True Indie
Life and Death in Filmmaking
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From Don Coscarelli, the celebrated filmmaker behind many cherished cult classics comes a memoir that's both revealing autobiography and indie film crash course.
Best known for his horror/sci-fi/fantasy films including Phantasm, The Beastmaster, Bubba Ho-tep and John Dies at the End, now Don Coscarelli’s taking you on a white-knuckle ride through the rough and tumble world of indie film.
Join Coscarelli as he sells his first feature film to Universal Pictures and gets his own office on the studio lot while still in his teens. Travel with him as he chaperones three out-of-control child actors as they barnstorm Japan, almost drowns actress Catherine Keener in her first film role, and transforms a short story about Elvis Presley battling a four thousand year-old Egyptian mummy into a beloved cult classic film.
Witness the incredible cast of characters he meets along the way from heavy metal god Ronnie James Dio to first-time filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary. Learn how breaking bread with genre icons Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter and Guillermo Del Toro leads to a major cable series and watch as he and zombie king George A. Romero together take over an unprepared national network television show with their tales of blood and horror.
This memoir fits an entire film school education into a single book. It’s loaded with behind-the-scenes stories: like setting his face on fire during the making of Phantasm, hearing Bruce Campbell’s most important question before agreeing to star in Bubba Ho-tep, and crafting a horror thriller into a franchise phenomenon spanning four decades. Find out how Coscarelli managed to retain creative and financial control of his artistic works in an industry ruled by power-hungry predators, and all without going insane or bankrupt.
True Indie will prove indispensable for fans of Coscarelli’s movies, aspiring filmmakers, and anyone who loves a story of an underdog who prevails while not betraying what he believes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This autobiography from filmmaker Coscarelli, director of such cult classics as The Beastmaster and Bubba Ho-Tep, reflects its author perfectly: it's an engaging, eager-to-please piece of work. Most of the book is dedicated to production histories of Coscarelli's films, shown here as family affairs; his dad provided financing for his 1976 debut, Story of a Teenager, and his mom pulled triple duty on Phantasm, his 1979 breakout hit, by cooking for the cast, sewing costumes, and doing makeup. Coscarelli proves a natural storyteller on the page as well as the screen, and it's evident that the stories he shares have been told and retold over many years. He takes special delight in describing, at length, the creation of "the ball," a chrome sphere that menaces the heroes of Phantasm and its four sequels, as well as the finer points of the 1971 Plymouth 'Cuda driven throughout the series. The book loses a little steam near the end, with less attention paid to the final Phantasm film, though, in fairness, Coscarelli ceded its direction to other hands. His conversational prose style is straightforward and unadorned, but it readily communicates the director's signature trait his enthusiasm, which is as charming as it is infectious.
