Cut Above: 50 Film Directors Talk about Their Craft

This book's strengths are its breadth, which is to say the sheer number of people interviewed, combined with Singer's ability to get his subjects talking. Its weaknesses are minor, but they add up. First, most of the interviews are too short to really get into the director's career, views, work philosophies, and so on, the way Bogdanovich does in "Who the Devil Made It." Second, a few of the interviews really seem like filler, wherein Singer spends way too much time with lightweights or second-rate film artists whose interviews here do nothing to dispel that label. And third, the book is rife with editing and transcription errors, typos, and other annoyances that are truly, truly distracting. But for the most part, the good outweighs the bad, and it's a worthwhile read.