Will there ever be a great book about the film business as it is now? I still think not. What used to be called The Industry, as it exists today, might be grist for a eulogy, a festival panel discussion or possibly an online technical manual—10 steps to reboot the software that made your last picture.
But the stuff of a gloriously wicked novel or a shocking real-life tale of ambition and folly can only come now from Hollywood’s past.
Hot, sassy insider movie books were truly a grand tradition, as integral to film culture as the pictures themselves. Half the fun was on-screen.
The other half was embedded in those myriad tell-alls, exposes and romans-a-clef that created a myth many times larger than life—which, after all, was pretty large to begin with.
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