by Julia Phillips
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| List Price: | $14.00 |
| Average Rating: |  |
| Lowest New Price: | $16.87 |
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Product Description
The first woman producer to win a Best Picture Academy Award describes her rise in the motion picture industry and reveals behind-the-scenes gossip about some of Hollywood's hottest stars. Reprint. NYT.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Love it! Hats off to Julia Phillips!, 2008-12-04
Anyone considering playing in the big leagues of Hollywood film producing needs to read this book! One of my film producer friends recommended this book to anyone starting out in film production and well worth the investment.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Needs more clarity--2.5 stars, 2007-12-06
A girl brought up in New York in the 1940s and 1950s by liberal, educated parents comes of age during the dawn of youth culture and the rock and roll era. She matriculates from Mount Holyoke College, finds work in magazine publishing and soon makes a lateral move into the film industry. As half of a husband-and-wife production team, she co-produces "The Sting," "Taxi Driver" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and later becomes a studio exec. Never secure in her unique male-dominated business/creative Hollywood environment, she divorces her co-producer, spends heavily, and spirals into drug addiction with a series of financially dependent live-in boyfriends.
There are a number of things to like here. Julia Phillips was bright, witty and articulate. We learn something about how business is done in Hollywood, how egos are flexed and about the junior high social games and power plays, such as deliberately showing up late for scheduled meetings: for all the mirror gazing done by people in the industry, there is little seeing of oneself, she explains. Glimpses of Redford, Coppola, DeNiro, Beatty, Madonna, Penn, Scorsese, Spielberg, Geffen and Erica Jong (and, bizarrely, an evening with G. Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary) are compelling. When this book was published in 1991, this book was overhyped as an expose'. Nothing here rises to the level of shock (except that she hid her cocaine freebasing, and the substance abuse of her live-in boyfriends, from her ex-husband for years as she retained custody of their young daughter). Ms. Phillips bluntly criticizes some well-known, powerful people in her book, but never without an explanation, and without sparing herself.
While apparently a talented manager and hard worker, Ms. Phillips had the arrogance of a New Yorker and a directness that alienated some of her business associates. Her directness unfortunately does not translate to her narrative. The style overwhelms the story, to the point of obscuring what exactly is going on, and unclear prose keeps this biography safely out of the "can't put down" category. For example, she drops far too many first names of unknown casual friends and business associates, without ever developing or illustrating their importance to her story, if any, until she enlightens us later...sometimes. Certain passages ranging in length are set apart and told in a detached third person. Still other, shorter portions are formatted like a movie script. Much better writers can use these kinds of narrative shifts only with difficulty. At least this story is mostly chronological. The hardback edition (573 pages) should be at least 150 pages shorter. Ms. Phillips' story, a good story, is not particularly well-told.
Superior reading may be found in Robert Evans' "The Kid Stays in the Picture" and in Joe Eszterhas' "Hollywood Animal." (2.5 stars)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Talk about a guilty pleasure!, 2007-04-16
Julia Phillips wallows in being part angel, part devil, and that makes for a terrific story. This is the best insider's look at the Hollywood of today that one could wish for. Just goes to show why so much Hollywood output is dreck, and it's a miracle that a worthwhile film is ever made and often in spite of the creators. If you've ever had a dream of walking the red carpet, READ THIS!
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Over the Top, 2006-12-18
Poor Ms. Phillips. The voice of this memoir comes across as brutally honest - perhaps too honest. The book is too long. I found the author's meteoric rise to fame fascinating and it proves the belief that the road to fame and fortune is often quirky to say the least. How many magazine editors reach the top of the heap in Hollywood? - not many I would guess. She was a fast learner but she must have also possessed charm. I kept thinking, these people don't even go to lunch unless they're stoned. I must lead a sheltered life as I had no idea the drugs were that rampant. But they destroyed her in the end. Anyway, the lesson to be learned is that the movie business is not for the faint of heart. The fact that it's full of phoney, disloyal, back-stabbing people is nothing new so there is a banal feeling throughout the book. After all, they aren't inventing a cure for cancer - they are just grossly overpaid people who create stories to be watched on a screen so that the masses can escape their dreary lives. She does go on and on about her friendship with Steven Spielberg - she obviously idolized him. It's too bad she was an addict because it certainly derailed her career prematurely.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Ahem...., 2006-04-17
How does one evaluate something like this, which is rather unprecedented?
A blurbed review cited on the cover refers to this as "the Hollywood Chainsaw Massacre," and the description fits. Julia Phillips - R.I.P. - is clearly not a writer, and the clunky prose does drag in places, but I didn't go into this looking for Proust. The dirt she dishes is truly spectacular - moreso for her chutzpah in revealing it all than for any of the actual content.
Her description of her drug decline is grueling and lurid, but I suppose the reality was considerably worse, so her communication on this front is vivid and effective. Her descriptions of the behind-the-scenes politics of Hollywood could scare half of today's film students into rethinking their career aspirations. And it's worth it all for the inside details into the making of 'Taxi Driver' and 'Close Encounters.'
-David Alston
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