Book Review: Fiasco, a History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops by James Robert Parish

[my_daroga]

When reading nonfiction, of course, the primary consideration is the subject, along with the author's knowledge and presentation of that subject. It is for this reason that one sometimes finds oneself reading something which offends their literary sensibilties yet which cannot be discarded because the subject matter is of interest. Such is the case with Fiasco, a poorly-written, overdone examination of Hollywood's mistakes. The movies covered (including Cleopatra, Popeye, Last Action Hero, Showgirls, and Ishtar) are interesting stories of ego and greed gone completely insane and will make you hate everyone ever involved in movie-making. Stars, execs and directors alike emerge as children without even the sense to surround themselves with people with sense. It is instructive, for example, to learn that eight people wrote Last Action Hero at various times, and that this sort of patching-together of scripts is commonplace in an industry that hires a new writer to “add more comedy” or “tone down the violence” rather than send it back to the original scripter. Although I always kind of liked Last Action Hero. Hmm.

But the depth never gets above simple expose, and Parish's writing is the worst kind of workmanlike prose. Take this section from page 18, where I nearly stopped reading:
In 1958 the erudite Walter Wanger was 64 years old and suffered from a heart problem. The longtime film executive had served as chief of production at Paramount in the late 1920s and early 1930s... Back in 1940 the well-bred Walter had married his second wife, screen beauty Joan bennett. The couple had two daughters. In 1952 the dapper Wanger was sent to prison briefly for having shot and wounded talent agent Jennings Land the previous year.
Nothing's actually happening here, so Parish feels the need to spice it up with his adjectives, not to mention alternating first and last names to refer to the same person. He avoids repetition of names or pronouns at all costs, and therefore comes up with increasingly ridiculous ways to introduce his characters. Everyone's “exotic” or “musclebound” or “Buddhist.” Or whatever. Was he being paid by the word?

Maybe this bothers you less than it does me. If so, and you're interested in learning why Showgirls sucks (other than what you learn from watching it), this book's for you. Otherwise, there are a lot better books about contemporary film, successful and otherwise.

Comments

[filmnoir6.livejournal.com]

'tis true: there are lots of scriptwriters who toy with film scripts whether credited or not. I normally cringe whenever I see more than three names listed to a "screenplay by" credit in a film or poster.

A lot of the stories behind the production of "flops" is interesting sometimes but not too much one could say. Still, even after the notoriety of a "flop" is revealed, over time, the film still makes its producers some sort of profit.

[my_daroga]

True. And I was continously struck by a sort of hypocrisy in the book itself; it seems to decry the overspending of Hollywood, yet when someone helms one of these movies the author points out that the person has yet to make another "important/big" picture. It sounds like he's saying that the sign of success is to make costly movies--although these people made the mistake of doing so!

And while most of the films discussed aren't good, many of them are also not nearly as bad as their reputations (probably because the money spent is out of proportion with the quality of the work). Ishtar really isn't THAT terrible, and neither is Popeye (as far as I can remember) or LAH, among others. There's some confusion, in general, about cost and quality and success and what all those mean, relatively.