You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything by Walt Hickley (2024) 

The saga behind The Blues Brothers is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd, the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard’s Lampoon and Chicago’s Second City, the early years of Saturday Night Live where the Blues Brothers were born, and the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made. Based on original research and interviews of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to SNL creator Lorne Michaels and Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers vividly portrays the creative geniuses behind modern comedy. 

Married and with a child, the author takes unpaid gigs to get a foot in the door, and eventually ends up working on all seasons of The Sopranos. The show’s setting and its creator’s insistence on accuracy placed the native New Jersey author in the right place at the right time to become part of television history, and to witness the effects of sudden fame and acclaim on the show’s principal players. Includes many stories about guest stars, as well as the cast, including new tales of James Gandolfini. 

Award-winning editor and film critic Matt Singer eavesdrops on the iconic balcony set of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, detailing their rise from making a few hundred dollars a week on local Chicago PBS to securing multimillion-dollar contracts for a syndicated series. Their partnership was cut short when Gene Siskel passed away in February of 1999, but their influence on in the way we talk about (and think about) movies continues to this day. 

In this collection, New Yorker columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Emily Nussbaum writes about her passion for television beginning with Buffy–as she writes, a show that was so much more than its critical assessment–the evolution of female protagonists over the last decade, the complex role of sexual violence on TV, and what to do about art when the artist is revealed to be a monster. And, she also explores the links between the television antihero and the rise of Trump. The book is an argument, not a collection of reviews. Through it all, Nussbaum recounts her fervent search, over fifteen years, for a new kind of criticism that resists the false hierarchy that places one kind of culture over another. It traces her own development as she has struggled to punch through stifling notions of ‘prestige television,’ searching for a wilder and freer and more varied idea of artistic ambition. 

In 1999, Hollywood as we know it exploded: Fight Club. The Matrix. Office Space. The Blair Witch Project. The Sixth Sense. Being John Malkovich. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.  Those are just some of the landmark titles released in a dizzying movie year, one in which a group of daring filmmakers and performers pushed cinema to new limits—and took audiences along for the ride. Freed from the restraints of budget, technology (or even taste), they produced a slew of classics that took on every topic imaginable, from sex to violence to the end of the world. The result was a highly unruly, deeply influential set of films that would not only change filmmaking, but also give us our first glimpse of the coming twenty-first century. 

An in-depth and hysterical look at the making of 1980s comedy classic Airplane! by the legendary writers and directors of the hit film. With anecdotes, behind the scenes trivia, and never-before-revealed factoids, these titans of comedy filmmaking unpack everything from how they persuaded Peter Graves to be in the movie after he thought the script was a piece of garbage, how Lorna Patterson auditioned for the stewardess role in the back seat of Jerry’s Volvo, and how Leslie Nielsen’s pranks got the entire crew into trouble, to who really wrote the jive talk. It also features testimonials and personal anecdotes from well-known faces in the film, television, and comedy sphere, proving how influential Airplane! has been from day one.