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From 2014 to 2018, character comedy trio Sleeping Trees challenged themselves to bring the big screen to the stage, paying homage and reinventing gangster, western and sci-fi movies for audiences across the country. This book recounts how these shows were made, stories from when they were on tour, the trio’s unique approach to devising fringe comedy, as well as the original scripts of the three award-winning plays. Mafia? Sleeping Trees deliver their version of every gangster film they’ve ever...

For more than a century the cinematic western has been America’s most familiar genre, always teetering on the verge of exhaustion and yet regularly revived in new forms. Why does this outmoded vehicle—with the most narrowly based historical setting of any popular genre—maintain its appeal? In Late Westerns Lee Clark Mitchell takes a position against those critics looking to attach “post” to the all-too-familiar genre. For though the frontier disappeared long ago, though men on horseback have bec...

The legendary icon is made real through vivid anecdotes and observations from the insiders who worked, gambled, drank, and fought with Wayne’s outsized personality.  Drawing on hundreds of sources, both published and broadcast, this oral biography presents in-depth interviews with the friends and confidants of John Wayne: Lee Aaker, John Agar, Peri Alcaide, Luster Bayless, Budd Boetticher, Harry Carey Jr., Tom Corrigan, Robert Donner, Edward Faulkner, Leo Gordon, Ben Johnson, Burt Kennedy, Jean...

Melodrama is the foundation of American cinema. It is, however, a poorly understood term. While it is a pervasive and persuasive dramatic mode, it is not tied to any specific moral or ideological system. It is not a singular genre; rather, it operates as a "genre generating machine" capable of determining the aesthetics and structure of the drama within many genres. Melodrama centers the conflict around the clash between good and evil and provides a sense of poetic justice--but the specific v...

The second of two official companion books for the Zack Snyder-directed Netflix films Rebel Moon taking an exclusive in-depth look at the heroes and villains, monsters and animals. From Zack Snyder, the filmmaker behind 300, Man of Steel, and Army of the Dead, comes REBEL MOON, an epic science-fantasy event decades in the making. When a peaceful settlement on a moon in the furthest reaches of the universe finds itself threatened by the armies of the tyrannical Regent Balisarius, Kora (Sofia Bou...

Ride Lonesome, the fifth film in the "Ranown cycle," is both the best and most representative of the whole series, which has been called "the most remarkable convergence of artistic achievement in the history of low-budget moviemaking." Director Bud Boetticher captures the alienation and loneliness of an America faced with the Cold War and the daily threat of nuclear annihilation. Shot in seventeen days for under a half-million dollars, Ride Lonesome is a masterpiece of cinematic minimalism. Ve...

Thelma & Louise, the 1991 film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, has been described as a road movie, a buddy movie, a feminist parable, and only incidentally as a Western. An Oscar winner for first-time screenwriter Callie Khouri, Thelma & Louise catalyzed a national conversation about women, violence, and self-determination in a Hollywood still shrugging off the West of John Wayne and in an America that still viewed women as accessories to the national mythol...

African American westerns have a rich cinematic history and visual culture. Mia Mask examines the African American western hero within the larger context of film history by considering how Black westerns evolved and approached wide-ranging goals. Woody Strode’s 1950s transformation from football star to actor was the harbinger of hard-edged western heroes later played by Jim Brown and Fred Williamson. Sidney Poitier’s Buck and the Preacher provided a narrative helmed by a groundbreaking African...

John Wayne’s name is synonymous with not only the tough cowboys of the Wild West, but also the all-American war hero. Rising beyond the standard recognition that most Hollywood actors get, Wayne achieved an unparalleled level of success as a walking and talking symbol of America. John Wayne: A Photographic Celebration collects many photographs from his long and celebrated career. Annotated with quotes from the man himself, as well as quotes about him from his loved ones, this book follows the co...

With fresh appraisals of popular Westerns, this book examines the history of the genre with a focus on definitional aspects of canon, adaptation and hybridity. The author covers a range of largely unexplored topics, including the role of "heroines" in a (supposedly) male-oriented system of film production, the function of the celluloid Indians, the transcultural and transnational history of the first spaghetti Western, the construction of femininity and masculinity in the hybrid Westerns of the...

Since the silent days of cinema, Westerns have been one of the most popular genres, not just in the United States but around the world. International filmmakers have been so taken by westerns that many directors have produced versions of their own, despite lacking access to the American West. Nowhere has the Western been more embraced outside of the United States than Italy. In the 1960s, as Hollywood heroes like John Wayne and Randolph Scott were aging, Italian filmmakers were revitalizing the...

The Western is the quintessential American epic - a mythic story of nation building and the triumphs and failures, the fantasies, and even the hypocrisies that process entails. Once Upon a Time . . . The Western: A New Frontier in Art and Film explores the genre and its attendant myths in the context of painting, photography, literature, and film from the mid-1800s to the present. This book is not a comprehensive history of Western film, but a story about the visualisation, transmission, and tra...

The theme of death is an essential component of film narrative, particularly in how it affects the hero. Filmmakers from different cultures and backgrounds have developed distinct yet archetypal perspectives on death and the protagonist's response. Focusing on Western and Japanese period genre films, the author examines the work of John Ford (1894-1973), Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) and Sergio Leone (1929-1989) and finds similarities regarding death's impact on the hero's sense of morality.

From the late 1970s into the early 1990s, a generation of female filmmakers took aim at their home countries’ popular myths of the frontier. Deeply influenced by second-wave feminism and supported by hard-won access to governmental and institutional funding and training, their trailblazing films challenged traditionally male genres like the Western. Instead of reinforcing the myths of nationhood often portrayed in such films—invariably featuring a lone white male hero pitted against the “savage”...

This beautiful book is a celebration of John Wayne and the films he made. Filled with illuminating insights and behind-the-scenes stories, this book details all 169 of Duke's movies, from long forgotten gems to Hollywood classics that made John Wayne into the world's biggest movie star. You'll also find hundreds of gorgeous full-color and black-and-white photos from the set, along with movie posters, lobby cards, costumes, collectibles and more, including a number of full-spread photos that sho...