Featured in Episodes 329, 330, & 331
L.A. native Sam Wasson studied Film at Wesleyan University and at the USC School of Cinematic Arts before publishing his first book, A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards, “the critical resurrection of Blake Edwards” (Andrew Sarris). The subsequent publication of Paul on Mazursky, Wasson’s book of conversations with the legendary writer-director of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Down and Out in Beverly Hills, occasioned Quentin Tarantino to declare Mazursky “one of the great writer-directors of cinema.”
Published in 2010, Wasson’s Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman became a New York and Los Angeles Times Best Seller and a New York Times and Publishers’ Weekly best book of the year. Winner of the Cinémathèque française’s Meilleur livre étranger sur le cinéma, Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. has been translated into over a dozen languages and was named by Entertainment Weekly one of the best pop-culture books of all time.
Wasson’s award-winning biography Fosse, “one of the most eloquent showbiz accounts in years” (Chicago Tribune) appeared on over a half-dozen best books of the year lists, was a finalist for the Marfield Prize, the national award for arts writing, and the basis for the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning series, Fosse/Verdon, directed by Thomas Kail and produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
In 2017, Wasson published Improv Nation: How We Made A Great American Art. Called “one of the most important stories in American popular culture” (New York Times), the book was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s George Freedley Memorial Award. The internationally acclaimed New York Times Best Seller, Wasson’s The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood won him a second Meilleur livre étranger sur le cinéma from the Cinémathèque française and would appear on Esquire’s list of the best books ever written about Hollywood. “Sam Wasson’s deep dig into the making of the film,” Janet Maslin wrote, “is a work of exquisite precision. It’s about much more than a movie. It’s about the glorious lost Hollywood in which that 1974 movie was born.”
In 2020, Wasson and producer Brandon Millan founded Felix Farmer Press to publish necessary books on the art, business, culture and history of the Hollywood film. Their first book, Bruce Wagner’s The Marvel Universe: Origin Stories Bret Easton Ellis hailed one of the best novels of the year. Felix’s Farmer’s second book, Richard Schickel’s landmark The Famous Mr. Fairbanks: A Story of Celebrity, was published in 2022.
In addition to his work as an author and publisher, Wasson has written for numerous publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker. He’s served as a consultant for The National Comedy Center in New York and The Film Society of Lincoln Center, was a Visiting Professor of Film at Wesleyan University and Emerson College. As panelist and lecturer Wasson has appeared all over the world, from the 92nd Street Y in New York to The Second City in Chicago. He has been featured in numerous documentaries on Hollywood, and as a guest on CNN, BBC, Fox, ABC and NPR. In 2013, In conjunction with the Paley Center for Media, Wasson discovered “Seasons of Youth,” a lost 1961 Fosse television special, now publicly available at the Paley Center’s museums in New York and Los Angeles.
Wasson’s latest book, Hollywood: The Oral History, co-authored with renowned film scholar and educator Jeanine Basinger, will be published in November 2022.
Currently, Wasson is working on a biography of Francis Ford Coppola’s real-life dream studio, Zoetrope.
He lives in Los Angeles.
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