Film Flam : Essays on Hollywood [Paperback]

Larry McMurtry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 28, 2001

A noted screenwriter himself, Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry knows his Hollywood. In Film Flam, he takes a funny, original, and penetrating look at the movie industry and gives us the truth about the moguls, fads, flops, and box-office hits.

With successful movies and television miniseries made from several of his novels -- Terms of Endearment, The Last Picture Show, Lonesome Dove, and Hud -- McMurtry writes with an outsider's irony of the industry and an insider's experience. In these essays he illuminates the plight of the screenwriter, cuts a clean, often hilarious path through the excesses of film reviewing, and takes on some of the worst trends in the industry: the decline of the Western, the disappearance of love in the movies, and the quality of the stars themselves.

From his recollections of the day Hollywood entered McMurtry's own life as he ate meat loaf in Fort Worth to the pleasures he found in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Film Flam is one of the best books ever written about Hollywood.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Perhaps timed to piggyback on acclaim for McMurtry's latest novel Texasville, this stale collection of magazine pieces is a scam, all right, but it falls short of its titular pun only because the author demonstrates little of the delight in his art expected from the true con artist. McMurtry takes his self-effacing tone to an irritating extreme, claiming that he can't remember writing these pieces (most of which he churned out during a stint as a columnist at American Film in the mid-'70s) and that he would have forgotten them entirely if someone hadn't had the idea of putting them into a book. No wonderthere is little memorable here, other than the few efforts that actually live up to the subtitle, in which McMurtry observes the peculiar role of the writer in an industry that values images more than words. McMurtry's novels have served as the basis for some of Hollywood's finest films of the last decades, including Hud (based on his first novel, Horseman, Pass By The Last Picture Show (whose screenplay he co-wrote with director Peter Bogdanovich) and Terms of Endearment, so he is in a choice position to examine the writer's place in the Hollywood machine. Unfortunately, he strays from the material that he is uniquely equipped to handle and wanders uncompellingly into film criticism, book reviews and digressions about column writing. It is an odyssey easily forgotten.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this slim volume of essays, novelist/screenwriter McMurtry offers his refreshing views on movies, both junk (yea) and art (nay), Hollywood and its populace, the process of filmmaking, the power of money, film audiences, and critics. His experiences and thoughts on screenwriting, adapting novels, adapting one's own novels (a bad idea), and on the craft itself contain more useful information than a pile of how-to manuals. As in his novels, McMurtry is by turns witty, acerbic, and thoughtful; the pieces are surprisingly stylish in that the bulk of them (17 out of 21) were spun off on monthly deadlines (for American Film magazine, in 1975-77), and McMurtry admittedly can't remember writing most of them. A fine collection, from a fine writer.David Bartholomew,
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (August 28, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743216245
• ISBN-13: 978-0743216241
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,036,766 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Larry McMurtry is the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. His other works include two collections of essays, three memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, including the coauthorship of Brokeback Mountain, for which he received an Academy Award. His most recent novel, When the Light Goes, is available from Simon & Schuster. He lives in Archer City, Texas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good essays but not what I expected, November 25, 2008

By 

Robert Tucker - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Film Flam : Essays on Hollywood (Paperback)

It is difficult to review a book that is actually a collection of essays of different types, each with a unique but loosely connected subject matter and purpose (although one might argue that the disparity itself demonstrates a lack of congruity and goal-direction). Yet, taken as a whole Film-Flam does have as its unifying them or centrality a general negativity toward Hollywood and the film industry in general. I have mentioned before that in many ways I prefer McMurtry's non-fiction over fiction, with its definite opinions and truthfulness about people. Film Flam, unlike McMurty's other books, has a depth of thought, morality, and an unusually complex vocabulary that makes it a more challenging read than expected.

I especially enjoyed the essays on books turned into movies, and I think I enjoyed (the verdict may still be out on this) the essay on his weekend at the movies at Times Square. Especially intriguing were the erudite moments of philosophy on art and truth and the sad, but also rather humorous descriptions of the banal activities found in Hollywood. Ironically, McMurtry remains fairly self-critical of his own books, a humility not often found among popular writers, and somewhat pragmatic about his own place in the literary world. These elements jump out pretty regularly in Film Flam, making it a kind of brutal and honest diatribe of movies and people's reactions to them.

What I am wrestling with is why I didn't really enjoy this book that much? What should and could have been an opportunity to reveal secrets of the film industry, and a hard, edgy realistic look at exploitation of writers, actors, producers, and audience members seemed to be simply a series of McMurtry opinions that while fascinating in their own right, have a quality of disconnect without profundity.

Still, in spite of its disappointments, it is worth reading and rather fun in a dark, cynical way.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Film Flam - Excellent Value, September 10, 2008

By 

Derek Wilkinson "Second Edition" (Tura Beach Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Film Flam : Essays on Hollywood (Paperback)

Very pleased with purchase. Many thanks and hope to do business with you again in the future.
Regards
Derek Wilkinson