Films Inspired

The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year. Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family's typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.

Lights! Camera! Action! The latest book in the Big Book Series takes us behind the curtain to uncover the stories that became some of the greatest films of the silver screen. Among these are Robert Louis Stevenson's horrifying tale that was later turned into the iconic movie The Body Snatcher, starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff; and "Cyclists' Raid", the short story that formed the basis for the legendary Brando film The Wild One.

To the wider world, Al Pacino exploded onto the scene like a supernova. He landed his first leading role, in The Panic in Needle Park, in 1971, and by 1975, he had starred in four movies—The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon—that were not just successes but landmarks in the history of film. Those performances became legendary and changed his life forever. Not since Marlon Brando and James Dean in the late 1950s had an actor landed in the culture with such force.

This book is an invaluable and inspirational material for the film, television and theater professional. It helps directors, actors, writers, designers, producers and executives tap into their imagination and instincts, in turn helping them create the films they’ve always dreamed of creating.

Anna Leonowens, a proper Englishwoman, was an unlikely candidate to change the course of Siamese (Thai) history. A young widow and mother, her services were engaged in the 1860's by King Mongkut of Siam to help him communicate with foreign governments and be the tutor to his children and favored concubines.

Now Tom Santopietro has written the ultimate Sound of Music fan audiobook with all the inside dope, from behind-the-scenes stories of the filming in Austria and Hollywood to new interviews with Johannes von Trapp and others. Santopietro looks back at the real-life story of Maria von Trapp, goes on to chronicle the sensational success of the Broadway musical, and recounts the story of the near cancellation of the film when Cleopatra bankrupted 20th Century Fox.

Unearth the terrifying and true tales behind some of the scariest horror movies to ever haunt our screens, including the Enfield poltergeist case that was retold in The Conjuring 2 and the serial killers who inspired Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs. Behind the Horror dissects these and other bizarre tales to reveal haunting real-life stories of abduction, disappearance, murder, and exorcism.

Professor and cultural historian Michael Keane reveals much in this nostalgia-inducing book packed with original research and interviews. Keane compellingly shows that the ultimate broadcast of the Christmas special—given its incredibly tight five-month production schedule and the decidedly unfavorable reception it received by the skeptical network executives who first screened it—was nothing short of a miracle. Keane explains why the show, despite its technical shortcomings, has become an uplifting and enduring triumph embraced by millions of families every Christmas season.

In 1911, famed cartoonist Winsor McCay debuted one of the first animated cartoons, based on his sophisticated newspaper strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, itself inspired by Freud’s recent research on dreams. McCay is largely forgotten today, but he unleashed an art form and the creative energy of artists from Otto Messmer and Max Fleischer to Walt Disney and Warner Bros.’ Chuck Jones. Wild Minds is an ode to our colorful past and to the creative energy that later inspired The Simpsons, South Park, and BoJack Horseman.

In an evolving networked era, social-issue documentaries like Blackfish are art for civic imagination and social critique. In Story Movements, producer and scholar Caty Borum Chattoo explores how documentaries disrupt dominant cultural narratives through complex, creative, often investigative storytelling.

Turner Classic Movies offers an endlessly fascinating look at 52 beloved screen adaptations and the great reads that inspired them. Some films, like Clueless—Amy Heckerling’s interpretation of Jane Austen’s Emma—diverge wildly from the original source material, while others, like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, shift the point of view to craft a different experience within the same story. Author Kristen Lopez explores just what makes these works classics of both the page and screen, and why each made for an exceptional adaptation.

Did the recent cinematic masterpiece, the Oppenheimer movie directed by the brilliant Christopher Nolan with Cillian Murphy in the lead role, captivate your imagination? Drawing inspiration from the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 biography "American Prometheus Oppenheimer" by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the film offers a mesmerizing glimpse into the enigmatic life of J. Robert Oppenheimer. But if it ignited a spark of curiosity within you, urging you to delve deeper into the intricate tapestry of events and personalities that birthed the atomic age, then you're on the precipice of an ...

Henry Winkler, launched into prominence by his role as “The Fonz” in the beloved Happy Days, has transcended the role that made him who he is. Brilliant, funny, and widely-regarded as the nicest man in Hollywood (though he would be the first to tell you that it’s simply not the case, he’s really just grateful to be here), Henry shares in this achingly vulnerable memoir the disheartening truth of his childhood, the difficulties of a life with severe dyslexia, the pressures of a role that takes on a life of its own, and the path forward once your wildest dream seems behind you.

Most people didn't know Seth Aaron Rogen until he was cast as the lead character in Apatow’s films Knocked Up and Funny People in 2007 and 2009 respectively at a very young age. Surprisingly though, many people still have some of the most pressing questions in their mind, which are: Who is Seth Rogen? How do I get Seth Rogen's biography?

Unearth the terrifying and true tales behind some of the scariest Horror movies to ever haunt our screens, including the Enfield poltergeist case that was retold in The Conjuring 2 and the serial killer who inspired Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs. Behind the Horror dissects these and other bizarre tales to reveal haunting real-life stories of abduction, disappearance, murder and exorcism.