A transformative decade that witnessed the U.S. film industry's restructuring under the pressures of neoliberal globalization, the 1980s swept away the last remnants of Old and New Hollywood alike while preparing the ground for today's High Concept wasteland – thus goes an all too familiar tale of decline. The texts assembled in this volume tell a different, altogether more fitful and complex story about Reagan-era Hollywood, attuned to the struggles that went on behind and in front of the camera: interrupted careers, defiant last stands, paths not taken.

The book places particular emphasis on modes of realism from within the mainstream of U.S. popular cinema that resisted the tide of the times. The lexicon format, allowing for many perspectives and constellations while imposing none, encourages the reader to make their own connections, drawing out parallel histories that restore a sense of possibility to the canonical course of film history. From forgotten masters to minor works of the greats, from the defining actors of the decade to its definitive genres, from resistant independents to the resistible rise of the multinational corporation: the Real Eighties await rediscovery.