This is both one man's remarkable story and an essential guide for anyone who has a celluloid story to tell and the dreams and determination to see it through. Part production diary, part how-to manual, Rodriguez unveils how he was able to make his influential first film on only a $7,000 budget. Also included is the appendix, The Ten Minute Film Course,” a tell-all on how to save thousands of dollars on film school and teach yourself the ropes of film production, directing, and screenwriting.

In the summer of 1982, eight science fiction films were released within six weeks of one another. E.T., Tron, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing, and Mad Max: The Road Warrior changed the careers of some of Hollywood's now biggest names―altering the art of movie-making to this day.

Friedkin Connection takes listeners from the streets of Chicago to the suites of Hollywood and from the sixties to today. William Friedkin offers a candid look at a thrilling era of Hollywood cinema, when traditional storytelling gave way to the rebellious and alternative; when filmmakers like him captured the paranoia and fear of a nation undergoing a cultural nervous breakdown.

The Last Action Heroes opens in May 1990 in Cannes, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone waltzing together, cheered on by a crowd of famous faces. After years of bitter combat, the world’s biggest action stars have at last made peace. In this wildly entertaining account of the golden age of the action movie, Nick de Semlyen charts Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s carnage-packed journey from enmity to friendship against the backdrop of Reagan’s America and the Cold War.

Two-time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner was the second-most-googled person in 2023—and not for his impressive filmography. His searing portrayals on film ranged from an Iraq-based army bomb technician in The Hurt Locker and a Boston bank robber in The Town to a crooked Camden mayor in American Hustle before he became heir to the Jason Bourne franchise (The Bourne Legacy). Amongst other iconic roles, he also captured hearts as fan-favorite comic book marksman Hawkeye in seven Marvel films.

Kennedy, the thirty-fifth president of the United States, is often ranked among Americans’ most well-liked presidents. Yet what most Americans don’t know is that JFK’s historic presidency almost ended before it began—at the hands of a disgruntled sociopathic loner armed with dynamite. On December 11, 1960, shortly after Kennedy’s election and before his inauguration, a retired postal worker named Richard Pavlick waited in his car—a parked Buick—on a quiet street in Palm Beach, Florida.

They were orphans, Chris and Saul - raised in a Philadelphia school for boys, bonded by friendship, and devoted to a mysterious man called Eliot.

First came the man: a young wanderer in a fatigue coat and long hair. Then came the legend, as John Rambo sprang from the pages of FIRST BLOOD to take his place in the American cultural landscape. This remarkable novel pits a young Vietnam veteran against a small-town cop who doesn't know whom he's dealing with - or how far Rambo will take him into a life-and-death struggle through the woods, hills, and caves of rural Kentucky.

The first full-length biography of Fred Rogers, The Good Neighbor tells the story of this utterly unique and enduring American icon. Drawing on original interviews, oral histories, and archival documents, Maxwell King traces Rogers’s personal, professional, and artistic life through decades of work, including a surprising decision to walk away from the show to make television for adults, only to return to the neighborhood with increasingly sophisticated episodes, written in collaboration with experts on childhood development.

The behind-the-scenes story of the iconic funnymen who ruled '80s Hollywood - Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Eddie Murphy - and the beloved films that made them stars, including Animal House, Caddyshack, and Ghostbusters.

First came the man: a young wanderer in a fatigue coat and long hair. Then came the legend, as John Rambo sprang from the pages of FIRST BLOOD to take his place in the American cultural landscape. This remarkable novel pits a young Vietnam veteran against a small-town cop who doesn't know whom he's dealing with - or how far Rambo will take him into a life-and-death struggle through the woods, hills, and caves of rural Kentucky.

When Wilco's 2007 album Sky Blue Sky was infamously criticized as "dad rock," Niko Stratis was a twenty-five-year-old closeted trans woman working in her dad's glass shop in the Yukon Territory. As she sought escape from her hypermasculine environment, Stratis found an unlikely lifeline amid dad rock's emotionally open and honest music. Listening to dad rock, Stratis could access worlds beyond her own and imagine a path forward.

In Gandolfini, critic and historian Jason Bailey traces the twinned stories of the man and the unforgettable roles he played. Gandolfini’s roots were working class, raised in northern New Jersey as the son of Italian immigrants, and acting was something he loved for a long time before he could see it as a career. It wasn’t until he was well into his bohemian twenties that he dedicated himself to a life on the stage and screen.

Final Thoughts: Jerry Springer tells the fascinating story of a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who became the beloved mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio before morphing into a symbol of cultural decline. Through dozens of intimate and revealing interviews with those who knew Springer best—from his big sister to his early political aides to the producers who shaped his show—listeners will be transported into the world of this singular figure’s rise to notoriety, and his fascinating struggle to reconcile his status as “the king of trash TV” with his lifelong dream of returning to politics.

Five high school friends are bonded by an oath to protect one another no matter what. Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something extraordinary: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend walks up—and never comes back down. Then the staircase disappears. Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase in the woods.