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Joseph McBride
Milwaukee, WI Born: 1947 Link to Wikipedia Page Link to Author's Website Listen to Black Op Radio's interview with McBride about the Kennedy assassination |
Biography:
Joseph McBride is an American film historian, biographer, screenwriter and Associate Professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he grew up in the suburb of Wauwatosa. He attended Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, where he received a National Merit Scholarship, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and worked as a reporter for The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison before departing for California in 1973.
McBride has published eighteen books since 1968, including acclaimed biographies of Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, and John Ford. His most recent works are Writing in Pictures: Screenwriting Made (Mostly) Painless (2012) and an updated edition of his 1997 book Steven Spielberg: A Biography. The new edition of the Spielberg book was published in 2011 by the University Press of Mississippi, which also reprinted his biographies Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (1992; 2000) and Searching for John Ford (2001). His other books include: Orson Welles (1972; 1996), Hawks on Hawks (1982), The Book of Movie Lists: An Offbeat, Provocative Collection of the Best and Worst of Everything in Movies (1999), and What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career (2006).
His screenwriting credits include the movies Rock 'n' Roll High School and Blood and Guts and five American Film Institute Life Achievement Award specials on CBS-TV dealing with Fred Astaire, Frank Capra, Lillian Gish, John Huston, and James Stewart. 'He also was cowriter of the United States Information Agency worldwide live TV special Let Poland Be Poland (1982). McBride plays a film critic, Mr. Pister, in the legendary unfinished Orson Welles feature The Other Side of the Wind (1970-76). McBride is also the coproducer of the documentaries Obsessed with "Vertigo": New Life for Hitchcock's Masterpiece (1997) and John Ford Goes to War (2002).
McBride received the Writers Guild of America Award for cowriting The American Film Institute Salute to John Huston (1983). He has also received four other WGA nominations two Emmy nominations, and a Canadian Film Awards nomination. The French edition of Searching for John Ford, A la Recherche de John Ford, published in 2007, was chosen the Best Foreign Film Book of the Year by the French film critics' association, le Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma.
A documentary feature on McBride's life and work, Behind the Curtain: Joseph McBride on Writing Film History, written and directed by Hart Perez, had its world debut on April 10, 2011 at the Tiburon International Film Festival in Tiburon, Marin County, CA, and was released on DVD in March 2012.
In 2013 he published Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit, which was the result of McBride's 31-year investigation of the case.
In 2015 he published The Broken Places: A Memoir, which deals with his troubled childhood, his teenage breakdown, and his subsequent recovery.
Works by Joseph McBride:
Joseph McBride is an American film historian, biographer, screenwriter and Associate Professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he grew up in the suburb of Wauwatosa. He attended Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, where he received a National Merit Scholarship, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and worked as a reporter for The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison before departing for California in 1973.
McBride has published eighteen books since 1968, including acclaimed biographies of Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, and John Ford. His most recent works are Writing in Pictures: Screenwriting Made (Mostly) Painless (2012) and an updated edition of his 1997 book Steven Spielberg: A Biography. The new edition of the Spielberg book was published in 2011 by the University Press of Mississippi, which also reprinted his biographies Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (1992; 2000) and Searching for John Ford (2001). His other books include: Orson Welles (1972; 1996), Hawks on Hawks (1982), The Book of Movie Lists: An Offbeat, Provocative Collection of the Best and Worst of Everything in Movies (1999), and What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career (2006).
His screenwriting credits include the movies Rock 'n' Roll High School and Blood and Guts and five American Film Institute Life Achievement Award specials on CBS-TV dealing with Fred Astaire, Frank Capra, Lillian Gish, John Huston, and James Stewart. 'He also was cowriter of the United States Information Agency worldwide live TV special Let Poland Be Poland (1982). McBride plays a film critic, Mr. Pister, in the legendary unfinished Orson Welles feature The Other Side of the Wind (1970-76). McBride is also the coproducer of the documentaries Obsessed with "Vertigo": New Life for Hitchcock's Masterpiece (1997) and John Ford Goes to War (2002).
McBride received the Writers Guild of America Award for cowriting The American Film Institute Salute to John Huston (1983). He has also received four other WGA nominations two Emmy nominations, and a Canadian Film Awards nomination. The French edition of Searching for John Ford, A la Recherche de John Ford, published in 2007, was chosen the Best Foreign Film Book of the Year by the French film critics' association, le Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma.
A documentary feature on McBride's life and work, Behind the Curtain: Joseph McBride on Writing Film History, written and directed by Hart Perez, had its world debut on April 10, 2011 at the Tiburon International Film Festival in Tiburon, Marin County, CA, and was released on DVD in March 2012.
In 2013 he published Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit, which was the result of McBride's 31-year investigation of the case.
In 2015 he published The Broken Places: A Memoir, which deals with his troubled childhood, his teenage breakdown, and his subsequent recovery.
Works by Joseph McBride:
- Steven Spielberg: A Biography, 1997
- Searching for John Ford, 2001
- Hawks on Hawks, 1982
- Writing in Pictures: Screenwriting Made (Mostly) Painless, 2012
- What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career, 1975
- Orson Welles
- Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, 1992
- Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit, 2013
- The Book of Movie Lists: An Offbeat, Provocative Collection of the Best and Worst of Everything in Movies, 1998
- John Ford Movie Mystery, 1975
- Making Movies with Orson Welles: A Memoir, 2011
- Howard Hawks, 1972
- Albert Camus, 1993
- Orson Welles, Actor And Director, 1977
- Focus on Howard Hawks
- High and Inside: An A to Z Guide to the Language of Baseball, 1980
- Kirk Douglas, 1976
- Filmmakers on Filmmaking: The American Film Institute Seminars on Motion Pictures and Television, 1983
- John Ford, 1975
- American Madness: The Life of Frank Capra
- Young Orsen
