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Backstory 5
Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1990s
Edited by Patrick McGilligan
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Book Presentation:
Patrick McGilligan continues his celebrated interviews with exceptional screenwriters in Backstory 5, focusing on the 1990s. The thirteen featured writers—Albert Brooks, Jean-Claude Carrière, Nora Ephron, Ronald Harwood, John Hughes, David Koepp, Richard LaGravenese, Barry Levinson, Eric Roth, John Sayles, Tom Stoppard, Barbara Turner, and Rudy Wurlitzer—are not confined to the 1990s, but their engrossing, detailed, and richly personal stories create, in McGilligan’s words, “a snapshot of a profession in motion.” Emphasizing the craft of writing and the process of collaboration, this new volume looks at how Hollywood is changing to meet new economic and creative challenges. Backstory 5 explores how these writers come up with their ideas, how they go about adapting a stage play or work of fiction, how they organize and structure their work, and much more.
About the Author:
Patrick McGilligan, who teaches film at Marquette University, edited the previous four volumes of Backstory, all published by UC Press. He is the author of many books about film, including Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light and the New York Times Notable Book, George Cukor: A Double Life.
Press Reviews:
"Author and film historian Patrick McGilligan has done a great service by compiling these periodic collections of interviews with screenwriters. . . . Their thoughts on the filmmaking process, and their candid stories about experiences in the trenches, make for good reading and valuable reference."— Leonard Maltin’s Movie Crazy"Illuminating . . . I’ve long found Pat’s Backstory volumes a treasury of information about Hollywood’s craft practices. Every conversation yields ideas about structure, style, and working methods."— David Bordwell Blog
"Intelligent talk on writing, filmmaking and the movie industry."— Expressmilwaukee.com
"Backstory 5 is a well-documented [and] detailed . . . selection for students and fans of the previous four Backstory books."— Library Journal
"I hope Patrick McGilligan keeps doing his invaluable Backstory series as long as there is cinema. No books more clearly elucidate the actual messy, infuriating, and wildly creative process of moviemaking. If you want to know the truth about how films are made today, Backstory 5 is the place to find it."—Joseph McBride, author of Searching for John Ford and Steven Spielberg: A Biography
"Pat McGilligan is the great American film historian, and the Backstory series is his epic, subversive account of how movies are really made. Backstory 5, like the volumes before it, is entertaining, eye-opening and indispensable."—Lee Server, author of Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don't Care and Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing
See the publisher website: University of California Press
> From the same author:
Young Orson (2015)
The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane
Subject: Director > Orson Welles
Tender Comrades (2012)
A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist
by Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle
Subject: History of Cinema
Oscar Micheaux (2008)
The Great and Only: The Life of America's First Black Filmmaker
Subject: Director > Oscar Micheaux
Backstory 4 (2006)
Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1970s and 1980s
Subject: Technique > Scriptwriting
George Cukor (1991)
A Double Life : A Biography of the Gentleman Director
Subject: Director > George Cukor
> On a related topic:
Story and Character (2004)
Interviews With British Screenwriters
Dir. Alistair Owen
Subject: Technique > Scriptwriting
Conversations with Sam Shepard (2021)
Dir. Jackson R. Bryer, Robert M. Dowling and Mary C. Hartig
Subject: Actor > Sam Shepard
Rem Koolhaas as Scriptwriter (2025)
OMA Architecture Script for West Berlin
Subject: Technique > Scriptwriting
On Story (2016)
Screenwriters and Filmmakers on Their Iconic Films
Dir. Barbara Morgan and Maya Perez
Subject: Technique > Scriptwriting
The New Entrepreneurs (2010)
An Institutional History of Television Anthology Writers
Subject: Technique > Scriptwriting
Breaking In (2017)
Tales from the Screenwriting Trenches
by Lee Jessup
Subject: Technique > Scriptwriting
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