Pictures at a Revolution

Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood

By: Mark Harris

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Here is the epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967 - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Dolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde - and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood and America forever.

It was the mid-1960s, and Westerns, war movies, and blockbuster musicals, such as Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, dominated the box office. The Hollywood studio system, with its cartels of talent and its production code, was hanging strong, or so it seemed.

But by the time the Oscar ceremonies rolled around in the spring of 1968, when In the Heat of the Night won the 1967 Academy Award for Best Picture, a cultural revolution had hit Hollywood with the force of a tsunami. The unprecedented violence and nihilism of fellow nominee Bonnie and Clyde shocked old-guard reviewers and made the movie one of the year's biggest box-office successes. Just as unprecedented was the run of The Graduate, which launched first-time director Mike Nichols into a long and brilliant career and inspired a generation of young people who knew that, whatever their future was, it wasn't in plastics.

What City of Nets did for Hollywood in the 1940s, and Easy Rider and Raging Bull did for the 1970s, Pictures at a Revolution does for Hollywood and the cultural revolution of the 1960s. As we follow the progress of five movies, we see an entire industry change and struggle and collapse and grow - and we see careers made and ruined, studios born and destroyed, and the landscape of possibility altered beyond all recognition.

©2008 Mark Harris (P)2008 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Thorough and engaging....Fascinating." ( Publishers Weekly)
"Fresh and candid....A particularly accomplished debut book." ( The New York Times)

A good listen - A valuable book

Pictures at a Revolution offers a well researched detailed account of a time at which an industry and a nation was shifting values. I only saw Doctor Dolittle in theatres of the 5 discussed in the book. As a child I had no awareness of the political or social climate of the times. As an adult, I was to appreciate the relevance they had to the history of film and Harris' assessments are spot on. His description of Dede Allen's editing brought the film alive for me despite the fact that it has been decades since I last saw the Bonnie & Clyde.

As someone who works in "the industry" I found this book insightful and believe it would appeal to anyone with an interest in film. It makes accessible the process of actually getting a movie made; the business and politics of it all in addition to the creative process. It is so much more than you will find in a glossy magazine.

But really, someone should have done something about the mispronunciations. The narrator is very listenable, but Sidney Lumet's name is, as mentioned in other reviews, NOT pronounced LUMMIT. It's just not.

Excellent Book and Excellent Narration

The fastest 17 hours I've heard. I only saw one of the movies Mark Harris writes about, The Graduate, but that didn't matter. Harris wrote so well about the other revolutionary movies, I was interested all the way. I hope Mark Harris picks another set of movies and writes about them. Also, Lloyd James did a first-rate job on the narration. Very easy on the ears.

Very Interesting

Awesome view of the industry at the time and the old industry trying to grip to what it knew.

The narrator had this weird upward inflection thing when making a supporting comment that I feel he was told to stop doing 3 quarters through the book. That was the only thing I noticed to critique haha

If you like movies (let alone love them) this is a great bit of history.

Great story. Well read.

Deeper revealing story about the shift in the Hollywood machine that eventually leads to the modern blockbuster mentality.

Great stories about specific films, actors, directors, and producers and how they all contributed to the film Revolution on the late 60’s.

Mispronounced names

This is a wonderful book but the narrator consistently mispronounced names from beginning to end. Leslie "Karen"? Seriously?