The first book to bring together these interviews of master
moviemakers from the American Film Institute’s renowned seminars,
Conversations with the Great Moviemakers offers an unmatched
history of American cinema in the words of its greatest
practitioners.
Here are the incomparable directors Frank Capra,
Elia Kazan, King Vidor, David Lean, Fritz Lang (“I learned only
from bad films”), William Wyler, and George Stevens; renowned
producers and cinematographers; celebrated screenwriters Ray
Bradbury and Ernest Lehman; as well as the immortal Ingmar Bergman
and Federico Fellini (“Making a movie is a mathematical operation.
It’s absolutely impossible to improvise”). Taken together, these
conversations offer uniquely intimate access to the thinking, the
wisdom, and the genius of cinema’s most talented pioneers.