The formula for Hollywood success has long baffled even its greatest visionaries. For every blockbuster there are countless flops. Directors, producers, and actors who achieve great success with one film often suffer abject humiliation on the next. After all, George Lucas may have created the Star Wars franchise, but he also created Howard the Duck. Now Peter Bart, the editor-in-chief of Variety, co-host of Sunday Morning Shootout, and the former studio executive whose hits include The Godfather and Rosemary’s Baby, presents a fascinating look at the hits that sizzle and the flops that fizzle.
In Boffo, Peter Bart reveals the backlot secrets behind the biggest hits and misses in both film and television: how movies with the biggest stars and budgets turned out to be bombs and how unknowns with no studio support overcame great adversity to make cinematic history. In so doing, Bart tells the history of pop culture itself. He looks at the mega successes of today, from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to the CSI phenomenon, the smashes of the past including Easy Rider, American Graffiti, and All in the Family, as well as the progenitor of all blockbusters, Birth of a Nation. Bart offers his signature straight-shooting analysis of the silk purses and the sows’ ears of the entertainment world.
