Top Twenty Essential Film-Related Books

A sure sign of a cracking book about film (or music, come to that matter), is that it often doesn’t even matter if you aren’t well acquainted with the subject. With this is mind, welcome to the top 20 essential books relating to films, actors and actresses. In no particular order:

1. Easy Riders and Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind. Hated by those in the industry for being riddled with inaccuracies (or at least things they’ve since regretted admitting), this leering look at Hollywood from the sixties to the dawn of the 80’s is required reading for gluttons of salacious gossip and excess. Biskind followed this with two further volumes: Down and Dirty Pictures, and Gods and Monsters
2. Laurel & Hardy: The Roots of Comedy. Simon Louvish’s book is both inspiring and heartbreaking, going into the minutiae of Stan and Ollie’s lives both behind of and in front of the camera. 
3. Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger. Perhaps the most notorious film book of them all, it was banned ten days after publication in 1965 and didn’t reappear until a decade later. Derided by starchy critics as immoral and without merit, it’s rattlingly graphic depictions of film stars from the first half of the twentieth century are eye-popping stuff.
4. Me Cheeta by Cheeta. Yes, Cheeta, the chimp from the Tarzan films, wrote his autobiography. Actually, that’s only slightly true. Authored by James Lever, the book tells the story of behind Hollywood’s gloss from Cheeta’s perspective. Weird, perhaps, but a really good read
   
5. Nightmare Movies by Kim Newman. If you only own one book on horror films…Kim is the don of the horror film writer’s world and his exploration of the horror movie, from its reinvention in the sixties to the present day, is essential.  
6. Nightmare USA by Stephen Thrower. More nightmares but not necessarily horror films. Thrower’s incredibly ambitious project to uncover every element of independent film making, specifically exploitation films from 1970 to 1985. Huge in size and scope (528 pages of tiny type and too heavy to read for prolonged periods), this is only part one of the project!
7. Klaus Kinski – Kinski Uncut. Not just the most outrageous film book but one of the most outrageous books ever published! The maniacal actor charts his poverty-stricken youth through to international success and excess leaving no stone unturned. Much is reputed to be made-up – we suspect not actually that much.  
8. Aurum Film Encyclopedias – Phil Hardy. Lavishly adorned with stills and posters, Hardy’s encyclopedias, which covered the genres: horror; science fiction; westerns and gangsters, were riddled with falsehoods, largely due to the fact he hadn’t seen a great many of them. No matter, they served as gospel for film writers for years. 
9. David Niven – The Moon’s a Balloon. Niven’s autobiog is entirely the yarn-filled traipse through yesteryear you’d hope for. Of its time yet still stands up as one of the great celebrity memoirs.  
10. Errol Flynn – My Wicked, Wicked Ways. Spoiler alert – his ways were wicked. Flynn’s life is the stuff you’d hope all Hollywood tales to be, embellished by an actor whose rise to stardom was far from conventional.  
11. Michael Winner – Winner Takes All. Imagine what a book written by Michael Winner about himself might be like – you’re welcome! Heavy on name-dropping and charmingly self-deprecating, one day, the world will realise he was, on his day, one of the best movie directors in the world. 
12. John Waters – Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters. Perhaps history’s most wayward film director compiles essays of everything from his feverish adoration of Christmas to serial killers to behaving badly in public. 
13. Ernest Borgnine – I Don’t Want To Set the World on Fire, I Just Want to Keep My Nuts Warm – and that everyone, is how you title your autobiography! Comes across as a genuinely great bloke you’d want to go to the pub with. His ex-wives may disagree. 
14. Brian Blessed – Absolute Pandemonium. Might as well all be in bold caps, Brian’s rip-roaring life, from Z Cars to Flash Gordon to scaling (nearly) Everest, is life-affirming stuff.  
15. Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego, and the Twilight Zone Case by Stephen Farber. Utterly damning account of the goings-on behind the scenes of the Twilight Zone movies, in which both Vic Morrow and two children were killed by a helicopter-related incident on-set. Directors and producers John Landis and Steven Spielberg DO NOT come out of the hushed-up scandal smelling of roses. 
    
16. Margaret Rutherford: Dreadnought with Good Manners by Andy Merriman. The epitome of Englishness, Rutherford comes across as wholesome, kind and a joy to be around. Inevitably her life is riddled with tragedy 
17. Alec Guinness: My Name Escapes Me – A Diary of a Retiring Actor. Guinness actually comes across as a bit of an arse, which entirely reasonable for an actor who conquered all before him. 
18. My Word is my Bond: Roger Moore. Roger lived just long enough to receive the public outpouring of gratitude for a career which never took itself seriously and always praised those around him ahead of himself. 
19. Bounder: The Biography of Terry-Thomas by Graham McGann. Rattles along at a fair old pace, it’s the kind of book you could certainly find yourself reading in one or two sittings. Perhaps slightly skewed to the cheerier elements of his life, certainly considering his tragic demise in all but poverty. 
20. Once Upon a Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergio Leone by Sir Christopher Frayling. A brilliant look at a man who devoted his life to storytelling. Such is Leone’s extraordinary eye for images, that even renowned film historian Frayling resorts to cramming the book with luscious photographs.