You'Re Only As Good As Your Next One » (Reprint)

Mike Medavoy started his career in the mailroom of Universal Studios. He became a talent agent at age twenty-four, Joined United Artists, went on to co-found Orion Pictures, and then became chairman of Sony's TriStar Pictures. In 1994, he formed Phoenix Pictures.

"If I had a talent for anything, it was a talent for knowing who was talented."

Mike Medavoy is a Hollywood rarity: a studio executive who, though never far from controversy, has remained well loved and respected through four decades of moviemaking. What further sets him apart is his role in bringing to the screen some of the most acclaimed Oscar-winning films of our time: Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and Sleepless in Seattle are just some of the projects he green-lighted at United Artists, Orion, TriStar, his own Phoenix Pictures.

"The ultimate lose-lose situation for a studio executive: to wind up with a commercial bomb and a bad movie."

Of course, there are the box office disasters, and the films, as Medavoy says, "for which I should be shot." They, too, have a place in his fascinating memoir -- a pull-no-punches account of financial and political maneuvering, and of working with the industry's brightest star power, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Sharon Stone, Michael Douglas, Meg Ryan, and countless others.

"Putting together the elements of a film is a succession of best guesses."

Medavoy speaks out on how movie studio buyouts have stymied the creative process and brought an end to the "hands-off" golden age of filmmaking. An eyewitness to Hollywood history in the making, he gives a powerful and poignant view of the past and future of a world he knows intimately.

Publishers Weekly

Studio mogul Medavoy and journalist Young worked for two years on this hefty Hollywood history. Documenting decades of filmmaking with authoritative ease, Medavoy's memoir mainly focuses on ad campaigns, big budgets, box-office battles, executive egos, movie marketing and the politics of deal-making. Slipping in only four paragraphs about his childhood in Shanghai and Chile, his UCLA education and his family history, Medavoy instead tells of his career's early years, starting in the Universal mailroom, then moving into casting. Rising as a top agent, he packaged such films as The Getaway and Jaws, and his client list included Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and Jane Fonda. "I had two requirements for my clients," he writes, "that they be talented and that they be passionate about their work." Medavoy moved into production by joining United Artists in 1974, and his insider anecdotes of those productions (Rocky, Apocalypse Now, Coming Home and New York, New York) are revelatory. Cofounding Orion in 1978, he worked with leading talents like Woody Allen and oversaw top-grossing films (e.g., The Silence of the Lambs and Dances with Wolves). In 1990 he became chairman of Tri-Star, a stint that was followed by more successes in the mid-1990s with Phoenix Pictures. Other chapters detail his efforts to garner Hollywood support during Gary Hart's and Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns. Medavoy maps some of the same territory readers know from Robert Evans's The Kid Stays in the Picture and Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, yet the writing lacks the electricity and humor found in those titles. This is a solid memoir, yet some may wish Medavoy had covered certain films in depth instead of compressing 40 years to fit into one book. Photos not seen by PW. (Feb. 15) Forecast: Anyone interested in the marketing of motion pictures will seek this book out. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.