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Jerry Ziesmer, Ready When You Are, Mr. Coppola, Mr. Spielberg, Mr. Crowe. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2000. 436p. $49.50
Filmmaking involves a whole host of individuals, from actors to technicians, who collaborate with a director on a movie. This fact has been recognized from time to time by the publication of books that focus on editors (Gabriella Oldman's First Cut: Conversations with Film Editors) and cinematographers (Dennis Schaefer and Larry Salvato's Masters of Light: Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers). Now comes Ready When You Are, Mr. Coppola, Mr. Spielberg, Mr Crowe by Jerry Ziesmer, who served as assistant director (Ad) on Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters ofa Third Kind, and Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire, among other movies. And it is one of the best books of the lot.
The assistant director (more properly the assistant to the director) is charged with arranging for the cast and crew, the sets, and technical equipment involved in the shooting of a particular scene to be all prepared and in place when the director calls "Action!" on the set, Consequently, in describing the role of the Ad in the production of a movie, one can say that the ad's function is that of a trail boss,...