The Milo Forman Stories

First published in 1975, this book examines the career of one of the leading post-war Czech filmmakers Miloš Forman through his own testimony. After recollecting his childhood and early artistic ventures, Forman gives accounts of the making of his major films, interspersed with contemporaneous reviews by the author, and in the final chapter he sums up his ‘lessons along the way’. A section entitled ‘Stories behind the Stories’ fills in details on the events and people mentioned in Forman’s narrative. The author’s commentary provides valuable insights not only into the aesthetics of filmmaking but also the social and political environment in contemporary Czechoslovakia.

First published in 1975, this book examines the career of one of the leading post-war Czech filmmakers Milo� Forman through his own testimony. After recollecting his childhood and early artistic ventures, Forman gives accounts of the making of his major films, interspersed with contemporaneous reviews by the author, and in the final chapter he sums up his �lessons along the way�. A section entitled �Stories behind the Stories� fills in details on the events and people mentioned in Forman�s narrative. The author�s commentary provides valuable insights not only into the aesthetics of filmmaking but also the social and political environment in contemporary Czechoslovakia.

The acclaimed film director Milos Forman was orphaned in a small Czechoslovakian town during WW2: he was 8 years old when his father was taken by the Gestapo & 10 when his mother was taken away as well. Much of his subsequent life was spent living out of a suitcase & nurturing his dream of making films. When he came to New York, his international reputation was secured with Taking Off, Hair, Ragtime, Valmont, & especially Amadeus, & One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, both of which won Oscars for Best Director & Best Picture of the Year. This frank memoir brings the traumatic experience of Eastern Europe in this century to life & takes the reader inside the very process of artistic creation. Ill.

As a teenager, he made his way to Prague, where he began his apprenticeship among drunken filmmakers and humorless state-controlled film czars, but most significantly with brilliant mentors such as Alfred Radok, the legendary Czech director.

For nearly 40 years, David Lynch's works have enthralled, mystified, and provoked viewers. Lynch's films delve into the subjective consciousness of his characters to reveal both the depraved darkness and luminous spirituality of human nature. From his experimental shorts of the 1960s to feature films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and INLAND EMPIRE, Lynch has pushed the boundaries of cinematic storytelling. In David Lynch: Beautiful Dark, author Greg Olson explores the surreal intricacies of the director's unique visual and visceral style not only in his full-length films but also his early forays into painting and short films, as well as his television landmark, Twin Peaks. This in-depth exploration is the first full-length work to analyze the intimate symbiosis between Lynch's life experience and artistic expressions: from the small-town child to the teenage painter to the 60-year-old Internet and digital media experimenter. To fully delineate the director's life and art, Olson received unprecedented participation from Lynch, his parents, siblings, old school friends, romantic partners, children, and decades of professional colleagues, as well as on-set access to the director during the production of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Throughout this study, Olson provides thorough analyses of the filmmaker's works as Lynch conceived, crafted, and completed them. Consequently, David Lynch: Beautiful Dark is the definitive study of one of the most influential and idiosyncratic directors of the last four decades.