Lawrence Grobel

Huston's Gamble

Al Pacino is a mystery. He is fire and ice at the same time. His attraction is animalistic, his looks frightening. From the ghetto of the Bronx in New York he has made it onto the big stage – from Broadway to Hollywood. As Michael Corleone in "The Godfather" he celebrated his big breakthrough at the beginning of the 70s – against much resistance, because apart from director Francis Coppola himself nobody wants him for the role. His realistic acting became the measure of all things overnight.

An in-depth investigation into the private world of the American writer J. D. Salinger (1919-2010), who lived most of his life behind the impenetrable wall of a self-imposed seclusion: how his dramatic experiences during World War II influenced his life and work, his relationships with very young women, his obsessive writing methods, his many literary secrets.

The epic story of how the film The African Queen (1951), directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, was shot on real African locations, barely overcoming all kinds of hardships and disasters.

A funny, intimate and heartbreaking portrait of one of the world’s most beloved and inventive comedians, Robin Williams, told largely through his own words. Celebrates what he brought to comedy and to the culture at large, from the wild days of late-1970s L.A. to his death in 2014.