Making Movies

Lumet's guide to filmmaking, published late in his remarkable career, is one of the best exemplars of Flaubert's famous dictum, "Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work." Lumet's greatest pictures—from 12 Angry Men through Dog Day Afternoon and Network to his final When the Devil Knows Your Dead—carry a passionate chaos inside their frames, but Lumet's working process, as outlined here, was thoroughly sane and efficient. As is his book, which is both a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into the movies and a superb guide to building any sort of creative life. —Tom Old Book of the Week