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

Linson, Art

3.4

377 ratings by Goodreads

9781582342887: What Just Happened?: Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1582342881 ISBN 13: 9781582342887

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2003

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Art Linson's riotous journey through the making of five major motion pictures.

Whether he's trying to persuade an executive that Gwyneth Paltrow has enough chin to carry the lead in a movie, forcing an enraged Alec Baldwin to shave off his mountain-man beard, or sitting through an excruciating reading of a David Mamet script as Bob de Niro toys with the notion of heading up the cast, Art Linson gives us a brutally honest, funny, and comprehensive tour through the horrors of Hollywood, from script to screen.

In What Just Happened? we get to explore, at close range, finicky directors, clueless executives, shameless marketers, famous actors, battered screenwriters, and hapless producers crossing paths in such calamitous ways that it's a miracle these films get made at all. Linson is the ideal guide through this heavily land-mined, high-stakes industry, pausing for a moment here or there to explain some aspect or pitfall of the business, to wax nostalgic about film days past, or to serve up a compelling inside Hollywood tale of woe. Whether you love the movies or not, you won't be able to resist the stories behind them.

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From the Publisher:

"Art Linson puts a film freak exactly where he or she wants to be: in the Fox screening room during the studio brass' horrified first look at Fight Club...Linson gives readers a glimpse into a bizarro world where 'It's good' is the absolute worst thing you can say about a movie."-Entertainment Weekly Editor's Choice (Grade: A-)
"A breezy anatomy of ritual humiliation, Hollywood-style...Linson takes not quite potshots, but humorous nibbles at Hollywood's culture of self-importance."-L.A. Times
"It's a hoot...Linson observes all with a keen, critical eye."-The Philadelphia Inquirer
"A fun read. The tone-raw, wounded, sarcastic-is lively, and the story is seasoned with anecdotes about the stupid or bizarre behavior of suits and stars." -People Weekly "[A] juicy tell-all memoir."-US Weekly

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.

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