To prepare his cast before making the film The Three Burials of Melquidas Estrada, Tommy Lee Jones had them read The Stranger by Albert Camus since the theme of alienation is central to both that book and the film they were about to shoot. Before he commenced filming the movie Heat, director Michael Mann gave the cast copies of the book No Beast So Fierce by former convicted felon turned author Edward Bunker about a recently paroled convict and his attempt to go straight. In my senior year of college, before we began rehearsals of the one-act play I wrote “Show Me Your Tong Po,” I invited the cast over to my house to watch Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor for similar reasons as those directors.