Fare film è un inferno. Follie, eccessi e disastri che hanno fatto grande il cinema americano

In 1994, Kevin Costner and the director were planning the filming of Waterworld , a dystopia set in an underwater world. They decided to ask Steven Spielberg, who twenty years earlier had directed Jaws , despite a thousand difficulties, for some tips on how to best film in the open sea. The answer was lapidary: “Simple: don’t film in the open sea!”
But in 1994, Costner fancied himself a movie god and decided to ignore Spielberg’s warning. Fast forward a few months: there he was, in full costume, tied to the mast of a drifting ship, the strong winds preventing the crew from getting close.
This anecdote alone would be enough to demonstrate Hollywood’s inability to learn from its mistakes, probably because it’s a gigantic machine that often works by accident. Thus, between gangster producers, megalomaniac actors, paranoid directors, accidents and disasters, the behind-the-scenes action becomes a film unto itself, constantly oscillating between melodrama, disaster drama, and ramshackle comedy.

Yet, upon closer inspection, there’s much to learn from these infernal chronicles, and Gabriele Niola knows this only too well. In this exhilarating and rigorous book, he recounts the essence of American cinema through the daring production stories of great masterpieces and minor cult classics, from the old Hollywood of the 1930s to the explosive Hollywood of the 1970s, from the blockbusters of the 1990s to auteur cinema.
From film to film, we will discover how difficult it is to get Marilyn Monroe to act (but what a joy when you succeed); to what extent Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was an obsession for Walt Disney; how Francis Ford Coppola went crazy on the set of Apocalypse Now ; how dangerous 71 real lions can be on a set; how they offered David Cronenberg the chance to direct Flashdance and David Lynch Return of the Jedi ; what was a razor blade doing hanging in the editing booth of Titanic with the post-it “To be used in case the film sucks”; and why Thelma & Louise isn’t called, in the end, Tits & Bullets .
But most of all, we’ll learn the one thing everyone in Hollywood knows: making movies is hell.