The Big Picture

Book Description

Critics

• The Grand Acquisitors

  In his study of “the new logic of money and power in Hollywood,” Edward Jay Epstein offers the reader a goodly array of facts, some of them charming and others of them snooze-making. I can’t easily suppress my indifference to the fact that Sony emplo ... (read full critics)

  nybooks published on Mon, 23 Aug 2010

• The Grand Acquisitors

  In his study of “the new logic of money and power in Hollywood,” Edward Jay Epstein offers the reader a goodly array of facts, some of them charming and others of them snooze-making. I can’t easily suppress my indifference to the fact that Sony emplo ... (read full critics)

   published on Thu, 7 Apr 2005

1 Review

• 

  The real story behind the movies

  Epstein lays bare the process behind the movies today: who makes them, why they make them, and who profits from them. He contrasts this new Hollywood to that of the pre-1948 studio system, when studios had total control over films, stars, theaters, and pretty much everything else. His main point i ... (continue)

  Epstein lays bare the process behind the movies today: who makes them, why they make them, and who profits from them. He contrasts this new Hollywood to that of the pre-1948 studio system, when studios had total control over films, stars, theaters, and pretty much everything else. His main point is that movies have become marginalized in importance, both financially for the studios (and the multimedia conglomerates who own them), as well as in the eyes of the consumer, noting that while only 2% of the American public may go to a movie on a single day, 95% will watch something on television. He further argues that movies mainly serve as a launching pad for the real moneymaking enterprises of a studio’s corporate parent, namely the licensing of the studio’s intellectual properties, and the ability to provide the consumer with all different types of home entertainment, from DVD’s to games to movies on demand. He demonstrates the post-studio system shift from making and marketing movies for adults to making and marketing movies for children and teens. He argues that adult movies mainly get made to further Hollywood’s sense of its artistic importance, but that even this is being threatened by the rise of digital technology, which may someday serve to make the human element in movies mostly unnecessary. A grand journey through a world where nothing is as it seems, because every aspect of the process is hidden behind illusion, subterfuge, or even outright lies, all to further the ‘magic’ of movies. You cannot read this book and ever hope to look at movies the same way again.

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Book Details

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• English Books
• Paperback 416 Pages
• Edition: Reprint
• ISBN-10: 0812973828
• ISBN-13: 9780812973822
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
• Pub date: Jan 10, 2006
• Dimensions: 1290 mm x 839 mm x 194 mm Just how big is that?
• Also available as: Hardcover

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