Director Barry Sonnenfeld has a brand new memoir coming out

Barry Sonnenfeld
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Barry Sonnenfeld – the director of films such as The Addams Family and Men In Black – has more tales to tell.


Having cemented a career as a director of photography, Barry Sonnenfeld made the jump to the director’s chair at the start of the 1990s, his debut being 1991’s The Addams Family. A hit movie – and a difficult production – it started a run of movies that included the first three Men In Black films, Get Shorty, the underrated Big Trouble and the infamous Wild Wild West.

Sonnenfeld has already penned one memoir, Call Your Mother: Memoirs Of A Neurotic Filmmaker, and it’s quite the read too. Now, he’s collected together another bunch of stories from his working life, for Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time.

His new book, which is due out in October, now promises a look at how Hollywood really works, framed through the many film and TV productions that Sonnenfeld has worked across (and the many characters he’s encountered).

The book is currently set for release on 1st October 2024, and you can pick up a copy here.

In the meantime, here’s the synopsis for it…

Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time delivers a cavalcade of sometimes baffling, often enlightening, and always funny stories about Sonnenfeld’s many films and television shows. From battling with studio executives and producers to bad-script-solving on set to coaxing actors into finding the right light and talking faster, Sonnenfeld provides an entertaining master class in how to make commercial art in the face of constant human foible. Over four decades in Hollywood, the mega-franchises include The Addams Family and Men in Black; the critical favorites, Get Shorty and Pushing Daisies; the icons, Will Smith, John Travolta, and Michael Jackson; and the projects that got away, Forrest GumpAli, and anything starring Jim Carrey.

The true stories escalate from surreal to outrageous to unbelievable. And then there’s magic hour. But you’ll never see Hollywood the same way again.

It’s available for preorder now, from Hachette.

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