The Gross: The Hits, The Flops: The Summer That Ate Hollywood [Paperback]

Peter Bart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 21, 2000

The Gross is an all-access pass to the movers, shakers, and fakers who make Hollywood run. Tinseltown is an edgy place where risk-taking is a way of life—and the risks now run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Summertime, when the studios unfurl their most expensive and effects-laden "tent-pole pictures," has become the only season in which Hollywood makes money, and so, as this book illustrates, the summer season provides an ideal microcosm for scrutinizing the mega-budget-driven revolution that has forever changed the movie business. Bart interviews all the key players, including studio executives, producers, directors, and stars, to show how creativity and commerce hang in a dangerous balance in the new Hollwood.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the summer of 1998, as far as Hollywood was concerned, nothing went the way it was supposed to. As Peter Bart recaps that season:

A cheaply made gross-out comedy generated twice the revenues of a Steven Spielberg high-concept adventure; two pricey asteroid films collided, yet neither suffered damage; Jim Carrey made a hit movie that didn't offer a single laugh; Eddie Murphy buried his hard edge long enough to make two successful, warm-and-cuddly family films; Harrison Ford made a love story playing opposite a self-avowed lesbian; and finally, defying the mythology of the "youth demos," two stars in their sixties, Robert Redford and Warren Beatty, enjoyed yet another warm moment in the sun.

Bart is a seasoned observer of the film industry both as studio executive (holding seats at Paramount and MGM/UA) and as the editor in chief of Variety and Daily Variety. His insider's perspective, and his ability to gain access to the major players in the business, serve him well here. The Gross is filled with juicy behind-the-scenes stories on how certain summer blockbusters got made and positioned for release--even though the book could strongly benefit from both an index, to make finding information on particular films easier, and information on its sources, to determine exactly how much of the story is Bart's original legwork and how much comes from the trades. Along the way, he sketches a grim portrait of an industry whose leaders have become increasingly frustrated with the high cost of filmmaking; even when they're making fun-filled romps like The Mask of Zorro and Armageddon, people at the studios don't seem to be enjoying themselves. Bart manages to cover almost every major summer release of '98 with enough detail to hold readers' interest, so while The Gross may not be the ultimate overview of the film business, it's a captivating snapshot of an industry in flux. --Ron Hogan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In 1969, William Goldman penned The Season, the quintessential insider's guide to the triumphs and failures of one Broadway season?but no author has since managed to do the same for Hollywood. Who better to attempt it than Bart, a former studio executive at Paramount, MGM/UA and Lorimar and currently editor-in-chief of Variety? Here Bart offers a savvy, gossipy, nuts-and-bolts look at the corporate machinations behind the summer films of 1998, a season of extravagant hype, box-office records and corporate disquiet that spotlighted what he calls the "dysfunctional economics of the movie industry." He divides his book into three sections: Genesis, a rundown of executives at the major studios and an outline of 11 hotly anticipated summer pictures, Armageddon to The X-Files; The Reckoning, a week-by-week listing of box office grosses for the 18 weeks of the summer season; and The Fallout, an assessment of why executives have grown increasingly wary of taking risks in a market dominated by blockbusters. Recounting how each film was put together and sold to the public, he relates chilling anecdotes of studio interference and moneymen making artistic decisions. As Bart shows little interest in the quality of these films, however, his book seems written primarily for the executives pulling the strings (for instance, the box office failure of Godzilla is largely attributed to a backlash against the mega-prerelease hype and rushed release date rather than the generic substance of the film). Whether or not the summer of 1998 marked a major turning point for Hollywood is debatable, but Bart has that rare bird's-eye view of the business that allows him to discern, even in this one fairly random crop of movies, the economic forces shaping American cinema.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (February 21, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312253915
• ISBN-13: 978-0312253912
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #771,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best guide to the way movies get made today., January 16, 2000

By 

Ian Abrams (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Gross (Hardcover)

"The Gross" is the best, most comprehensive and most approachable overview of the current filmmaking world that I've ever seen. It deserves a place next to "Adventures in the Screen Trade" and the wonderful Aljean Harmetz "Casablanca" and "Wizard of Oz" books as essential reading for anybody who wants to know how films are actually put together. Bart shows how every 1998 film was the result of personality interplay, of business decisions (bad and good), of sheer luck. He brings out the drama inherent in every film's conception, production and eventual fate. The new trade paperback edition has an index, unaccountably missing from the hardcover original, and Bart has updated the book with a new chapter analyzing the summer of 1999. I wish that, as future editions come out, Bart would continue to add new chapters to keep it up to date.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars In bad need of work, January 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Gross (Hardcover)

Having read some of the other reviews, I tend to echo some of those sentiments. While this was a relatively quick read, there were a number of things that struck my attention. First of all, the book could have used a good editor. There were all kinds of spelling and grammatical errors.

Second, the book could have used a fact-checker. There are too many instances of incorrect information, some mentioned in the other reviews, but some that were downright blatant. The author confuses "Ghosts of Mississippi" with "Mississippi Burning", mentions actors as featured in movies they did not appear in, and sometimes seems to be confused as to who did what in a particular instance.

Third, I found it annoying and more than a bit hypocritical that an author who will take a filmmaker or actor to task for their ego will find it so completely necessary to feed his own ego by mentioning how intimate he was or is with several of the big names in Hollywood. It's fine if Mr. Bart, in his official capacity as editor of Variety, goes right to the source, but if he thinks that the reader cares, my guess is he's mistaken.

Fourth, the book could really have used an index. I wanted to refer to a previous chapter somewhere towards the middle of the book and had to thumb through the pages until I found it.

Lastly, to again echo some of the other reviews, it's more than a bit ironic that someone who feels that movies suffer from the manipulations of the studio executives in trying to make some films over into what they were not intended to be has (I would venture) published a book that is probably not what he intended it to be. I'm sure Mr. Bart could shrug it off as being emblematic of Hollywood, but I sure came away with a little of the glitter worn off.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hollywood Gossip Cental!, September 1, 2000

By 

A. Seibert "trumpeyter" (new york, new york) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Gross (Hardcover)

Most of us love a good tidbit of gossip. If you do, you have 323 pages of movie behind the scenes snippets. I really enjoyed this book for what it was - gossipy, insightful and enlightening. Particularly enlightening to those of us who are saturated with movie "glamour" but are interested in how "not glamourous" the business really is. How fascinating that a business which is essentually about fantasy is really about the bottom line - money.