Inventing The Movies: Hollywood’s Epic Battle Between Innovation And The Status Quo, From Thomas Edison To Steve Jobs

From Edison to the iPod, from the Warner Brothers to George Lucas, the story of how the movies became America's favorite form of escapist entertainment - and retained their hold on our imaginations for more than a century - is a story of innovators prevailing again and again over skeptics who prefer to preserve the status quo. Inventing the Movies unspools the never-before-told story of the innovators who shaped Hollywood: how a chance meeting at the Saratoga Race Track led to the end of black-and-white movies ... how Bing Crosby brought you the VCR ... how Walt Disney tamed television ... how a shotgun blast signaled the end of hand-made models and the beginning of digital special effects ... and how even the almighty Morgan Freeman had trouble persuading theater-owners that the Internet wasn't their mortal enemy. Inventing the Movies is an important read not just for fans of Hollywood's history, but for innovators trying to make change happen in any industry.

Scott Kirsner is a journalist and blogger who writes about new ideas and their impact on the world. He edits the blog CinemaTech (http: //cinematech.blogspot.com), and is the author of ＂The Future of Web Video: New Opportunities for Producers, Entrepreneurs, Media Companies and Advertisers,＂ published in March 2007. He writes regularly for Variety and the Boston Globe. Scott’s writing has also appeared in the New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Wired, Fast Company, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, BusinessWeek, and Newsweek, among other publications. Scott regularly speaks and moderates at entertainment industry events, including the Sundance Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the South by Southwest Film Festival. He is part of the founding team of The Conversation, a new event geared to exploring the convergence of new technologies and the entertainment industry