Ready for My Close-Up: The Making of Sunset Boulevard and the Dark Side of the Hollywood Dream

by David M. Lubin

Overview

For readers of Sam Wasson and Glenn Frankel, a cultural history about the making and lasting significance of Sunset Boulevard, whose piercing—and in many ways, prophetic—critiques of fame continue to resonate today.

Great films are born of great collaborations, and Sunset Boulevard represents one of the most extraordinary confluences of cinematic talent in film history—but its production was surprisingly fraught, filled with unexpected twists. Why was William Holden, who had never caught fire as a leading man, hired to play Joe Gillis after the fastest‑rising star in the business dropped out at the last minute? After Mae West and Mary Pickford turned down the now iconic role of Norma Desmond, how did Billy Wilder convince Gloria Swanson, who had long been absent from Hollywood at this point, to leave her low‑paying job as a TV talk show host to join the cast? From the writers' room during Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett’s final collaboration to the moment when the film won three Academy Awards, scholar and former Rolling Stone staffer David M. Lubin takes readers on a fascinating journey through film history that proves, once and for all, why Sunset Boulevard is one of the most iconic films in cinematic history.

Just in time for the film's 75th anniversary, Ready for My Closeup breathes life into a beloved masterpiece of American cinema.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538739310
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	08/12/2025
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	49 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

David M. Lubin, a former writer for Rolling Stone and a professor at Wake Forest University, has published eight books on American art, film, and popular culture. His Shooting Kennedy: JFK and Culture of Images won the Smithsonian Institution’s Charles C. Eldredge Prize for distinguished scholarship in American art. Lubin is a Guggenheim fellow and an NEH Public Scholar.

Editorial Reviews

"David Lubin gives Sunset its due with this fast-paced journey through the making of the movie, sprinkling his well-researched tale with rich nuggets about the Golden Age."
 —Stephen Galloway, New York Times bestselling author of Truly, Madly

"David Lubin’s deep dive into Hollywood’s darkest take on Hollywood seamlessly analyzes process, motive and meaning, as well as the confluence of talents that brought this bleak, beloved tale to life and, eventually, immortality."
 —Scott Eyman, New York Times bestselling author of John Wayne: The Life and Legend

"Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is one of the most majestic and original works of Hollywood’s golden era, and David M. Lubin's entertaining book casts a wide net in capturing and exploring all of the elements of the film's brilliant artistry, from great writing and acting to set design and cinematography for a movie that is both a scathing critique and a requiem for the studio system, its grandeur and its cruelties."  

 —Glenn Frankel, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Shooting Midnight Cowboy

“With the perfect blend of journalistic brio and scholarly erudition, David Lubin’s Ready for My Closeup invites us on an eminently pleasurable journey through the production history, the critical and popular reception, and the enduring resonance of Sunset Boulevard. The gripping story he tells will surely be catnip to cinephiles and equally seductive to readers of Hollywood history and lore.”—Noah Isenberg, bestselling author of We’ll Always Have ‘Casablanca’: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie

“David Lubin’s exhaustively researched and fluently written anatomy of Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder’s classic about ‘the pathology of fame’ (Lubin's phrase), is an example of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ genre at its best.”—Peter Biskind, author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

"David M. Lubin’s impeccably researched Ready for My Close-Up pulls apart the hall of mirrors that is Sunset Boulevard, convincingly demonstrating that the film is not only the greatest American statement on fame and its delusions, but that it also served as a fulcrum point in the lives of its makers and the industry that it filets so expertly. This observant and trenchant making-of blends biography, history, and cultural criticism to thrilling effect." —Isaac Butler, author of The Method: How the 20th Century Learned to Act

"An intimate dance with a disturbing movie—a close-up of the despair, humiliation, and brilliance that make up a work of art. Whether a painting by Rembrandt, a sonata of Mozart, or a novel of Hemingway, few creations have received the beautiful star treatment David Lubin accords to Sunset Boulevard."—Alexander Nemerov, author of Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s America

"A deft account of a Hollywood classic."

—Kirkus Reviews

"Paints a complex portrait of both the film and the industry it takes to task. This shines."—Publishers Weekly

"This heavily researched yet never dense page-turner is an essential addition to any film fanatic’s bookshelf."—Booklist

"Aficionados of movie classics and those intrigued by storytelling will enjoy peeling back the layers of one of the great films of its era."—Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

2025-04-16
HowSunset Boulevardmade film history by reflecting on Hollywood’s past.

Widely considered the finest Hollywood film about Hollywood, director Billy Wilder’sSunset Boulevard (1950) rose out of crisis. Wilder’s two previous movies had flopped, the studio system was crumbling, a crackdown on Hollywood leftists was underway, and the growth of television threatened the film industry. Amid this turmoil, Wilder and his team fashioned a quirky film about an aging film star, a desperate young screenwriter, and the disfiguring effects of what author Lubin calls the dark side of the Hollywood dream. Wilder’s project was by no means a safe bet. With its irreverent script, mordant humor, and edgy sensibility,Sunset Boulevard jumped between genres and lampooned the industry that produced it. Yet Lubin’s capsule biographies of the film’s principals reveal how the project came together and made cinematic history. Wilder’s early years in Vienna and Berlin are vividly recounted, as are the remarkable careers of Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim. Producer and screenwriter Charles Brackett, actor William Holden, and supporting actress Nancy Olson are given their due. So are Hedda Hopper, Buster Keaton, and Cecil B. DeMille, whose appearances in the film helped blur the line between past and present, art and real life. Lubin keeps the film, its creators, and its reception in sharp focus and displays a knack for concise analysis.Sunset Boulevard was a movie “about has-beens and also-rans, about failed comebacks, misguided dreams, and murderous delusions.” Yet it was made by “a raft of exceptionally creative individuals, all at critical junctures in their careers, several of them playing roles that seemed drawn from their actual lives.” Deeply informed but never pedantic, this book shows how Wilder and his team turned Hollywood's midcentury crisis into film history.

A deft account of a Hollywood classic.

Kirkus Reviews