The story of Hollywood, as told by its creative leaders, exists, in raw form, in the vaults of the American Film Institute. Since 1967, the AFI’s Harold Lloyd Lectures have provided of master class conversations with leading directors, actors, producers, executives, cinematographers. All the names are here, classic and contemporary: Pacino, De Niro, Nicholson, Beatty, Hanks, Eastwood, Chaplin, Mann, Henson, John Hughes, John Ford, Capra, Stanwyck, Spielberg, Lucas, Streep, Scorsese. Even more importantly, a large number of interviews on file are with women creators and with a diverse population of filmmakers. Not merely answering questions, but telling wonderful stories at length, these nearly 2,500 seminars represent the most voluminous, comprehensive, in-depth filmmaker conversations available -- except they have never been made available. Virtually none have been published. Some have never even been transcribed. Until now. Legendary film scholar Jeanine Basinger and New York Times bestselling author Sam Wasson, both acclaimed storytellers in their own right, have undertaken the herculean feat of digesting these hours and hours of conversations and weaving them into a surprising, revealing latticework, equally delicious and scholarly, that tells the whole story of the movie factory from its origins to the present day. This resulting book is not just the definitive oral history of Hollywood, it will be one of the great, permanent contributions to the subject.