New Review: Open Wide

The following is a brief excerpt from a review posted on PopandPolitics.com:

Being the type of movie fan that would practically live in the theaters during the summer months or even see up to four movies in a weekend, it was quite interesting to read “Open Wide: How Hollywood Box Office Became a National Obsession,” by Dade Hayes & Jonathan Bing.

“Open Wide,” published by Miramax Books/Hyperion, is the inside story of how a film gets produced and marketed to consumers. The reader is taken behind the scenes of a typical summer blockbuster release weekend to find out why by the time a film is released, we’re all simply ecstatic to overpay for tickets and stand in long lines in the dead of night with other movie geeks.

“Open Wide,” focuses on three major motion picture releases for the 2003 summer season. The movies competing for the July 4th market of expendable moviegoer income are “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde,” and the DreamWorks animated feature, “Sinbad.” Using these releases as the anchor for the narrative of the book, the reader learns about how armies of slick marketers shape and manipulate the consumer base well ahead of the release date so that their box office numbers will be smashed out of the park on opening weekend — no matter how good or bad the actual movies are.

However, this book is not just about how and why the fans react as they do, but also about the acute neurosis of the Hollywood moguls and filmmakers that are only as good as their last gig. In Hollywood, you may be king for a day, but a fool for a lifetime if you take projects that fail to bring home big box office numbers (just ask John Travolta before Quentin Tarrantino resurrected his career in “Pulp Fiction”). Read More