Entertainment & Performing Arts

The beloved star of Friends takes us behind the scenes of the hit sitcom and his struggles with addiction in this candid memoir.

Step back inside the world of President Jed Bartlet’s Oval Office with Fitzgerald and McCormack as they reunite the West Wing cast and crew in a lively and colorful “backstage pass” to the timeless series.

Here's what started the phenomenon: This book has been a best seller for over 15 years and has been used by screenwriters around the world! Blake Snyder tells all in this fast, funny, and candid look inside the movie business....

In this brutally candid memoir, Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee Eric Roberts pulls no punches about the ups and downs of his career and his sometimes stormy relationship with his famous sister, Julia....

The man who brought the kavorka to the Seinfeld show through one of the most remarkable and beloved television characters ever invented, Kramer, shares the extraordinary life of a comedy genius.

With love, humor, and humility, Earth to Moon reminds us that every family is faced with problems that are unique to their particular makeup, but the journey to growing into yourself with grace is as universal as it gets.

A memoir of leadership and success: The executive chairman of Disney, Time’s 2019 businessperson of the year, shares the ideas and values he embraced during his 15 years as CEO while reinventing one of the world’s most beloved companies....

Jinger Vuolo, of Duggar family fame, tells how she began to question the ideology of her youth and learned to embrace freedom in Christ.

From actor Cary Elwes, who played the iconic role of Westley in The Princess Bride, comes a first-person account and behind-the-scenes look at the making of the cult classic film....

A wryly funny and surprisingly moving account of an extraordinary life lived almost entirely in the public eye....

The long-awaited first work of nonfiction from the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: a deliriously entertaining, wickedly intelligent cinema book as unique and creative as anything by Quentin Tarantino....

A five-time Moth GrandSLAM winner and bestselling novelist shows how to tell a great story - and why doing so matters....

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands upon his New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles used to build Pixar's singularly successful culture, including what he got wrong—and how he made it right....

James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales raucously and revealingly take the SNL story up to the present, adding a constellation of iconic new stars, surprises, and controversies....

A full-speed-ahead oral history of the nearly two-decade making of the cultural phenomenon Mad Max: Fury Road....

How do master storytellers compel us? There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story, but few have used a scientific approach....

From the author of dozens of #1 New York Times bestsellers and the creator of many unforgettable movies comes a vivid, intelligent, and nostalgic journey through three decades of horror as experienced through the eyes of the most popular writer in the genre.

The definitive biography of the creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and A Clockwork Orange, presenting the most in-depth portrait yet of the groundbreaking film-maker....

At 95, the legendary Mel Brooks continues to set the standard for comedy across television, film, and the stage. Now, for the first time, this EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner shares his story in his own words....

The Perfect Story will help you take your stories and make them perfect. Learn how to take any story and make it perfect--from storytelling expert Karen Eber, whose TED Talk on the subject has nearly two million views....

A deeply personal and revealing Hollywood-survival story.....

Robin Williams was a singularly innovative and beloved entertainer. He often came across as a man possessed, holding forth on culture and politics while mixing in personal revelations....

Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy....

Robert McKee's screenwriting workshops have earned him an international reputation for inspiring novices, refining works in progress, and putting major screenwriting careers back on track....

Bryan Cranston landed his first role at seven, when his father, a struggling actor and director, cast him in a United Way commercial....

Fresh off the success of her groundbreaking first play, A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry's The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window tells the tragicomic story of a young bohemian couple in New York's Greenwich Village, struggling to do what's right in a world that rewards everything that's wrong. Sidney is a dreamer who wants his own Walden Pond; Iris is a budding actress whose own backstory is a performance. They're caught in a moment where, "the world is about to crack right down the middle," as the play tackles racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, liberal complacency, and more.

In this brutally candid memoir, Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee Eric Roberts pulls no punches about the ups and downs of his career and his sometimes stormy relationship with his famous sister, Julia.

Most people think genres are simply categories on Netflix or Amazon that provide a helpful guide to making entertainment choices. Most people are wrong. Genre stories aren’t just a small subset of the films, video games, TV shows, and books that people consume. They are the all-stars of the entertainment world, comprising the vast majority of popular stories worldwide. That’s why businesses—movie studios, production companies, video game studios, and publishing houses—buy and sell them. Legendary writing teacher John Truby provides a guide to understanding the major genres of the story world.

From private feuds and on-set disasters to fanfare that swept the nation and the realities of child stardom, culture journalist Ashley Spencer offers the first unauthorized look at the heyday of TV’s House of Mouse, featuring hundreds of exclusive new interviews with former Disney executives, creatives, and talent to explore the highs, lows, and everything in between.

Virtually anyone who has ever watched a profound movie, a powerful TV show, or read a moving novel understands that entertainment can and does affect us in surprising and significant ways. But did you know that our most popular forms of entertainment can have a direct physical effect on us, a measurable impact on society, geopolitics, the economy, and even the future itself? In You Are What You Watch, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Walter Hickey proves how exactly how what we watch (and read and listen to) has a far greater effect on us and the world at large than we imagine.

The story of an unlikely hero who fulfilled his destiny… Fans will be fascinated by Kristian Nairn’s experience on Game of Thrones, from his unlikely audition to his on-the-job training as an actor to his ascendance as one of the most beloved and pivotal characters on the show. Nairn details the camaraderie that develops as the actors face the elements on set, not entirely unlike the ones their characters must endure on screen, as well as the life-altering effects of worldwide stardom.

In this brilliant work of political satire, Henry Morris presents fourteen years of Conservative (mis)rule in the only form in which such misfortunes could be portrayed: as a Shakespearean play. In five acts that take in five prime ministers, The Tories: A Tragedy is a captivatingly realised Jacobean tragedy, replete with Machiavellian manoeuvrings, hilarious mechanicals and poignant verse.

In this second edition, Murch reconsiders and completely revises his popular first edition's lengthy meditation on digital editing (which accounts for a third of the book's runtime) in light of the technological changes that have taken place in the six years since its publication.

Among a crop of fresh filmmakers including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola revolutionizing Hollywood in the ’70s, Brian De Palma—a director from Philadelphia with a few social satires under his belt—charted a cinematic path unlike any of his peers. At times he was unfairly dismissed as a Hitchcock copycat; other times he was misunderstood for his peculiar mix of sexuality, humor, music, and violence. But, over the course of ten years, he created a new cinematic language.

For fans of one of the most successful and highly discussed shows in recent memory, LOST: Back to the Island is both a delightful time capsule and a rousing work of entertainment criticism.

With a new introduction, acclaimed director and screenwriter Paul Schrader revisits and updates his contemplation of slow cinema over the past fifty years. Unlike the style of psychological realism, which dominates film, the transcendental style expresses a spiritual state by means of austere camerawork, acting devoid of self-consciousness, and editing that avoids editorial comment.

In their third and final screen teaming, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly starred together in the MGM musical Summer Stock. In C'mon, Get Happy, authors David Fantle and Tom Johnson present a comprehensive study of this 1950 motion picture. The production coincided at a critical point in the careers of Kelly and an emotionally spent Garland. Kelly, who starred in An American in Paris just one year later, was at the peak of his abilities.

A great script is only as good as the effort you put into your career, but there is little information for the aspiring screenwriter about how to break in. Even those who study TV or film in college are taught to simply “get a production assistant job.” But then what? Anton Schettini provides a rare insider’s glimpse of the modern-day network and streaming TV writers’ room. Here, you will find practical advice, career path strategies, and first-hand accounts for how to establish your network, grow within it, and acquire the necessary tools to become a TV writer.

Divided into four sections - Status, Spontaneity, Narrative Skills, and Masks and Trance - and arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the audiobook sets out the specific techniques and exercises which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is both an audiobook of ideas and a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity.

Written by film critic Odie Henderson, Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras is a spirited history of a genre and the movies that he grew up watching, which he loves without irony (but with plenty of self-awareness and humor). Blaxploitation was a major trend, but it was never simple. The films mixed self-empowerment with exploitation, base stereotypes with essential representation that spoke to the lives and fantasies of Black viewers. The time is right for a reappraisal, understanding these films in the context of the time, and exploring their lasting influence.

From Tony Blair and David Frost to Aziraphale and Hamlet, Michael Sheen has taken on a host of iconic roles, inhabiting each one with complete conviction. But – whether he’s transforming himself into real figures or bringing fictional ones to life – how does he go about immersing himself in his characters? The answer lies in an obscure Russian theatre technique that has evolved to become a central plank of modern-day acting training.

You don't have to miss out just because you don't like to be frightened! Stop trying to read nonsensical Wikipedia plot summaries (we know you're doing it), and let an expert tell you everything you need to know about the most influential horror films of the past sixty years—without a single jump scare or a drop of gore.

This eclectic volume traces Rigg’s career as a renowned star of television, film, and the stage. The author includes insights from rare, archived interviews, encompassing both video dialogues conducted by the University of Kent and Oxford Union.

The rise in UFO sightings and Alien encounters is unprecedented. With thousands of everyday people claiming to be in contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. What is happening on planet Earth? Why are the Aliens here and what do they want with the human race? Explore the theories and the astounding accounts that defy comprehension. Maybe the film 4th of July is closer to reality than we could have ever imagined.

Everyday people have been encountering UFOs (now UAPs) for decades and now with congressional hearings demanding information from the military and government, the mysterious phenomenon is getting worldwide media attention. Explore the greatest cover-up in our history in depth from Project Blue Book to the clandestine group "Majestic 12" and beyond.

Explore pyramids around the world even more mysterious than those in Egypt as well as bizarre "Alien" archaeological artifacts that defy comprehension.

Strong evidence is mounting of previously unknown races and cultures that were highly advanced. Explore this fascinating enigma of our hidden past.

Advances in science and technology are now enabling us to see dozens of highly advanced civilizations that defy the historical timeline as we know it.

New discovery of highly advanced civilizations that defy the historical timeline, presents a far different human origin story than what we've been told.

Who runs the world? Is there a shadow world of powerful and elite men pulling the strings of our global society? If so, when did it originate and why? Discover the Secret Origins of the Knights Templar, Freemasonry, The Bilderbergers, Serpent Cults, the Illuminati and delve into a formidable world hidden from our eyes, an all too real conspiracy that has been ongoing for centuries.