Moviemakers Master Class
 

I just started reading this, and it is a goldmine. Twenty interviews with directors, distilled down to a few pages of wisdom per director. I got five great insights into directing in the first five pages.

HONESTLY time the script, so you spend your production time $$ on what matters.

Only make films that you do not know what they are about when you start them.

A movie is like a dream or trance state, rather than realistic viewpoints. (This one will control all future blocking & camera placement decisions for me).

I paid $5 for my copy.

'Only make films that you do not know what they are about when you start them.'

Care to elaborate on that one? Not sure I follow it...

quoting from the book...

"It is the excitement of exploration which appeals to me, and the danger that's involved in that, and you always hope that it will lead you into something really new, fresh, and original."

Yes, great book. I have it also.

I wish all books were as concise as this one.

Great book
 

The author was really able to get the best out of the directors he interviewed. He also gathered a really good body of interviews - you can really compare the styles and insights from a wildly varied group of talent;

Wood Allen
Pedro Almodovar
Bernardo Bertolucci
Tim Burton
John Boorman
Joel and Ethan Coen
David Cronenberg
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Takeshi Kitano
Emir Kusturica
David Lynch
Sydney Pollack
Claude Sautet
Martin Scorcese
Oliver Stone
Lars Von Trier
Wim Wenders
Wong Kar Wai
John Woo

Each interview is about 8 pages long. I would have to agree with you that it's a good book worth reading for narrative video/film directors.

That's an impressive list. Thanks for the recommendation. I recently read the excellent "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors " by Peter Bogdanovich. It's one of the most informative books I've read on the subject of directing. It simultaneously gives great insight (the interview with Hitchcock is remarkably inspiring) while also entertaining readers with information about the lives of the directors being interviewed. If you can track down a copy, I highly recommend it.

Full list of interviews:

Alan Dwan, Raoul Walsh, Fritz Lang, Josef Von Sternberg, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, George Cukor, Alfred Hitchcock, Edgar G. Ulmer, Otto Preminger, Joseph H. Lewis, Chuck Jones, Don Siegal, Frank Tashlin, Robert Aldrich, Sidney Lumet.

Moviemaker's Masterclass 2 has just came out.

With interviews from :

Bertrand Blier
Roman Polanski
Jim Jarmusch
Milos Forman
Arthur Penn
Mathieu Kassovitz
Jean-Jacques Annaud
Claude Lelouch
Steven Soderbergh
Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu
André Téchiné
Atom Egoyan
Denys Arcand
James Ivory
Michael Mann
Claude Chabrol
Claire Denis...

I've read it and loved it just as much as I loved the first book.

Gilles: where did you get the second book? I could not find it on Amazon US
and on Amazon UK it is listed with a release date of December 2006:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/057122265X/