Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System (P.S.) [Paperback]

Sharon Waxman (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 3, 2006 | Series: P.S.

The 1990s saw a shock wave of dynamic new directing talent that took the Hollywood studio system by storm. At the forefront of that movement were six innovative and daring directors whose films pushed the boundaries of moviemaking and announced to the world that something exciting was happening in Hollywood. Sharon Waxman of the New York Times spent the decade covering these young filmmakers, and in Rebels on the Backlot she weaves together the lives and careers of Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction; Steven Soderbergh, Traffic; David Fincher, Fight Club; Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights; David O. Russell, Three Kings; and Spike Jonze, Being John Malkovich.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

New York Times Hollywood correspondent Waxman has written a gritty, truthful study of six boundary-breaking young directors who revolutionized 1990s filmmaking and still represent a refreshing alternative to "cookie cutter scripts and cheap MTV imagery." Her full-blooded profiles introduce Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction), Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights), David Fincher (Fight Club), Steven Soderbergh (Traffic), David O. Russell (Three Kings) and Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich). Waxman shows these auteurs, who "wreaked havoc with traditional narrative form" and combined brutality with humor, as eccentric, frequently antisocial and hardheaded. Their stories make for compelling reading: Waxman dramatizes Russell's erratic, explosive nature in the book's most blistering episode, where the director loses his temper and has a fistfight with actor George Clooney on the set of Three Kings. Other chapters depict Tarantino's penchant for jettisoning close friends after achieving success and Soderbergh's unswerving loyalty to pals. These men possess a daring vision, which the author skillfully depicts, simultaneously offering an illuminating view of motion picture politics. Most of all, Waxman proffers assurance to artists with original voices that their ideas can reach the public if they maintain Fincher's attitude - "Take me or leave me. My way or the highway" - and possess a little luck. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In the 1990s, a group of young directors roiled Hollywood in much the way that Coppola, Scorsese, and their peers shook up the establishment two decades earlier. New York Times correspondent Waxman traces the careers of six of those next-generation rebels--Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Jonze, and David O. Russell--from Tarantino's groundbreaking and influential Reservoir Dogs in 1992 to Soderbergh's success, Traffic, in 2000. The '90s had more than its share of innovative and challenging films, ranging from Anderson's Altmanesque Boogie Nights and Fincher's brutal Fight Club to Russell's prescient Three Kings and Jonze's unclassifiable Being John Malkovich. Waxman details the shooting of those films and others, and the corporate barriers their directors had to overcome. The young turks of the '90s didn't change the course of the film industry the way the '70s rebels did, but if they evaded the self-destructive lifestyles that sabotaged many of their earlier counterparts, their self-indulgences were manifested in their films instead, as Waxman's sympathetic but clear-eyed account shows. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (January 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060540184
• ISBN-13: 978-0060540180
• Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 5.2 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #479,790 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #98 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Television > Direction & Production

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "Down & Dirtier Pictures" January 25, 2005

By Clare Quilty

Format:Hardcover

If you felt a little let down by Peter Biskind's recent look at 90's indie film, "Down & Dirty Pictures," this juicier but also more personal book might be closer to what you were hoping to find there.

Instead of focusing primarily on Sundance and Miramax, Waxman focuses on the six men responsible for some of the biggest movies of the past decade: Quentin Tarantino ("Pulp Fiction"), P.T. Anderson ("Boogie Nights," "Magnolia"), Spike Jonze ("Being John Malkovich"), David O. Russell ("Three Kings"), David Fincher ("Fight Club") and Steven Soderbergh ("Traffic").

They're a mixed bag of personalities and Waxman tells their stories with detail and relish, and also touches on other interesting filmmakers such as Wes Anderson, Roger Avary, Charlie Kaufman, Alexander Payne and others (though some are conspicuously absent -- Spike Lee and especially Richard Linklater, who isn't even mentioned).

It's hard to miss with a collection of stories like this: Tarantino's rise to power; Hackman cursing Wes Anderson on the set of "Tenenbaums"; Avary's attempts to buy a famous French film studio; Russell headbutting George Clooney on the set of "Kings" and P.T. Anderson admitting that "Magnolia" was probably too long.

"Rebels" (very deliberately) rises to the same sordid, "print the legend" heights as Biskind's "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls...." But it also suffers from some of the same weaknesses - occasionally questionable accounts; some poor copy editing and more than a few awkward sentences that feel like they were written the Sunday night before the term paper was due: "Traffic" screenwriter Stephen Gaghan's high school drug problems are introduced twice in three pages; Wes Anderson's debut was "Bottle Rocket" not "Rushmore"; and what can one say about lines such as, "Soderbergh questioned his own questioning" and "The director kept the obituary about his father printed in the local paper framed in his office in Los Angeles" ? Waxman also has a strange storytelling habit of explaining the results of a situation, then backtracking once or twice to tell the circumstances that led to the results.

Nevertheless, it is absolutely impossible to deny the appeal of this book, and it was equally impossible for me to put the damn thing down for the past week. Read more ›

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy April 14, 2005

By Indie filmmaker

Format:Hardcover

This book is a very quick read, but unfortunately shows all the signs of having been an equally quick write. I have never before stopped in the middle of reading a book to pull out a pen and write down all the glaring factual errors and omissions that I saw, but Rebels on the Backlot forced me to do just that. I see that many of the most egregious errors have already been noted by others, but here is some of what I wrote down as I read:

On page 231: "Texas preppie-geek Wes Anderson had made his first movie, Rushmore, based on his experience in prep school, with an utter unknown in the lead, Jason Schwartzman." Wes Anderson's first film, of course, was Bottle Rocket, not Rushmore. And, yes, Jason Schwartzman had no previous film acting experience before Rushmore, but was hardly an "utter unknown" to the film world- his family (both the Schwartzmans and the Coppolas) had done a little bit of film work in their past, both in front of and behind the cameras. Even Waxman might have recognized the mother of this "utter unknown" from all of the Rocky movies.

Traffic star Erika Christensen is identified on page 321 as "Erika Christenssen" and, most howlingly, on page 101 as "Julia Stiles." Yes, the two actresses do look alike, but that's just absurd.

On page 266, describing the marketing of Fight Club, Waxman writes that "Fincher insisted the studio hire a cutting-edge advertising firm, Weiden + Kennedy, based in Seattle." Weiden + Kennedy are based in Portland, home of Nike, their biggest client. They have offices in Portland, New York, Amsterdam, London, Tokyo and Shanghai, but not in Seattle.

On page 194, Waxman describes the profound influence of Aimee Mann's music in the creation of Magnolia, both at the script level, and in the soundtrack.... On the very next page, she describes how writer/director PT Anderson got the idea for the film's rain of frogs, as well as its historical prologue, from "musician and friend Michael Penn, Sean's brother." Perhaps Waxman is the only person left in the film or music worlds who doesn't know that, besides being Sean's brother, Michael Penn is also Aimee Mann's husband.

This is a sloppy, poorly researched, poorly written, and incredibly poorly edited book. Reading it, one can easily imagine Waxman's interview subjects seeing how little she knew about her subject, and simply making up absurd lies just to see if she would ever catch them. Spike Jonze tells her that location scouting was conducted to find an actual half-floor building for Being John Malkovich, and she repeats this claim on page 205. I'm sure Jonze is enjoying a good laugh over that.

If you are looking for well-written book on this subject matter, I'd stick with Peter Biskind. Read more ›

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Fire the editor! March 24, 2005

By Howard Lamp

Format:Hardcover

I tore through this book, enjoying it thoroughly. It's a quick entertaining read, and seems to reveal a lot about the craziness of trying to manage a directing career.

However, there's also a really shoddy first-draft feel to the book. The irony is Waxman is a New York Times writer, and the book is filled with passages that would embarrass the paper. Example- "The question of Tarantino's ability to write without the support of a partner became a real question over the years." Oy vey!

The factual errors also make me wonder how much of these stories I can take at face value. She briefly mentions Wes Anderson's first film, Bottle Rocket, early in the book and then later calls Rushmore his first film. She misidentifies Erika Christensen as Julia Stiles in Traffic. She reports that David Russell used a real corpse for a shot of a bullet entering a body in Three Kings when it's been reported widely that this story was a misunderstanding of a joke that Russell had made and a dummy was actually used. These are just the ones that I (not a film industry person) caught.

That said, I recommend it to wannabe film directors as a fun set of stories that may inspire you or may revulse you to the business altogether.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Rebels With A Cause... (4.5 stars) June 26, 2007

By L. Shirley TOP 100 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

Ahhh the 90's...Going to the movies became a whole other experience. Just as directors of the 70's and 80's left their mark as groundbreaking filmmakers with new and innovative techniques, so these rebels of the 90's gave us new experiences on the big screen to awe us to delight. Although there were many that could be talked about for decades to come, "Rebels On The Backlot" by Sharon Waxman tells us the story of six of the most rebellious of the bunch. Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, David O. Russell, David Fincher, and Spike Jonze. What a group!

The subtitle of this book, 'Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered Hollywood Studio System' is the focus of this book, and the story is not always pretty. Waxman goes into some depth into the making of such films as "Boogie Nights", "Pulp Fiction", "Traffic", "Three Kings", "Fight Club", and "Being John Malkovich" among some others by these now famous, but once struggling filmmakers. They were not always likable lads, often more like spoiled and thoughtless prima donnas alienating many around them, but one thing is for sure, they were geniuses with great visions, visions they wanted done their own way not chopped and edited or rewritten by those who thought they knew better. The big studios often scoffed at their ideas, saying audiences just couldn't handle the films these artists envisioned, the independents caught on but couldn't always afford the high price it would take to create their masterpieces. So these six were often left to deal with the big studios, which was often like a war.

Waxman begins at the beginning. Each director's life from childhood and the effects it had on their filmmaking is delved into.... Their early beginnings in the industry,trying to get a script noticed, attending the film festivals, the fights on and off the set(Russsell and George Clooney actually duked it out on the set of Three Kings),the frustration of not being understood,the long road to seeing their visions completed(often asking for things in their contracts that the biggest of the big didn't even get, like final cut), their rise to fame and reactions from both the critics and the filmgoers. She leaves no stone unturned, often revealing some very personal information, all very well researched and with the cooperation of the directors themselves, and including lots of great quotes as well.

It's a well written, extremely detailed, and enthralling read for fans. Told in chronological order so that each chapter records the progress of each film. Also included is a picture section, a P.S. section with insights, interviews and even letters written to Russell by George Clooney, and a nice time line. Although there were a couple of times where I felt the Author injected her own very opinionated points - and not always agreeing, it kind of put me off at first - I still found this book to be a fascinating page-turner and a must read for fans and aspiring filmmakers alike. One that gives a truly up close, behind the scenes, and very personal look at some of our favorites that moved filmmaking into the 21st century.

4.5 stars for making me want to view these films all over again(and again)...enjoy the read...Laurie

also recommended:
Kieslowski on Kieslowski
Hitchcock's Notebooks: An Authorized And Illustrated Look Inside The Creative Mind Of Alfred Hitchcock Read more ›