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Film Freak
Film Freak
Apr 26, 2025 1:39 PM

Author:Christopher Fowler

Film Freak

It’s the late 1970s and 20-something Christopher Fowler is a film freak, obsessively watching lousy films in run-down fleapit cinemas. He longs to be a famous screenwriter and put his dreams on the big screen. And so he heads for Wardour Street, Britain’s equivalent of Hollywood.

But he’s made a spectacular mistake, arriving just as the nation’s filmmakers are falling to their knees, brought low by the arrival of video and the destruction of the old movie palaces. The only films being made are smutty low budget farces and TV spinoffs and instead of being asked to write another

'Bullitt’, he's churning out short films advertising boilers and nylon sheets. Somehow, against the odds, he finds success – although in a very different guise to the one he expected.

From the sticky Axminster of the local cinema to the red carpet at Cannes, Film Freak is a grimly hilarious and acutely observed trawl through the arse-end of the British film industry that turns into an ultimately affecting search for friendship and happiness.

Reviews

Film Freak is Fowler's brisk, chatty memoir... His writing is peppered with trenchantly funny film references. Fowler's gifts are those of a performing raconteur more than a cultural essayist - but he's so entertaining, moment by moment, that you readily accept this deal.

—— Daily Telegraph

A master storyteller, he slips deftly from fiction to fact: I've rarely read a better analysis of the movie business...This is a beautifully written and often hilarious book.

—— Sunday Express

a natural autobiographer, charming, funny, perceptive and mercifully free of the usual egomaniacal windbaggery.... I was so smitten with this book that I read it through from cover to cover in one sitting. At times, I found myself laughing loudly and lengthily. Above all, though, I was moved.

—— John Preston , Daily Mail

An homage to pre-digital cinema, an elegy for a vanishing London of almost half a century ago and a tribute to friendship, gonzo-style. Two thumbs up for this triple-billing.

—— FINANCIAL TIMES

He's written a roomful of books, including the Bryant & May series of crimers, but his memoirs are just as much fun... Hugely entertaining this.

—— Sunday Sport

This is the sort of book that should be prescribed as a pick-me-up on the NHS...Film Freak is gold-plated writing: uproarious, then dark, and surprisingly moving. Above all it's a fabulous evocation of a London, and a way of life, now almost gone for ever. *****

—— Mail on Sunday

Dazzlingly funny and evocative . . . conjures up a world before corporate suits took over, when rubbishy films played all day in smoke-filled cinemas and stars would do a quick advert for a wad of cash. It’s also the most tender and genuine story of a bizarre and complicated relationship . . .anyone who loves film and brilliant writing should invest in this slice of British culture

—— Daily Mail

A fierce manifesto for radical political, corporate and social change.

—— The Financial Times

In this book Handy encourages us to think differently about organisational structures. He presents engaging, cogent arguments about the organisations that we know today in sectors such as politics, education, business and how they will need to be very different in 20 years’ time.

—— Marketing Week

Jeff Sutherland is the master of creating high-performing teams. The subtitle of this book understates Scrum’s impact. If you don’t get three times the results in one-third the time, you aren’t doing it right!

—— Scott Maxwell, Founder & Senior Managing Director, OpenView Venture Partners

Jeff Sutherland used the common-sense but seldom-applied principles of the quality movement, user-centered design, and lean development to come up with a process that dramatically increases productivity while reducing employees’ frustrations with the typical corporate nonsense. This book is the best description I’ve seen of how this process can work across many industries. Senior leaders should not just read the book—they should do what Sutherland recommends.

—— Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor, Stanford Business School and c-author of The Knowing-Doing Gap

Groundbreaking…Will upend people’s assumptions about how productive they can actually be…Here Jeff Sutherland discloses to the non-tech world the elegantly simple process that programmers and Web developers have been using since he invented Scrum, showing how a small, empowered, and dedicated team can deliver significantly higher quality work at a faster pace through introspection, iteration, and adaptation.

—— Michael Mangi, Senior V.P. of Interactive Technology, Social@Ogilvy

This book will change the way you do everything. Even better, it will help you feel good in the process. Just read it, and get more done.

—— Arnold V. Strong, CEO of BrightNeighbor.com, and Colonel, US Army Reserve

This deceptively simple system is the most powerful way I've seen to improve the effectiveness of any team. I started using it with my business and family halfway through reading the book.

—— Leo Babauta, creator of Zen Habits

A rip-roaring read.

—— People Management

Every manager should read it.

—— Scottish Business Insider

Makes you rethink the fundamentals of successful management.

—— Flight Time

Whether you’re building schools in a third world country, teaching a classroom full of elementary students, or building websites, Scrum is highly effective because it matches many of the instincts that drive human nature; as Sutherland put it in his book, “Happiness is not complacent. It is a process, not a result.”

—— Speckyboy

If there was a Nobel Prize for management, and if there was any justice in the world, I believe that the prize would be awarded, among others, to Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn for their contributions to the invention of Scrum.

—— Forbes magazine
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