The Grip of Film

by Richard Ayoade

Overview

You SLUG the guy.
You KISS the dame.
You TOTAL the car.

That's movies. And I love 'em.

Gordy LaSure’s passionate about film. He eats film, he drinks film, and sometimes he’ll even watch a film. But most of all he loves talking about film, and how they’d be a shit-ton better if only people would pull their asses out of their ears and listen to Gordy LaSure.

The voyage of this book can be categorised as an attempt to understand How In Hell Film Works. Why are some films bad, and some films terrible? How come just a handful of films (Titanic, Porky’s, Dirty Harry) are any good at all? Gordy’ll tell you How and Why, and he’ll give you a shot of Wherefore on the side. And he doesn’t shoot from the hip; he shoots from the gut.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571316564
Publisher:	Faber and Faber
Publication date:	08/10/2021
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Richard Ayoade is a writer and director. In addition to directing and co-writing Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, he has adapted and directed Joe Dunthorne's novel Submarine for the screen, and is the co-writer (with Avi Korine) and director of the film, The Double.

As an actor he is best known for his roles as Dean Learner in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and Maurice Moss in the Emmy Award-winning The IT Crowd, for which we was awarded a BAFTA as Best Performance in a Comedy.

Table of Contents

Ante Foreword Richard Ayoade vii

Foreword Skippy Briskman xi

Introduction xvii

Acknowledgments xix

What the Hell Am I Reading Exactly? xxiii

A Note on the Text xxviii

A Note on the Use of Gender within the Text xxix

Disclaimer xxxi

The Grip of Film: An A-W of Movies 1

Fade Out 317

Index 321

Other Publications by Gordy LaSure 333

Credits 335

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"It is of course a work of shimmering, glimmering genius. Finally, brilliant critical appraisals of such luminous cinematic masterworks as Road House and Time Cop allow us to see – as if through a mist – just how movies work and how critics have been fooled into valuing such comparatively mediocre and lame effusions as Citizen Kane, The Seventh Seal or It’s a Wonderful Life – none of which, Gordy LaSure shows us, match up to the high water mark of the great Seagal, van Damme, Norris, Swayze and Statham achievements. Never has the cult and mythos of hero been so accurately and insightfully illuminated, or with such excoriating passion, zest, knowledge and insane prejudice.
A pity perhaps that Richard Ayoade should so shamelessly piggy-back on the talent of Gordy LaSure, just to get his nose in the trough, but I understand that his name will probably get the book a readership that the (criminally) unknown LaSure could not manage on his own. Such is the price of integrity in this cheap world." -- Stephen Fry

Editorial Reviews

"If forced, I will admit to reading all of this book." — Steven Soderbergh

"A work of shimmering, shimmering genius...Never has the cult and mythos of the hero been so accurately and insightfully illuminated, or with such excoriating passion, zest, knowledge and insane prejudice." — Stephen Fry

From the Publisher