Hollywood: The Oral History

Film writers Basinger (The Star Machine) and Wasson (The Big Goodbye) synthesize (for general readers and cinema cognoscenti) their sleuthing of primary sources—nearly 3,000 transcripts of interviews with hundreds of movie people found in the American Film Institute’s archives. Ranging from the silent film era (an ongoing recollection project began in 1969 as the Harold Lloyd Master Seminar series) through the present, this compilation includes actors, directors, and producers as well as essential, often overlooked support personnel—agents, editors, writers, makeup and wardrobe artists, musicians, and publicists—forming a more perfect picture of the entertainment enterprise. While underscoring too frequent stereotypical gender expectations (fewer, surprisingly, during the early days), there is little mention of actual sexual harassment. This edited, conversational retrospective contains much on changes in the industry as experienced by those in it, such as the transition to sound, the waning of censorship after the Production Code and McCarthyism, the use of digital technology, and the challenge of immediate reviews through the blogosphere.