Gallery Books to Publish Memoir by Award-Winning Director and Producer Ed Zwick
NEW YORK, June 12—Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., will publish HITS, FLOPS, AND OTHER ILLUSIONS: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood by Ed Zwick, the director of Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai, Legends of the Fall, About Last Night, and Glory, creator of the television show thirtysomething, and executive producer of My So-Called Life on February 13, 2024.
“I tell stories for a living,” notes Zwick in the opening line of his book, HITS, FLOPS, AND OTHER ILLUSIONS, as he takes readers on a spirited, behind-the-scenes odyssey, sharing tales of intimate working relationships with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. By turns nostalgic and warm, dishy and aggrieved, and just as often laugh-out-loud funny, Zwick’s heartfelt career memoir is a layered love letter to showbusiness and the “beautiful, magical, terrified creatures” who make it happen.
Zwick’s long career has spanned four decades of directing, producing and writing projects that have collectively received eighteen Academy Award nominations (seven wins) and sixty-seven Emmy nominations (twenty-two wins). In HITS, FLOPS, AND OTHER ILLUSIONS he recalls the head spinning ascents and vertiginous plunges that define a career in Hollywood – with equal emphasis on craft, luck, and the contributions of his creative partner Marshall Herskovitz – as he describes the intense collaborations he’s shared with such actors as Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise, Clare Danes, Leonardo DiCaprio, Annette Bening, Matt Damon, and many others as they work together to discover the small truths, unexpected secrets and necessary vulnerabilities that lead an actor to realize their character in full.
About writing his memoir, Zwick says, “Even as the business undergoes yet another seismic shift, those of us who do the actual work (as opposed to those who hoard the lion’s share of its profits) have no choice but to keep going. This book is my attempt to understand that impulse. And to celebrate it in all its absurdities, ambivalences, and grace.”
Written mostly with love, sometimes with rue, this memoir is also a meditation on working — an appreciation of its mysteries, as well as the occasionally unseemly, often comic verities of creating film and television.
Gallery Books editor Max Meltzer acquired world rights including audio from Gail Ross at Ross Yoon, newly at WME, John Burnham at Atlas Artists, and Bob Bookman.
Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, is an imprint dedicated to publishing a variety of must-read books on a wide array of topics. Launched in 2010, Gallery is designed to showcase established voices and to introduce emerging new ones—in both fiction and nonfiction. Gallery Books is the publisher of Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci, The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish, Where Tomorrow’s Aren’t Promised by Carmelo Anthony, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer, The It Girl by Ruth Ware and Anna: The Biography by Amy Odell.
Simon & Schuster, a Paramount company, is a global leader in general interest publishing, dedicated to providing the best in fiction and nonfiction for readers of all ages, and in all printed, digital and audio formats. Its distinguished roster of authors includes many of the world’s most popular and widely recognized writers, and winners of the most prestigious literary honors and awards. It is home to numerous well-known imprints and divisions such as Simon & Schuster, Scribner, Atria Books, Gallery Books, Adams Media, Avid Reader Press, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing and Simon & Schuster Audio and international companies in Australia, Canada, India and the United Kingdom, and proudly brings the works of its authors to readers in more than 200 countries and territories.
CONTACT:
Jennifer Robinson
Vice President & Executive Publicist
jennifer.robinson@simonandschuster.com