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Summary: "Hello,I lied",I said, knowing I would see her. johnnyhughes
Review: Read the book 'cause she is a great looking fox and the book turned out great,too. Used it in teaching about strong women, the subject of my novel and teaching.Being a part-time psychic, part-time charlatan, I KNEW that I would run into Lynda the day after I returned the book to the library. Hicksville and Hollywood are sisters under the skin. Now, YOU write her for me because I am very shy.
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Summary: Ruthless, cynical, self-serving claptrap
Review: Remember what John Travolta says to Donna Pescow in "Saturday Night Fever"? "There are two kinds of girls". Well, basically, this book is about how to transform yourself into the second kind of girl. So if your goal is to ruthlessly advance your career with no regard for others, then you've come to the right place, my friends. This cynical manual from the producer of such shoddy fare as "One Fine Day" and "Bad Girls" is just the thing for the opportunist. Obst apparently never heard the phrase "check your egos at the door". Every episode is written to show her in the best possible light. Obst is particularly duplicitous when she whines about the mistreatment of women in Hollywood. Give me a break! I should have it so tough. After all, both she and Nora Ephron glided right into Hollywood because of their connections, as did Lili Fini Zanuck, Wendy Finerman, etc. All these women were married to prominent men in the entertainment industry, or had family in other aspects of the business. Only Dawn Steel had to break in on her own. What Obst really resents is that Hollywood didn't roll out the red carpet for her, and hold a coronation ceremony. Grow up! Obst excuses her ruthless conduct by advancing the old saw that when a woman acts in an aggressive fashion, she's called a b**ch, but when a man acts similarly, he's called decisive. She needs to be reminded that there is a distinction between assertive behavior, which is appropriate, and aggressive behavior, which is inappropriate. The fact is, that many women managers are unfamiliar with the turf, and so attempt to overcompensate for their perceived lack of status by bellicosity and political intrigue. In a perverse way, Obst has done all would-be filmmakers a service by putting them on notice of her intentions. Whether they heed the warning or not is their affair. If I wrote a screenplay, Obst would be the last producer in Hollywood I would show it to.
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Summary: So so
Review: This book was recommended to me by an Oscar nominee friend of mine, so I looked forward to reading it, and I found it to be a serviceable tome on the industry, but nothing exceptional. Obst was obviously writing with William Goldman's ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE in mind, but Goldman has greater depth, gives advice on stuff HE KNOWS ABOUT (no stupid dating advice, as Obst gives) and has a better track record. Obst has worked on a lot of films, but a lot of them were flops or little better, and those that were hits mostly stank, so she's just not the best candidate to be doling out advice! Especially advice that often includes a subtext of condescension. And when you want her to use specific anecdotes to make her points, she uses generic brush strokes. She reminds me of Adrian Brodie kissing Halle Barri when he won an Oscar. Yeah, he won an Oscar, but he still doesn't have the cachet to pull something like that, as only someone with the track record of a Jack Nicholson would. Obst pontificates as though she's a studio head, or a veteran with highly regarded cultural-impact films under her belt. Ambitious people often are nonreflective types, so their memoirs are often two-dimenionsal and boring (Jack Welsh's autobiography comes to mind). Obst is a nonreflective type who THINKS she's reflective because she quotes Buddhist aphorisms, etc...but she ain't. And might I say that her justification of aggression and lack of modesty and the importance of nerve in success is self-serving. David Brown is one of the most successful movie producers in film history...and by all accounts, he is genteel, modest and kind, and still incredibly successful. One thing I've liked about the movie people I know, is film is the only industry I know that holds such an extreme span of characters. You will find the most ruthless "bottom line" people sitting at the same table as the most delicate, vulnerable (and sometimes very successful) fragile artistic creatures. Just to single out one line of work in film: an old acting saying is "Acting is a shy man's revenge." So, yes, you can be shy and huge in Hollywood, despite what Obst says.
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Summary: Great Guidebook for High Powered Women in Any Business!
Review: This isn't a memoir so much as it is a guidebook for ambitious women (and men) in high powered businesses. There are useful tips on how to deal with other people, how to pitch deals successfully, how to partner with others.... But most of all there are great tips and illustrative stories on how to deal with stress, let go of failure and move on to "Next!" when it's time. Plus a great chapter on Chix in Flix that helped me better understand male/female dynamics in any high powered industry. This really is an older sister's or a mentor's book, passing on the wisdom to the next generation. It's more selfless than self-serving, and anyone who doesn't get that is, well probably jealous of Ms. Obst's quite genuine success in life.
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Summary: A great survival manual for women in business!
Review: Though Lynda Obst's book focuses on her victories and defeats in the business of producing movies, I found that her insight, experiences, and tips were useful for women in any business. It doesn't matter whether one is making movies or software, there are certain unwritten rules of etiquette that women need to adhere to in order to ensure their success. A must for any woman in a predominantly male-dominated work environment
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Summary: Worth reading
Review: Thoughtfully revealing of the inner workings of Hollywood. It may not detail how things should be done in the film industry but it seems to be an honest account of how things are done (and how to get them done). Any woman who brought us The Fisher King should be given an open-minded hearing.
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Summary: It's enough to make you retch
Review: Under the guise of writing an insider's guide to Hollywood, Lynda Obst has written a self-serving book that illuminates nothing so much as her own ego. Obst, producer of such drek as "Bad Girls" and "One Fine Day", purports to give us an insider's glimpse of a producer's life. But everything is filtered in such a way to display herself in the best possible light, rendering the rest of what she has to say of questionable value. For example, whenever Obst describes firing somebody, an inevitable occurrence for a producer, she will shift responsibility onto that person, saying "So-and-so had to be let go because he wasn't lighting the picture properly". (I'm sure So-and-So thought he was doing just fine!) She can't take responsibility by saying "I fired So-and-So because I thought he was doing a lousy job" As a producer who has never produced an exceptional picture, never ventured off the well-trod path, Obst, whose sole criteria is expediency, can't even begin to conceive of the courage of a Saul Zaentz, who could tell Twentieth Century Fox to take a flying leap rather than cast Demi Moore in "The English Patient". Zaentz's courage forced him to close down production - and won him an Oscar! When Obst whines about how women are mistreated in Hollywood, it's important to remember that whereas it is true that women in general have historically been mistreated, Obst herself enjoyed preferential treatment owing to the connections of her (much older) literary-agent husband. Many an aspiring player would kill to receive the kind of access that she enjoyed owing to her connection. For a far better book on what it's like to be a working producer, read Art Linson's "A Pound of Flesh"
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Summary: Obst is "Part of the Problem"
Review: We used to have a saying during the halcyon days of the 60's, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem". Obst is clearly the latter. She cynically justifies and defends Hollywood's archaic and byzantine practices as if they were the result of some divine inevitability, rather than acknowledging the reality that they evolved by accident and that they serve no purpose. I agree wholeheartedly with the Reader who found her account self-serving. Obst is never wrong about anything. She is truly a legend in her own mind! That's too bad, because she has some valid points to make. You would be far better off reading a book by a true movie maker, director Sidney Lumet. It's called "Making Movies".
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Summary: A must read for Hollywood Veterans and Rookies
Review: Where to begin! This book helped me better understand the industry I work in tremendously! I only wish I would have read it the day it was published. Lynda does a great job of weaving real-life experiences with observations of other people within her inner circle. If you've ever wanted to understand how a person juggles the life of a movie producer, parent, and friend...THIS IS YOUR BOOK!
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Summary: Removes any doubt as to why Hollywood movies are so lousy.
Review: While Lynda Obst certainly knows her way around Hollywood and has survived and even prospered in an arena where megalomaniacs, narcissists and pathological liars abound and indeed make the rules, her book is most useful in describing why good business makes for lousy art. Obst again proves the observation that 'Hollywood is high school with money'. Ambitious and driven (and obviously intelligent) though Obst may be, the deal-making she painstakingly describes is the art form, the pictures themselves mere adjuncts. Shopping witless scripts to a tiny group of hugely overpaid stars and directors insures a steady stream of 'product' and little beyond the most common entertainment and certainly rarely anything approaching art. Sheer persistence overcomes all. A project moves forward only when the right people are 'attached'. Risky, personal pictures do not fit into this equation and subsequently rarely get produced. Instead the motion picture audience receives a steady stream of generic diversions, soulless to the extreme, dull, predictable and adolescent, near perfect reflections of their creators.
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