John Boorman came of age as a filmmaker in the 1960s--the golden age of world cinema. Then as now, his celebrated films embrace the spirit of the era: challenging authority, questioning accepted morality, and examining the thin line between civilization and savagery. In Adventures of a Suburban Boy, Boorman delves deeply into these themes, applying his subversive sensibility to his life story as well as to some of the most important political and cultural events of the twentieth century. The result is a heady fusion of personal memoir and cinematic study, as a child of the London Blitz becomes the influential director known for films such as Point Blank, Excalibur, Hope and Glory, Deliverance, and The General--discussing the cultural role of the motion picture and the art of filmmaking along the way. With a vividly depicted supporting cast that includes Sean Connery, Richard Burton, Burt Reynolds, and Cher, among others, this entertaining and witty tour through the life, times, and works of one of the cinema's great practitioners is not only essential for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of Boorman's incredible body of work, but is also indispensable resource for anyone who is fascinated by film's impact on our lives.

The five-time Oscar-nominated director discusses his life and work, discussing such topics as his dismay at the conservatism of 1950s London, the impact of his life on his choices for film themes, and the role of motion pictures in culture. 10,000 first printing.

In Adventures of a Suburban Boy, John Boorman, hailed by the Observer as 'arguably Britain's greatest living director', offers an enthralling memoir of a creative life spent turning dreams into celluloid, and money into light.One of cinema's authentic visionaries, Boorman nevertheless enjoyed an archetypal English suburban boyhood in the 1940s and 50s, attending Catholic school and finding his first employment in a dry-cleaner's. But his abiding passion was for film, and he got his first break during the 'gold rush' era of British television in the 1960s. After directing several innovative documentaries for the BBC, he graduated to motion pictures, first filming pop stars The Dave Clark Five for Catch Us If You Can, before venturing to Los Angeles to make his first Hollywood picture - and his first masterpiece - Point Blank. The film inaugurated Boorman's profound friendship with star Lee Marvin, which also led to a second professional collaboration on Hell in the Pacific.What follows are accounts of Boorman's joys and agonies in the making of such extraordinary pictures as the terrifying backwoods adventure Deliverance, the fantastical epics Zardoz and Exorcist II: The Heretic, the glorious Arthurian legend Excalibur, his magnificent drama of imperilled Amazonian tribes, The Emerald Forest, and his semi-autobiographical, multi-Oscar-nominated Hope and Glory. Among the many friends and collaborators of whom Boorman offers vivid portraits are Lee Marvin, Sean Connery, Richard Burton, Marcello Mastroianni, Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Helen Mirren and Nicol Williamson.

This book offers a critical study of the writer and director's feature films as well as lesser-known works for television.

Two cousins, one from the city and one from the suburbs, spend a day and a night together at each other's house, and decide that each likes his own home better.

It was a time when your brother persuaded you to eat the grease behind the cooker by telling you it was caramel, your house was blown up by lightning, your dad mixed up the toothpaste and the 'arse-cream', and you fell asleep on Sunday nights to the sound of one of the neighbours - who were all named Paddy - drunkenly singing 'Magic Moments' in the good front room. All of this while trying to stop your wonky eye from giving the game away. With illustrations by the award-winning Nicky Phelan, Jason Byrne's Adventures of a Wonky-eyed Boy is a unique memoir capturing the childhood adventures of an accident-prone youngster in suburban Ireland. It's like Angela's Ashes on amphetamines!

'What a life! What a career!' Harold Pinter'Boorman is one of the world's great directors, a master storyteller.' Paul AusterJohn Boorman is one of cinema's authentic visionaries whose travels have taken him from London in the Blitz to the pinnacle of Hollywood success: the man behind filmes such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, Hope and Glory, and The General. Conclusions continues the story of his life that Boorman began with Adventures of a Suburban Boyand shares what has happened since its publication: films made (such as the award-winning The General) and unmade; new knowledge about the craft of film-making; and, ultimately, the story of of his kith and kin, including the death of his cherished elder daughter.Wielding a metaphorical Excalibur, Boorman's career has been a continual search for the truth that only art can convey, and this memoir shows him at his finest.