I Loved Movies But...

<p>The novelist Jonathan Lethem in his Foreword to <em>I Loved Movies But..</em>. calls Joseph McBride an example to me of discipline versatility and abiding with one's obsessions against all odds.... What animates my desire to follow Joe to any lengths on any subject he engages whether I already agree with him (Welles! Ford! Hawks! Lubitsch!) or am being seduced into a new exploration (Cukor) or have yet to be fully persuaded (Spielberg) or lack the equipment to judge (Officer Tippit) my response is uniform; I need to know what he thinks; I'm addicted to his form of inquiry and electrified by his gentle ferocity in pursuit of undisclosed or falsified truths. Joe McBride is a seeker and however disarmingly plainspoken his writing may appear to be his search and his rage for truth is a force animating every line he writes. This creates a thrilling energy a pulse or backbeat in his thought and expression.... In this book of conversation we learn the personal underpinnings of Joe's voice.</p><p></p><p>In<em> I Loved Movies But...</em> celebrated historian critic screenwriter and emeritus professor Joseph McBride turns the lens on himself in a candid wide-ranging conversation with a longtime friend the film historian and baseball biographer Danny Peary. Across formative childhood traumas Hollywood adventures investigative reporting landmark biographies and critical studies and decades of teaching McBride's life has been characterized by his relentless search for truth-about movies politics and history and himself. Honest funny unsparing and deeply humane this book is both a revelatory autobiography and a love letter to the culture of cinephilia brimming with stories of Orson Welles John Ford Frank Capra Steven Spielberg and the obsessive joy of a life spent wrestling with the magic and the seductive illusions of cinema.</p>