What Just Happened?: Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line

by Art Linson

Overview

As a Hollywood film producer, Art Linson has had a hand in producing some of the most unforgettable films of the last half century—Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Untouchables, Fight Club—and has worked with some of America’s finest actors and directors. Dubbed by the Los Angeles Times “a breezy anatomy of ritual humiliation,” Art Linson’s Hollywood memoir What Just Happened? gives us a brutally honest, funny, and comprehensive tour through the horrors of Hollywood. To be released in 2008 as a feature film starring Robert De Niro and featuring appearances from Bruce Willis, Sean Penn, and John Turturro, among others, Grove Press’s reissue of Linson’s hysterical memoir will include a new foreword, the film’s script, and several black-and-white shots from the film.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802143389
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	10/03/2008
Edition description:	Revised Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Art Linson was born in Chicago and grew up in Hollywood. He has been producing movies for twenty-four years, and his credits include The Untouchables, Heat, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Fight Club, and Scrooged. In 1995, he published his first book, A Pound of Flesh: Perilous Tales of How to Produce Movies in Hollywood.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix
1 Negative Pickup 1
2 Two Guys and a Bear 11
3 Over the Edge 30
4 One plus One Equals Three 38
5 After Shave 53
6 Bookwormed 62
7 Great Expectations Dashed 68
8 A Glass Jaw 81
9 I'm Driving a Pinto 89
10 Pushing Tin Downhill 106
11 The Fox and the Hound 113
12 Fight Clubbed 116
13 Sunset Stripped Naked 130
14 I'm As Independent As a Dry Cleaner from Lebanon 142 Photos 154 Screenplay 159

Editorial Reviews

“Art Linson’s dark gem of a book is a wickedly funny and sardonic insider’s look at life in the belly of the beast. It is the best user’s manual to Hollywood I know.” —Peter Biskind, author of Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film

“Art Linson puts a film freak exactly where he or she wants to be: in the Fox screening room during the studio brass’s horrified first look at Fight Club. . . . Linson gives readers a glimpse into a bizarre world where ‘It’s good’ is the absolute worst thing you can say about a movie.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Art Linson sings of Hollywood in a low, guttural, animal wail, alternately hysterical, biting, humiliating, and wise.” —Sean Penn

From the Publisher

In this latest addition to the spate of Hollywood tell-alls, the producer of The Untouchables and Fight Club details the planning, handholding and power games involved in making movies. Each film brings its own problems, which Linson recounts in sardonic discussions of his own less-than-boffo features, including Pushing Tin and Great Expectations (the 1998 remake). His account of The Edge is particularly remarkable, as it demonstrates the difficulties of putting together a deal (De Niro had a problem with fighting a fake bear), placating the stars (Alec Baldwin didn't want to shave his beard) and finding a title (The Bear and the Brain was a contender, as was the screenwriter's choice, Bookworm). Linson's insights into why some movies fail are revealing: no one wants to see John Cusack naked (which explains Pushing Tin), for one, and you don't stand a chance if an earlier, bigger release (Titanic) uses the same erotic scene as your movie (Great Expectations). To hear Linson tell it, it's a jungle out there, with loads of fussy, na ve, brazen and unlucky monkeys swinging from the trees. He reels out one conversation after another, unearthing the bar banter, telephone exchanges and studio t te- -t tes that reveal just how much quibbling goes on behind the scenes. Although Linson's book lacks the polish of William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade or the all-around savvy of Peter Bart and Peter Guber's Shoot Out, it provides a decent bird's-eye view on what a producer actually does and the pressures it involves. (May) Forecast: An excerpt in this month's Vanity Fair, blurbs from Sean Penn and Peter Biskind and author promos in New York and L.A. will help this one land on film groupies' shelves. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly