This is not actually a book, but more of a short story contained in a collection called Tales of the Jazz Age.  After having just watched the movie, I decided to read the story. It was a quick read; it probably took about an hour to read the whole thing. I was wondering how they could make an almost 3 hour long movie from a short story and here is the answer: the only thing similar between the two is that Benjamin Button ages backwards.  Everything else is completely different.

In this story, Benjamin is born in 1860 in Baltimore, Maryland right before the Civil War to a hardware retailer. His father arrives at the hospital and the doctors and nurses are just horrified by what has been born and when the father says who he is everyone treats him scornfully.  The baby is an old man and when he can talk he asks his father for a cane.  Unlike the movie, the father doesn’t give Benjamin up, but instead dyes his hair to make him appear younger.  One kind of racist thing in this story (of course you have to think about the time it was published, 1922) is when the father is walking with Benjamin by a slave trader he secretly wishes his son had been born black so he could get rid of him.

At age 18 Benjamin tries to enroll into Yale College, but he has run out of hair dye.  He goes to the interview with his natural hair, he probably looks like he is in his 50′s or 60′s, and is basically thrown off the campus. No one believes he is freshman age. It’s kind of funny that the Yale freshman taunt him to go to Harvard.  Shortly after this he gets married to the daughter of a general, Hildegarde.  Their marriage goes along fine at first and then Benjamin tires of her so he enlists in the army for the Spanish American War.

The story further documents the exploits of Benjamin as he grows older in age and younger in appearance. He has a son who he soon bypasses as in he looks the same age as his son and then starts to look younger than his son.  His son in his thirties doesn’t want anything to do with Benjamin as he is an embarrassment to the family looking like a teenager.  No one seems to understand nor want to believe that Benjamin can’t control what happens to him and they all seem to think he is doing this on purpose.  That part is very strange.  It is a very interesting story though and night and day different from everything that happens in the movie.

I love Pixar movies (though the movie Cars not so much) and I found this book about the history of Pixar fascinating. The first half of the book covers the backgrounds of the people who founded Pixar and the beginnings of the company while the second half covers the movies themselves including how story lines evolved and what kinds of things went into the making of the movie. It also covers some of the corporate background at Disney including the pressure Steve Jobs and Roy Disney were putting on the company to get rid of CEO Michael Eisner.

The three men who basically founded Pixar, Ed Catmull, John Lassiter, and Steve Jobs, were at a low point in their careers when Pixar was founded. All three had been fired, removed, or left their jobs. Catmull was being let go from LucasFilm, Lassiter was dissatisfied with Disney and took the job at Pixar, and Jobs had been removed from Apple by Mike Scully. Ed Catmull always idolized animation and wanted to be an animator, but the only problem was that he couldn’t draw. So he decided to make it his life’s work in the early 70′s to animate with computers. He was hired by the New York Institute of Technology to run their computer graphics division and his first attempt at animation was to make a plaster cast of his hand, draw tiny geometric shapes on the cast and get the computer to connect the dots and animate the hand. Catmull and his team weren’t satisfied at NYIT because their goal of making movies wasn’t being shared by the wealthy patron they had there. So they moved to California to work George Lucas at his Industrial Light and Magic. Gradually, Catmull was able to bring the rest of his team to ILM.

While at Lucasfilm, Catmull and his team designed a computer that could render computer graphics. Over dinner one night they were thinking about what to call the computer and someone suggested creating a Spanish type verb “Pixer” for something that makes pictures. Someone else suggested the “ar” sound at the end making it Pixar. The company soon broke away from Lucas although they were able to get a building on the same Lucas property and their first order of business was to sell these Pixar computers and their Renderman software. These computers cost 10s of thousands of dollars. Here is where Steve Jobs comes in. Jobs believed all computers should have this capability of rendering so he became a huge investor in the company and was in charge of the business dealings the company would have.

Over all this time was going on Catmull never lost what his true ambition was which was to make computer animated movies. They hired John Lassiter who had gone to school at CalArts and was very familiar with the Disney way of making movies. Lassiter would then direct these shorts using computer animation and show them at the annual Siggraph convention to great acclaim. Lassiter had a great talent for telling stories in his animation which has carried through to all of Pixar’s later movies. So while all of this was going on at Lucasfilm and then when Pixar was it’s own company, Lassiter was directing a short a year and showcasing them at this annual convention. Still, the goal was a feature film. They set a roadmap for getting there by first doing commercials, then a half hour TV special and then finally a movie. What was interesting to me was that Pixar was involved in the Listerine commercials where the bottle is in a boxing ring beating tartar and plaque. I don’t think Pixar did the TV special, but they were soon working on their first movie Toy Story. Toy Story was John Lassiter’s idea because he was a big toy collector and had done a short a year or so earlier called Tin Toy.

The rest of the book goes into what went into making each of the movies through Cars. Ratatouille is mentioned in the epilogue. This was really interesting also in the level of detail the animators wanted where they would get professors to lecture to them about fish for an hour for Finding Nemo. There were also a couple of lawsuits over Monsters, Inc. I don’t remember ever hearing about concerning Pixar appropriating other people’s drawings or poetry for the movie. That was fascinating as well. I’ve already written probably too much about the book already, but it was a fascinating listen (of course I heard the audiobook version) and sure would be a great read for anybody who is a fan of animation in general or Pixar in particular.

On its exterior, Acting Class looks pretty straightforward: A book about acting for actors. And that might lead you to think, “I’m no actor. There’s nothing in this book for me.” Well, you couldn’t be more wrong. Acting Class isn’t really about acting. It’s more like a manual for people trying to manage difficult things. Sure, all of the book’s scenarios are drawn from the author’s experiences as a director and acting teacher/coach. But the wisdom that jumps off of every page could easily be applied to most readers’ professional (and even personal) lives. Simply put, Katselas says, “Acting is hard! You’re going to need a lot to make it in this business!” And anyone who has ever pursued a life in music, writing, acting or… just about anything, is likely to relate to the things covered in this book. Over and over again, Katselas demonstrates how the pursuit of acting should also be the pursuit of truth and sincerity. Not just with screenplays or scripts. But with life itself. For example, a section of the book is devoted to what Katselas called “Administration.” This section gives important tips on how to help maintain good emotional/physical/financial health. And the stuff might seem basic, but I learned a few things!

All of that aside, the best part of Acting Class is Katselas’s vibrant and direct writing style. His passion and confidence shine through every word, making the book very fun to read. I was saddened to learn that Mr. Katselas passed away just before I received his book. He will be missed.

Your Movie Sucks is a collection of movie reviews written by film critic Roger Ebert. All of the films covered in the book received two-star or lower reviews by Ebert, and this is the inspiration for the book’s title. And while many of the films mentioned in the book do indeed suck, Ebert’s reviews definitely do not. What makes Ebert really more of a writer than just a “critic” is his ability to interject humor, disappointment, frustration and sometimes even anger into his reviews. It all makes for an entertaining read, and at times, takes the tone of a disappointed parent chiding a youngster for bad behavior. It’s like Ebert just expects more from filmmakers. And maybe the real lesson here is that we all should expect more from Hollywood, instead of giving up our hard-earned dollars for products like Battlefield Earth and Pearl Harbor. But as long as the movie industry continues to churn out crap, we can be assured that Ebert will be there to warn us, and if nothing else, we can always look forward to Your Movie Sucks II: Seriously. It Really Sucks.

A Star Is Found is a memoir-style book written by two Hollywood casting agents. On the surface, this book promises to tell a lot of stories about famous people. And in that case, it delivers. For example, Hirshenson and Jenkins gave Julia Roberts some of her earliest roles as an actress, and the pair were also responsible for casting the first Harry Potter film as well as the newest James Bond release. During all of this time, the pair met and worked with many of Hollywood’s top-name actors and directors. And while all of that information is interesting, what I found to be most fascinating about this book was the behind-the-scenes look it provides into the work of casting. It’s amazing to see that, for even the seemingly smallest film role, the agents might have auditioned hundreds of different actors. And even when they believed they had the right person for a part, there was no telling if a director or even the film studio would end up selecting someone completely different.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone aspiring to become a professional actor. Hirshenson and Jenkins spend a lot of time discussing the qualities they like to see during an audition. I found it remarkable to learn how many prospective actors (from children to adults) will turn up at an audition completely unprepared.

A Star Is Found is a fast read, and would be enjoyed by anyone interested in the entertainment industry. Whether it’s behind-the-scenes information you’re after, or just a little bit of tabloid fare about some famous names, this book delivers.