Icons in the Fire: The Decline and Fall of Almost Everybody in the British Film Industry - Hardcover

Walker, Alexander

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0752856103 ISBN 13: 9780752856100

Publisher: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ), 2004

Synopsis

Mention the films - FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL, NOTTING HILL, THE FULL MONTY, BRIDGET JONES' DIARY - made in Britain, huge successes all, but none financed by British money. Walker's previous volumes, HOLLYWOOD ENGLAND (1974) and NATIONAL HEROES (1985), covered the period until 1984. This final volume tells the inside story right up to date of why a nation that produces actors of the calibre of Kenneth Branagh, Daniel Day-Lewis, Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Robert Carlyle, Kate Winslet and directors such as Anthony Minghella, Sam Mendes, Stephen Frears, Neil Jordan, Peter Greenaway, Ken Loach and Guy Ritchie cannot sustain a native film industry. Walker's revelations on the iniquities of National Lottery funding of movies - over 200m to date and hardly a profitable film among those so far produced - have been headline news. Indeed he shows that one movie, based on a novel by one of Britain's leading novelists, managed to take only 3,200 at the box office. He relates the extraordinary events of the past two decades years through the individuals, the companies and the studios. His judgments are based on more than four decades as Britain's leading film critic, biographer and film historian.

About this title

About the Author

Alexander Walker is the author of over twenty books about the cinema and its stars, including bestselling biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, Vivien Leigh, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Peter Sellers and Audrey Hepburn. He has also written standard works on the coming of the Talkies, a monograph on Stanley Kubrick, and the fullest account to date of the British film industr from 1960 to 1985. He has been the London "Evening Standard's" influential film critic since 1960 and has been named "Critic of the Year" three times in the British Press Awards. A prolific broadcaster on television and radio, he wrote and narrated four series of "Film Star" for the BBC. Alexander Walker was born in Ireland, and educated there, on the Continent and in the United States.

Edition details

• Publisher: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0752856103
• ISBN 13: 9780752856100
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352