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Peter Bart, The Gross: The Hits, the Flops - The Summer That Ate Hollywood (St. Martin's Press, 1999) Published in paperback in 2000 by Griffin There is no better guide than Bart, the editor-in-chief of Variety and Daily Variety and a former studio executive, to Hollywood's dramatic summer of 1998, when Godzilla and Armageddon were the forecast hits but the brainier Saving Private Ryan, The Truman Show, and Bulworth became either unqualified hits or sleepers. As Bart explains in this fluid, sharp-eyed account of how the studios prepared for the summer's blockbusters and recouped after their expectations had faltered, the seemingly inconsequential There's Something About Mary garnered huge crowds, two asteroid movies were released but both had reasonable box office returns, Jim Carrey didn't do funny things in The Truman Show even though crowds lined up to see the movie, and Harrison Ford played opposite a (then) lesbian in Six Days, Seven Nights. Bart avows early on that he doesn't want to focus solely on "the 'suits'" and the business side of Hollywood but on the creative people who actually make the movies as well. Despite his protestations, though, the "dysfunctional economics of the movie industry" clearly fascinate Bart, and he cogently, clearly explains labyrinthine studio politics, personalities, and corporate thinking to a general readership. There is important analysis of the relatively new co-financing trend in Hollywood that limits a studio's financial risk (and has other implications.) An excess of unattributed quotes, the sudden singling-out of particular actors and creators for harsh rebuke, and an episodic, disjointed narrative mar the book. But for an insider's perspective on Hollywood, The Gross is a worthy read. The Boston Globe concluded that the book is "an intelligent and informed tale of a business based more on gambling than foresight." The New York Times, calling Bart "an awkward hybrid of goad and town crier," laments the fact that Bart doesn't come up with an alternative plan to the mega-blockbuster thinking that pervades Hollywood. MORE: Frontline Interview with Bart Infamous Amy Wallace profile of Bart in Los Angeles Magazine |
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