"The next best thing to watching movies is perhaps to read about them," series editor Jason Shinder writes in his preface, and the 27 selections (culled from magazines, newspapers, journals and books) chosen by guest editor and film director Landis (Animal House) are a fine mixture of intelligence, fun, pathos and wit. Arranged in general, if at times quirky, categories like "actors," "censorship," "writers," "Nazis" and "genre," these pieces do not cover practical issues in filmmaking as much as provide an overview of the field's intellectual state. Bob Burns's memoir of Charles Gemora, who played the gorilla in many 1940s and '50s Hollywood movies, is a touching tribute and meditation on the magic of movie special effects before technology took over. "People Who Need People," by David Geffner, details film documentaries about real people's sex lives, questioning the false boundaries we make between art and life. And J. Hoberman's "When the Nazis Became Nudniks" questions whether Mel Brooks's The Producers
is a product of Jewish anti-Semitism. Many of the essays are political, and generally have a progressive, edgy tone. Two great treasures are a contemplation of Moe, Larry and Curly by Jack Kerouac and a short piece by the late Stanley Kubrick on audiences' reactions to 2001
after it was trashed by critics. While reading about is never the same as watching a film (Landis notes that writing about film is "rather like using words to explain the experience of sex"), these essays still satisfy and excite. (Jan.)
