Scenes from a Revolution: The Birth of the New Hollywood

The 1967 Academy Awards ceremony marked a pivotal moment in Hollywood's history: the shift from studio-generated epics, westerns and musicals, such as Doctor Dolittle, to the director-centered, European aesthetic seen in Bonnie & Clyde and The Graduate. It was the birth of the New Hollywood. Scenes from a Revolution tells the story of five films (In the Heat of the Night, Bonnie & Clyde, Doctor Dolittle, The Graduate, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner), from the first drafts of the scripts to the impact of their release. The key players of the time, such as Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols and Sidney Poitier, many of whom Mark Harris has interviewed especially for this book, all feature prominently. It is also a book about Hollywood and the United States at a critical juncture in their history. Scenes from a Revolution is the story of this vital period in the development of Hollywood, and the films that came to reflect the countercultural thirst for change at the end of the sixties.