Patton Oswalt's 6 favorite books about movies and moviemaking

The actor and stand-up comedian recommends works by Roger Ebert, Roger Evans, and more

The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan by Jimmy McDonough (out of print). Andy Milligan, a below Z-grade exploitation filmmaker, filmed a shadow autobiography of his life and hid it in the disposable, grind-house trash he churned out in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. John Waters once talked about Milligan and The Ghastly One in this same space, asking the disturbing question, "Can a genius be untalented, too?"

Out of the Past: Adventures in Film Noir by Barry Gifford (University Press of Mississippi, $22). Gifford's 1988 collection of seemingly random reviews of movies from the film noir era is the best example of how films affect you personally — both in how you perceive them and how they make you look at your life.

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