Today’s stack is all about the movies! I love books that show off concept art and character designs, or tell some behind-the-scenes stories about the making of movies. I’ve got a few of those, plus some movies that were never made, and a favorite movie turned into a musical!
Disclosure: The books in this column were sent to me for review purposes. Clicking on the title will take you to Bookshop.org and I earn a small commission from purchases there, which also help support independent booksellers.
Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie by Ramin Zahed
The Spider-Verse films are amazing, not just for their eye-popping visuals but also for the story and the characters, particularly Miles Morales. That said, this book is about the art! If you just can’t get enough of all the alternate-universe Spider-folks from the movie, you’ll love paging through this book and seeing oodles of concepts—many that made it into the movie, and some that didn’t (maybe? or they could have just been in a background scene and you’ll see them when you can freeze-frame later).
One striking aspect of the film was the way that each universe had its own comic-book style, and when the characters travel to different universes, they retain their own visual idiosyncrasies. This art book gives you a closer look at several of the worlds seen in the film—Gwen Stacy’s abstract color washes, Miles’ Brooklyn filled with Kirby Krackle, Spider-Punk’s zine-styled collage look. You also get a run-down on most of the major characters in the movie, with plenty of sketches and costume designs and the like. The artwork is paired with a good amount of commentary from the filmmakers so you get a sense of what they were trying to do with their design choices.
I will note that this book does include plot spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you should probably wait before flipping through this to avoid some surprises. I did note at least one scene described in the book that I think must have gotten cut from the film (because it doesn’t seem like something that would make sense in Part Two), so that was a little odd to see included in the book without a mention that it was a cut scene. And there’s at least one bit about some scenes and characters near the end of the film that I think could be a potential spoiler for Part Two, assuming they’re still accurate and aren’t something that got changed … so read with caution!
The Art of Strange World by Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster Jones and Kalikolehua Hurley
I didn’t see Strange World last fall when it first came out, so I’ve been hanging onto this book for a little while. I finally watched it recently with my daughter and we enjoyed this funny tale of a family lost in a bizarre technicolor landscape and trying to figure out how to get along with each other. The story focuses on three generations of the Clade clan—Jaeger is an explorer who goes missing in the first act, but his son Searcher is more interested in farming and putting down roots. The grandson, Ethan, has dreams of being an explorer like his famous grandfather but Searcher doesn’t really understand that. They end up finding an entire separate world deep underground, and make a discovery that could put the city of Avalonia in grave danger.
This art book does a pretty good job of showing off a lot of the cool artwork and character designs while avoiding some specific plot spoilers—though if you pay close enough attention you’ll probably figure some things out. Avalonia has a lot of technology based on the fictional Pando plant, so you get to see a lot of the designs for the floating vehicles and other devices powered by Pando. I also really enjoyed getting a closer look at the various weird creatures that populate the strange world, as well as the colorful landscapes themselves. One fun bonus was a page about Primal Outpost, a card game that some of the characters play in the movie—I’m curious to see if the game ever gets an actual release in our world, since the directors have said that it’s fully playable beyond the glimpse that we see in the movie. If you enjoyed the film—especially the unusual environments and the creatures that populate it—this book is worth perusing!
Prop Man: From John Wick to Silver Linings Playbook, From Boardwalk Empire to Parks and Recreation by Ross MacDonald and Steven Heller
Ross MacDonald is a prop-maker whose has a particular expertise with books and printed materials. This slim book showcases a bunch of props he has made for various movies and television shows, paired with text by Steven Heller, an interview with MacDonald, and one essay by MacDonald about working on National Treasure: The Book of Secrets.
Heller details how far MacDonald will go to make his documents as authentic as possible, even if they’re only going to be glimpsed on-screen for a few seconds. Whether it’s an old newspaper, some product packaging, or earth-shattering government secrets, it all has to look and feel real for the time period.
It’s definitely cool to see sketches and photos of various props that MacDonald has made, but I especially enjoyed the stories behind the props. His experience on The Book of Secrets sounds intensely stressful, making props on the fly for the prop master with strict requirements and very little time. There are also props that got cut: for instance, John Wick was originally going to be binding and restoring books as his post-retirement hobby, so MacDonald taught Keanu Reeves some leatherwork, and there’s even a photo of an embossed business card that says “This book bound by John Wick.”
If you like movie props, this one is a quick read that provides a cool peek behind the curtain.
Underexposed! The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made by Joshua Hull
Every “making of” story includes scenes that got cut, concepts that changed, actors that were considered, and other ideas that ultimately never made it to the screen. This book, as the title suggests, collects fifty movies that were proposed, considered, and sometimes even started production before ultimately being left on the cutting room floor. Each chapter is divided into the sections Fade In, Flashback, Action!, and Cut!, giving a quick overview of the movie in question and then some background info about the principal players, before describing how far the movie got and why it was shelved. Each one is also paired with a movie poster made by artists from PosterSpy, a site for alternative pop culture posters and artwork.
I loved reading through this one, picturing all these unmade films and imagining what they might have been like. What if Godzilla had battled Batman and Robin (played by Adam West and Burt Ward)? Can you imagine the Beatles in The Lord of the Rings, or the Rolling Stones in A Clockwork Orange? What would the DC cinematic universe look like if the Wachowskis had managed to make Plastic Man with Keanu Reeves? The book is filled with these what-if scenarios, along with additional sidebars that focus on particular directors or stories. My only complaint is that the writing is not always great—the timelines are sometimes confusing between the Fade In and Flashback sections, and Hull is very fond of incorrectly using the word “ironically.”
Creating Back to the Future The Musical by Michael Klastorin
Back to the Future is one of my personal favorites, and I never get tired of reading more stories about it. Back in 2020, I mentioned that Back to the Future: The Ultimate Visual History got a revised edition that talked about a stage musical—but unfortunately the pandemic shut down theaters only a week after their official opening. I was intrigued by the brief description included in the book, but (with the pandemic and all) it slipped my mind and I hadn’t really looked into it any more. Now, there’s a whole book (by the same author) all about the making of the musical itself, a process that took fifteen years from the initial spark of an idea to its crowd-pleasing debut.
Klastorin is intimately familiar with the film franchise and is now the Official BTTF Historian, so he was already familiar with the filmmakers and had access to interview the many people involved in the musical as well. This book is similar to his Ultimate Visual History in that it tells the story in a chronological narrative form, from the spark of the idea, to hiring the various people needed (songwriter, producer, director, actors), to the design of the sets, to the opening night … and then subsequent closure. (The theaters were reopened a little over a year later, and Back to the Future made its reappearance.)
There’s also a section about all of the music, which includes the lyrics as well as commentary about each song from various people, paired with photos of the production. We get peeks at the amazing set design—especially the prop DeLorean—and the creative ways the team reproduced seminal moments from the movie, as well as changes that were made from screen to stage. (They don’t, however, reveal the secret of how they make the time machine magically appear on stage during its big reveal.)
As a Back to the Future Fan, it was exciting to see a new take on this familiar story, and I’ve since been listening to the original cast recording. I’ve got my fingers crossed that when the musical comes to the US next year I’ll get a chance to see it for myself!
Back to the Future: Race Through Time written by Marc Sumerak, illustrated by JJ Harrison
And speaking of Back to the Future, here’s another fun book from a few years ago. It’s basically a giant board book, with three spreads that depict Hill Valley in 1885, 1955, and 2015. It comes with a little wind-up DeLorean, and the pages have a grooved track so that you can put the car on the pages and it will drive around the maps, which are sprinkled with little captions and quotes from the movies. There are also two pages at the beginning that are a description of the town of Hill Valley (with a warning about accelerating the model vehicle to 88mph).
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History by Caseen Gaines
I missed reading this in time for last year’s 40th anniversary, but better late than never! What Klastorin did for Back to the Future, Caseen Gaines does for Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece, his “small picture” that became a worldwide sensation and continues to delight audiences over four decades later. While I knew a little bit about the making of E.T., a film that I was obsessed with as a kid, I just hadn’t read a lot of the details, and it turns out that some of what I thought was either incomplete or inaccurate.
This book also follows the narrative history format, starting with a brief summary of Spielberg’s work leading up to E.T. We get a peek at its initial incarnation as Watch the Skies featuring some much-less-friendly aliens before it was scrapped for the story we know and love. There is some concept art included, both from Carlo Rambaldi who ultimately designed the alien, as well as a bunch of sketches by Ralph McQuarrie (of Star Wars fame, among other things) that show how E.T. might have turned out quite differently. Gaines describes the casting process and the difficulty they had finding their Elliott, and also describes Spielberg’s unconventional way of evaluating the actors. There’s also a section about Industrial Light & Magic and the techniques they used for some of the effects shots (particularly the flying bikes), and a brief chapter about the famously panned Atari game.
There are a lot of details about the multiple puppets used to bring E.T. to life, along with three actors who wore a modified suit for the walking scenes, and even a mime who performed many of E.T.’s hand movements. There were a lot of technical challenges involved in making E.T. look realistic, but ultimately he made for a believable character, both to audiences and to the young actors who interacted with him. The book also includes a lot of inserts, like reproductions of Spielberg’s stage pass or a ticket for the film’s premiere.
A lot of the people involved in E.T. were pretty new: it was Kathleen Kennedy’s first time producing, and writer Melissa Mathison’s second script. Spielberg had already had some success, but nobody really knew how successful this movie would become. (Neither Dungeons & Dragons and M&Ms appeared in the movie because they couldn’t get the rights—I bet they were kicking themselves afterward!) It was just a fascinating read, and fans of E.T. will really enjoy this deep dive into its history.
My Current Stack
I’ve got two other movie-related books in my stack that I just didn’t get to in time for this week’s column: The Art of Elemental (still in shrink until I see the movie to avoid spoilers), and Kevin Smith’s Secret Stash (another visual history from Insight Editions), so maybe I’ll have those for my next movie-related column! In the meantime, I’m cueing up a few books about video games, so watch for that perhaps sometime in August!
