True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking

This autobiography from filmmaker Coscarelli, director of such cult classics as The Beastmaster and Bubba Ho-Tep, reflects its author perfectly: it’s an engaging, eager-to-please piece of work. Most of the book is dedicated to production histories of Coscarelli’s films, shown here as family affairs; his dad provided financing for his 1976 debut, Story of a Teenager, and his mom pulled triple duty on Phantasm, his 1979 breakout hit, by cooking for the cast, sewing costumes, and doing makeup. Coscarelli proves a natural storyteller on the page as well as the screen, and it’s evident that the stories he shares have been told and retold over many years. He takes special delight in describing, at length, the creation of “the ball,” a chrome sphere that menaces the heroes of Phantasm and its four sequels, as well as the finer points of the 1971 Plymouth ’Cuda driven throughout the series. The book loses a little steam near the end, with less attention paid to the final Phantasm film, though, in fairness, Coscarelli ceded its direction to other hands. His conversational prose style is straightforward and unadorned, but it readily communicates the director’s signature trait—his enthusiasm, which is as charming as it is infectious. Agent: Alyssa Reuben, Paradigm Agency. (Oct.)