In 1967, John Gregory Dunne asked for unlimited access to the inner
workings of Twentieth Century Fox. Miraculously, he got it. For one year
Dunne went everywhere there was to go and talked to everyone worth
talking to within the studio. He tracked every step of the creation of
pictures like "Dr. Dolittle, " "Planet of the Apes, " and "The Boston
Strangler." The result is a work of reportage that, thirty years later,
may still be our most minutely observed and therefore most uproariously
funny portrait of the motion picture business.
Whether he is recounting a showdown between Fox's studio head and two
suave shark-like agents, watching a producer's girlfriend steal a silver
plate from a restaurant, or shielding his eyes against the glare of a
Hollywood premiere where the guests include a chimp in a white tie and
tails, Dunne captures his subject in all its showmanship, savvy,
vulgarity, and hype. Not since F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West
has anyone done Hollywood better.
"Reads as racily as a novel...(Dunne) has a novelist's ear for speech
and eye for revealing detail...Anyone who has tiptoed along those
corridors of power is bound to say that Dunne's impressionism rings
true."--Los Angeles Times
