A Life in Movies

The list of films Irwin Winkler has produced in his more-than-50-year career is extraordinary: Rocky, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Creed. His films have been nominated for 52 Academy Awards, including five movies for Best Picture, and have won 12. And Winkler is still working. Creed II, starring Michael B. Jordan, opens this autumn, followed by Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, a major mafia saga for Netflix starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

In A Life in Movies, his charming and insightful memoir, Winkler tells the stories of his career through his many films as a producer and then as a writer and director, charting the changes in Hollywood over the past decades. Winkler started in the famous William Morris mailroom and made his first film—starring Elvis—in the last days of the old studio system. Beginning in the late 1960s, and then for decades to come, he produced a string of provocative and influential films, making him one of the most critically lauded, prolific, and commercially successful producers of his era.

This is an engrossing and candid book, a beguiling exploration of what it means to be a producer, from how rights get purchased and scripts developed to actors cast, directors managed, film edited, and awards won. Filled with tales of legendary and beloved films, as well as some not-so-legendary and forgotten ones, A Life in Movies takes readers behind the scenes and into the history of Hollywood.

Irwin Winkler is an American film producer, writer, and director. He is the recipient of numerous American and international honours.