Michael Hoffman

The world of the film is Tuscany at the turn of the lastcentury. Necklines are high. Parents are rigid. Social convention dictates the fate of the young. Class distinction is a largepart of everyday life and to be an aristocrat still means something. This is the setting for director Michael Hoffman's adaptation of Shakespeare's classic comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. Together with Rupert Everett, Calista Flockhart, Kevin Kline, Michelle Pleiffer, and Stanley Tucci, Hoffman stirs up a raucous mixture of love triangles, mischievous fairies, revelry, love potions, spells, dreams, weddings, a play, and finally, three happy couples heading off to their marriage beds. As Puck so aptly puts it:"What fools these mortals be!"

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Markus Werner

Scrounged from his notebooks and hearsay, this is the story of a schoolteacher named Konrad Zündel: a philosopher, a wanna-be writer; scattered, self-conscious, glum, anxious, unlucky, discontent . . . At the end of his rope, he decides to flee his workaday life at all costs, only to find escape always a little beyond his reach. Zündel’s Exit is a Chaplinesque comedy of disintegration, never knowing if it’s coming or going. Scrounged from his notebooks and hearsay, this is the story of a schoolteacher named Konrad Zündel: a philosopher, a wanna-be writer; scattered, self-conscious, glum, anxious, unlucky, discontent . . . At the end of his rope, he decides to flee his workaday life at all costs, only to find escape always a little beyond his reach. First his tooth falls out in the sight of other travelers, then he finds a severed finger in a restroom on a train. In fact, Zündel seems on the verge of falling to bits, as do his words, thoughts, wife, and world—will there be anything left, and anyone to hold the pieces? Zündel’s Exit is a Chaplinesque comedy of disintegration, never knowing if it’s coming or going.

Zundel's Exit

Rupert Everett

Leslie Urdang

Two pairs of star-crossed lovers, a troop of inept amateur actors, a feuding pair of supernatural sprites and a love potion gone awry all come together in an enchanted moonlit forest.

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer night's dream

A study of the occult uses of neurolinguistic programming and the alchemical processing of humanity, with special emphasis on symbolism and psychodrama in ritual murders, Black Jack game theory, 21st century Revelation of the Method, and the reign of dead matter.

Twilight Language

The stories, or essays, or perhaps poems in disguise, collected here are somewhat whimsical. They emerged from simple questions: What is Zen? Who was Confucius? What was it like to be a kid in Japan 10,000 years ago, or 1000, or 500? How did death come to seem, as it did for many centuries, so much more important to the Japanese than life? It is the author's proud boast that, though the questions are treated in some depth, not a single definitive answer emerges.

A Journey Into the Hearts of Japan

In the Land of the Kami

The official script book to the Golden Globe-nominated tragicomedy about the last year of Tolstoy's life in 1910 Russia, written and directed by Michael Hoffman (A Midsummer Night's Dream, One Fine Day) and starring Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, Paul Giamatti, and James McAvoy. After almost fifty years of marriage, the Countess Sofya (Helen Mirren), Leo Tolstoy's (Christopher Plummer) devoted wife, suddenly finds her entire world turned upside down, when the great Russian novelist decides to renounce his title and his property and to leave the rights to his iconic novels to the Russian people rather than his family. Feeling betrayed by her husband's disciple, Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), and using Tolstoy's worshipful new assistant Valentin (James McAvoy) as a pawn, she fights for what she believes is rightfully hers. In addition to the complete screenplay, the Newmarket Shooting Script® Book includes an exclusive foreword by novelist Jay Parini, an original introduction by Michael Hoffman, along with scene notes and a 12-page color photo section.

The Shooting Script

The Last Station

T. Scott Gross

Andrew Szabo

In today’s tough economy, cutting prices and providing good service aren’t enough. To be truly successful, innovative businesspeople must learn the art of Positively Outrageous Service (POS)—doing the unexpected unexpectedly and giving the customer more than he or she could hope for. POS put customer service guru T. Scott Gross on the map in the early 1990s. In this revised third edition, he contemporizes his work by examining what’s wrong in the service industry today and how to turn those negatives into POS. In his signature, slightly irreverent, but always insightful style, he shows managers at every level of the service industry how to: Build a customer base by following the four key principles of promotions—have fun, get people to your store, get people involved with your product, and do something good for others Hire the right people and show them the fundamentals of POS Energize and obtain the most creativity out of employees Win over customers when mistakes happen, no matter who is at fault POS is not just a way of doing business, according to Gross; it’s also a state of mind and the key to success in the twenty-first century. T. Scott Gross is a consumer advocate whose client roster for consulting, training, and speaking reads like a who’s who of the Fortune 500. Countless businesses, including Southwest Airlines, FedEx, McDonald’s, Sears, and Wal-Mart, have asked him to motivate the troops at sales meetings and conferences worldwide. Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

How to Delight and Astound Your Customers and Win Them for Life

Positively Outrageous Service

The stories collected here were written over the past seven years for a monthly Japan Times column called The Living Past. They range from earliest prehistory to modern times. The column still runs. The living past is inexhaustible. It never runs out of stories to tell. Column and book both were born of the conviction that the past, as the inrushing future engulfs it, is worth preserving - not only preserving but participating in, living in. Each story invites the reader to think, as the author did in writing it, "What would I have been if I'd lived then? What would I be doing, what thinking?" Try it. It's a wonderful form of self-discovery.

Michael Hoffman

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