Customer Reviews

George Lucas's Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success

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Susan Hayward as Margo Channing in the 1950 hit "All About Eve"? Clint Eastwood as one of the two alien-fighting "Men in Black"? Neither of these castings actually happened, but they almost did. These are just two of the seemingly zillions of fascinating, interesting tidbits found among the pages of this massive, detailed look at 300 "blockbusting" films.

The 300 films profiled were picked by George Lucas. Arranged by decade, from the early silents to present-day (and including potential future trends), the information includes an overall look at each decade -- the trends, the culture, the innovations, the filmmakers -- and then profiles a number of films that have stood the test of time from each period. Charts, graphs and tables supplement the material, offering samplings of studio mogul and stars' salaries, film budgets, celebrities' popularity and more, with financial info presented both in original dollar figures as well as figures adjusted to 2005 levels. Amazing stuff.

Also included are easy-to-understand sidebars, like the section explaining the various "widescreen" formats (CinemaScope vs. VistaVision vs. Cinerama, etc.; something I always found confusing, until now), and interesting profiles on such popular luminaries as Alfred Hitchcock, the Marx Brothers, Walt Disney, and others. A glorious look at movies, movies, and more movies. If you make them, finance them, write them, or simply LOVE them, this 975-page book is a great, almost overwhelming look at some of the greatest movie "blockbusters" of the silver screen. Highly recommended.

My husband saw George Lucas being interviewed about this book on John Stewart and really wanted it. I ordered it for him and he was even more delighted than he thought he would be. It's an easy lay out to dip in and out of, you grab a page and it gives you so much juicy and interesting information about the making of that particular movie. It's great for movie buffs and for those who like to know background stories. It makes a great gift, esp for those hard to buy for men, if he's mildly interested in the background of how movies are made, then get it and they won't be disappointed.

"Blockbusting" is an in-depth look at how 300 of the biggest and best movies made it to the screen. The material covering the early years of the industry is particularly interesting. At least one movie/year, from 1913 through 2005, is included. The first movie, 'Monkeyshines,' was made by Edison's assistant William Dickson, was 5 seconds long, and used Eastman's flexible roll film. Edison decided the technology didn't produce a strong enough image to project on a big screen and exhibited it in a coin-operated upright cabinet with a peephole. After some further experiments, Dickson settled on 35 mm wide film. The viewing machines cost $250, and a view was 5 cents. In 1895 Dickson left Edison and began filming with Mary Pickford and the Gish sisters.

'The Great Train Robbery' (1903) was one of the first era of film-making most memorable products. It ran 12 minutes, cost $800, and was completed in 4 days. Films at that time were sold by the foot, and ran until audiences lost interest or the film was in tatters and no longer usable. By 1907, however, there were 150 movie exchanges that rented movies for one-fifth the purchase price. New releases were shipped out ahead of time so they could be promoted nationally and open on the same day across the country. Block booking soon followed - this required theaters to take at least one print of every movie the producer made. French movies at the time were considered better by many - even prior to 1908 the French were offering color, and by 1909 they introduced newsreels covering events around the world. Movie rates rose to a dime in 1909. The major film producers of the future, Warner, Loew, Mayer, all started as New York city film exhibitors on or before 1907.

Edison's General Film Company took films costing about $700 to make and made $7,000+ from each one - Edison had exclusive deals with Eastman Kodak and filmmakers. Distributors had to sell themselves to Edison's firm to participate, or rely solely on European films. Turns out Edison was both a great inventor and hard-nosed businessman as well. However, lawsuits in 1912 broke up Edison's monopolies. In 1919 Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin joined Douglas Fairbanks and others to form United Artists, which controlled all aspects of movie-making and distribution. The decade's leading film was 'The Birth of the Nation' (1915), covering the U.S. after the Civil War. Producers of that time refused to put the names of actors on each movie, not wanting them to become more famous and then demand more money. This stratagem was undone by astute theater operators that posted the stars' names outside to increase draw. Movie star cults and movie magazines followed.

The first Academy Awards was held in 1929 as a private dinner, the following year it was broadcast on radio, and went live on TV in 1953.

Warner Bros. was first with sound (1926), but theaters had to synchronize the separate audio and video systems; many theater-goers were not happy with its replacing a regular orchestra - seen as inferior. Fox followed the next year with an improved system that was incorporated into its Movietone News. The first showing - Lindbergh taking off for Paris, brought a ten-minute standing ovation. By 1928, Fox was on to making 'tallkies.'

Color didn't become common until the 1950s - differentiation from newly introduced TV was a major motivation. Fox, and Darryl Zanuck, had been the major exception regarding use of color up to that point.

Early theaters (eg. 1917) were cooled by fans blowing air over blocks of ice - expensive and not very effective. Thus, theaters in warm climates closed for the summer season. The 1930s brought the spread of newer cooling systems, adapted from those used in meat-packing plants. Theaters became a respite from the heat, and the movie content less important. Revenues were further boosted by showing double-features, candy and soda sales, special promotions and give-aways, and the construction of elaborate facilities. The 1940s, however, brought a government-forced separation of movie production from distribution. The 1950s then brought the licensing of movies for TV broadcasting.

President Roosevelt formed the Office of War Information (OWI) in 1941 to sell the war and American propaganda. The intent was to portray a united America (workers and employers) making joint sacrifices for the war effort. Combat films were supposed to include a multi-ethnic cast, and all allies (including Russia) shown favorably. Compliance was not legally mandated, but aided by the fact that many movie moguls at the time were immigrant Jews who were deeply disturbed by events in Europe. Another favorable factor was that the OWI controlled films shown in liberated countries and could hold ticket revenues until it felt a studio was 'behaving.' Regardless, Paramount didn't comply - the only major studio.

Walt Disney came into prominence during these same years - his 'The Three Little Pigs' ran 8 minutes and was a smash hit. Full-length 'Snow White' took four years, was also a hit, but required mortgaging almost everything he had.

Today's innovations include switching to digital (clearer, easier to distribute), and the introduction of 3-D.

Lots of interesting movie trivia. A great read for someone who really likes to know the back story about some of the most popular movies of all time. I wonder how much George Lucas had to do with this book, but I still like it.

I love Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Young Indy TV series and the original Star Wars movies, especially The Empire Strikes Back, and I was excited to hear that George Lucas had written a movie book. It turns out that George only wrote a one page preface, but he did apparently choose the 300 key movies covered.

Unfortunately, Alex Ben Block who edited Blockbusting and wrote most of the text is a godawful writer. At his best, he's straightforward and plain, but his best doesn't happen too often. The snarls he gets himself into sometimes make it difficult to understand what he's trying to tell us, and what he's trying to tell us in the one page alloted to each film is rarely insightful or meaningful, often pointless, and sometimes ridiculous.

In his discussion of Mutiny on the Bounty for instance, he tells us that the studio was nervous about the project because of "the lack of important women's roles"(among other reasons). He then goes on to say that Gable didn't want to do the film, but was talked into it by a producer "who pointed out that he would have the key romantic role." This is ridiculous on its face, as Gable always had the key romantic role by this stage in his career, and of course, the romantic role in Mutiny in the Bounty is, as the studio said, relatively unimportant,in any case. Whatever Gable's reasons for doing the picture, clearly, this nonesense has nothing to do with them.

In a book designed mainly as a reference work, it's disheartening to find careless mistakes such as confusing Robert Montgomery and George Montgomery, identifying the original version of State Fair as a musical in the unattractively designed standard format page under genre, and telling us that when Irving Thalberg died "he left behind many movie projects, including oversight of the highly successful comedy Animal Crackers." That's a very odd way to characterize Thalberg's accomplishments, even if he had supervised Animal Crackers, but of course he didn't. One assumes Block meant A Night at the Opera.

Going back to Mutiny on the Bounty, Block makes a point of saying that it was the first remake to win a best picture Oscar, citing In the Wake of the Bounty, released in 1933 as the original. This is a very questionable distortion, especially since Blockbusting is almost wholly concerned with American movies, and In the Wake of the Bounty was a little seen, barely professional Australian picture.

A final disappointment is the system used to calculate adjusted box office and production figures for the films. This is an area in which Blockbusting could have been really useful, but I can't understand the comments in the Notes to the Reader section which tell me that the difference between ticket prices and the Consumer Price Index result in Little Women's production adjustment being 1 million = 15 million in 2005 dollars, while the box ofiice revenue for the same film tells me that 5.1 million = 142.4 million in the same 2005 dollars. Aren't dollars, dollars in this book? I'd love to know how many people actually saw the chosen films based on ticket prices divided into total box office revenue, but since no effort is made to do this, I'm confused about the saliency of ticket prices to the adjusted revenue calculations.

In sum, this book is absolutely awful.The information is skimpy, frequently irrelevant, and generally untrustworthy. The writing is sophomore college level, and I'm insulting many fine sophomore writers when I say that.

What a disappointment!

Lansing Sexton

I bought this book, and one of the first movies I looked up had a glaring mistake. The movie "The Sting" lists Robert Redford as winning the Best Actor award. He didn't win it that year, or any other year. I haven't been through the whole book to know if that was a fluke, or one of many. But how could a mistake like that go unoticed?

What also bothered me was the ommission of several movies I was hoping to read up on. For instance, Sylvester Stallone was in several of the biggest blockbusters on the 1980's, and some were culteral icons. And not ONE is included. Neither is Die Hard, which really changed the way action movies were made. Yet several small, forgotten movies are highlighted.

It's matter of where your tastes lie, and ome may love the book. But I expected more... and certainly more proof reading.

Also, all figures in the book are adjusted to 2005 numbers, yet the book was just realeased in 2010. I don't get it!

Well, this is a 900 page book and my intention is to write a full review when I've gotten through it all. My question about it is whether it is really useful as an introduction to film history, some sort of basic text, and my preliminary answer is, no. But I'll explain that in a longer note.

I am writing this now, because I've just run across a remarkable piece of "information," that I'd never heard before, but is firmly asserted, that an earlier film version -- earlier than the John Ford film, starring Victor McLaglen -- of Liam O'Flaherty's play, "The Informer," was made in England in 1929, and starred (!) Victor's brother, Cyril McLaglen. Whoa! I never knew that.

Well, I looked it up in the IMDb, and it had no such information, listing instead a cast starring Lars Hanson. Cyril McLaglen's IMDb credits do not mention "The Informer." I Googled the elements and found an easy dozen respectable sources telling the same tale, that Cyril had starred in a 1929 version, including a piece in the NY Times (NOT the original review.) Well, I went a little further and found a note in the Times from 1929, "London Film Notes," which describes the film and lays particular emphasis on its Swedish star, Lars Hanson.

So there you go. Maybe the writer (Alex Ben Block) shouldn't be taken too greatly to task for his bobble, since it's a story of some broad currency, but it seems to be: UNTRUE. And so we can be forgiven for staring hard at the books other "interesting" assertions.

This remarkable reference is just what students of the film industry have always needed. Published under the imprint of George Lucas Books, it is a compilation of 300 films that have made an impact on the business of film production over the decades. Be aware that this is not a book for film fans who want information on those films that are termed 'blockbusters' but a guide to understanding what factors have contributed to the industry's ability to make or loss money on select films. Each decade contains a lengthy description of the cultural, economic, and technical factors that contributed to the business of movie making, an insider's take on key films produced, and a breakdown of costs with many other details. Obviously for an almost 1,000 page volume filled with millions of facts, there are bound to be some errors, but none are significant, nor are there any that cannot be fixed in future editions. The volume end with 2005 data because the editors did not want to include any more unreliable data then necessary (a real problem in data collection for the industry over the years), however, additional and more current data is available on the book's website. The films contained were selected by George Lucas who wrote the preface to the book along with a foreword by Francis Ford Coppola. The main text is a collaborative effort by over 18 film writers. For those interested in the film industry as a business, this is the book for you. Highly recommended and quite an achievement.

Update: After going over this book a second time, I discovered a lot more errors. Some are typos that should have been caught by a copy editor. The number of errors calls into question the books usefulness as a reliable sourcebook so I have downgraded my 5-star review to 3-stars. Hopefully a new edition will correct the mistakes.

It has his best 300 movies. The book was in good shape and arrived promptly. I would highly recommend the book to any George Lucas fan. The one I got was the first edition, not sure if a second edition is forthcoming. Sincerely, Cole Spavin

Film students take note. As George Lucas says in his introductory notes, that his new book, "Blockbusting," (it books) is the kind of book he wishes he had when he was in film school, and with good reason. If there is one book that captures the essence of what the big-league filmmaking business is all about, it's this one.
Despite appearances to the contrary, "Blockbusting" is not merely a book about the biggest and best movies of all time (although it is that, too). It is about the ins and outs of the film business, from technical breakthroughs (e.g. "talkies," Dolby, 3-D, etc.), to cost issues (salary charts, budgets...) to distribution angles, to storytelling, to cultural impact, and yes, of course, to box office results. Along the way, editors Alex Ben Block and Lucas Books' Lucy Autrey Wilson compile an assemblage of facts, charts, lists and data surrounding issues like, thematic trends, the industry's evolution and, of course, individual project data like production budgets, dates of principal photography and distribution data (all adjusted for current era dollars) giving the reader a carefully detailed window into the processes that conspired to make some of the biggest movies of all time into... well, the biggest movies of all time!
As if that side of the screen weren't interesting enough, the authors dig deeper, into the background of each of their 300 particularly chosen films; who were the players, how the project got teed-up and just how that movie eventually got made. The book is filled with a variety of surprising stories and insider facts (for example, did you know that Exorcist writer/producer William Peter Blatty was a comedy writer before penning his macabre thriller? Or that despite the success of his "2001," Stanley Kubrick was only given $2 million to film "A Clockwork Orange," could only build four sets and used mostly handheld cameras? Or that "American Graffiti" was filmed for under a million bucks before becoming one of the most profitable studio-financed films ever?!)
FIlm buffs and certainly film students will find much to absorb in this serious, 944-page weighty volume - not just about the movies, but about the history of movies and the real stories which nearly always include the filmmaker's P.O.V. With a tightly focused format, as well as its punchy summaries of the human elements of movie making, "Blockbusting" is, at minimum, an essential reference for today's filmmakers, and for film students, it may just well be the best place to begin.