Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops [Paperback]

James Robert Parish (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0470098295 | ISBN-13: 978-0470098295

A longtime industry insider and acclaimed Hollywood historian goes behind the scenes to tell the stories of 15 of the most spectacular movie megaflops of the past 50 years, such as Cleopatra, The Cotton Club, and Waterworld. He recounts, in every gory detail, how enormous hubris, unbridled ambition, artistic hauteur, and bad business sense on the parts of Tinsel Town wheeler-dealers and superstars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Clint Eastwood, and Francis Ford Coppola, conspired to engender some of the worst films ever.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A film hit or miss often forms two sides of the same coin, notes veteran entertainment observer Parish (The Hollywood Book of Scandals) in this gleefully readable, well-researched study of hubris in Hollywood. Parish's 15 choice box-office busts since 1963's Cleopatra demonstrate how "the combination of ill-matched personalities and tangled situations can result in chaos during the making of a must-succeed, extremely costly Hollywood feature." Parish's criteria in choosing his stinkers include the toppling of major stars (such as Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1993's frenzied Last Action Hero); wild overspending and lavish promotion that don't translate into a noteworthy product (Paramount's extravagant 1969 Paint Your Wagon); and a shaky idea that would never have taken off if not for the overweening enthusiasm of a big name, e.g., Warren Beatty's protracted albatross, Town and Country (2001). Occasionally, Parish's insider snooping lends some intriguing tidbits, such as the literary history behind the making of Merchant Ivory's 1975 The Wild Party (starring Raquel Welch) and director Elaine May's costly detail obsession as evidenced by the bulldozing of Moroccan sand dunes for the Beatty-Hoffman loser Ishtar (1987). While most of these film disasters have been well documented elsewhere, Parish depicts an industry in harrowing transition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Hollywood is notorious for big-budget bombs, but Parish points out that of late the amounts of money shoveled into blockbusters have become so excessive as to gin up public interest in fiduciary misadventure for its own sake. Parameters for inclusion among his chosen legends of Tinseltown profligacy are the involvement of stars, moviemakers "becoming so crassly and blatantly intent on turning out a hit picture that nothing else seems to matter," and "the degree of entertainment value in the finished product." Applying these criteria, Parish amassed a roster of turkeys that he discusses with relative restraint, focusing more on offscreen concerns than onscreen missteps. Showgirls, which set the cause of gratuitous onscreen nudity back immeasurably, takes the most sustained shredding. Sadly, the emphasis on huge budgets precludes discussion of many older failures; only Cleopatra, The Chase, and Paint Your Wagon represent pre-1970 fiscal foolishness. Several recent megastinkers don't rate because they've already been extensively pilloried in print. Despite its lack of historical perspective and comprehensiveness, a satisfying flaming of overstuffed cinematic showboats. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (February 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470098295
• ISBN-13: 978-0470098295
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #692,819 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I have the privilege of doing work (i.e., writing books) that I thoroughly enjoy, so it is no real chore to be active on my book projects seven days a week. Doing research is much like being a detective, bringing as many elements of the subject's life to light and assessing how each piece fits into the puzzle of a celebrity's biography.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Murdered: Who Killed 14 Films?, May 29, 2006

By 

Mart Martin "Mart Martin" (San Francisco CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops (Hardcover)

Ever wonder why some of those Hollywood extravaganzas touted in advance as "sure-fire hits" turn into abysmal flops? James Robert Parish's new book "Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops" details why. Parish turns his keen eye and strong writing style on how over-paid, egotistical stars, meddling studio execs, directors whose vision has the opaque clarity of a tennis ball, and just plain "bad-timing" can sink a strongly anticipated film faster than the Titanic went down. In Fiasco, Parish has chosen fourteen Titanics to muse upon. Yes, Cleopatra, The Cotton Club, Ishtar and Battlefield Earth are included, along with some you may have missed, like The Wild Party - a thorough miss by the usually highly regarded Merchant-Ivory duo - and Shanghai Surprise, another Madonna film crucifixion, accompanied in her writhing agony by then-hubby Sean Penn.

Don't misunderstand me; Parish words are written more in sorrow than in anger. He truly loves Hollywood, as his many other books attest. But Parish does not like the film colony's big messes, and he rakes all the partners in these fourteen disasters over the coals for their participation in foisting such abominations off on the public. Good for him! Parish is an excellent writer, and there are juicy tidbits in almost every sentence: lots of behind the scenes drama; warning signs ignored; egos stroked when they should have been squashed. Personally, I've seen all fourteen of these films and I already knew each one was a disaster. Some of them are legendary, so it was hard not to be aware of them. But I never knew the "back-story" on any of the films: exactly what made it mis-fire so badly. Viewing most of these films is like arriving at the scene of a murder; you can see the victim, but have no clue as to who committed the murder and what was the motive. Thanks to Parish's Fiasco, you not only discover the murderers - the slaughter of all of these films was assisted by more than one person, rest assured - you also understand their motives, which were misguided in all cases.

Another excellent book by James Robert Parish. Fun to read; informative; well-written; and actually a bit sad, given that all the mistakes could have been so easily avoided.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why Films Flopped, March 2, 2006

By 

A. M. Sulkin (wayne, nj USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops (Hardcover)

Parish does a nice job reviewing and discussing the reasons behind some of Hollywood's big budget flops and disasters. By limiting the scope to movies during the past few decades, only, kicking off with the infamous Cleopatra (the Liz and Dick version), Parish bypasses ill-begotten films from the classic studio days when budgets were less than some of today's music videos.

Although some of the films in the book were not outright disasters based on total revenue returns including worldwide grosses and DVDs, they all failed to live up to expectations, excluding the films for which there were never expectations, e.g., Madonna/Penn's Shanghai Gesture. Packaging the Kevin Costner misfires - Waterworld and The Postman - is a nice touch, and I'm sure Parish could have included a few more of Warren Beatty's big budget disappointments, but the behind the scenes goings on for Ishtar and Town and Country are more than sufficient to illustrate the downside of Beatty's total control complex. Parish wisely leaves out such infamous films as Heaven's Gate that are written about in detail elsewhere.

Although many of the stories included in the book should be familiar to most film enthusiasts, the overall package should provide more than a few chuckles over the incompetency and infighting associated with the film industry. As William Goldman famously observed about the movies, no one knows anything and this book certainly proves it.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Fiasco", May 24, 2006

By 

Rm31d "rm31d" (Columbus, OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops (Hardcover)

James Robert Parish's latest work is unfinished: the absences of such grand Hollywood follies as the original "Dr. Dolittle," "Howard the Duck," "Hudson Hawk," and The John Frankenheimer version of "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (a trial to make and a trial to sit through) are deeply felt. "Heaven's Gate" was excluded because Bach's "Final Cut" had already gone over it, but is a study of follywood's worst really complete without it? The torturous shoot of "Waterworld" is only briefly discussed to fit it together with "The Postman;" I felt pretty cheated. Yet the book is engagingly written, and what's there is rather dishy. Kevin Costner's laid-back demeanor belies his planet-moving ego; when "Team America" was slaughtering celebrities left and right, they should have included him. Watching Robert Evan's dream project "The Cotton Club" falling in on itself before his eyes can win your empathy, while the story behind "Last Action Hero" reads like a script for a farce ( the movie was thought to be able to give "Jurassic Park" stiff box office competition, yet until they were topped by "Cutthroat Island" and "Titanic," respectively, the industry's biggest bomb and biggest moneymaker were released within a week of one other). Only "cleopatra's" budget is adjusted for inflation, breaking out to the equivilant of 260 million of today's dollars, which is a shame because it could help give perspective of how badly the others fared. But what's there is priceless. The only complaint I could make is that there isn't enough of it. Unlike many of the films here (or any of them, really) this book deserves a sequel.