What Just Happened?
Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
This film producer’s honest, hilarious behind-the-scenes memoir “details the planning, handholding and power games involved in making movies” (Publishers Weekly).
Art Linson has had a hand in producing some of the most unforgettable films of the past half-century—Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Untouchables, Fight Club—and has worked with some of America’s finest actors and directors. In what the Los Angeles Times calls “a breezy anatomy of ritual humiliation,” his memoir gives us a brutally honest, funny, and comprehensive tour through the horrors of Hollywood.
“Art Linson puts a film freak exactly where he or she wants to be: in the Fox screening room during the studio brass’s horrified first look at Fight Club…Linson gives readers a glimpse into a bizarre world where ‘It’s good’ is the absolute worst thing you can say about a movie.” —Entertainment Weekly
“A hoot.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
Includes a new interview of Art Linson by Peter Biskind and the screenplay of the film version
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this latest addition to the spate of Hollywood tell-alls, the producer of The Untouchables and Fight Club details the planning, handholding and power games involved in making movies. Each film brings its own problems, which Linson recounts in sardonic discussions of his own less-than-boffo features, including Pushing Tin and Great Expectations (the 1998 remake). His account of The Edge is particularly remarkable, as it demonstrates the difficulties of putting together a deal (De Niro had a problem with fighting a fake bear), placating the stars (Alec Baldwin didn't want to shave his beard) and finding a title (The Bear and the Brain was a contender, as was the screenwriter's choice, Bookworm). Linson's insights into why some movies fail are revealing: no one wants to see John Cusack naked (which explains Pushing Tin), for one, and you don't stand a chance if an earlier, bigger release (Titanic) uses the same erotic scene as your movie (Great Expectations). To hear Linson tell it, it's a jungle out there, with loads of fussy, na ve, brazen and unlucky monkeys swinging from the trees. He reels out one conversation after another, unearthing the bar banter, telephone exchanges and studio t te- -t tes that reveal just how much quibbling goes on behind the scenes. Although Linson's book lacks the polish of William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade or the all-around savvy of Peter Bart and Peter Guber's Shoot Out, it provides a decent bird's-eye view on what a producer actually does and the pressures it involves.
