Ready for My Closeup
The Making of Sunset Boulevard and the Dark Side of the Hollywood Dream
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Aug 12, 2025
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
For readers of Sam Wasson and Glenn Frankel, a cultural history about the making and lasting significance of Sunset Boulevard, whose piercing—and in many ways, prophetic—critiques of fame continue to resonate today.
Great films are born of great collaborations, and Sunset Boulevard represents one of the most extraordinary confluences of cinematic talent in film history—but its production was surprisingly fraught, filled with unexpected twists. Why was William Holden, who had never caught fire as a leading man, hired to play Joe Gillis after the fastest‑rising star in the business dropped out at the last minute? After Mae West and Mary Pickford turned down the now iconic role of Norma Desmond, how did Billy Wilder convince Gloria Swanson, who had long been absent from Hollywood at this point, to leave her low‑paying job as a TV talk show host to join the cast? From the writers' room during Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett’s final collaboration to the moment when the film won three Academy Awards, scholar and former Rolling Stone staffer David M. Lubin takes readers on a fascinating journey through film history that proves, once and for all, why Sunset Boulevard is one of the most iconic films in cinematic history.
Just in time for the film's 75th anniversary, Ready for My Closeup breathes life into a beloved masterpiece of American cinema.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this detailed account, art historian Lubin (Grand Illusions) investigates how the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard expressed both the anxieties and joys of being in the spotlight. Sunset Boulevard is "a movie about moviemaking," Lubin writes, in which former star Norma Desmond hires young screenwriter Joe Gillis to read her film script before taking him as a lover and murdering him out of jealousy. Lubin details the personal backgrounds of many people involved in Sunset Boulevard's production, including director Billy Wilder and his cowriter, Charles Brackett. Beginning in the 1930s, Wilder and Brackett teamed up to write several successful films; after the death of a washed-up filmmaker in 1948, Brackett reflected on the feeling of falling into obscurity and worked with Wilder to turn this idea into a film. Lubin notes that the film, in addition to blurring "the lines between real life and reel life" including in its casting, tips "into comedy, mystery, melodrama, social satire, or horror." The author paints a complex portrait of both the film and the industry it takes to task. This shines.
