Joseph McBride (born August 9, 1947) is an American film historian, biographer, screenwriter, author and educator. He has written numerous books including biographies of notable film directors, a book on screenwriting, an investigative journalism book on the JFK assassination, and a memoir of the dark years in his life. He also serves as professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University. Career Early life and career Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, McBride grew up in the suburb of Wauwatosa. He attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and worked as a reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, before moving to California in 1973. Books McBride has published more than 20 books since 1968, including biographies of film directors Steven Spielberg (Steven Spielberg: A Biography, 1997, and published in translation in mainland China in 2012), Frank Capra (Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, 1992), Orson Welles (Orson Welles (1972), Orson Welles: Actor and Director (1977) and What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career (2006)), and John Ford (John Ford (with Michael Wilmington, 1974) and Searching for John Ford (2001)). McBride's interview book with Howard Hawks, Hawks on Hawks, was published in 1982. In 2012, he published a screenwriting manual, Writing in Pictures: Screenwriting Made (Mostly) Painless. In the book, McBride uses his adaptation of Jack London’s short story "To Build a Fire" to break down the steps necessary for a screenplay, such as research, treatments, and outlines. The book draws from his extensive teaching experience. In 2013, he published Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit, which was the result of McBride's 31-year investigation of the case. Later, in 2015, he published The Broken Places: A Memoir, which deals with his troubled childhood, his teenage breakdown, and his subsequent recovery. Columbia University Press published How Did Lubitsch Do It?, McBride's look at the career of filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch, in June 2018. In March 2019, Frankly: Unmasking Frank Capra was published by McBride. It recounts his legal battle with original publisher Knopf/Random House and Capra allies over publication of the biography Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, which was published by Simon & Schuster in 1992. His biography of Billy Wilder, Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge was published in 2021. Film and television McBride's screenwriting credits include the movies Rock 'n' Roll High