Customer Reviews

The Gross

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"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.

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.

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.

Peter Bart, editor of Variety, penned this sketch of the Hollywood summer season of 1998, and offers insight and background information both useful to the interested moviegoer/home critic, and to screeenwriting professionals looking for strategies to break the script-reader barrier. As the title implies, he analyzes in-depth the dollar amounts going into studio movie projects from initial option monies to the screenwriter to post-production marketing campaigns and all points in between. There are a couple of things to be learned here: 1) that the Hollywood moviemaking process doesn't necessarily reward truly innovative and creative material; and 2) that the movie going public does. Hence, Something About Mary comes out of nowhere with a miniscule budget and scores big with the public, while Godzilla hopes to make back some of Sony's money overspent on a shove-down-your-throat marketing campaign the public didn't buy. The gist of this book is that a truly creative screenplay will find a way no matter what financial juggernauts happen to be cruising through Hollywood, with a little bit of faith, hope -- and luck.

I am a avid movie lover and so enjoyed Peter Bart's fun trip through the summer of 1998. Reading it now in the spring of 2001 I really already forgot that summer had so many really awful films. And Peter Bart does a fine job saying how they came to be. It does look like coporate Hollywood has done a fine job of killing off Hollywood. I was interested to note my favorite film of that summer, Smoke Signals,was only mentioned twice in passing. My other favorite Everest was not mentioned at all. But the point of the book was just that... Hollywood wants the dumb down block buster. After reading this I'm glad I missed Godzilla. If you like the movie industry and how and why things get made and marketed you will find this an intersting few hours read.

Bart's THE GROSS is the best book about Hollywood I've read in ages. Focusing on the Summer of 1998 (remember that? GODZILLA, ARMAGEDDON, THE TRUMAN SHOW, THE X-FILES, THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, THE AVENGERS, etc), Bart takes us behind the scenes in production meetings, with directors and studio heads, on sets, into special effects studios...everywhere the action is. He fills his saga with anecdores, often pithy biographical snapshots, interviews, and informed opinion (with which I often strongly disagreed). After an introduction to the studios and their suits, Bart takes us behind-the-scenes for glimpses at at the makers and the making of each major film. He then tracks---week by week---how they fare in the market horse-race. Bart writes well and structures his book so that it develops irresistable suspense. If you care about the movies, are interested in Hollywood, or just wonder, as you sit through one of these "blockbusters", what were they thinking?, then this is the book for you.

So as not to bore you with the same remarks regarding the finer points of the book, I agree with the previous two reviewers' assessments that Peter Bart's Gross is an eye-opening book about the studios preparation and releasing of its big summer hits. It was an immensely enjoyable book that makes you laugh out loud in some instances (Beatty's maneuvers with the studio) and shake your head in dismay at others (Godzilla).

My main complaint about this book is its lack of an index (a book with so much name dropping of the most powerful in the industry should have one!) and citations. I know that Peter Bart didnt find all this information on his own, yet he only seems to cite quotes from articles in respect to reviews and box office predictions in the summer movie previews of certain magazines. As a journalist, I am sure Mr. Bart knows the importance of citing and crediting source material.

Also, in spending a considerable amount of time on Godzilla, Mr.Bart talks about the massive media hype that took place before the film was released. Surprisingly enough, while throughtout the book he remarks upon his own personal experiences from his days as a studio exec. to his current position at Variety, he distances himself in the Godzilla sweepstakes, failing to even mention the glowing article he wrote about the Devlin/Emmerich team for, I believe, Esquire magazine. However, he deserves kudos for only bashing his perennial target James Cameron twice (judging from his Variety articles, he could have been more aggressive in his Titanic- aftermath assessment of Fox)

Peter Bart,ex-New York Times reporter,ex-executive of Paramount, now editor-in-chief of Variety,is the first journalist to tell why magazines have become insistinguisable from public relations . On page 196 of his book,"The Gross" he tells how PMK ,a PR agency,inserted a "lengthy profile " on Robert Redford in The New Yorker. Well , what a relief .Read "The Gross" for more proof that the American press is offten just a carrier of publicity material . Hurrah for Peter Bart.Now we know why the American press has become unreadable . Its all a press release, kiddies . Bart's book is a must . Just more "publicity material, " says Bart,

Anyone who follows the motion picure industry from either the position of film buff to budding or established industry insider should read Peter Bart's "The Gross". Bart, a former executive at Lorimar, Paramount, and MGM, takes a look at the summer of 1998 slate of studio releases, covering films as diverse as "Armageddon", "The Truman Show", "Godzilla", and "There's Something About Mary", and the process leading up to their release, from script development at the studio level to the precise steps studio executives now follow such as determining whether a film will fail or succeed based on its opening night East Coast grosses and what kind of legs a film will have on both the domestic and worldwide fronts. As compulsively readable as Bart's "The Back Lot" column in Daily Variety, "The Gross" is trenchantly informative, as one might expect from a former studio executive reporting from an outside world perspective. Film buffs, infrequent filmgoers, and individuals about to enter the business side of the industry often find themselves wondering how three-hour love stories focusing on the afterlife and soulless adventure films ever see the light of day; "The Gross" will provide plenty of answers.

It's funny that Peter Bart's book was so hastily written, so filled with typos and factual errors. He obviously rushed it into print to beat some deadline. The book is about all the lousy movies made far worse by producers rushing them to meet the summer deadline. There are such frequent errors that I knew about that it made it difficult to trust him on stuff I don't know much about. The writing, too, is horrible: Confusing sentences, bizzarre chapter structure that flips back and forth through time so randomly that it's hard to follow the tale. I frequently had to put the book down and grunt about how mad it made me. Sadly, it is a sign of the poor state of Hollywood writing that this is, in fact, one of the best accounts out there. It does allow the reader to see the process of green-lighting a movie from the executives perspective. It's just sad that the book shows why there are such few and low-quality films available and it, itself, is a low-quality book and only one of a few.