David Breskin is a fantastically talented interviewer: he has a knack for asking probing questions and the good sense to make sure his subjects answer them directly. He's assured enough not to be cowed by his famous interviewees, but humble enough to let them do most of the talking, Inner Views contains eight length conversations that Breskin held with some of the most prominent modern film directors, many of them caught in the process of making their most important recent works. Francis Ford Coppola reveals the reasons for making The Godfather Part III after sixteen years of refusals. Oliver Stone traces his life from his earliest memories tot he making of JFK. Spike Lee, fresh from the success of Do the Right Thing, talks about the meaning of that movie and of Jungle Fever, which followed it. Robert Altman waxes eloquently on his unique filmmaking process, particularly as it relates to The Player and Short Cuts. And Clint Eastwood, caught just before the release of Unforgiven, gives a lively overview of his career. Throw in engrossing conversations with David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Tim Burton and you have a book that provides indispensable insight into the live and work of the world's most intriguing filmmakers.

Inner Views: Filmmakers In Conversation

Humor & Entertainment

Breskin, David

Movies

Da Capo Press

Describes the organization of USA for Africa, which has produced an album by top American rock singers and musicians on behalf of famine relief in Africa

We Are the World

Arts & Photography

Music

Perigee Trade

Over the last two years, Breskin interviewed seven of contemporary filmmaking's greatest directors--David Lynch, Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, David Cronenberg, Tim Burton and Robert Altman. Here they discuss the role of women in their films, the relationship of politics to art, their styles and philosophies, and more.

Inner Views: Filmmakers in Conversation

Faber&Faber

Randi Bruce, a blaster on an all-woman mining crew in Wyoming, describes life in a remote boom town

Real Life Diary of Boomtown Girl

Literature & Fiction

VIKING

Escape Velocity

"Escape Velocity" is a polyrhythmic and polyphonic "tour-de-force" that engages both with the constructed and the constructor: with buildings and architects, with music and musicians, policy and politics, the personal and the political, the dancer and the dance. Attacking his subject matter with fierce precision, confronting the world on the same tough terms as an investigative journalist would, Breskin traverses the globe in search of the conjunctions and elisions that reveal the world. His poems go into all the darkened interstitial spaces, and crack them and lever them wide apart: scary, open, free. "Welfare Reform" is about just that, as a monologue spoken from one very poor to one very rich, referencing North Korea, African tribal warfare, the holocaust, mortgages, ecstasy, Native Americans, tennis and dancing along the way; "Ugly Beauty" takes a Monk song title and goes at contemporary Social Darwinism by way of Cheney, Bush, "The Bell Curve" controversy, and Cindy Crawford's mole; "Newsworthy" looks at how our society commodifies "tragedy" to bolster the emotions of innocent spectators (with a special snippet reserved for Plath's ex-); and"Due Process" examines a schoolyard shooting from the POV of a mother who's lost her only child.

Dramas & Plays

Soft Skull

"Escape Velocity" is a polyrhythmic and polyphonic "tour-de-force" that engages both with the constructed and the constructor: with buildings and architects, with music and musicians, policy and politics, the personal and the political, the dancer and the dance. Attacking his subject matter with fierce precision, confronting the world on the same tough terms as an investigative journalist would, Breskin traverses the globe in search of the conjunctions and elisions that reveal the world. His poems go into all the darkened interstitial spaces, and crack them and lever them wide apart: scary, open, free. "Welfare Reform" is about just that, as a monologue spoken from one very poor to one very rich, referencing North Korea, African tribal warfare, the holocaust, mortgages, ecstasy, Native Americans, tennis and dancing along the way; "Ugly Beauty" takes a Monk song title and goes at contemporary Social Darwinism by way of Cheney, Bush, "The Bell Curve" controversy, and Cindy Crawford's mole; "Newsworthy" looks at how our society commodifies "tragedy" to bolster the emotions of innocent spectators (with a special snippet reserved for Plath's ex-); and "Due Process" examines a schoolyard shooting from the POV of a mother who's lost her only child.

Poetry

SOFT SKULL PRESS *

On February 1, 2016, the date of the Iowa Caucus, David Breskin began a project that would carry him through the American presidential election. An ex- journalist, Breskin set out to “cover” this most strange and historic election, under the pressure of a reporter’s daily deadline, by writing one poem a day. He created a deliberately awkward, rollickingly restrictive form—seven beats per line, eleven lines per poem—and, noting our preference for the convenience of sound- bite news and junk-food polls over more nutritious fare, called them “7-Elevens.”
The result is Campaign, a fierce, prescient, oddly moving and scathingly funny book. No one is spared (not Ted, not Marco, not Carly; not Hillary nor Bernie nor The Donald; not the Pope nor Scalia nor even Jeb!) as Breskin shines a searching light on the hubris and folly of our would-be leaders. Yet he also captures what is fine about America and Americans, even under siege. “Smashed glass of freedom, a toast / for this sad ballad country / that orphans its immigrants.”
Campaign is a record of the election unfolding in real time: its distractions and psychodramas laid bare; its bit-part players of single news cycles recycled; the silliness of its silly season skewered. All the while, the drumbeat of essential issues sounds throughout these seventy-seven beat poems, reminding us what was—and remains—at stake.

Campaign

MadHat, Inc.

DIRTY BABY is a provocative "trialogue" between the paintings of Ed Ruscha, the music of Nels Cline, and the poems of David Breskin. The title comes from the idea that when different art forms mate, the resulting offspring is no purebred but rather a wonderfully dirty and lovable mutt. The book is divided into two "sides" in the manner of a vinyl record: Side A offers a time-lapse history of Western Civilization; Side B charts the American misadventure in Iraq. The 66 Ruscha pictures in the book are drawn from two rarely seen bodies of work, the "Silhouettes" and the "Cityscapes," in which Ruscha uses "censor strips" in place of the words which normally occupy a prominent place in his pictures. Throughout, Breskin's lyrical verses, using the ancient Arabic form of the ghazal, serve as powerful companions to Ruscha's gorgeously reproduced paintings. To this mix Cline adds more than an hour-and-a-half of new music for a large ensemble: by turns rhapsodic and edgy, heartfelt and raucous, it ranges from acoustic impressionism to dense, dark electronica. Housed in a luscious slipcase and including four CDs, two of music and two of spoken-voice poetry, this vibrant, polyphonic book is a wild surprise produced by three of the most exciting artists working today.

DIRTY BABY

RUSCHA, ED

Cline, Nels

History & Criticism

Prestel USA

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Breskin, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Breskin, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Breskin, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Inner Views: Filmmakers In Conversation

We Are the World

Inner Views: Filmmakers in Conversation

Real Life Diary of Boomtown Girl

Escape Velocity

Escape Velocity

Campaign

DIRTY BABY