Sidney Lumet

Directed 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and Network, and shot most of them in New York because he refused to move to Los Angeles.

Making Movies is the best book about how a film is actually assembled, written from the chair rather than from theory: how a lens choice makes a room feel, why he rehearsed for two weeks before shooting, what a producer does, how sound is built.

Lumet came out of live television and worked fast. He is honest in it about the films that failed and why, which is what separates the book from a memoir.