Strange-But-True Tales of Cross-Dressers, Drug Addicts, Foot Fetishists, and Other Legendary Filmmakers. With outrageous and uncensored profiles of everyone from D. W. Griffith to Quentin Tarantino, Secret Lives of Great Filmmakers reveals the little-known secrets of all your favorite directors. Why did Charlie Chaplin refuse to bathe for weeks at a time? Was Alfred Hitchcock really missing a belly button? Is Walt Disney’s corpse preserved in a state of suspended animation? And why on earth did Francis Ford Coppola direct a 3-D pornographic movie? The legends of the silver screen will never be the same!

Take a tour through the wilder side of art history, and discover true tales of murder, forgery, and trickery—featuring jaw-dropping profiles over 30 iconic artists like Leonardo Da Vinci and Salvadori Dalí. With outrageous anecdotes about everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci to Caravaggio to Edward Hopper, Secret Lives of Great Artists recounts the seamy, steamy and gritty history behind the great masters of international art. Here, you’ll learn that Michelangelo’s body odor was so bad, his assistants couldn’t stand working for him; that Vincent van Gogh sometimes ate paint directly from the tube; and Georgia O’Keeffe loved to paint in the nude. This is one art history lesson you’ll never forget!

The strange-but-true tales of the rumors, idiosyncrasies, and feuds of literary legends—including Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Shakespeare, and more This fascinating—and shocking!—tour through the lives of classic literature icons is the perfect stocking stuffer for book lovers and fans of little-known history. With outrageous and uncensored profiles of everyone from William Shakespeare to Thomas Pynchon, Secret Lives of Great Authors tackles all the tough questions your high school teachers were afraid to ask: What’s the deal with Lewis Carroll and little girls? Is it true that J. D. Salinger drank his own urine? How many women—and men—did Lord Byron actually sleep with? And why was Ayn Rand such a big fan of Charlie’s Angels? Classic literature was never this much fun in school! Authors included: William Shakespeare Lord Byron Honoré de Balzac Edgar Allan Poe Charles Dickens The Brontë Sisters Henry David Thoreau Walt Whitman Leo Tolstoy Emily Dickinson Lewis Carroll Louisa May Alcott Mark Twain Oscar Wilde Arthur Conan Doyle W.B. Yeats H.G. Wells Gertrude Stein Jack London Virginia Woolf James Joyce Franz Kafka T.S. Eliot Agatha Christie J.R.R. Tolkien F. Scott Fitzgerald William Faulkner Ernest Hemingway Ayn Rand Jean-Paul Sartre Richard Wright William Burroughs Carson McCullers J.D. Salinger Jack Kerouac Kurt Vonnegut Toni Morrison Sylvia Plath Thomas Pynchon

Discover little-known stories from music history—including murder, riots, and heartbreak—in this entertaining tour through the fascinating (and surprising) lives of classical music masters With outrageous anecdotes about everyone from Gioachino Rossini (draft-dodging womanizer) to Johann Sebastian Bach (jailbird) to Richard Wagner (alleged cross-dresser), Secret Lives of Great Composers recounts the seamy, steamy, and gritty history behind the great masters of international music. Here, you’ll learn that Edward Elgar dabbled with explosives; that John Cage was obsessed with fungus; that Berlioz plotted murder; and that Giacomo Puccini stole his church’s organ pipes and sold them as scrap metal so he could buy cigarettes. This is one music history lesson you’ll never forget!

A whip-smart fiction debut, Our Secret Life in the Movies riffs on classic and cult cinema. Inspired by films from silent-era documentaries to music videos, the authors unfold a dual narrative about two boys growing up in the 1980s. Coming of age during the last days of the Cold War, these boys dream of space exploration and nuclear winter, Reaganomics and Dungeons & Dragons, Blade Runner and Red Dawn. Haunting, cinematic, and full of life, Our Secret Life makes it clear that we are in the movies and the movies are in us.

What your teachers never told you about the men of the white house.

Publisher Description

ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • The first book to bring together interviews of master moviemakers from the American Film Institute’s renowned seminars, Conversations with the Great Moviemakers, offers an unmatched history of American cinema in the words of its greatest practitioners. Here are the incomparable directors Frank Capra, Elia Kazan, King Vidor, David Lean, Fritz Lang (“I learned only from bad films”), William Wyler, and George Stevens; renowned producers and cinematographers; celebrated screenwriters Ray Bradbury and Ernest Lehman; as well as the immortal Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini (“Making a movie is a mathematical operation. It’s absolutely impossible to improvise”). Taken together, these conversations offer uniquely intimate access to the thinking, the wisdom, and the genius of cinema’s most talented pioneers.

These collected biographies on the wacky secrets and scandals of the first ladies of the United States casts American history in a whole new light Whether she’s a leading lady, loyal spouse, or lightning rod for scandal, the First Lady of the United States has always been in the spotlight—and in 2017 that was truer than ever. This revised and expanded edition from Quirk’s best-selling Secret Lives series features outrageous and uncensored profiles of the women of the White House, from Martha Washington to Melania Trump, it comes complete with hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright wacko facts. Did you know that: • Dolley Madison loved to chew tobacco • Mary Todd Lincoln conducted séances on a regular basis • Eleanor Roosevelt and Ellen Wilson both carried guns • Jacqueline Kennedy spent $121,000 on her wardrobe in a single year • Betty Ford liked to chat on CB radios—her handle was “First Mama” With chapters on every woman who’s ever made it to the White House, Secret Lives of the First Ladies tackles all the tough questions that other history books are afraid to ask: How many of these women owned slaves? Which ones were cheating on their husbands? And why was Eleanor Roosevelt serving hot dogs to the King and Queen of England? American history was never this much fun in school!

Get ready to spot hundreds of things you've never seen before across a wide range of films, in this brand new book from the creator of Den Of Geek. From the small references and inspirations, through to clues, hidden meanings and moments in frame that you may have simply missed, this indispensable guide is both a love letter to cinema, and a jam-packed treasure trove that no film fan will want to miss!