STEVE STARKEY

Breaking & Entering

The Education of a Film Producer

“A breezy, plainspoken memoir with film trivia galore.” - Kirkus Reviews

How does one learn to become a film producer? Steve Starkey followed a circuitous and rather unlikely path that started with no job prospects or film-related experience that eventually led to working alongside some of the most influential directors of his generation, including George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis. A witty and engaging storyteller, Starkey recounts how he broke into the film business by sneaking onto the lot at Universal Studios and landed his first job as an electrician doing set lighting.  He then relocated to the Bay Area and was hired as a production assistant at Lucasfilm, a small but growing company, fresh off of Star Wars.  While running errands, he moonlighted in the editing room and became the assistant editor on both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. 

His stories about being an associate producer on Amblin’s TV series Amazing Stories offer insights into the directorial styles of Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, and many others. As an associate producer of the Robert Zemeckis films Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Back to the Future II and III, Starkey and a vast talented crew of artists and technicians tackled and ultimately perfected groundbreaking techniques to create movies that changed cinema. After prepping Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, Starkey was asked by Robert Zemeckis to produce the film Death Becomes Her, the first in a long line of popular and award-winning features that they made together.

Entertaining and enlightening, Breaking & Entering is a book about taking risks, being resourceful, working hard, working harder, and pursuing a dream. It’s a book for anyone who ever sat through a movie and wondered how in the world could I get a job as a film producer.

KIRKUS Review:
Starkey’s first brush with Hollywood is a story fit for, well, Hollywood: Picture a young man with no film experience or connections sauntering onto a backlot of Universal Studios looking for work. Instead of getting kicked out for trespassing, he rises on the film-world ladder and was hired by none other than eminent director Bob Zemeckis. Starkey recounts this and other dinner party–worthy anecdotes in his lighthearted memoir. The author seems to share these idiosyncratic stories in the service of a simple, universal message: To succeed in a craft (in the film industry or elsewhere), one needs to learn that craft—and learning takes time. (“My education in the film industry lasted for fifteen years before I became a producer.”) Starkey’s story is one of hard work and a healthy dose of luck readers of all stripes—particularly film nerds with a yen for big-name directors like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese—are likely to be inspired (or at least charmed) by this industry vet’s patient journey.