When New Yorker staff writer Lillian Ross heard that John Huston was planning to make a film of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, she decided she would follow the movie's progress "in order to learn whatever I might learn about the American motion-picture industry." In the spring of 1950, Huston visited New York and called the young writer to say that progress was not smooth: "Come on over, kid, and I'll tell you all about the hassle.".

Lillian Ross's marvelous description of John Huston's work and the film's subsequent fate at the hands of its studio bosses was first published as a serial in The New Yorker and was released in book form as Picture in 1952. It remains the best account of the inner workings of Hollywood.