fan, my only wish is that this book will make the people, who don't respect Elvis, see the light...