Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad Hardcover Author: Visit Amazon's Brett Martin Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1594204195 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad Epub FreeYou can download Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad Epub Free from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link
From Booklist
The title of this fascinating study refers to the antiheroic male protagonists of some recent popular television series (Mad Men’s Don Draper, The Shield’s Vic Mackey, The Sopranos’ Tony Soprano), but it also, to a slightly lesser degree, refers to some of the men who made those shows—David Chase, for example, the demanding creator of The Sopranos, and David Simon, the ambitious creator of The Wire. The author’s premise, that around 1999 there came a third golden age of television (The Sopranos debuted in ’99), might not sit well with all readers, but the argument that a new kind of TV series started to flourish around that time is undeniably true. Can you imagine any earlier point in television history when Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad Men, Six Feet Under, and Deadwood could have existed? Martin combines standard making-of stuff (behind-the-scenes production battles, stories about the stars, etc.) with in-depth profiles of the people who, in a very real sense, changed the modern face of television. Fans of the shows he discusses, and especially those interested in television history, should consider this a must-read. --David Pitt
From Bookforum
Difficult Men is a vastly entertaining and insightful look at the creators of some of the most highly esteemed recent television series. The book is crammed with pungent anecdotes about, and quotes from, people who have collaborated with these "difficult men"--or at least tried to. Male egos may grow lush under adoring gaze of online fanboys and fangirls, but as Martin's vivid and idea-packed study makes plain, the best way to make sense of our culture's difficult men is to subject them to rigorous, if often admiring, scrutiny. --Ken Tucker
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- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; First Edition edition (June 27, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1594204195
- ISBN-13: 978-1594204197
- Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
I think this interesting, detailed book will be best enjoyed by those of a "certain age," who can recall the original creation of each step along the way. If you're in your mid-40s, you might very well have watched "Hill Street Blues," and realized, when Hill and Renko got shot, that it was something different, even if you weren't sure how or why.
Author Brett Martin answers that 'why' and 'how' for many of the current high-quality shows we take totally for granted. The 'showrunners' behind "The Sopranos," "The Wire," "Mad Men," etc., are creative producers at the top of their game, but none of them walked into a studio and just started making shows; their personal timelines date back decades, with a surprising amount of collaboration between them. Each had to overcome obstacles and a lack of network faith.
Martin does not recap show plots and stories. Rather it walks the reader through the decisions, proposals, and occasional lucky breaks and coincidences that led to each show's genesis - FX's "The Shield" was greenlit just before 9/11 for example; another two weeks, and it's probably never made. So it's not about the shows, but the offices that created the shows - it's much more interesting than that might sound.
Each of these shows required a complete commitment from its creator - and a lot of breaks in-between. Anybody who ever thinks "oh, creative people are just lucky" is an idiot. They made their own 'luck' with a single-minded devotion and talent that 99 percent of people can't relate to, and Martin's biographical accounts fill in those blanks.
I enjoyed reading this book for the most part, and I've given it two stars for the areas where it succeeds, but given the cover, I thought it was going to be more about the creative process behind these shows, not just writers but actors. (I'll admit - I skipped the parts about Mad Men and Deadwood because I haven't seen these shows yet.) I think I was expecting more of a Peter Biskind type of exposé and critique. The parts about the Sopranos were wonderful, and the creative process in the writer's room and the tensions were fascinating to me. I also loved the background on The Wire. Yet, when the book was over, I was still hungry for a conversation about what these shows mean to people, a conversation about Walter White and Tony Soprano and what they represent in terms of masculinity in our age.
The difficult men in the title is really about David Chase, David Simon, Ed Burns, etc, and the auteur theory and I don't think that is clear from the cover. If you are interested in their biographies, their resumes, the shows they worked on before and their personal inspirations as they brought these revolutionary shows to television, then this is the book for you.
But as a critique of the shows, a conversation about themes, or a real breakdown of the characters of Tony Soprano or Walter White, or masculinity, that's not this book. While I think the creators and their biographies are interesting, the writers behind the shows are treated like the real heroes (in some ways they are) but unfortunately, they aren't as fascinating to read about as the characters they have created- reading about writers writing isn't everyone's idea of fun. Perhaps this is unfair because each show is so rich, it deserves its own book.
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