With Foreward By George Clooney And “Lost Photos” Of The Cast At Work And Play Newly Discovered In The Universal Studios Vault
(NEW YORK, NY, May 14th) Jane Friedman, Co-Founder and CEO of Open Road Integrated Media, announced today that it will release Kirk Douglas’ 10th book and his first E-riginal, I Am Spartacus! Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist, with Foreword by George Clooney on June 12, 2012. The title will be available as an ebook and a paperback. The audiobook, read by multiple Oscar© winner Michael Douglas, will be produced by Brilliance for release on the same day.
Long recognized as one of filmdom’s most courageous actors and producers, both on and off the screen, Douglas looks back at the making of the 52-year old epic with characteristic honesty, wit and the compelling voice of a born storyteller.
Jane Friedman says, “I have admired Kirk Douglas as an author ever since the publication of his first bestselling book, The Ragman’s Son, in which he touched on the complicated and career-threatening decisions he took in producing Spartacus, which resulted in the breaking of the decade-long Hollywood blacklist. I am thrilled that he finally decided— with the wisdom and clarity of his 95 years—to tell the definitive story of the making of this iconic film amid the shameful political climate of the time. I am very pleased that Open Road is his publisher.”
“The blacklist,” Douglas remarks,” was a witch hunt, destroying lives and careers without regard for the truth of the allegations. I made Spartacus with a blacklisted writer, Dalton Trumbo, who had to hide behind a pseudonym—Sam Jackson for Spartacus—in order to find work. I was making a film about freedom at a time when freedom in America was in jeopardy. There are parallels to today’s political climate, and I thought it was timely to set down my recollections about the making of the film.”
In his Foreword, George Clooney—whose interest in the era yielded the award-winning film Good Night and Good Luck—wrote: “Kirk Douglas is many things. A movie star. An actor. A producer. But he is, first and foremost, a man of extraordinary character…the kind we always look for at our darkest hour.”
