Includes index. Originally published: Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
Contents:
The devil's candy -- Great, great, great -- Head bangers -- The magic hour -- On Medicis, x-rays, and bloody fruit flies -- The war zone -- Forty million dollars of transformation -- Silly season in the Bronx -- Demented optimism -- Wire without a net -- Hollywood way -- Leading ladies -- Nickel and diming -- "This is the best movie we ever made" -- It's in your bones -- Junketeers -- "You've got to be a genius to make a movie this bad" -- Afterword: Ten years later.
Summary:
When Brian De Palma agreed to allow Julie Salamon unlimited access to the film production of Tom Wolfe's best-selling book The Bonfire of the Vanities, both director and journalist must have felt like they were on to something big. How could it lose? But instead Salamon got a front-row seat at the Hollywood disaster of the decade. She shadowed the film from its early stages through the last of the eviscerating reviews, and met everyone from the actors to the technicians to the studio executives. They'd all signed on for a blockbuster, but there was a sense of impending doom from the start -- heart-of-gold characters replaced Wolfe's satiric creations; affable Tom Hanks was cast as the patrician heel; Melanie Griffith appeared mid-shoot with new, bigger breasts. This insider's portrait provides an account of an industry where art, talent, ego, and money combine and clash on a monumental scale.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.