"This is a ground-breaking book. The text is remarkable in its use of MPAA files and studio archives; Weisenfeld uncovers all sorts of side stories that enrich the larger narrative. The writing is clear and concise, and Weisenfeld makes important theoretical interpretations without indulging in difficult jargon. She incorporates both film theory and race theory in graceful, non-obtrusive ways that deepen understanding. This is an outstanding work."--Colleen McDannell, author of Picturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression

This book looks at the impact that Hollywood has had on America morally and spiritually. It seeks to answer questions such as: What led the Columbine and Virginia Tech killers to hate Christianity? ; Why did the crime rate triple in the U.S. in the late 1960s? ; and What was it that Hollywood did in 1968 that changed everything?

This story is based on 10 years of my life as a Hollywood musician and my secret life as a top shot-caller in the gritty Hollywood underworld. The four of us set out for Hollywood on September 1st, 1987, with dreams of becoming the next Motley Crue. We had the talent and the looks, and vowed to each other to avoid the lure of drugs. Unfortunately, Hollywood had other plans. When the record deal fell through and I was on my last dime, I found myself being dragged into an underground world of corruption. Before long, I was working for organized crime, doing business deals with outlaw motor cycle gangs, staying one step ahead of the FBI, and losing touch with the world I had once known. My guitar cases were now filled with deadly weapons. Love, betrayal, Wicca, crystal meth, and a crippling blast from a sawed-off shot gun would all have roles in bringing me to my knees. Many of the people and events in the story have been the focus of local and national new programs, though I have changed most of the names. This book includes my adventures with dozens of celebrities, from famous musicians to Hollywood actors and known underworld figures. It goes into great depth explaining how methamphetamine made the jump from the biker culture to the Hollywood nightlife and then via the Internet to the rest of the country.

"Hell House is the scariest haunted house novel ever written. It looms over the rest the way the mountains loom over the foothills." -- Stephen King From the author of I Am Legend comes Richard Matheson's Hell House, the basis for the supernatural horror film starring Pamela Franklin, Roddy McDowall, Clive Revill. Rolf Rudolph Deutsch is going die. But when Deutsch, a wealthy magazine and newspaper publisher, starts thinking seriously about his impending death, he offers to pay a physicist and two mediums, one physical and one mental, $100,000 each to establish the facts of life after death. Dr. Lionel Barrett, the physicist, accompanied by the mediums, travel to the Belasco House in Maine, which has been abandoned and sealed since 1949 after a decade of drug addiction, alcoholism, and debauchery. For one night, Barrett and his colleagues investigate the Belasco House and learn exactly why the townsfolk refer to it as the Hell House. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

According to the results of recent surveys, Americans overwhelmingly believe that HEAVEN exists, though a much smaller number believe that HELLexists, with only one-tenth of one percent believing they will go there when they die. Gary Frazier helps readers: Discern what beliefs are based on fact or fiction Discover the truth in the midst of so much deception Understand the depth of Scripture that speaks of HELL more than HEAVEN. Hell is for Real is a clear search for truth, and truth matters for the simple reason that we all have a divine appointment with death. What if those who do not believe in HELL die one day and find they made a tragic and eternal mistake? Where do we turn for real answers? Should we look to movies, television, and stories of personal experiences, psychics, or religion? Cemeteries and mausoleums dot the landscape of America as evidence and reminders of the sad reality of death. The good news is there is a source of hope that provides answers for each and every one who cares to seek the truth. Join the search and choose wisely because, eternity is too long to be wrong and Hell is for Real.

Peter Bogdanovich, known primarily as a director, film historian and critic, has been working with professional actors all his life. He started out as an actor (he debuted on the stage in his sixth-grade production of Finian’s Rainbow); he watched actors work (he went to the theater every week from the age of thirteen and saw every important show on, or off, Broadway for the next decade); he studied acting, starting at sixteen, with Stella Adler (his work with her became the foundation for all he would ever do as an actor and a director). Now, in his new book, Who the Hell’s in It, Bogdanovich draws upon a lifetime of experience, observation and understanding of the art to write about the actors he came to know along the way; actors he admired from afar; actors he worked with, directed, befriended. Among them: Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, John Cassavetes, Charlie Chaplin, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, Ben Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn, Boris Karloff, Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, Frank Sinatra, and James Stewart. Bogdanovich captures—in their words and his—their work, their individual styles, what made them who they were, what gave them their appeal and why they’ve continued to be America’s iconic actors. On Lillian Gish: “the first virgin hearth goddess of the screen . . . a valiant and courageous symbol of fortitude and love through all distress.” On Marlon Brando: “He challenged himself never to be the same from picture to picture, refusing to become the kind of film star the studio system had invented and thrived upon—the recognizable human commodity each new film was built around . . . The funny thing is that Brando’s charismatic screen persona was vividly apparent despite the multiplicity of his guises . . . Brando always remains recognizable, a star-actor in spite of himself. ” Jerry Lewis to Bogdanovich on the first laugh Lewis ever got onstage: “I was five years old. My mom and dad had a tux made—I worked in the borscht circuit with them—and I came out and I sang, ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ the big hit at the time . . . It was 1931, and I stopped the show—naturally—a five-year-old in a tuxedo is not going to stop the show? And I took a bow and my foot slipped and hit one of the floodlights and it exploded and the smoke and the sound scared me so I started to cry. The audience laughed—they were hysterical . . . So I knew I had to get the rest of my laughs the rest of my life, breaking, sitting, falling, spinning.” John Wayne to Bogdanovich, on the early years of Wayne’s career when he was working as a prop man: “Well, I’ve naturally studied John Ford professionally as well as loving the man. Ever since the first time I walked down his set as a goose-herder in 1927. They needed somebody from the prop department to keep the geese from getting under a fake hill they had for Mother Machree at Fox. I’d been hired because Tom Mix wanted a box seat for the USC football games, and so they promised jobs to Don Williams and myself and a couple of the players. They buried us over in the properties department, and Mr. Ford’s need for a goose-herder just seemed to fit my pistol.” These twenty-six portraits and conversations are unsurpassed in their evocation of a certain kind of great movie star that has vanished. Bogdanovich’s book is a celebration and a farewell.

”I will admit I was lured into temptation during the twenties and thirties, and I blame no one for what happened then, least of all myself.” Unmistakably, this is the voice of Colonel Pyat, addict, inventor, and bizarre Everyman for the twentieth century. In Jerusalem Commands, the third of the Pyat quartet, our hero schemes and fantasises his way from New York to Hollywood, from Cairo to Marrakech, from cult success to the utter limits of sexual degradation, leaving a trail of mechanical and human wreckage in his wake as he crashes towards an inevitable appointment with the worst nightmare this century has to offer. It is Michael Moorcock’s extraordinary achievement to convert the life of Maxim Pyatnitski into epic and often hilariously comic adventure. Sustained by his dreams and profligate inventions, his determination to turn his back on the realities of his own origins, Pyat runs from crisis to crisis, every ruse a further link in a vast chain of deceit, suppression, betrayal. Yet, in his deranged self-deception, his monumentally distorted vision, this thoroughly unreliable narrator becomes a lens for focusing, through the dimensions of wild farce and chilling terror, on an uneasy brand of truth.