Moneywood : Hollywood in its last age of excess / by William Stadiem.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stadiem, William.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion picture industry--California--Los Angeles--History--20th century.

Motion picture industry.

Motion picture producers and directors--California--Los Angeles--History--20th century.

Motion picture producers and directors.

History.

Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)--History--20th century.

Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.).

California--Los Angeles.

Physical Description:

v, 324 pages, 16 unnumbered plates : some colored illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2013.

Summary:

"From Top Gun to Howard the Duck, Hollywood was never more excessive than it was in the 1980s. In the Moneywood era, the purse strings were not controlled by adults, but by pop culture cowboys who couldn't balance their own checkbooks but could fast talk the talent, snowball the Japanese, and explain their way out of Dodge when the grosses came in. Their know-nothing raging narcissistic personalities make Sam Goldwyn look professorial and some of the biggest flops the industry has ever seen (Days of Heaven, Howard the Duck) were released on their watch. They were the producers. Out to line their pockets, trash each other, and never forget to look out for #1, the Moneywood cast of characters includes: Don Simpson, the Flashdance and Top Gun producer whose big-swinging-dick swagger and bigger drug habit only made him more desirable in studio boardrooms Ronald Betts, the Silver Screen Partners founder and former frat-mate of George W. Bush at Yale who milked that connection for all it was worth (and with Ronald Reagan in the White House it was worth a lot) David Begelman, the embezzler and womanizer who was president of MGM Ray Stark, Jon Peters, Peter Guber, Michael Eisner, Mike Ovitz, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the other careerists who bent the industry, and their enemies, to their wills This is a meaty exposé of the real hit men of Hollywood's last go-go decade"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Capital Hill

Down and out in Century City

Off the menu

Agents provocateurs

Hair apparent

Scary rich guys

Strange bedfellows

Jon and Don

British Columbia

Murphy's lawyer

Aristocrats at the gate

Italian rapscallion

Epilogue: Requiem for the heavyweights.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-306)and index.

ISBN:

9780312656898

0312656890

1250014077

9781250014078

OCLC:

814951918