Joseph McBride is an American film historian, biographer, screenwriter and Associate Professor of Cinema at San Francisco State University.
McBride has published 15 books including acclaimed biographies of Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, and John Ford. His most recent work is an updated edition of his 1997 book Steven Spielberg: A Biography. The new edition was published in 2011 by the University Press of Mississippi which also reprinted his biographies Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (1992; 2000) and Searching for John Ford (2001). His other books include: Orson Welles (1972; 1996), Hawks on Hawks (1982), The Book of Movie Lists: An Offbeat, Provocative Collection of the Best and Worst of Everything in Movies (1999), and What Ever to Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career (2006). His next book is Writing in Pictures: Screenwriting Made (Mostly) Painless, which will be published in 2012.
His screenwritings include the movie Rock 'n' Roll High School and five American Film Institute Life Achievement Award specials on CBS-TV dealing with Fred Astaire, Frank Capra, Lillian Gish, John Huston, and James Stewart.
In 1983, McBride received the Writers Guild of America Award for the American Film Institute Salute to John Huston. He further received two Emmy nominations.
A documentary feature on McBride's life and work, Behind the Curtain: Joseph McBride on Writing Film History, written and directed by Hart Perez, had its world debut on April 10, 2011 at the Tiburon International Film Festival in Tiburon, Marin County, CA.