Hawks on Hawks - Paperback

by Joseph McBride (Author)

"I read Hawks on Hawks with passion. I am very happy that this book exists."--François Truffaut

Howard Hawks (1896-1977) is often credited as being the most versatile of all of the great American directors, having worked with equal ease in screwball comedies, westerns, gangster movies, musicals, and adventure films. He directed an impressive number of Hollywood's greatest stars--including Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Rosalind Russell, and Marilyn Monroe--and some of his most celebrated films include Scarface (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Rio Bravo (1959).

Hawks on Hawks draws on interviews that author Joseph McBride conducted with the director over the course of seven years, giving rare insight into Hawks's artistic philosophy, his relationships with the stars, and his position in an industry that was rapidly changing. In its new edition, this classic book is both an account of the film legend's life and work and a guidebook on how to make movies.

Back Jacket

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences belatedly recognized Hawks's six decades in films with an Oscar for career achievement in 1975, it cited him as a giant of the American cinema whose pictures, taken as a whole, represent one of the most consistent, vivid, and varied bodies of work in world cinema. This book shed new light on the personal concerns which Hawk brought to his films, bringing into clear focus the deeply ingrained ethical sense which enabled him to stamp his distinctive signature on what once appeared to casual moviegoers to be a random assortment of genre pieces. Hawk's relaxed comic perspective keeps his films as fresh today as when they were made, and it also enlivens this candid and frequently irreverent book. Listening to him discuss his working methods in Hawks on Hawks is the equivalent of attending a master class in the practical art of film direction.

Author Biography

Joseph McBride is an internationally known film critic and historian and a professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University. McBride's sixteen books include What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career; Writing in Pictures: Screenwriting Made (Mostly) Painless; and acclaimed biographies of Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, and John Ford. www.josephmcbridefilm.com