Selznick's Vision: Gone with the Wind and Hollywood Filmmaking (Texas Film and Media Studies Series) - Softcover

Vertrees, Alan David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292787294 ISBN 13: 9780292787292

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 1997

Synopsis

Gone with the Wind has generated interest in every aspect of its production. Yet one crucial aspect has never been fully understood or appreciated―the vital shaping role played by executive producer David O. Selznick.

In this book, Alan David Vertrees challenges the popular image of Selznick as a megalomaniacal meddler whose hiring and firing of directors and screenwriters created a patchwork film that succeeded despite his interference. Drawing on ten years of research in the Selznick archives, and examining the screenplay's successive drafts, dramatic continuity designs and "storyboard" sketches (many of which are reproduced here), and production correspondence and memoranda, Vertrees interprets the producer's actions as manipulation, not indecision, establishing Selznick's "vision" as the guiding intelligence behind the film's success.

In his drive to create a cinematic monument, Selznick also reformed many key facets of studio filmmaking, inventing jobs such as "production designer" (inaugurated by William Cameron Menzies), which persist today. This book thus adds an important chapter to the story of classical Hollywood cinema and the making of the film that has been lauded variously as the "Sistine Chapel of movies" and the "single most beloved entertainment ever produced."

About this title

Synopsis:

In five "acts," film scholar Vertrees counters for cinema studies buffs the conventional wisdom that Gone with the Wind succeeded as one of the most popular movies ever made in spite of executive producer David O. Selznick. Drawing upon extensive research of the screenplay's successive drafts, production memoranda, and storyboard art (sampled here)

About the Author:

Alan David Vertrees, of Lake Forest, Illinois, holds a Ph.D. in theater and film from Columbia University.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0292787294
• ISBN 13: 9780292787292
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256