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Conundrums: Typographic Conundrums
by Harry PearceConundrum is a mind-stretch. Encrypting idioms into their typographic equivalents, Harry enlivens our everyday language and challenges readers to see that "time after time after time" or, at least, "more often than not" "the writing is on the wall." For fans of word puzzles, sudoku, crosswords, and all manner of mind games, Conundrum offers an artfully packaged, cleverly designed new challenge. Drawing upon, literally in this case, graphic puzzles that he began creating as a child, Harry's developed over 100 witty conundrums for this book that will stretch the mind as well as delight the senses. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale, a frequent lecturer and contributor to design discourse, an internationally recognized leader in design, and a founder of Lippa Pearce, one of the UK's most respected design agencies, Harry refines the way we see and communicate. Conundrum achieves nothing less than changing how we understand and interact with language.
Convergence: The Redesign of Design (AD Smart)
by Randy Deutsch"There is today a pronounced and accelerated convergence in architecture. This convergence is occurring by doers not thinkers; in practice not academia; in building design, fabrication, and construction. It is about solution-centric individuals engaged in real time problem solving, not in abstractions. The nature of this convergence, where things are converging and what that means for architecture, is the subject of this book."—from the IntroductionThose working in architecture and engineering feel pressure to work faster, at lower cost, while maintaining a high level of innovation and quality. At the same time, emergent tools and processes make this possible. Convergence is about the firms, teams and people who thrive in this environment as a result of their ability to creatively combine and innovate. It seeks to answer several timely questions: What are the tools and work processes that are converging? How are individuals and organizations converging their tools and work processes? What challenges and benefits are they seeing? What is the ultimate endgame of this convergence? What skillsets and mindsets would someone need to develop to work effectively in this changing environment? What are the implications of convergence on the role of the designer, and on design? On how we design, build, fabricate, and construct? On how we work? The book explains how convergence relates to, but ultimately differs from integration, consolidation, multi-tasking, automation, and other forms of optimization. The practice-based research builds upon the author’s research in BIM and in the collaborative leveraging of data in design and fabrication. As an investigation and meditation on the impact of technology on the education and making of design professionals Convergence explains what is happening in the world of design, and discusses the implications for the future of education, training and practice.
Convergence: An Architectural Agenda For Energy
by Kiel MoeConvergence is based on the thermodynamic premise that architecture should maximize its ecological and architectural power. No matter how paradoxical it might initially seem, architects should maximize energy intake, maximize energy use, and maximize energy feedback and reinforcement. This presumes that the necessary excess of architecture is in fact an architect’s greatest asset when it comes to an agenda for energy, not a liability. But how do we start to understand the full range of eco-thermodynamic principles which need to be engaged with in order to achieve this? Kiel Moe explicates three factors: materials, energy systems and amortization. When these three factors converge through design, the resulting buildings begin to perform in complex, if not subtle, ways. By drawing on a range of architectural, thermodynamic, and ecological sources as well as illustrated and well-designed case studies, the author shows what architecture stands to gain by simultaneously maximizing the architectural and ecological power of buildings. .
Conversation Pieces
by Mark CarnallThis book, beautifully illustrated with specially commissioned photography, is a celebration of UCL's unique collections, with leading academics from the university invited to select and write about an object each found inspiring. From a jar of moles to an Egyptian unguent spoon, a finger X-ray to some prehistoric cereal grains, their choices were often surprising, their responses always fascinating.
Conversations: Up Close and Personal with Icons of Fashion, Interior Design, and Art
by Blue CarreonConversations began as a column for the Huffington Post where it initially featured fashion designers. Author Blue Carreon would ask his subjects to answer a fill-in-the-blanks type of questionnaire on topics that touch on many different aspects of our lives-from personal rituals to alternative careers to thoughts on Botox. Discover the fascinating truth on who has resisted and succumbed to Botox, and those who wouldn't admit to using it by their twist of words or vague replies.From Tory Burch, Carreon went on to ask a great mix of personalities to be part of the Conversations series. Among these include the style icons Ines de la Fressange and Olivia Chantecaille; fashion designers Diane Von Furstenberg, Rachel Roy, and Michael Bastian; decorators Charlotte Moss, Vicente Wolf, and Mary McDonald; and artists James Nares and Polly Apfelbaum. Through sixty selected interviews, Conversations stretches over the fields of fashion, interior design, and art.Delve into the fascinating lives of some of the world's most creative minds and see just how many turns of phrase can be added to a single open-ended word like Happiness...Read their answers and you'll be surprised at how the subjects jump so quickly from clever to funny to philosophical-or all of the above-with each question.
The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of the Editing Film
by Michael OndaatjeThe Conversationsis a treasure, essential for any lover or student of film, and a rare, intimate glimpse into the worlds of two accomplished artists who share a great passion for film and storytelling, and whose knowledge and love of the crafts of writing and film shine through. It was on the set of the movie adaptation of his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, that Michael Ondaatje met the master film and sound editor Walter Murch, and the two began a remarkable personal conversation about the making of films and books in our time that continued over two years. From those conversations stemmed this enlightened, affectionate book -- a mine of wonderful, surprising observations and information about editing, writing and literature, music and sound, the I-Ching, dreams, art and history. The Conversationsis filled with stories about how some of the most important movies of the last thirty years were made and about the people who brought them to the screen. It traces the artistic growth of Murch, as well as his friends and contemporaries -- including directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Fred Zinneman and Anthony Minghella -- from the creation of the independent, anti-Hollywood Zoetrope by a handful of brilliant, bearded young men to the recent triumph of Apocalypse Now Redux. Among the films Murch has worked on are American Graffiti, The Conversation, the remake of A Touch of Evil, Julia, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather(all three), The Talented Mr. Ripley, and The English Patient. “Walter Murch is a true oddity in Hollywood. A genuine intellectual and renaissance man who appears wise and private at the centre of various temporary storms to do with film making and his whole generation of filmmakers. He knows, probably, where a lot of the bodies are buried. ”
The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of the Editing Film
by Michael OndaatjeThe Conversations is a treasure, essential for any lover or student of film, and a rare, intimate glimpse into the worlds of two accomplished artists who share a great passion for film and storytelling, and whose knowledge and love of the crafts of writing and film shine through. It was on the set of the movie adaptation of his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, that Michael Ondaatje met the master film and sound editor Walter Murch, and the two began a remarkable personal conversation about the making of films and books in our time that continued over two years. From those conversations stemmed this enlightened, affectionate book -- a mine of wonderful, surprising observations and information about editing, writing and literature, music and sound, the I-Ching, dreams, art and history. The Conversations is filled with stories about how some of the most important movies of the last thirty years were made and about the people who brought them to the screen. It traces the artistic growth of Murch, as well as his friends and contemporaries -- including directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Fred Zinneman and Anthony Minghella -- from the creation of the independent, anti-Hollywood Zoetrope by a handful of brilliant, bearded young men to the recent triumph of Apocalypse Now Redux. Among the films Murch has worked on are American Graffiti, The Conversation, the remake of A Touch of Evil, Julia, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather (all three), The Talented Mr. Ripley, and The English Patient. "Walter Murch is a true oddity in Hollywood. A genuine intellectual and renaissance man who appears wise and private at the centre of various temporary storms to do with film making and his whole generation of filmmakers. He knows, probably, where a lot of the bodies are buried."From the Trade Paperback edition.
Conversations: A Conversation Between Ai Weiwei, Uli Sigg And Yung Ho Chang, Moderated By Peter Pakesch
by Ai WeiweiAi Weiwei is one of the world’s most acclaimed artists and dissidents. This book presents him in conversation with theorists, critics, journalists, and curators about key moments in his life and career.These wide-ranging conversations flow between topics such as his relationship with China, the meaning of citizenship, moving his studio to Lesbos to be on the front lines of the migrant crisis, how to make art, and technology as a tool for freedom or oppression. Ai opens up about his relationship to his father as a poet and as a dissident forced into hard labor in a small village after the Cultural Revolution. He shares his thoughts on formal education and the importance of finding your own way as an artist.New York—both the city and its people—were formative for Ai Weiwei, and he speaks eloquently about how these experiences continue to influence him. Ai conjures up scenes from his long relationship with the city: dropping out of Parsons School of Design because he couldn’t afford tuition, making portraits in Washington Square Park as an undocumented immigrant in the 1980s, taking photos for the New York Times at demonstrations in Tompkins Square Park, and returning to set up the Good Fences Make Good Neighbors project across the city.These candid, spontaneous conversations reveal why Ai Weiwei has become such a major force in contemporary art and political life.
Conversations about Sculpture
by Richard Serra Hal Foster“The rhythm of the body moving through space has been the motivating source of most of my work.”—Richard Serra Drawn from talks between celebrated artist Richard Serra and acclaimed art historian Hal Foster held over a fifteen-year period, this volume offers revelations into Serra’s prolific six-decade career and the ideas that have informed his working practice. Conversations about Sculpture is both an intimate look at Serra’s life and work, with candid reflections on personal moments of discovery, and a provocative examination of sculptural form from antiquity to today. Serra and Foster explore such subjects as the artist’s work in steel mills as a young man; the impact of music, dance, and architecture on his art; the importance of materiality and site specificity to his aesthetic; the controversies and contradictions his work has faced; and his belief in sculpture as experience. They also discuss sources of inspiration—from Donatello and Brancusi to Japanese gardens and Machu Picchu—revealing a history of sculpture across time and culture through the eyes of one of the medium’s most brilliant figures. Introduced with an insightful preface by Foster, this probing dialogue is beautifully illustrated with duotone images that bring to life both Serra's work and his key commitments.
Conversations at the American Film Institute with the Great Moviemakers
by George Stevens Jr.A companion volume to George Stevens, Jr.'s, much admired book of American Film Institute seminars with the great pioneering moviemakers ("Invaluable"--Martin Scorsese).Those represented here--directors, producers, writers, actors, cameramen, composers, editors--are men and women working in pictures, beginning in 1950, when the studio system was collapsing and people could no longer depend on, or were bound by, the structure of studio life to make movies. Here also are those who began to work long after the studio days were over--Robert Altman, David Lynch, Steven Spielberg, among them--who talk about how they came to make movies on their own. Some--like Peter Bogdanovich, Nora Ephron, Sydney Pollack, François Truffaut--talk about how they were influenced by the iconic pictures of the great pioneer filmmakers. Others talk about how they set out to forge their own paths--John Sayles, Roger Corman, George Lucas, et al. In this series of conversations held at the American Film Institute, all aspects of their work are discussed. Here is Arthur Penn, who began in the early 1950s in New York with live TV, directing people like Kim Stanley and such live shows as Playhouse 90, and on Broadway, directing Two for the Seesaw and The Miracle Worker, before going on to Hollywood and directing Mickey One and Bonnie and Clyde, among other pictures, talking about working within the system. ("When we finished Bonnie and Clyde," says Penn, "the film was characterized rather elegantly by one of the leading Warner executives as a 'piece of shit' . . . It wasn't until the picture had an identity and a life of its own that the studio acknowledged it was a legitimate child of the Warner Bros. operation.") Here in conversation is Sidney Poitier, who grew up on an island without paved roads, stores, or telephones, and who was later taught English without a Caribbean accent by a Jewish waiter, talking about working as a janitor at the American Negro Theater in exchange for acting lessons and about Hollywood: It "never really had much of a conscience . . . This town never was infected by that kind of goodness." Here, too, is Meryl Streep, America's premier actress, who began her career in Julia in 1977, and thirty odd years later, at sixty, was staring in The Iron Lady, defying all the rules about "term limits" and a filmmaking climate tyrannized by the male adolescent demographic . . . Streep on making her first picture, and how Jane Fonda took her under her wing ("That little line on the floor," Fonda warned Streep, "don't look at it, that's where your toes are supposed to be. And that's how you'll be in the movie. If they're not there, you won't be in the movie"). Streep on the characters she chooses to play: "I like to defend characters that would otherwise be misconstrued or misunderstood." The Next Generation is a fascinating revelation of the art of making pictures.
Conversations on Conflict Photography
by Lauren WalshIn today’s image-saturated culture, the visual documentation of suffering around the world is more prevalent than ever. Yet instead of always deepening the knowledge or compassion of viewers, conflict photography can result in fatigue or even inspire apathy. Given this tension between the genre’s ostensible goals and its effects, what is the purpose behind taking and showing images of war and crisis? Conversations on Conflict Photography invites readers to think through these issues via conversations with award-winning photographers, as well as leading photo editors and key representatives of the major human rights and humanitarian organizations. Framed by critical-historical essays, these dialogues explore the complexities and ethical dilemmas of this line of work. The practitioners relate the struggles of their craft, from brushes with death on the frontlines to the battles for space, resources, and attention in our media-driven culture. Despite these obstacles, they remain true to a purpose, one that is palpable as they celebrate remarkable success stories: from changing the life of a single individual to raising broad awareness about human rights issues. Opening with an insightful foreword by the renowned Sebastian Junger and richly illustrated with challenging, painful, and sometimes beautiful images, Conversations offers a uniquely rounded examination of the value of conflict photography in today’s world.
Conversations with Anne
by Anne BogartFrom one remarkable mind to another, Conversations with Anne documents the series of intimate interviews that theater director Anne Bogart has conducted-before live audiences-with major artists and cultural thinkers at her West Side studio over half a decade. In these extraordinary conversations, Bogart and her guests consider such free-ranging topics as the driving forces in their work, the paths their lives have taken, and their visions for the future of their field. Bogart delves into the daily thoughts of these artists and thinkers whom she most admires-a group that, collectively, has profoundly shaped the arts and artistry in America over the past twenty-five years.Interviewees include: JoAnne Akalaitis, Lee Breuer, Ben Cameron, Martha Clarke, Oskar Eustis, Zelda Fichandler, Richard Foreman, Andre Gregory, Bill T. Jones, Tony Kushner, Tina Landau, Elizabeth LeCompte, Eduardo Machado, Charles Mee, Joseph V. Melillo, Meredith Monk, Peter Sellars, Molly Smith, Elizabeth Streb, Julie Taymor, and Paula Vogel.Anne Bogart is artistic director of the SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She has received two OBIE Awards, a Bessie Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is a professor at Columbia University, where she runs the Graduate Directing Program.
Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers: The Eye Behind the Lens
by Jacqueline B FrostPacked with gems of wisdom from the current 'masters of light’, this collection of conversations with twenty leading contemporary cinematographers provides invaluable insight into the art and craft of cinematography. Jacqueline Frost’s interviews provide unprecedented insight into the role as cinematographers discuss selecting projects, the conceptual and creative thinking that goes into devising a visual strategy, working with the script, collaborating with leading directors such as Martin Scorcese, Spike Lee, and Ava DuVernay, the impact of changing technology, and offer advice for aspiring cinematographers. Interviews include Maryse Alberti, John Bailey, Robert Elswit, Kirsten Johnson, Kira Kelly, Ellen Kuras, Edward Lachman, Matthew Libatique, John Lindley, Seamus McGarvey, Reed Morano, Polly Morgan, Rachel Morrison, Rodrigo Prieto, Cynthia Pusheck, Harris Savides, Nancy Schrieber, John Seale, Sandi Sissel, Dante Spinotti, Salvatore Totino, Amy Vincent and Mandy Walker. Filled with valuable information and advice for aspiring cinematographers, directors, and filmmakers, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the art and craft of cinematography.
Conversations with Diego Rivera: The Monster in His Labyrinth
by Alfredo Cardona Peña Alvaro Cardona-HineA year of weekly interviews (1949-1950) with artist Diego Rivera by poet Alfredo Cardona-Peña disclose Rivera’s iconoclastic views of life and the art world of that time. These intimate Sunday dialogues with what is surely the most influential Mexican artist of the twentieth century show us the free-flowing mind of a man who was a legend in his own time; an artist who escaped being lynched on more than one occasion, a painter so controversial that his public murals inspired movements, or, like the work commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, were ordered torn down. Here in his San Angelín studio, we hear Rivera’s feelings about the elitist aspect of paintings in museums, his motivations to create public art for the people, and his memorable, unedited expositions on the art, culture, and politics of Mexico. The book has seven chapters that loosely follow the range of the author’s questions and Rivera’s answers. They begin with childlike, yet vast questions on the nature of art, run through Rivera’s early memories and aesthetics, his views on popular art, his profound understanding of Mexican art and artists, the economics of art, random expositions on history or dreaming, and elegant analysis of art criticisms and critics. The work is all the more remarkable to have been captured between Rivera’s inhumanly long working stints of six hours or even days without stop. In his rich introduction, author Cardona-Peña describes the difficulty of gaining entrance to Rivera’s inner sanctum, how government funtionaries and academics often waited hours to be seen, and his delicious victory. At eight p. m. the night of August 12, a slow, heavy-set, parsimonious Diego came in to where I was, speaking his Guanajuato version of English and kissing women’s hands. I was able to explain my idea to him and he was immediately interested. He invited me into his studio, and while taking off his jacket, said, “Ask me...” And I asked one, two, twenty... I don't know how many questions ‘til the small hours of the night, with him answering from memory, with an incredible accuracy, without pausing, without worrying much about what he might be saying, all of it spilling out in an unconscious and magical manner. A series of Alfredo Cardona-Peña’s weekly interviews with Rivera were published in 1949 and 1950 in the Mexican newspaper, El Nacional, for which Alfredo was a journalist. His book of compiled interviews with introduction and preface, El Monstruo en su Laberinto, was published in Spanish in 1965. Finally, this extraordinary and rare exchange has been translated for the first time into English by Alfredo’s half-brother Alvaro Cardona Hine, also a poet. According to the translator’s wife, Barbara Cardona-Hine, bringing the work into English was a labor of love for Alvaro, the fulfillment of a promise made to his brother in 1971 that he did not get to until the year before his own death in 2016.
Conversations With Form: A Workbook for Students of Architecture
by N. John Habraken Andrés Mignucci Jonathan TeicherThrough a progressive series of exercises - accompanied by observational studies, examples and applied theory - Conversations with Form: A Workbook for Students of Architecture improves designers’ understanding, dexterity and resilience in making form. It specifically focuses on the skills needed to succeed in the everyday context in which the vast majority of architects will ultimately design and build, wherein no one designs in isolation and existing conditions never represent a tabula rasa. The text begins by familiarizing readers with utilizing step-by-step sequences of moves to steer the development of built form and rapidly moves to designs of increasing complexity. These design plays treat a wide-ranging series of topics including structures, patterns, types, systems and other kinds of shared form principles. Conversations with Form is a workbook for honing hands-on skills and tools of the architect’s trade. Beautifully illustrated and focused on practical, usable information, the book provides architectural students with an accessible and useable handbook for their design practice.
Conversations with Frank Gehry
by Barbara IsenbergAn unprecedented, intimate, and richly illustrated portrait of Frank Gehry, one of the world's most influential architects. Drawing on the most candid, revealing, and entertaining conversations she has had with Gehry over the last twenty years, Barbara Isenberg provides new and fascinating insights into the man and his work.Gehry's subjects range from his childhood--when he first built cities with wooden blocks on the floor of his grandmother's kitchen--to his relationships with clients and his definition of a "great" client. We learn about his architectural influences (including Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright) and what he has learned from Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rauschenberg.We explore the thinking behind his designs for the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the redevelopment of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and Grand Avenue in Los Angeles, the Gehry Collection at Tiffany's, and ongoing projects in Toronto, Paris, Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere. And we follow as Gehry illuminates the creative process by which his ideas first take shape--for example, through early drawings for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, when the building's trademark undulating curves were mere scribbles on a page. Sketches, models, and computer images provided by Gehry himself allow us to see how so many of his landmark buildings have come to fruition, step by step.Conversations with Frank Gehry is essential reading for everyone interested in the art and craft of architecture, and for everyone fascinated by the most iconic buildings of our time, as well as the man and the mind behind them.From the Hardcover edition.
Conversations with John Schlesinger
by Ian Buruma"I like the surprise of the curtain going up, revealing what's behind it." -John Schlesinger. The British director John Schlesinger was one of the cinema's most dynamic and influential artists. Now, in Conversations with John Schlesinger, acclaimed writer Ian Buruma, Schlesinger's nephew, reveals the director's private world in a series of in-depth interviews conducted in the later years of the director's life. Here they discuss the impact of Schlesinger's personal life on his art. As his films so readily demonstrate, Schlesinger is a wonderful storyteller, and he serves up fascinating and provocative recollections of growing up in a Jewish family during World War II, his sexual coming-of-age as a gay man in conformist 1950s England, his emergence as an artist in the "Swinging 60s," and the roller-coaster ride of his career as one of the most prominent Hollywood directors of his time. Schlesinger also discusses his artistic philosophy and approach to filmmaking, recounting stories from the sets of his masterpieces, including Midnight Cowboy; Sunday, Bloody Sunday; Marathon Man; and The Day of the Locust. He shares what it was like to direct such stars as Dustin Hoffman, John Voight, Sean Penn, Madonna, and Julie Christie (whom Schlesinger is credited with discovering) and offers his thoughts on the fickle nature of fame and success in Hollywood. Packed with wit and keen insight into the artistic mind, Conversations with John Schlesinger is not just the candid story of a dynamic and eventful life but the true measure of an extraordinary person.
Conversations with Legendary Television Stars: Interviews from the First Fifty Years (Screen Classics)
by Ron Miller James Bawden“Insightful, often humorous, and always fascinating remembrances by some of the greatest names in entertainment history . . . a vibrant portrait of a bygone era.” —Brent Phillips, author of Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood DanceDuring television's first fifty years—long before Hulu, Netflix, and the like—families would gather around their sets nightly to watch such shows as I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, M*A*S*H, The Beverly Hillbillies, Fantasy Island, and The Rockford Files.Seasoned journalists James Bawden and Ron Miller have captured provocative and entertaining interviews with beloved stars of shows like these, important figures from TV’s first half century. These thirty-nine interviews, selected from conversations conducted from 1971-1998, present a fascinating glimpse of some of television’s most influential performers. Featured are exclusive interviews with major stars (including Donna Reed, James Garner, and Ricardo Montalban), icons of comedy (including Lucille Ball, George Burns, and Milton Berle), TV hosts (including Dick Clark and Ed Sullivan), and notable musical entertainers (such as Glen Campbell, Mary Martin, and Lawrence Welk). Each chapter explores the subject’s television work—with detailed behind-the-scenes disclosures—and includes additional information about the subject’s performances in film and on stage.
Conversations With Mark Frost: Twin Peaks, Hill Street Blues, and the Education of a Writer
by David BushmanTwin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost dishes about his long and storied career, including his time as a stagehand at Mister Rogers' Neighborhood ; his early days as a a young bachelor in Hollywood rooming with Adam Arkin and Michael O'Keefe; his brief time at Universal TV before chucking it all away to return home to Minnesota to work on documentaries; his experiences in the infamous Hill Street Blues writing room with Steven Bochco and David Milch; and, finally, his career-defining collaboration with David Lynch on Twin Peaks.Mark Frost, cocreator of both the original Twin Peaks and The Return, is often lost in the shadow of co-creator David Lynch in the eyes of critics and scholars -- one newspaper even called him the "Other Peak." In fact, Frost played at least as crucial a role in developing the narrative, mythology, and aesthetic of what has come to be revered as one of the most artful and influential shows ever to air on television. This book, comprising a series of interviews with Frost over the course of a single year, finally and fully acknowledges the extent of Frost's contributions not only to those series, but also to American television in general, as a writer/producer on Hill Street Blues and other shows, and as a mentor to numerous other writers. The book traces the arc of his entire life and career, from his boyhood days in New York, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, to his nascent playwriting career in Pittsburgh, to his days as a writer at Universal TV's famed factory of the seventies, to his work on Hill Street Blues alongside such industry titans as Steven Bochco and David Milch, to his multiple collaborations with the famously enigmatic Lynch, who perhaps emerges as slightly less enigmatic in the pages of this book. Conversations with Mark Frost deconstructs that legendary partnership, while at the same time exploring Frost's values, influences, thematic preoccupations, and approach to creating art -- for the screen, the stage, and the printed page -- as well as his thoughts about such topics as politics, extraterrestrial life, ethics, and the future of the human race.
Conversations with Neil Simon (Literary Conversations Series)
by Jackson R. Bryer and Ben SiegelNeil Simon (1927–2018) began as a writer for some of the leading comedians of the day—including Jackie Gleason, Red Buttons, Phil Silvers, and Jerry Lewis—and he wrote for fabled television programs alongside a group of writers that included Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart, Michael Stewart, and Sid Caesar. After television, Simon embarked on a playwriting career. In the next four decades he saw twenty-eight of his plays and five musicals produced on Broadway. Thirteen of those plays and three of the musicals ran for more than five hundred performances. He was even more widely known for his screenplays—some twenty-five in all. Yet, despite this success, it was not until his BB Trilogy—Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and Broadway Bound—that critics and scholars began to take Simon seriously as a literary figure. This change in perspective culminated in 1991 when his play Lost in Yonkers won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In the twenty-two interviews included in Conversations with Neil Simon, Simon talks candidly about what it was like to write commercially successful plays that were dismissed by critics and scholars. He also speaks at length about the differences between writing for television, for the stage, and for film. He speaks openly and often revealingly about his relationships with, among many others, Mike Nichols, Walter Matthau, Sid Caesar, and Jack Lemmon. Above all, these interviews reveal Neil Simon as a writer who thought long and intelligently about creating for stage, film, and television, and about dealing with serious subjects in a comic mode. In so doing, Conversations with Neil Simon compels us to recognize Neil Simon’s genius.
Conversations with Paolo Soleri
by Lissa McCulloughConversations with Paolo Soleri, the newest volume in our popular Conversations series, offers timely thinking in response to our global environmental crisis. Drawn from the visionary architect's personal notebooks and sketchbooks, Soleri's most recently (2004–2009) documented ideas respond to contemporary issues such as climate change, oil dependence, suburban sprawl, and overconsumption. Soleri outlines a detailed proposal for urban reformulation and renewal, appealing to architects, urban planners, environmentalists, urban historians, philosophers, ethicists, and anthropologists. Two essays and a new interview covering the breadth of Soleri's career round out this accessible introduction, offering a useful overview of Soleri's work.
Conversations with Peter Brook: 1970-2000
by Margaret Croyden Peter Brook"A fascinating and provocatively stimulating distillation of three decades of intense conversations between one of the twentieth century's few true theater innovators and America's leading writer on the theatrical avant-garde. A splendid book."--Clive Barnes"Peter Brook continues to astonish, not in an ordinary, fashionable way, but in an ancient, insistent way that always forces one inward. There is a true, honest, fearless voice in this fascinating conversation."--Ken BurnsPeter Brook, one of the most important contemporary theatrical directors in the West, shares his most insightful thoughts and deepest feelings about theater with Margaret Croyden, who has followed his career for thirty years, gaining an unparalleled perspective on the evolution of his work. In these interchanges from 1970 to 2000, Brook freely discusses major works such as his landmark airborne A Midsummer Night's Dream and his untraditional interpretation of the opera La Tragédie de Carmen. He also covers the establishment of the Paris Center, his work in the Middle East and Africa, and his masterwork, the nine-hour production of The Mahabharata, which has virtually reinvented the way actors and directors think about theater.Margaret Croyden is a well-known critic, commentator, and journalist, whose articles on theater and the arts have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Village Voice, American Theatre, and Antioch Review, among others. She is the author of Lunatics, Lovers and Poets, a seminal book on the development of nonliterary theater.
Conversations with Sam Shepard (Literary Conversations Series)
by Jackson R. Bryer, Robert M. Dowling, and Mary C. HartigA prolific playwright, Sam Shepard (1943–2017) wrote fifty-six produced plays, for which he won many awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. He was also a compelling, Oscar-nominated film actor, appearing in scores of films. Shepard also published eight books of prose and poetry and was a director (directing the premiere productions of ten of his plays as well as two films); a musician (a drummer in three rock bands); a horseman; and a plain-spoken intellectual. The famously private Shepard gave a significant number of interviews over the course of his public life, and the interviewers who respected his boundaries found him to be generous with his time and forthcoming on a wide range of topics. The selected interviews in Conversations with Sam Shepard begin in 1969 when Shepard, already a multiple Obie winner, was twenty-six and end in 2016, eighteen months before his death from complications of ALS at age seventy-three. In the interim, the voice, the writer, and the man evolved, but there are themes that echo throughout these conversations: the indelibility of family; his respect for stage acting versus what he saw as far easier film acting; and the importance of music to his work. He also speaks candidly of his youth in California, his early days as a playwright in New York City, his professionally formative time in London, his interests and influences, the mythology of the American Dream, his own plays, and more. In Conversations with Sam Shepard, the playwright reveals himself in his own words.
Conversations with Scorsese
by Richard SchickelMean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun, The Departed, The Aviator, Shutter Island: these are just a few of the critically acclaimed films, startling experimental works, and spectacular commercial blockbusters with which Martin Scorsese has forever enriched American cinema. Here is a rare and wonderfully insightful chance to experience all of these films, and the history and process of moviemaking in general, through the words and wit of the master director. Richard Schickel's canny and intelligent interviews guide us through Scorsese's life and work, from the child who escaped the realities of Little Italy in the 1950s through movies to the man whose increasingly encyclopedic knowledge of film shaped his ambitions and art. Scorsese reveals which films are most autobiographical and which have been forays into unknown territory in content or aesthetics. He talks about his lesser-known movies, those already considered classics, his documentaries, and his influences. He explains his personal style, the close attention he pays to detail, and his attraction to genre films. And he discusses what being a lifelong student of film has taught him about acting, directing, music, and camerawork, among many other topics. The result is a vivid, immensely enlightening history of modern Hollywood seen through the eyes of one intrepid filmmaker. We see audiences' expectations tested by what Scorsese was willing to put on the screen in explorations of prostitution, institutionalized violence, and religion. We see the unavoidable frustrations and exhilarating rewards of filming live concerts for The Band and at Woodstock. And we see many of the rewarding artistic and personal relationships of Scorsese's career, including collaborations with Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Jack Nicholson, and Leonardo DiCaprio. An invaluable appreciation of one of our most admired film directors.
Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age: At the American Film Institute
by George Stevens Jr.The first book to bring together these interviews of master moviemakers from the American Film Institute's renowned seminars,Conversations with the Great Moviemakers offers an unmatched history of American cinema in the words of its greatest practitioners. Here are the incomparable directors Frank Capra, Elia Kazan, King Vidor, David Lean, Fritz Lang ("I learned only from bad films"), William Wyler, and George Stevens; renowned producers and cinematographers; celebrated screenwriters Ray Bradbury and Ernest Lehman; as well as the immortal Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini ("Making a movie is a mathematical operation. It's absolutely impossible to improvise"). Taken together, these conversations offer uniquely intimate access to the thinking, the wisdom, and the genius of cinema's most talented pioneers.