BOFFO!: How I Learned to Love the Blockbuster and Fear the Bomb

by Peter Bart

The formula for Hollywood success has long baffled even its greatest visionaries. For every blockbuster there are countless flops. Directors, producers, and actors who achieve great success with one film often suffer abject humiliation on the next. Here,journalist and former studio executive Bart reveals the backlot secrets behind the biggest hits and misses in film, television, and how some projects with the biggest stars and budgets turned out to be bombs, and how unknowns overcame great adversity to make entertainment history. In so doing, Bart tells the history of pop culture itself. Bart offers his signature straight-shooting analysis of the silk purses and the sows' ears of the entertainment world.--From publisher description.Provides a backstage glimpse of twenty-seven productions from the past one hundred years in film, television, and theater, analyzing some of the factors that made them artistically successful and financially profitable.

Genres: Film, Media Tie In, Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Constance · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really great inside look into the world of Hollywood, how some of the greatest films, TV shows, and Broadway spectacles of all time overcame the countless skeptics surrounding them and were brought into our lives.

[Alexa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great look into twenty some odd films - the personalities of the filmmakers/studio heads and the situations in which the films were made.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This author purports to have the inside story on many of entertainments biggest hits. Unfortunately, I felt there was not much of interest to be gleaned from these memoirs.

[Lu con Menta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuántos datos interesantes!! La redacción a veces no es muy fluida, pero no deja de ser interesante.