Movies and Money

In 1908, the French film impresario Charles Pathe, who single-handedly transformed a rag-tag business of lab technicians and carnival sideshows into the first vertically integrated film company, ruled the fledgling movie industry on both sides of the Atlantic. By the end of WWI, Hollywood, which as late as 1913 was merely a dusty colony in suburban L.A., had begun to dominate the overseas film market. Today, according to Puttnam, a British film producer who headed Columbia Pictures from 1986 to 1988, 80% of Europe's box office comes from American movies. In this trenchant business history of the cinema, Puttnam explores how the balance of economic power has shifted between European and American studios over the years, and how producers, directors, stars and agents, as well as movies, television and new media, have jockeyed for control of the market. The bulk of the book is a panoramic portrait of American cinematic imperialism, from the patenting of Edison's first coin-operated kinetoscope to the international release of Jurassic Park, which coincided with the vexed GATT negotiations of 1993, as European filmmakers successfully fought off Hollywood's attempts to abolish tariffs on film exports (an anxious cover story in L'Express at the time featured a dinosaur striding across Paris). Puttnam fills each chapter with lively anecdotes, business statistics and micro-profiles of industry players from Louis Lumiere to Michael Ovitz. But these details are all marshaled to support an overriding polemic: only by adapting to the changing patterns of marketing, distribution and consumer demand, Puttnam says, can European film producers combat American box office dominance. Unfortunately, Puttnam belabors this argument to the point that, at times, his book might be mistaken for the opening PR sally of the GATT negotiations scheduled for 2000. (Oct.)