Final Cuts: The Last Films of 50 Great Directors

by Nat Segaloff

Critic-producer Nat Segaloff was granted access to private papers, production records, never-before-published interviews, and specialized archives in reconstructing the colorful, touching, and sometimes scandalous stories behind the making of the last films of some of Hollywood's top directors. Winningly readable and yet meticulously researched, its substantial entries range from Robert Aldrich and Robert Altman to Peter Yates and Fred Zinnemann, and John Ford and Howard Hawks to Otto Preminger and Richard Brooks. Certain to attract controversy because of whom it ignores as well as whom it includes, Final Cuts presents fifty widely varied chronicles of success and failure, inspiration and ennui, elation and heartache, and every other emotion enjoyed or endured by the greatest filmmakers that Hollywood ever knew. About the Author Nat Segaloff always wanted to write and produce, but it took him several careers before he learned how to get paid for it. He was a journalist for The Boston Herald covering the motion picture business, but has also variously been a studio publicist (Fox, UA, Columbia), college teacher (Boston University, Boston College), on-air TV talent (Group W), entertainment critic (CBS radio) and author (nine books including Hurricane The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin and, as co-author, Love Hollywood's Most Romantic Movies). He has contributed career monographs on screenwriters Stirling Silliphant, Walon Green, Paul Mazursky and John Milius to the University of California Press's acclaimed Backstory series, and his writing has appeared in such varied periodicals as Film Comment, Written By, International Documentary, Animation Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, Time Out (US), MacWorld, and American Movie Classics Magazine. He was also senior reviewer for AudiobookCafe.com. His The Everything(R) Etiquette Book and The Everything Trivia Book and The Everything(R) Tall Tales, Legends and Outrageous Lies Book are in multiple printings for Adams Media Corp. As a TV writer-producer, Segaloff helped perfect the format and create episodes for A&E's flagship "Biography" series. His distinctive productions include John Funny You Should Ask; Shari Lewis & Lamb Chop; Larry Talk of Fame; Darryl F. Twentieth Century-Filmmaker and Stan The ComiX-MAN! He has written and co-produced the Rock 'n' Roll Moments music documentaries for The Learning Channel/Malcolm Leo Productions, and has written and/or produced programming for New World, Disney, Turner and USA Networks. He is co-creator/co-producer of Judgment Day with Grosso-Jacobson Communications Corp. for HBO. His extraterrestrial endeavors include the cheeky sequel to the Orson Welles "Invasion From Mars" radio hoax, When Welles Collide, which featured a "Star Trek"(R) cast. It was produced by L.A. Theatre Works and has become a Halloween tradition on National Public Radio. In 1996 he formed the multi-media production company Alien Voices(R) with actors Leonard Nimoy and actor John de Lancie and produced five best-selling, fully dramatized audio plays for Simon & The Time Machine, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Lost World, The Invisible Man and The First Men in the Moon, all of which feature "Star Trek"(R) casts. Additionally, his teleplay for The First Men in the Moon was the first-ever TV/Internet simulcast and was presented live by The Sci-Fi Channel. He has also written narrative concerts for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, celebrity events, is a script consultant, and was a contributing writer to Moving Pictures magazine.

Genres: Media Tie In, Film

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 2013

About the author

Nat Segaloff is a writer-producer-journalist. He covered the film industry for The Boston Herald, but has also variously been a studio publicist (Fox, UA, Columbia), college teacher (Boston University, Boston College), and broadcaster (Group W, CBS, Storer). He is the author of twenty books including Hurricane Billy: The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin, Arthur Penn: American Director and Final Cuts: The Last Films of 50 Great Directors in addition to career monographs on Stirling Silliphant, Walon Green, Paul Mazursky and John Milius. His writing has appeared in such varied periodicals as Film Comment, Written By, International Documentary, Animation Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, Time Out (US), MacWorld and American Movie Classics Magazine. He was also senior reviewer for AudiobookCafe.com and contributing writer to Moving Pictures magazine.

In 1996 he formed the multi-media production company Alien Voices with actors Leonard Nimoy and actor John de Lancie and produced five best-selling, fully dramatized audio plays for Simon & Schuster: The Time Machine, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Lost World, The Invisible Man and The First Men in the Moon, all of which feature Star Trek casts.

Reviews

[A Cesspool · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm officially over Nat Segaloff's brand of retrospective movie(s) memoir -- which frequently feels equal parts

🎬 copypaste legacy press kits,

🎬 clichéd puns & hokey witticisms,

🎬 shameless self-promotion, and

🎬 pandering sensationalism.

Example: Chronicling The Deep (1977), Segaloff forgoes more notorious anecdotal(s), à la exorbitant books rights (Peter Benchley's first since Jaws (1975) or debut production by Hollywood's favorite dilettante sidekick: Peter Guber; preferring instead to memorialize aforementioned sea adventure via Jacqueline Bisset's wet T-shirt and corresponding poster sales.
he triflin

[m. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Final Cuts is an interesting run-through of the films and lives of fifty great 'Hollywood' directors, given a personal touch because of the author's own relationship with the industry; certainly worth reading with a notebook handy to jot down films that have escaped your attention.

[Magnus Stanke · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun, light read, nothing too deep or revealing but broadly entertaining all the same. One could squabble about the in- or exclusion of one or the other director in the author's 'great 50' but that would be futile as he states in the introduction he chose according to his personal preference. And that's fair enough.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend and erstwhile writing partner (though it's been many years since we've collaborated) Nat Segaloff has come up with that rarity: a wholly original idea for a book. Final Cuts: The Last Films of 50 Great Directors has a premise that should intrigue any film buff. It's a case by case study of the concluding movie in the filmographies of directors ranging from Robert Aldrich to Fred Zinnemann.

He gives you brief overviews of their careers and what they're famous for, and then zooms in on their final movie. Some of the movies are worth seeing. Several of them exist on DVD in versions closer to the director's vision than in what was originally released. Several of them are cinematic crimes for which the perpetrators are granted posthumous pardons by the author. Given how many masterpieces they made, do we really want to condemn Charlie Chaplin for "A Countess from Hong Kong" or Billy Wilder for "Buddy Buddy?"

Other films demonstrate aging directors who could still surprise or at least entertain. "Family Plot" is not among Alfred Hitchcock's greatest movies, but it's certainly worth seeing, and Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments" is his film best remembered by the public if not most revered by film historians. Some of the movies are real curios, like "Penn & Teller Get Killed," directed by Arthur Penn, whose credits included "The Miracle Worker" and "Bonnie and Clyde," or the Orson Welles mixture of documentary and fiction, "F is for Fake."

As a collection of essays, it's endlessly fascinating, with Segaloff pulling material not only from various memoirs, archives, and libraries, but from interviews he's conducted himself with many of these directors over the years. There's a lot of new, fresh material here. If there's a downside is that -- except for the introduction -- there's no attempt to make a statement about final works. Perhaps such an overarching thesis is impossible as the careers here are varied and different. Frank Capra and Stanley Kubrick were as different from each other as both were different from Michael Curtiz. What common thread would tie them together?

Taken as an anthology -- albeit by one author -- on a theme, Final Cuts: The Last Films of 50 Great Directors is an important work of film scholarship.