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Lillian Ross |
"All enduring love  between two people, however startling or unconventional, feels unalterable, predestined, compelling, and intrinsically normal to the couple immersed in it."— Lillian Ross |
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About The Player (from the publisher, Random House): Before The Player, there was Picture.
"They don't want me to make this picture." John Huston told Lillian Ross in the spring of 1950,
Books by Lillian Ross:  PicturePortrait of Hemingway Here but Not Here: A Love Story Takes: Stories from the Talk of the Town The Little Old Man and His Dreams Moments With Chaplin The Player: A Profile of an Art Reporting The Stranger in Big Sur
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referring to the studio executives at M-G-M where Huston was under contract, "And I want to make
this picture. Come on over, kid, and I'll tell you all about the hassle." While covering the making of The Red Badge of Courage for The New
Yorker, Lillian Ross soon found out that the studio's initial resistance to Huston's picture was only the beginning. From Huston's work in writing
and directing the film, to its radical transformation at the hands of studio executives, Ross had a front row seat from beginning to end. The
result is a book that is as eloquent in its attention to detail as a Huston film and is still the best account of the inner workings of Hollywood.
Released in serial form in The New Yorker and as a book in 1952, Picture was praised by the film and book industry alike, not only for the sheer
quality of the writing but also for its technical innovation -- the presentation of reporting as a novel. Newsweek proclaimed it "the best
book on Hollywood ever published," and Ernest Hemingway thought Picture "much better than most novels." William Shawn, the editor
of The New Yorker wrote: "On the surface, Miss Ross has written a precise, marvelously detailed account of how one motion-picture, The Red
Badge of Courage, was made. Beyond that, exuberant, she has presented everything any sane person should want to know about how a big film studio
functions. And beyond that, she has written what must be called, for lack of a more appropriate word, the definitive book on the Hollywood
community -- its language, its manners, its preoccupations, its ideas. Last, she has told a dramatic story about some extraordinary people, and ,
in a triumph of interlineation, has written a treatise on human nature."