Thursday, December 17, 2020

Book review - "Hope for Film" by Ted Hope

 This book was always out at the LA library and I wondered why as it was a few years old until I realised that Hope was an exec at Amazon and presumably people wanted to suck up when they pitched projects to him.

This book goes up to just pre Amazon. Hope was at an odd stage of his career, having seen the indie film business be knocked out by the GFC and having a not-really-fun stint as head of the San Francisco Film Society.

The book is a combination of memoir, how-to, explaining financial models that aren't really there, and history.

There's terrific insights into the making of early films from Hal Hartley, Ang Lee, Ed Burns, Todd Solodonz. He worked with John Waters, Greg Molotta, Todd Field... lots of people. He doesn't hold back on criticism of people like Field and his one time girlfriend Tamara Jenkins and others.

I felt the book could have done with an edit to make it tighter but it was consistently interesting.

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