Mark Cotta Vaz

(#51 in the 2008 Book Challenge)

Just to clear things up, the reason I read this was because Maud Hart Lovelace, the author of the Betsy-Tacy books, was married to a guy named Delos Lovelace, and he and Merian Cooper were close friends and Delos and Maud ended up naming their daughter after him. So, onward. I really had no idea that Merian C. Cooper had done so much. He was a fighter pilot in WWI, and then started into film -- first with documentaries, and this was so fascinating that I'm show more going to try to watch all of his early films. I loved reading about how he and his colleagues were wrestling with ideas about what it means to call something a documentary. You know they've got all this primitive film equipment that only works under the most ideal conditions, and they would miss shots and then have to decide whether it was okay to ask everyone to do the same thing again, only this time on purpose. Then King Kong, and it made me think about how impossible it would be now to ever watch that movie without any irony at all. I guess his big idea of a follow-up was a movie about defending New York City with a fighter squad of people riding giant eagles ... but WWII happened and he enlisted again as a pilot. In short, he did live a crazy adventurous life, but it also struck me as firmly pathological (cripes, he gave his son the "come home with your shield or on it" speech before he shipped out for Viet Nam) ... a view that wasn't shared by the author, who apparently thought this was normal.

Grade: A-
Recommended: I thought this was a very good biography, it worked well for me and I wasn't even that interested in the subject before I started reading, and I think it would be very enjoyable for anyone interested in the pioneer days of film. show less

Mark Cotta Vaz captures the essence as well as the details of Merian C. Cooper's life. From war hero, in both World Wars, to adventurer, to filmmaker, to commercial aviation pioneer, and finally to filmmaking innovator, Cooper is almost untouched in importance compared to other Hollywood figures. He reigns as a titan. And it's all the more peculiar that he has been all but forgotten, while many much lesser Hollywood figures have maintained their fame.

The fact is that it's impossible to show more pigeonhole Cooper. And this biography makes that clear. Perhaps that is the reason lesser biographers have not been able to do Cooper justice. This volume reads like an adventure story. But then it is, because Cooper's life was an adventure story. Anyone of his exploits themselves could have been turned into a feature film. And, in many ways, as Vaz also makes clear, that is exactly what Cooper's great gorilla epic, King Kong, does. It captures the life and adventures of Cooper himself, being a somewhat veiled autobiography. show less

This just reminds me of how much I was disappointed in the film.
I haven't even read the sequels because the movie was so awful. Gah

It's got nice photos and stuff. And it is interesting to learn about production. But it's not great. I found I skimmed parts because I just didn't want to be bothered with reading them.

This was an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the complex Shadow of the Empire project: one that created an overlapping but somewhat distinct novel, graphic novel, video game, and movie soundtrack -- everything but a full-length movie. Unfortunately, as we moved from part to part, sometimes explanations were repeated. However, it was quite fascinating to see how a large project like this gets started, and to see how things evolved as various creators wanted to add their own ideas. The show more craziest story was the LucasArts team, wanting to have this video game ready for the Nintendo 64 lauch, had to create their own compiler and simulator, because Nintendo's own engineers were running late and didn't have samples to give to the game design team!

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LT Haiku:

Early concept art
and insider stories of
large Star Wars project. show less