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Join us to hear Peter Bart
& Peter Guber talk about their new book. You can buy a copy and
have them sign it for you.
Writing
in a direct, refreshing and honest style, Bart (Variety's editor-in-chief
and a former v-p for production at Paramount) and Guber (the founder and
head of Mandalay Entertainment and one-time production head at Columbia
Pictures) offer an intimate view of the film industry and its unending
economic, political and artistic clashes. While a reliable guide to the
mechanics of movie making, the book is best at telling fascinating
illustrative anecdotes that range from the scary (e.g., Frank Sinatra
sending "one of his goons" to ensure that Roman Polanski would
ask Sinatra's wife, Mia Farrow, to do only two takes of each scene on the
set of Rosemary's Baby) to the charming (as when Guber is thrilled that
Jimmy Stewart asks his opinion of a scene, only to realize that the star
is interested in everyone's opinion, even the cleaning man's). This isn't
a tell-all expos‚, … la Julia Phillips's You'll Never Eat Lunch in
This Town Again, but rather an informal, highly entertaining step-by-step
survey of how all the parts of filmmaking fit together. From a succinct
history of how TV spots and trailers have been developed to the problem of
casting and managing megastars (e.g., Bruce Willis ended up in the huge
hit The Sixth Sense because he needed an $18 million loan to get out of an
independent film), the authors convey with irony and good humor the
reality that "[t]he so-called `creative industries' are big
business," but despite the huge economic stakes involved, "the
vision keepers will win in the end."
From
Publishers Weekly: Copyright 2002
Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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