F. Scott Fitzgerald

Kevin Macdonald

The Love of the Last Tycoon was originally published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon. The novel was inspired by the life of film producer Irving Thalberg, on whom its rotagonist Monroe Stahr was based. The story follows Stahr's rise to power in Hollywood, and his conflicts with rival Pat Brady, a fictionalised version of Louis B. Mayer. A 1976 film version was adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter, starring Robert De Niro as Monroe Stahr. The New York Times called the book 'the best piece of creative writing that we have about one phase of American life - Hollywood and the movies.' Fitgerald's essay The Crack-up, was one of three originally published in Esquire and put together in a book under that title by Edmund Wilson, after Fitzgerald's death. It tells the story of the author's sudden descent at the age of thirty-nine from a life of success and glamour to one of emptiness and despair, and his determined recovery.

Love of the Last Tycoon/The Crack-Up

Mark Cousins

In Imaging Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary, Oscar-winning documentary-maker Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September, Touching the Void) and leading broadcaster/historian Mark Cousins (The Story of Film) offer an expanded, revised edition of their 'definitive, inspirational' (Independent) compendium on the roots and history of the documentary film. Imagining Reality takes the reader on a tour of the evolution of documentary film as an increasingly vibrant, polemical, experimental and entertaining form. It gathers a wide-ranging collection of writings by and about such groundbreaking documentary-makers as Vertov, Flaherty, Marcel Ophuls, Chris Marker, Kieslowski, Claude Lanzmann, and Nick Broomfield. The story is carried up to date by attention to the success documentaries have had among mainstream movie audiences in recent years, including Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, The Buena Vista Social Club, Spellbound, Capturing The Friedmans, tre Et Avoir, and The Fog Of War.

Kevin Macdonald

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