Hollywood Is Thy Name
Two new books explore the movies Hollywood made about Hollywood movies.
Charles Musser is a film historian, documentary filmmaker, and professor of Film and Media Studies, American Studies, and Theater Studies at Yale University. His films include An American Potter (1976), Before the Nickelodeon: The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter (1982) and Errol Morris: A Lightning Sketch (2014), and his books include The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (1990), Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (1991), High-Class Moving Pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the Forgotten Era of Traveling Exhibition, 1880-1920 (with Carol Nelson, 1991), and Edison Motion Pictures, 1890–1900: An Annotated Filmography (1997).
Two new books explore the movies Hollywood made about Hollywood movies.
Charles Musser figures that “Merton of the Movies” by Harry Leon Wilson is “one of the most profound novels ever written about Hollywood.”