High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess [Hardcover]

Charles Fleming (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1998

What Hit and Run was to Hollywood financial impropriety, and what You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again was to sex, drugs, and self-destruction, High Concept is to the evolution of today's driving business philosophy and simultaneous back-lot grotesqueries of the contemporary entertainment industry.

Using the life and career of producer Don Simpson as a point of departure, High Concept takes readers on a riveting journey inside the Hollywood of the 1980s and 1990s.  Throughout the period, Simpson and his partner, Jerry Bruckheimer, were the most successful independent producers in the history of moviemaking, responsible for the hit films Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, Crimson Tide, Bad Boys, and The Rock.  Widely credited with the genesis of the "tentpole," or "event," business strategy, which could make a studio's year in a single shot, Simpson had an uncanny ability to boil down a movie into an easily salable product.  His films generated billions of dollars at the box office, and today his business philosophy continues to drive the fortunes of the major studios, where $100 million blockbusters are now the norm.

But at the same time that his vision was driving the Hollywood bottom line, Simpson's lifestyle epitomized the pervasive dark side of the industry's power base.  Through intensive research and interviews with sources throughout the film community, Charles Fleming chronicles how Simpson made his mark as a young executive at Paramount, gradually gained entry into a small circle of friends, and gratified himself beyond recognition.  His legendary consumption knew no bounds.  This unrestrained excess killed him and sent a warning cry throughout the industry.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Veteran show-biz news hound Charles Fleming argues that the short, insanely foolish life of producer Don Simpson (Flashdance, Top Gun, Bad Boys) stands as a larger indictment of Hollywood, and it's hard to argue with him. For one thing, Simpson helped create Tom Cruise, Richard Gere, Will Smith, and Eddie Murphy, and his loud, high-concept, low-IQ school of filmmaking helped launch Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, and Bruce Willis to new heights (or depths). Others may have been responsible for 14 Top Ten pop tunes and 10 Oscar nominations, but nobody had thought to combine pop music and movies in a synergistic way.

While Fleming concentrates on Simpson's own antics--car wrecks, career crackups, whacked-out drug and sex orgies, whimsical overspending on brain-dead blockbusters--he does make an excellent case that the entertainment industry as a whole is nutty and slutty. Even the more levelheaded stars who turn up in High Concept turn out to be appalling: Fleming documents the behavior that earned Demi Moore the Hollywood nickname "Gimme More."

Despite his $60,000-a-month drug habit, Simpson actually did come up with smart ideas, according to many witnesses, and he was sharp enough to know how dumb so many of his colleagues were. Sylvester Stallone, for instance, almost starred in Beverly Hills Cop, and had he not left the project in favor of his notorious stink bomb Rhinestone, viewers would have been stuck with Stallone's rewrite of Cop, from which the star had removed every trace of humor--the very concept that made an ordinary action film, in Murphy's talented hands, a smash hit. In his detailed account of Simpson's bizarre life, Fleming demonstrates why modern movies are the way they are.

He also proves what a strangely tiny town Hollywood is. Simpson was mixed up with Heidi Fleiss, whose indicted dad was Madonna's pediatrician; his doctors had treated Kurt Cobain and Margaux Hemingway (and one had helped design Miss Piggy); Don Simpson's drug dealer claims he sold drugs to O.J. Simpson the day Nicole Brown Simpson died. The most shocking thing about the book is the Pulp Fiction-like combination of decadent horror and slapstick comedy that constituted everyday life for Don Simpson's cronies. The high life, as described in Fleming's addictively readable book, exemplifies Carrie Fisher's Hollywood mantra: "Good anecdote--bad reality." --Tim Appelo

From Library Journal

Contemporary Hollywood takes it on the chin in these two books, written from widely different perspectives. Fleming, who has written extensively on Hollywood for Variety, Newsweek, and Entertainment Weekly, tells the sordid story of producer Don Simpson, who helped create a string of blockbusters (Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun) and whose box office figures gave new meaning to the phrase "gross receipts." Simpson died in January 1996 at the age of 52; his heart gave out after years of crash dieting, drugs, alcohol, and disfiguring plastic surgery. Fleming spares few of the gory details of Simpson's decline, and he's quick to tie his lifestyle up with that of other Hollywood miscreants like Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Farley. The book needs a better sense of Simpson's longtime relationship with partner Jerry Bruckheimer, as well as some perspective; Fleming barely acknowledges that the film business has always harbored and even encouraged hard-living dynamos like Simpson, as long as they were successful. Grey, described by his publisher as "once a Hollywood insider," offers a collection of brief essays and interviews about the state of films. Grey's chats with directors John Waters (Hairspray) and Wes Craven (Scream) highlight what's best about the book; the author's essays range from the provocative to the puerile. A discretionary purchase for most collections. [Fleming's book was previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/97.]AThomas J. Wiener, Editor,"Satellite DIRECT.
-AThomas J. Wiener, Editor,"Satellite DIRECT"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1St Edition edition (April 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385486944
• ISBN-13: 978-0385486941
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #957,104 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Desperately seeking an editor, May 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Cultures of Excess (Paperback)

It takes a truly ungifted writer/editor to transform such a sordid topic into such a boring read.

With little original research of any value at his disposal, Fleming leans heavily on other books and magazine articles. The book's most annoying feature is its mindless repetition. Quotes and anecdotes that appear in one chapter are re-introduced in another chapter (see Simpson's public humiliation of Craig Baumgarten in an 1985 Esquire article) or, worse, in the same chapter (see Fleming's "where are they now" summary of Bonnie Bradigan).

What's worse than Fleming's shoddy writing (pick a tense, Mr. Fleming, any tense) is his utter lack of insight into Simpson's admittedly repellant character. The author is content to spread unsubstantiated rumors and dwell on the most minute detail of Simpson's bizarre sex life without even once delving into the psychological reasons/motivations for such repulsive behavior.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some Insight Found if you Dig, June 30, 2005

By 

Gabe "SRK" (Hollywood) - See all my reviews

This review is from: High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Cultures of Excess (Paperback)

Why is it that the movie FLASHDANCE has been central to the last 4 industry books I have read? It provides a great RASHOMON-style perspective on the industry: Get producer Don Simpson's take in High Concept, producer Lynda Obst's take in Hello He Lied, producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters in Hit and Run, and finally, writer Joe Esterhaz's take in Hollywood Animal.

Anyway, on to High Concept: I felt the book was poorly written and too often shot for the tabloid instead of the insight. I was more interested in his role in the industry and his exploits with Bruckheimer but this was overshadowed by chapters on his drug use and penchant for hookers.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Secrets of My Excess, January 7, 2004

By 

OverTheMoon ([e-mail]) - See all my reviews

This review is from: High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Cultures of Excess (Paperback)

Learn how to become a movie mogul, get laid every hour, do cocaine by the second and eventually die on the toilet just like the "King" himself. Truth be told it is a terrible thought that this best-selling Hollywood expose book is based on a dead man written shortly after his death. It's a fair topic - a tab bit tasteless - but fair, because when you are a multi-million dollar figure in Hollywood who has spent money and time on the latest fashion, fast cars, diets and diamonds to get your face into Variety press, then when things come tumbling down, or you go the way of the dodo, you can't expect writers like Charles Fleming to look the other way - and Fleming certainly does not!

This book is cruel. It does nothing for Simpson or his family and friends. If you know the man well or have been close to him then this is nothing more than despicable tabloid trash. However the rest of the world may not see it that way. We have an interest. How did the most powerful movie producer in Hollywood live? What made him tick? What did he eat for breakfast and what do people really think about him? Fleming is able to give us an angle, although it is an extremely limited one. It seems that anybody who had a good thing to say about this man just shut up and didn't want to talk to Fleming during his research. Unfortunately, the end result is that the only people who wanted to talk are those who didn't like Simpson much and Fleming's rendition of this producers life is marred almost by a secular group, who... well... to put to bluntly... hated the man's guts.

So this book ends up being pure sleaze with a big capitol "S". Fleming for life of him is trying to tell the reader something along the lines of - "Look, I am trying to find the man's good side, really, truly I am, but there are just so many people who hate the guy and want to say something that I just can not avoid them, really I can't." and then to break the monotony of all the bad press he is giving to Simpson, Fleming manages to find a hooker who says - "Gee, he was a sweet man who paid me well in bed." or some burnt out junky who says - "Simpson, oh yeah (sniff) that dude (sniff) we had a really crazy time together (sniff) and he was really nice to people who had powder (sniff)."

As soon as Fleming hears the words - Cruise, Gere, Smith, Murphy, Schwarzenegger, Gibson, Stallone, Willis, Johnson he is off like the wind to find out what is there. To be honest this book takes no prisoners and if you are involved in the industry then Fleming is going to give you a Royal shafting with cheese.... extra CHEESE.

When all is said and done, and you feel like you have read more Sleaze than all of the editions of National Enquirer put together, you might actually discover that Fleming has a moral to his story - that the life of Don Simpson, although a successful one, is a lesson to learn for all who venture down the path of excess. It is not a bad lesson to learn, however out of millions upon millions of readers who have scanned these pages, maybe one or two will ever get close to touching the royal robes and certainly it is odds on favorite that they will just be made cannon fodder for the mysterious monsters that haunt Fleming's world of fame.

This is swill with cream on top... but its still swill... however, it is excellent swill at that. So gobble up your swill and have your fill. When you are sick with yourself afterwards maybe you should pay more attention to that which you are eating and using, or you might end up like our friend here. How ironic this book turns out to be. A paradox that is talking about the very things that we should try and stay away from.