Customer Reviews

What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line

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

 

 

I like books on Hollywood biz and this one fits the bill by a real pro, Art Linson. Anyone involved with classics like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Fight Club and Heat knows his way around the business and how it has changed in the last 30 years. Linson throws one kink in the normal Hollywood tell-all. He introduces a fictitious former studio head that has lunches with Linson generating a lively dialog of the business by to former players.

While I enjoyed this book, I have one major complaint. There are only four Hollywood stories in the book. It's like Linson has found his hit and can issue many sequels so he does so little at a time. The book is only 180 pages and is a very fast read. Also, the stories are not in great depth. For example, he describes the movie The Edge with Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins. He does a good job describing how these two are selected and the great respect he has for both actors. But the story line quickly ends as Baldwin shows up overweight and with a long beard. Linson has to deliver the bad news that he must change his appearance. End of story. Let's move on to the next.

While this story is anticlimactic after a flirtation with Robert Deniro in the movie, I like Linson's writing style for the subjects. It's short, uncomplicated and humorous. Other stories covered include Pushing Tin, Great Expectations and The Fight Club. All interesting stories but all written about very briefly.

Irrespective, I still recommend this book if you enjoy reading Hollywood stories. Linson had a great career and I'm sure there is another book coming in the future.

Sex sells, goes the old maxim, but if the sales of gossip magazines featuring the likes of the late Princess Diana, the present Drew Barrymore et al, then gossip may well be up there with sex as a matter of titilation (no pun intended) for the masses, of which I am one. THe fact is David Mamet is a great writer, Robert De Niro a great actor and the author, Art Linson, is no slouch in the producing arena. So if any of these are of interest to you, this book is a very well written - snappy dialogue, witty observations on the status of restaurant seating, and well constructed vignettes - as well as providing yet another insider's view on the shark aquarium known as Hollywood.

What Just Happened consists of behind the scenes tales of the making of The Edge, Great Expectations, Pushing Tin, and Fight Club from film producer Art Linson.

The stories are pretty great. Bitter and specific to a degree not usually found in Hollywood books not written by Julia Phillips, these have the nasty ring of truth, and are very funny.

The only problem with this book is that it barely qualifies as one. There's barely enough text here to fill an ambitious pamphlet. Surely there was more to be written about the making of the wildly controversial Fight Club (like how it managed to get made in the first place) than just describing how the finished product power-freaked the Fox marketing department.

Also padding out the length is a bizarre framing story wherein Linson is telling these tales to a memorably creepy ex-studio head. Pitch black as these segments are, they feel both repetitive and vaguely untrue, a bit of theatricality whipped up to hammer home Linson's bitter points. The book doesn't need them, but I guess they added a few more pages.

I'm a Hollywood junkie, so I enjoyed this book. Art Linson isn't nearly the natural storyteller that William Goldman is, meaning the book isn't quite the joy Goldman's books were to read, but, on the other hand, Art is a PRODUCER and he sees films further through than Goldman and his stories are a deeper vision. The device used in the book, of the author talking to another has-been, is (as it was noted) very, VERY annoying and I suggest you just skip it by (it adds nothing). The book is a quick, one-sitting read, and it's as frivolous as a cookie wafer. Art certainly whines -- and I'm sure "Great Expectations" bombed because it was a bad movie, not because "Titanic" had the same scene in it (Art even implies the naked-drawing idea was stolen!) -- but if Art wasn't a whiny guy who took no responsibility...he wouldn't have written this book. So the trade-off is okay with me.

Art Linson writes a very funny profile/memoir of uptight execs in Hollywood...and the movies he's produced...with a pen dipped in bile.

Screamingly funny, and you'll zip right through it. I finished the tome in two and a half hours.

I read What Just Happened in one breathless sitting. Couldn't put it down. It is funny, well pace and amazingly well written. It is a gritty, honest look at an outrageous and often ridiculous world. You think you know everything there is to know about Hollywood? You don't. Read this book. It will change the way you think about the movies.

I'm assuming Art has officially checked out of the biz, because after this book he'll certainly never eat that proverbial lunch in this town again.

After tale after tale of bitterness, one is left with this overwhelming question: Why'd you ever bother with it, Art?

Art Linson's tales of Hollywood provide some intrigue and entertainment, but some of his writing falls flat. The ongoing relationship between the narrator and a former producer isn't a good enough excuse for the exposition in the storytelling. Not sure why Linson didn't just write a non-fiction tell-all and skip the part about his character getting things off his chest for "therapy." A life full of events that would have been more enjoyable in the hands of a stronger storyteller.

Art Linson has produced some of the greatest films of the last 20 years (Fast TImes at Ridgemont High, The Untouchables, Heat, Fight Club) yet with this insightful razor sharp guide to the trenches of filmmaking he shows how every film is a new fight with an insane collection of "creative" executives who must be appeased and destroyed...When Linson descibes the horrific response the executives at Fox had to seeing Fight Club for the first time I laughed out loud....Read this book if you love film and fear where its going

Unfortunately a very disappointing read. "What Just Happened" feels slapped together and the good bits get lost in the unimaginative writing. It opens with the author talking to a deposed studio head about hard times in the industry. Linson then uses this device of telling his story to the studio head as the justification for the story. It's a weak contrivance and adds nothing to the story. Sorry, Art, it's not even a ground rule double. I can't recommend Linson's first book highly enough, "A Pound of Flesh" is a wonderful insightful and amusing book but this sequel gets a thumb's down.