The 2025 Christmas Shopping Guide for Movie Lovers: THE BOOKS!
The 2025 Christmas shopping guide for movie lovers: books in my library and that have recently become available that will be gifts for cinephiles to find under the Christmas tree.
As I mentioned in the previous shopping guide (THE CLOTHES!), I am a big time Kringle when it comes to Christmas and someone who loves cinema and film, I am always on the hunt (as anyone who has tuned into previous shopping guides I have done on Films Gone Wild) for what I believe are cool and/or unique gifts for others like me.
So, let’s get into Round Two for the 2025 Christmas shopping hunt…
THE ESSENTIALS
MAKING MOVIES (Sidney Lumet)
ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER‘S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • “Invaluable…. I am sometimes asked if there is one book a filmgoer could read to learn more about how movies are made and what to look for while watching them. This is the book.” —Roger Ebert, The New York Times Book Review
Not much to add to that, right? From Barnes and Noble’s site: “Why does a director choose a particular script? What must they do in order to keep actors fresh and truthful through take after take of a single scene? How do you stage a shootout—involving more than one hundred extras and three colliding taxis—in the heart of New York’s diamond district? What does it take to keep the studio honchos happy? From the first rehearsal to the final screening, Making Movies is a master’s take, delivered with clarity, candor, and a wealth of anecdote.
For in this book, Sidney Lumet, one of our most consistently acclaimed directors, gives us both a professional memoir and a definitive guide to the art, craft, and business of the motion picture. Drawing on forty years of experience on movies that range from Long Day’s Journey into Night to Network and The Verdict—and with such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino—Lumet explains how painstaking labor and inspired split-second decisions can result in two hours of screen magic.”
IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE (Walter Murch)
From the master class in directing to a master class in editing… Also from the Barnes and Noble site: “In the Blink of an Eye is celebrated editor Walter Murch’s vivid, multifaceted, thought-provoking essay of film editing. Starting with what might seem to be the most basic editing question — Why do cuts work? — he treats the reader to a marvelous “ride” through the esthetics and practical concerns of cutting film. Along the way, he offers his insights on such subjects as continuity and discontinuity in editing, dreaming, and real life; the criteria of a good cut; and the blink of the eye as both an analog to and an emotional cue for the cut. New to this second edition is Murch’s lengthy meditation on the current state of digital editing.”
IF IT’S PURPLE, SOMEONE’S GONNA DIE (Patti Bellantoni)
I LOVE this book, as the dogeared copy in my library demonstrates. In fact, I admitted to celebrated cinematographer Ed Lachman that I “borrowed” liberally from his notes in the book for my film THE LADIES OF THE HOUSE (which tickled him and he was fully in support of.)
From Amazon: “If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die is a must-read book for all film students, film professionals, and others interested in filmmaking. This enlightening book guides filmmakers toward making the right color selections for their films, and helps movie buffs understand why they feel the way they do while watching movies that incorporate certain colors.
Guided by her twenty-five years of research on the effects of color on behavior, Bellantoni has grouped more than 60 films under the spheres of influence of six major colors, each of which triggers very specific emotional states. For example, the author explains that films with a dominant red influence have themes and characters that are powerful, lusty, defiant, anxious, angry, or romantic and discusses specific films as examples. She explores each film, describing how, why, and where a color influences emotions, both in the characters on screen and in the audience. Each color section begins with an illustrated Home Page that includes examples, anecdotes, and tips for using or avoiding that particular color.”
TWO INCREDIBLY COOL WOMEN
THE WORLD OF NANCY KWAN (Nancy Kwan with Deborah Davis)
Nancy Kwan was scheduled to attend the USA Film Festival in Dallas this year and unfortunately had to miss it, due to family scheduling issues. No one was more disappointed than me (and I’m hoping we’l be able to make it up this year), because she was someone I identified as a true movie star when I was a kid due to her film THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG. She attended Indian Film of Los Angeles when I was then publicist there and I happily took a photo with her (which is rare for me at my events). Anyway, she was the standard bearer as the Asian female film star taking the baton from Anna Mae Wong, as far as I was concerned.
From Amazon: “When Nancy Kwan burst onto the scene in the early 1960s, Asian characters in film were portrayed by white actors in makeup playing “yellowface,” and those minor roles were the stuff of cliché: shopkeepers, maids, prostitutes, servants. When—against all odds—Nancy landed the lead role in the much-anticipated 1960 film The World of Suzie Wong, she became an international superstar and was celebrated for her beauty, grace, authenticity, and spunk: a “Chinese Garbo,” the “Asian Bardot.” From Hong Kong to London, Hollywood and beyond, The World of Nancy Kwan charts Nancy’s journey. The obstacles she faced, the prejudices she overcame, and how her success created paths for others.
Never allowing show business to change her, Kwan persevered in an industry where everything was stacked against her, breaking through barriers and becoming a beacon of hope to generations of Asians who aspired to be seen. The World of Nancy Kwan is a multi-faceted personal history of an iconic actress whose triumphant rise and resilience illuminates the broader history of Hollywood and how the only way forward is to stay true to oneself.”
LET’S JUST SAY IT WASN’T PRETTY (Diane Keaton)
Of course, this was one of the major losses for any film lover this year. Diane Keaton embodied so much for so many in a myriad of ways as a singular acting talent, but also an uncompromising spirit who struck her own path not just in her career, or her style, but also how she lived her life.
From Random House Books: “Diane Keaton has spent a lifetime coloring outside the lines of the conventional notion of beauty. In Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty, she shares the wisdom she’s accumulated through the years as a mother, daughter, actress, artist, and international style icon. This is a book only Diane Keaton could write—a smart and funny chronicle of the ups and downs of living and working in a world obsessed with beauty.
In her one-of-a-kind voice, Keaton offers up a message of empowerment for anyone who’s ever dreamed of kicking back against the “should”s and “supposed to”s that undermine our pursuit of beauty in all its forms. From a mortifying encounter with a makeup artist who tells her she needs to get her eyes fixed to an awkward excursion to Victoria’s Secret with her teenage daughter, Keaton shares funny and not-so-funny moments from her life in and out of the public eye.”
BOOKS FROM TWO GREAT HOLLYWOOD “MINDS”
If you have ever had an opportunity to attend a screening of a QuentinTarantino film where he was participating in a Q&A afterward, likely you would be surprised at how easily you would get swept up in his overwhelmingly infectious love of movies. Doesn’t matter what you felt about him or his movies going into it, you would be hooked and lined and sinkered. Well, I believe this book captures all of that.
From Amazon: “In addition to being among the most celebrated of contemporary filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino is possibly the most joyously infectious movie lover alive. For years he has touted in interviews his eventual turn to writing books about films. Now, with Cinema Speculation, the time has come, and the results are everything his passionate fans—and all movie lovers—could have hoped for. Organized around key American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young moviegoer at the time, this book is as intellectually rigorous and insightful as it is rollicking and entertaining. At once film criticism, film theory, a feat of reporting, and wonderful personal history, it is all written in the singular voice recognizable immediately as QT’s and with the rare perspective about cinema possible only from one of the greatest practitioners of the artform ever.”
SEDUCTION SEX, LIES AND STARDOM IN HOWARD HUGHES’S HOLLYWOOD (Karina Longworth)
Karina Longworth is one of those writers who loved/loves to delve into the inner layers of Hollywood, and the stories on the sidelines that are (in my mind) often more entertaining and enlightening than the “main event” stories.
From Barnes and Noble: “In this riveting popular history, the creator of You Must Remember This probes the inner workings of Hollywood’s glamorous golden age through the stories of some of the dozens of actresses pursued by Howard Hughes, to reveal how the millionaire mogul’s obsessions with sex, power and publicity trapped, abused, or benefitted women who dreamt of screen stardom.
His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late 1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes—perhaps more than any other filmmaker of his era—commoditized male desire as he objectified and sexualized women. Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes’s grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these actresses would not escape his clutches.”
PORN, SERIOUSLY
THE OTHER HOLLYWOOD – THE UNCENSORED ORAL HISTORY OF THE PORN FILM INDUSTRY (Legs McNel & Jennifer Osborne)
Trying to describe this book makes me sound like I’m doing a Stefon bit from Saturday Night Live, because “it’s got everything…” Seriously, it’s a frank look at how the porn industry developed, went through various fits and starts, built people up to be “stars”, and also saw people get chewed up and spit out in the service of adult films.
From Amazon: A rollicking, funny, raunchy, and moving oral history of the adult film industry–from Deep Throat through today.
The Other Hollywood tells that story, through hundreds of interviews by the people who lived through it. In the riveting oral–history format that made his first book, Please Kill Me, one of the most memorable accounts of 1970s underground culture, Legs McNeil now pulls back the grimy satin sheets on one of the most astounding success stories in the history of American business. Careening back and forth between two groups–the actresses, directors, and others who made the films and the shady underworld figures who financed them–The Other Hollywood offers scores of never–before–told stories, all in the voices of those who lived them.
MAN OF TASTE – THE EROTIC CINEMA OF RADLEY METZGER (Rob King)
I met Radley Metzger when I was at Film Society of Lincoln Center. We did a film series featuring several of his soft core classics, and I became his handler that week. We struck up a friendship, he asked to watch my film, really liked it, and instantly I had a mentor and friend who loved to talk about my film ideas and delighted in teasing me and introducing my to “his” New York City (taking me to the Friars Club and Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse, among other places). He was the epitome of the raconteur, and someone whose cinematic style I “borrowed” from for a shot in one of my short films, THE MONEY STORE. He would’ve loved it.
From Rizzoli Bookstore: “Radley Metzger was one of the foremost directors of adult film in America, with credits including softcore titles like The Lickerish Quartet and the hardcore classic The Opening of Misty Beethoven. After getting his start making arthouse trailers for Janus Films, Metzger would go on to become among the most feted directors of the “porno chic” era of the 1970s, working under the pseudonym Henry Paris. In the process, he produced a body of work that exposed the porous boundaries separating art cinema from adult film, softcore from hardcore, and good taste from bad.
Rob King uses Metzger’s work to explore what taste means and how it works, tracing the evolution of the adult film industry and the changing frontiers of cultural acceptability. Man of Taste spans Metzger’s entire life: his early years in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, his attempt to bring arthouse aesthetics to adult film in the 1960s, his turn to pseudonymously directed hardcore movies in the 1970s, and his final years, which included making videos on homeopathic medicine. Metzger’s career, King argues, sheds light on how the distinction between the erotic and the pornographic is drawn, and it offers an uncanny reflection of the ways American film culture transformed during these decades.”
THE HORROR, THE HORROR…
I SPIT ON YOUR CELLULOID – THE HISTORY OF WOMEN DIRECTING HORROR MOVIES (Heidi Honeycutt)
I have ALWAYS made it a priority to celebrate and promote female filmmakers at my film festivals. As a genre film lover, there are so many films, and shots in films, scene work, and such audacious work that legitimately is such an inspiration to me as well as just enthralling viewing, I’m simply a fan. This book is just a comprehensive joy ride for someone like me.
From Amazon: “Slumber Party Massacre. Pet Sematary. Near Dark. American Psycho — These horror movies have heavily contributed to pop culture and are loved by horror fans everywhere. But so many others have been forgotten by history. From the first silent reels to modern independent films, in this book you’ll discover the creepy, horrible, grotesque, beautiful, wrong, good, and fantastic — and the one thing they share in common.
This is the true history of women directing horror movies.
Having conducted hundreds of interviews and watched thousands of horror films, Heidi Honeycutt defines the political and cultural forces that shape the way modern horror movies are made by women. The women’s rights and civil rights movements, new distribution technology, digital cameras, the destruction of the classic studio system, and the abandonment of the Hays code have significantly impacted women directors and their movies. So, too, social media, modern ideas of gender and racial equality, LGBTQ acceptance, and a new generation of provocative, daring films that take shocking risks in the genre.”
DAMN DIRTY GEEKS TALK AMONG US (Jack Bennett, Frank Dietz, Robb Maynard, Scott Weitz, and Frank H. Woodward)
Frank Dietz is a friend of mine, who can legitimately say he walks the walk and talks the talk when it comes to horror films. He starred in beloved horror films like BLACK ROSES, and as a member of the Damn Dirty Geeks podcast and a frequent flyer at genre conventions and film festivals, he knows the history of horror, and let’s just say…has thoughts about the present too. This book by Frank and his fellow DDG podcasters is like hanging out at one of those cons in the best way via a book.
From Amazon: The Damn Dirty Geeks podcast gang and their industry friends take a look back on the great (and not-so-great) movies and filmmakers that have delighted us over the years. From THE WOLF MAN and GODZILLA to DRAGONSLAYER and BLADE RUNNER, this collection is a cauldron full of humorous and reverent tributes to those films.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND HATE – A SANE PERSON’S GUIDE TO TAKING BACK THE BIBLE FROM FUNDAMENTALISTS, FASCISTS, AND FLOCK-FLEECING FRAUDS (John Fugelsang)
Okay, this book hasn’t got a damn thing to do with film. but we are in challenging times, as they say, and John Fugelsang’s book communicates (as he does in every single TV appearance as a political pundit, stand up performance, or radio show), the absolute back asswards view of the Christian religion and what Jesus actually said and taught by the Christian Nationalists running roughshod through our country and its Constitution right now. It is, as they say, a”must read”.
From Powell’s Books: “In the spirit of George Carlin and Christopher Hitchens, the son of a former Catholic nun and a Franciscan brother delivers a deeply irreverent and biblically correct takedown of far-right Christian hatred – a book for believers, atheists, agnostics, and anyone who’ll ever have to deal with a Christian nationalist.
For more than two centuries, the United States Constitution has given the right to a society where church and state exist independently. But Christianity has been hijacked by far-right groups and politicians who seek to impose their narrow views on government to justify oppressive and unequal policies. The extremists who weaponize the Bible for earthly power aren’t actually on the side of Jesus – and historically they never have been. How do we fight back against those acting – literally – in bad faith?
Comedian and broadcaster John Fugelsang finally offers the answers. In this informa-tive, perspective-shifting book, Fugelsang takes readers through common fundamentalist arguments on abortion, immigration, LGBTQ rights, and more – exposing their hypocrisy and inaccuracy through scripture, common sense, and deeply inappropriate humor. It offers practical tips on how to debate your extremist Christian loved one, coworker, or neighbor on the issues that divide us using actual scripture from that book they claim to follow.
But Fugelsang’s message is about more than just taking down hypocrites. It’s about fighting for the love, mercy, and service that are supposed to make up the heart of Christianity. Told with Fugelsang’s trademark blend of radical honesty, humor, and deep political and religious knowledge, Separation of Church and Hate is the book every American today needs. It’s a rallying cry for compassion and clarity for anyone of any faith who’s sick of the fundamentalists using religion as a cloaking device for hate.”