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Title details for Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris - Wait list

Pictures at a Revolution

Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood

by Mark Harris
Lloyd James
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The epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967—Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Dolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde—and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood, and America, forever.


It's the mid-1960s, and westerns, war movies, and blockbuster musicals such as Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music dominate the box office. The Hollywood studio system, with its cartels of talent and its production code, is hanging strong, or so it would seem. Meanwhile, Warren Beatty wonders why his career isn't blooming after the success of his debut in Splendor in the Grass; Mike Nichols wonders if he still has a career after breaking up with Elaine May; and even though Sidney Poitier has just made history by becoming the first black Best Actor winner, he's still feeling completely cut off from opportunities other than the same "noble black man" role. And a young actor named Dustin Hoffman struggles to find any work at all.


By the time the Oscar ceremonies roll around in the spring of 1968, when In the Heat of the Night wins the 1967 Academy Award for Best Picture, a cultural revolution has hit Hollywood with the force of a tsunami. The unprecedented violence and nihilism of fellow nominee Bonnie and Clyde has shocked old-guard reviewers but helped catapult Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway into counterculture stardom and made the movie one of the year's biggest box-office successes. Just as unprecedented has been the run of nominee The Graduate, which launched first-time director Mike Nichols into a long and brilliant career in filmmaking, to say nothing of what it did for Dustin Hoffman, Simon and Garfunkel, and a generation of young people who knew that whatever their future was, it wasn't in plastics. Sidney Poitier has reprised the noble-black-man role, brilliantly, not once but twice, in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, movies that showed in different ways both how far America had come on the subject of race in 1967 and how far it still had to go.


What City of Nets did for Hollywood in the 1940s and Easy Riders, Raging Bulls for the 1970s, Pictures at a Revolution does for Hollywood and the cultural revolution of the 1960s. As we follow the progress of these five movies, we see an entire industry change and struggle and collapse and grow—we see careers made and ruined, studios born and destroyed, and the landscape of possibility altered beyond all recognition. We see some outsized personalities staking the bets of their lives on a few films that became iconic works that defined the generation—and other outsized personalities making equally large wagers that didn't pan out at all.


The product of extraordinary and unprecedented access to the principals of all five films, married to twenty years' worth of insight covering the film industry and a bewitching storyteller's gift, Mark Harris's Pictures at a Revolution is a bravura accomplishment and a work that feels iconic itself.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    March 3, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400126255
      • File size: 499338 KB
      • Duration: 17:20:17

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Hollywood was transformed in the 1960s, and author Mark Harris makes the argument that 1967--and the five films nominated for an Oscar that year--marked the true beginning of the "new Hollywood." Filled with beautiful moments of sniping and tales of an industry consumed by petty rivalries and fragile egos, Harris's book traces the simultaneous evolution of these five films--BONNIE AND CLYDE, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, THE GRADUATE, GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER, and DOCTOR DOOLITTLE--each one a microcosm of a much larger forces at work. Lloyd James's delivery is at times bemused, at other times measured and pronounced as he conjures such legends as Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway--actors we all know and love today--when they were just starting out. J.S.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from October 29, 2007
      While one might think that the films discussed in this book have been thoroughly plumbed (The Graduate
      ; Bonnie and Clyde
      ; In the Heat of the Night
      ; Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
      ), Entertainment Weekly
      writer Harris offers his take in this thorough and engaging narrative. Instead of simply retelling old war stories about the production of these five Best Picture nominees at the 1968 Oscars, Harris tells a much wider story. Hollywood was on the brink of obsolescence throughout the 1960s as it faced artistic competition from European art films and financial implosion due to an outdated production system and rising budgets. Harris doesn’t shy away from complexity in favor of easy answers, and the personalities that he profiles—among them Sidney Poitier, Mike Nichols, Warren Beatty and Richard Zanuck—are certainly worthy of the three dimensional approach. Harris also peppers his narrative with moments that capture the rising cultural tide that broke in the late ’60s: chipping away at the moralistic Production Code, and Hollywood’s inconsistent engagement with the Civil Rights movement are continuous sources of interest throughout this fascinating book.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 28, 2008
      With meticulous research and a masterful blending of information, Harris delivers a detailed and intriguing exploration into the significance of the five films nominated in 1968 as Best Picture for the Oscars (Bonnie and Clyde
      , Doctor Dolittle
      , The Graduate
      , Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
      and In the Heat of the Night
      ). Harris illustrates how the nominated films represented a paradigm shift in Hollywood and the country. From the origins and finessing of the scripts to the selection (or rejection) of the principal actors along with all the typical Hollywood folklore, Harris weaves the narratives of each film into one cohesive story, clearly detailing how these films were interconnected and how each reflected the changing mood of the country. In a light, calm and reassuring voice, Lloyd James reads almost flawlessly. Despite the presence of numerous popular actors in the account, James resists the urge to do impersonations and instead lets the person's words speak for themselves. This outstanding audio is intriguing, lively, entertaining and educational. Simultaneous release with the Penguin Press hardcover (Reviews, Oct. 29).

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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