Alison Macor's Books

Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids

Thirty Years of Filmmaking in Austin, Texas

By: Alison Macor

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Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids

Thirty Years of Filmmaking in Austin, Texas

By: Alison Macor

During the 1990s, Austin achieved “overnight” success and celebrity as a vital place for independent filmmaking. Directors Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez proved that locally made films with regional themes such as Slacker and El Mariachi could capture a national audience. Their success helped transform Austin’s homegrown film community into a professional film industry staffed with talented, experienced filmmakers and equipped with state-of-the art-production facilities. Today, Austin struggles to balance the growth and expansion of its film community with an ongoing commitment to nurture the next generation of independent filmmakers. Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids chronicles the evolution of this struggle by re-creating Austin’s colorful movie history. Based on revealing interviews with Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, Mike Judge, Quentin Tarantino, Matthew McConaughey, George Lucas, and more than one hundred other players in the local and national film industries, Alison Macor explores how Austin has become a proving ground for contemporary independent cinema. She begins in the early 1970s with Tobe Hooper’s horror classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and follows the development of the Austin film scene through 2001 with the production and release of Rodriguez’s $100-million blockbuster, Spy Kids. Each chapter explores the behind-the-scenes story of a specific movie, such as Linklater’s Dazed and Confused and Judge’s Office Space, against the backdrop of Austin’s ever-expanding film community.

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393

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292722435

ISBN 13

9780292722439

Making The Best Years of Our Lives

The Hollywood Classic That Inspired a Nation

By: Alison Macor

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Making The Best Years of Our Lives

The Hollywood Classic That Inspired a Nation

By: Alison Macor

Released in 1946, The Best Years of Our Lives became an immediate success. Life magazine called it “the first big, good movie of the post-war era” to tackle the “veterans problem.” Today we call that problem PTSD, but in the initial aftermath of World War II, the modern language of war trauma did not exist. The film earned the producer Samuel Goldwyn his only Best Picture Academy Award. It offered the injured director, William Wyler, a triumphant postwar return to Hollywood. And for Harold Russell, a double amputee who costarred with Fredric March and Dana Andrews, the film provided a surprising second act. Award-winning author Alison Macor illuminates the film’s journey from script to screen and describes how this authentic motion picture moved audiences worldwide. General Omar Bradley believed The Best Years of Our Lives would help “the American people to build an even better democracy” following the war, and the movie inspired broad reflection on reintegrating the walking wounded. But the film’s nuanced critique of American ideals also made it a target, and the picture and its creators were swept up in the anti-Communist witch hunts of the late 1940s. In this authoritative history, Macor chronicles the making and meaning of a film that changed America.

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Page Count

302

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1477325069

ISBN 13

9781477325063

Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids

30 Years of Filmmaking in Austin, Texas

By: Alison Macor

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Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids

30 Years of Filmmaking in Austin, Texas

By: Alison Macor

During the 1990s, Austin achieved "overnight" success and celebrity as a vital place for independent filmmaking. Directors Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez proved that locally made films with regional themes such as Slacker and El Mariachi could capture a national audience. Their success helped transform Austin's homegrown film community into a professional film industry staffed with talented, experienced filmmakers and equipped with state-of-the art-production facilities. Today, Austin struggles to balance the growth and expansion of its film community with an ongoing commitment to nurture the next generation of independent filmmakers. Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids chronicles the evolution of this struggle by re-creating Austin's colorful movie history. Based on revealing interviews with Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, Mike Judge, Quentin Tarantino, Matthew McConaughey, George Lucas, and more than one hundred other players in the local and national film industries, Alison Macor explores how Austin has become a proving ground for contemporary independent cinema. She begins in the early 1970s with Tobe Hooper's horror classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and follows the development of the Austin film scene through 2001 with the production and release of Rodriguez's $100-million blockbuster, Spy Kids. Each chapter explores the behind-the-scenes story of a specific movie, such as Linklater's Dazed and Confused and Judge's Office Space, against the backdrop of Austin's ever-expanding film community.

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393

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292778295

ISBN 13

9780292778290

Rewrite Man

The Life and Career of Screenwriter Warren Skaaren

By: Alison Macor

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Rewrite Man

The Life and Career of Screenwriter Warren Skaaren

By: Alison Macor

This story of a talented screenwriter and the struggle over credits in Hollywood is “an insightful behind-the-scenes look at a behind-the-scenes man” (Stephen Harrigan, screenwriter and bestselling author of The Gates of the Alamo). Whether writing love scenes for Tom Cruise on the set of Top Gun, running lines with Michael Keaton on Beetlejuice, or crafting Nietzschean dialogue for Jack Nicholson on Batman, Warren Skaaren collaborated with many powerful stars, producers, and directors. By the time of his premature death in 1990, Skaaren was one of Hollywood’s highest-paid writers, though he rarely left Austin, Texas, where he lived and worked. Yet he had to battle for shared screenwriting credit on these films, and his struggles yield a new understanding of the secretive screen credit arbitration process—a process that has only become more intense, more litigious, and more public for screenwriters and their union, the Writers Guild of America, since Skaaren’s time. His story, told through a wealth of archival material, illuminates crucial issues of film authorship that have seldom been explored. In Rewrite Man, Alison Macor tells an engrossing story about the challenges faced by a top screenwriter at the crossroads of mixed and conflicting agendas in Hollywood. “A careful, thoughtful account of the career of somebody essential to the creation of films many watch and enjoy, but not accorded the same adulation by fans or journalists as brand-name celebrities.” —Publishers Weekly

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Page Count

353

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1477312021

ISBN 13

9781477312025

Book's by Alison Macor

Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids

Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids

Making The Best Years of Our Lives

Making The Best Years of Our Lives

Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids

Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids

Rewrite Man

Rewrite Man

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