The Gross: The Hits, the Flops...the Summer That Ate Hollywood

In 1969, William Goldman penned The Season, the quintessential insider's guide to the triumphs and failures of one Broadway season--but no author has since managed to do the same for Hollywood. Who better to attempt it than Bart, a former studio executive at Paramount, MGM/UA and Lorimar and currently editor-in-chief of Variety? Here Bart offers a savvy, gossipy, nuts-and-bolts look at the corporate machinations behind the summer films of 1998, a season of extravagant hype, box-office records and corporate disquiet that spotlighted what he calls the ""dysfunctional economics of the movie industry."" He divides his book into three sections: Genesis, a rundown of executives at the major studios and an outline of 11 hotly anticipated summer pictures, Armageddon to The X-Files; The Reckoning, a week-by-week listing of box office grosses for the 18 weeks of the summer season; and The Fallout, an assessment of why executives have grown increasingly wary of taking risks in a market dominated by blockbusters. Recounting how each film was put together and sold to the public, he relates chilling anecdotes of studio interference and moneymen making artistic decisions. As Bart shows little interest in the quality of these films, however, his book seems written primarily for the executives pulling the strings (for instance, the box office failure of Godzilla is largely attributed to a backlash against the mega-prerelease hype and rushed release date rather than the generic substance of the film). Whether or not the summer of 1998 marked a major turning point for Hollywood is debatable, but Bart has that rare bird's-eye view of the business that allows him to discern, even in this one fairly random crop of movies, the economic forces shaping American cinema. (Feb.)