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Who Killed Hollywood? : And Put The Tarnish On Tinseltown |
List Price: $24.95
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Reviews |
Description:
In a period when Hollywood is not just doing okay but has become positively enthroned as justification for the octoplex, what is Peter Bart asking, exactly? In this guileful series of columns first published in the pages of Variety and GQ, Bart paints his bull's-eye on the new cipher-titans of Tinseltown--the media megalopolises, the conglomerate tycoons, the deal-making super-agents and, oh yeah, the $20 million actors: "Given the mania to develop new Disney Worlds," he writes, "movies themselves have all too often become special-effects odysseys devoid of personal story or point of view." Bart has bite too. With a history as an executive at Paramount and Sony, where he put together movies such as The Godfather and Chinatown, he has a Rolodex that includes truth-tellers like Terrence Malick and Robert Towne and insider scoops galore. So whether he's analyzing the "golden gut" that tells Robert Redford what script to choose, describing Warren Beatty's care with words even during "sexual congress," rehashing the Eisner-Katzenberg show, or writing acid memos to Joe "Basic Instinct" Eszterhas, Bart's credentials are undeniable. Still, the really good stuff is buried in stories of lesser-knowns like David Begelman and his protégé William Tennant, who crashed and burned, respectively, on a check-forging scandal and cocaine addiction. Tennant's tale is a weird Hollywood epic. At one point he'd risen to being Roman Polanski's agent, but his addiction lowered him to earning his bones selling sandwiches off a catering truck. Years later Bart saw him rise again, via video sales in London, which made him millions. "This is a business book," he concludes coldly of Michael Eisner's autobiography. Same goes for Who Killed Hollywood--but with the difference that this book combines juicy gossip with that rare thing, a moral backbone. --Lyall Bush
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