Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.
Bezig met laden... Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper, Creator of King Kongdoor Mark Cotta Vaz
Geen Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Mark Cotta Vaz captures the essence as well as the details of Merian C. Cooper's life. From war hero, in both World Wars, to adventurer, to filmmaker, to commercial aviation pioneer, and finally to filmmaking innovator, Cooper is almost untouched in importance compared to other Hollywood figures. He reigns as a titan. And it's all the more peculiar that he has been all but forgotten, while many much lesser Hollywood figures have maintained their fame. The fact is that it's impossible to pigeonhole Cooper. And this biography makes that clear. Perhaps that is the reason lesser biographers have not been able to do Cooper justice. This volume reads like an adventure story. But then it is, because Cooper's life was an adventure story. Anyone of his exploits themselves could have been turned into a feature film. And, in many ways, as Vaz also makes clear, that is exactly what Cooper's great gorilla epic, King Kong, does. It captures the life and adventures of Cooper himself, being a somewhat veiled autobiography. (#51 in the 2008 Book Challenge) Just to clear things up, the reason I read this was because Maud Hart Lovelace, the author of the Betsy-Tacy books, was married to a guy named Delos Lovelace, and he and Merian Cooper were close friends and Delos and Maud ended up naming their daughter after him. So, onward. I really had no idea that Merian C. Cooper had done so much. He was a fighter pilot in WWI, and then started into film -- first with documentaries, and this was so fascinating that I'm going to try to watch all of his early films. I loved reading about how he and his colleagues were wrestling with ideas about what it means to call something a documentary. You know they've got all this primitive film equipment that only works under the most ideal conditions, and they would miss shots and then have to decide whether it was okay to ask everyone to do the same thing again, only this time on purpose. Then King Kong, and it made me think about how impossible it would be now to ever watch that movie without any irony at all. I guess his big idea of a follow-up was a movie about defending New York City with a fighter squad of people riding giant eagles ... but WWII happened and he enlisted again as a pilot. In short, he did live a crazy adventurous life, but it also struck me as firmly pathological (cripes, he gave his son the "come home with your shield or on it" speech before he shipped out for Viet Nam) ... a view that wasn't shared by the author, who apparently thought this was normal. Grade: A- Recommended: I thought this was a very good biography, it worked well for me and I wasn't even that interested in the subject before I started reading, and I think it would be very enjoyable for anyone interested in the pioneer days of film. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Prijzen
Explorer, war hero, filmmaker, and cinema pioneer Merian C. Cooper--the adventurer who created King Kong--was truly larger than life. "Pictures cannot be made from an executive's desk," "Coop" declared, and so he went to the far corners of the globe, with a motion picture camera in tow, in an era when those corners were truly unknown, untamed, and unforgiving. Cooper was one of the first bomber pilots in World War I. He then turned his attention to producing documentary films that chronicled his encounters with savage warriors, man-eating tigers, nomadic tribes, and elephant stampedes. He was the first to team Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers, arranged Katharine Hepburn's screen test, collaborated with John Ford on Hollywood's greatest Westerns, and introduced Cinerama, the original "virtual reality." He returned to military service during World War II, flying missions into the heart of enemy territory in China.--From publisher description. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Actuele discussiesGeen
Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)791.4302The arts Recreational and performing arts Public performances Film, Radio, and Television Film Techniques, procedures, apparatus...LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
A very enjoyable read, fighter pilot,explore,director and dreamer extraordinaire. ( )