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Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops
by: James Robert Parish

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.430979494
EAN: 9780470098295
ISBN: 0470098295
Label: Wiley
Manufacturer: Wiley
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: February 09, 2007
Publisher: Wiley
Sales Rank: 309253
Studio: Wiley

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
A longtime industry insider and acclaimed Hollywood historian goes behind the scenes to tell the stories of 15 of the most spectacular movie megaflops of the past 50 years, such as Cleopatra, The Cotton Club, and Waterworld. He recounts, in every gory detail, how enormous hubris, unbridled ambition, artistic hauteur, and bad business sense on the parts of Tinsel Town wheeler-dealers and superstars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Clint Eastwood, and Francis Ford Coppola, conspired to engender some of the worst films ever.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Fiasco, book or film?
Oh, is this book flawed. There are a number of incorrect facts from the small (Madonna's confirmation name is Veronica, not one of her birth names as Parish states) to the large (General Bethlehem was a character in "The Postman" movie that was completely made up and did not exist in the novel the film was based on). There are some grammatical and spelling errors. The writing is a cross between Entertainment Weekly and Premiere, and one gets the distinct impression that each chapter was written as a separate article that was rejected by either rag (there's little chapter continuity). One has to wonder about several choices Parish made in what films he chose to discuss ("Town and Country"? "The Wild Party"?) while ignoring others he constantly mentions in passing ("Heaven's Gate" being the obvious choice).

Rating:

- Lightweight, Entertaining Look At Hollywood's Disasters
Fiasco is a good overview of some of Hollywood's most notable failures. Parish spares no one in describing the unchecked egos, ulterior motives, and inability of anyone in charge to say no that made these failures as spectacular as they were. While it could get monotonous reading the same mistakes being repeated endlessly, Parish does his best to keep the stories interesting by making his writing unchallenging and light. In fact, if it weren't for his annoying habit of changing a person's possessive description from their first name to their last name and back (often within the same paragraph), Parish's writing style could be described as perfect for the topic.

Film and business students could probably gain additional insights for their fields of study by reading this book. But, for most of us, Fiasco is a gossipy, enjoyable read about very bad decision making.

Rating:

- Another solid book from the prolific Mr. Parish
When I see James Robert Parish's name in the "by..." line on a book cover, I know that whatever else it is, it's going to be solidly researched and sharply written, with lots of clear-eyed and often pungent observation. It is even so with _Fiasco_, wherein Mr. Parish chronicles the history of many of the most notable multimillion-dollar bombs of the last four decades, from "Cleopatra" to "Town and Country". Parish is both sympathetic and unsparing in his analysis of the decisions and actions that led to these movies' failures, and he spices his reportage with loads of anecdotes.

My only quarrel - and really, it's more of a quibble than anything else - is that Mr. Parish didn't cover the flops of the pre-1960 years (of which, he notes, there were plenty). Then again, as he states in his foreword, those older movies are really outside the scope of his thesis, which is that the decline of the old studio ... Read More

Rating:

- Entertaining and informative
FIASCO is certainly not for everyone, but it's a book that definitely and deftly illuminates some of the mishaps of "modern" (post 60's) cinema. The real joy of this tome of cinematic miscarriages is that Parish's style is so breezy and easy to read, that the reader can take in the vast historical, biographical, and economic data in a way that remains accessible and, dare I say, fun.

What really impressed me about the book is the fact that Parish so effortlessly condenses so much information into such concise vignettes. He breaks off into little modes of expository anecdotes about a particular star or producer or moment in history that he's brought up, gives you the gist of what you need to know (including various tidbits that I would imagine are difficult to drudge up elsewhere), and then goes back to the main point without a lurch.

Surely, most cineastes already know about the movies Parish ... Read More

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