Stories From The Trenches
After a successful crowdfunding campaign and months and months of hard work, Marco Siedelmann’s book, Stories From The Trenches: Adventures in Making High Octane Hollywood Movies from Cannon Veteran Sam Firstenberg is now available for action movie fans around the globe.
The book is 755 pages and features stories from Sam Firstenberg, plus tons of photos from Sam’s personal collection. The book also contains more than 50 interviews with some of the people who worked with Sam during his directorial career including Michael Dudikoff, Lucinda Dickey and Keith Vitali.
You can read the official press release below:
Get ready for the one of the most action packed, most candid, and most explosive career-spanning interview books in cinematic history! Straight from the glory days of the the legendary Cannon Film Group comes STORIES FROM THE TRENCHES: Adventures in Making High Octane Hollywood Movies from Cannon Veteran Sam Firstenberg!
Sam Firstenberg is mostly recognized as one Cannon’s most important in-house directors during their outrageously successful heyday of the 1980’s. The journey of this interview collection starts even before he made his way to direct box office hits just like REVENGE OF THE NINJA, NINJA III: THE DOMINATION, BREAKIN’ II: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, and AMERICAN NINJA, amongst others.
The conversations in the book shed light on his origins and influences, including childhood memories, private biographical chapters, his years as a film student in Los Angeles, and his early work as an assistant director and technician for people like Menahem Golan, Charles Band, Ephraim Kishon, Boaz Davidson, and many more. The interviews are not chronological, but focus on every career-step, just as well as on every single movie Firstenberg ever directed until his retirement in 2002.
His memories about all the projects he was involved in are packed with adventurous stories about ninjas and breakdancers, about directing action entertainment in exotic countries, and about working with numerous movie stars, among them Michael Dudikoff, Eric Roberts, John-Rhys Davies, Hulk Hogan, Grace Jones, Nick Cassavetes, Zachi Noy, Richard Roundtree, Steve James, Sho Kosugi, and many more.
STORIES FROM THE TRENCHES is also a book about the early film industry in Israel, the Hollywood star system and the no longer existing mid-budget movies. It’s about the home video boom, about the ascension and the decline of Cannon, but it also discusses the rules and traditions of the industry. Other topics are the practical way a film was put together in that era, the technical changes through the years, the different film market situation compared to nowadays – and last, but not least, it’s an inside story about the early years of Nu Image and how Avi Lerner’s companies Nu Image and Millennium continued the spirit of Cannon, but under different circumstances and times.
As I mentioned on a recent episode of The Bulletproof Podcast, as one of the crowdfunding backers I was fortunate enough to receive my copy of the book a few weeks ago and having just scratched the surface of the book I can say it is an absolute must for fans of Cannon films. But I am not the only one raving about this book…
“If you’re a fan of Firstenberg’s work which includes everything from Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja III: The Domination, American Ninja, Avenging Force, Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo, American Samurai and more, or the Cannon Films machine or just action movie making in general, it’s a hell of a good read!”
Mike Leeder (Impact Magazine)
“This book is a great achievement for the action film genre!”
Isaac Florentine (Director, Undisputed 2)
Stories From The Trenches is available on Amazon!
