Overview

"A cinematic memoir and critical exploration of nine classics of old Hollywood by a contemporary comic novelist. A cinematic memoir and critical exploration of nine classics of old Hollywood by a contemporary comic novelist. ""North by Northwest isn't about what happens to Cary Grant, it's about what happens to his suit. The suit has the adventures, a gorgeous New York suit threading its way through America. The suit, Cary inside it, strides with confidence into the Plaza Hotel. Nothing bad happens to it until one of the greasy henchmen grasps Cary by the shoulder. We're already in love with this suit and it feels like a real violation."" Todd McEwen grew up in Southern California, so his head was hopelessly messed with by the movies. As the son of relatively normal people, Todd had no in with Hollywood, a mere thirteen miles away, yearn and try as he might. This is a kid who loved the movies so much, he got up at 4-30 in the morning to watch Laurel and Hardy. A kid who insisted on his birthday that his father project 8mm cartoons onto the family's dining room curtains so they could be slowly parted, just like at a real cinema. This is a kid who liked to leave the movie and trudge up hundreds of dangerous iron steps to visit the lugubrious and always surprised projectionist. This is a kid who, years later, watched Chinatown over 60 times. A love letter to old Hollywood, this is a book for anyone interested in film. Movies discussed include Blotto, The Wizard of Oz, The Three Stooges, To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest, The 39 Steps, The Trouble with Harry, and many, many more."

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9781912559404

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Reviews

  'A quirky, chewy gallimaufry containing a small jewel, a little masterpiece of a chapter, 'Cary Grant’s Suit,' which lends the book not only its title but also its fundamental claim to your attention . . . If I were compiling a new Oxford Book of Essays, I’d include 'Cary Grant’s Suit' alongside Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt and Joan Didion. It’s digressive, surprising, delightful.' -- Ian Sansom * Telegraph * 'A hilarious and morose invocation of a lost world. Anyone who has ever been movie-mad will relish this irrepressibly digressive, surprise-filled, exquisitely written memoir (sort of). I certainly did.'  -- Phillip Lopate

  'A quirky, chewy gallimaufry containing a small jewel, a little masterpiece of a chapter, 'Cary Grant’s Suit,' which lends the book not only its title but also its fundamental claim to your attention . . . If I were compiling a new Oxford Book of Essays, I’d include 'Cary Grant’s Suit' alongside Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt and Joan Didion. It’s digressive, surprising, delightful.' -- Ian Sansom * Telegraph * 'A hilarious and morose invocation of a lost world. Anyone who has ever been movie-mad will relish this irrepressibly digressive, surprise-filled, exquisitely written memoir (sort of). I certainly did.'  -- Phillip Lopate ‘The book is delightful on the rewards of multiple viewings of the same film and the mastering of its self-contained universe . . .  A wonderfully knowing and vivid piece of time travel.’ * Times Literary Supplement *

Author Information

Todd McEwen was born in Southern California in the 1950s. As a child he was interested in comedy and the undersea realm, and was terrified by Bambi. In high school he had his own radio show, interviewing folk singers and puzzle inventors. At college he read Victorian and medieval English literature. He worked in radio, theatre, and the rare books trade before arriving in Scotland in the 1980s. After a spell at Granta, he has often worked as an editor and teacher. His novels include Fisher's Hornpipe, McX- A Romance of the Dour, Who Sleeps with Katz, and The Five Simple Machines.

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