Turnaround

About this book

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Hair. Ragtime. Amadeus. Valmont. Two of these films earned Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. All display a distinctive combination of intelligence and artistry born of the vision of one man: Milos Forman. Milos Forman's uncommon childhood left him orphaned by World War II in a small Czechoslovakian town. Eight years old when his father was seized by the Gestapo, ten when his mother was arrested, Forman spent his next thirty years living out of a suitcase and nurturing a dream to make movies. As a teenager, he made his way to Prague, where he began his apprenticeship among drunken filmmakers and humorless state-controlled film czars, but most significantly with brilliant mentors such as Alfred Radok, the legendary Czech director. In this frustrating and often surreal Communist state, Forman cultivated youthful friendships with the likes of Vaclav Havel, Milan Kundera, and Ivan Passer, and through sheer force of will he made his dream come true, virtually inventing the Czech New Wave with such films as Black Peter, Loves of a Blonde, and Fireman's Ball. But it wasn't until Forman emigrated to New York that he was able to realize the full range of his talents. First with Taking Off, and then working with the likes of Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, and Danny De Vito in the Academy Award-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Forman found enough peace to unpack his suitcase at last. In these pages are wonderful stories of the artist as a young man: tales of finding love in a deranged Communist bureaucracy, fleeing his beloved homeland, living in the bohemian Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties, discovering free spirits in Greenwich Village, learning the peculiar ways and means of Hollywood, reaching the pinnacle of professional success, and, finally, being allowed to return home to film the life of another young genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But above all, Forman's life story can be read as a chronicle of the bittersweet intersection of life, love, politics, and art. Frank, vibrant, passionate, Turnaround is a triumph