Hollywood: The Oral History

Product Information

Well I think Hollywood likes to talk about itself, the way we all like to talk about what we're our lives. We're all people. I mean, it's like saying how does Wall Street like to talk about itself? If you're good and proud, you speak about something that you love with pride. I think that would be a generalization to say Hollywood likes to talk about itself in a way that anyone else likes to talk about itself.

TOM COLICCHIO (HEAD JUDGE) My response was, “Not interested.” There were other reality shows at the time. One about a restaurant really didn’t seem to go too well for that chef. SERWATKA A little later, Andy Cohen and I were in our weekly meeting with Lauren when she brought up the idea of a food competition. Top Chef was Lauren’s idea.

Customer reviews

What we wanted to do was make it like a real conversation. So we wanted it to be like Lillian Gish is in the room with Jordan Peele. And, and the way that we achieve that is by having people finish each other's thoughts. It is one long conversation. In Hollywood, we're still dealing with the same issues of changes in technology and how to make a living and how to live a life out here. None of it changes, it just wears a different hat. COHEN There were all these long pauses right before the elimination, and I was like …“What is that noise?”

The coverage feels weaker after the 1970’s, perhaps because I lived through that period, but it does try to bring the story up to 2022.

Need Help?

This is a wonderful treasure trove of anecdotes about Hollywood, from its beginnings until today. Except, I actually found this book to be more reflective and accurately represent Hollywood from the 1920s until the 1970s (some anecdotes are in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s-22). Basinger and Wasson have painstakingly taken interviews from Hollywood luminaries, business and production insiders, directors, producers, actresses, actors and screenwriters who have created indelible, unforgettable art, captured forever on celluloid. Surely the most comprehensive portrait of America’s dream factory ever committed to paper.” — The Guardian (UK) SIMMONS Food Network is almost exclusively dessert and baking competitions now — so I have to believe, if we made Top Chef: Just Desserts again today, 10 years later, it would be received differently. Jeanine Basinger is the Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, founder and curator of the Wesleyan Cinema Archives, founding Chair of the Film Studies Department, and a recipient of Wesleyan’s Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching. She is the author of Silent Stars, which won the National Board of Review’s William K. Everson Prize, and The Star Machine, which won the Theatre Library Association Award. She is a trustee of the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute, a member of Warner Brothers Theatre Advisory Committee at the Smithsonian Institute, and a former member of the Board of Advisors of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers. She also served as advisor to Martin Scorsese’s film foundation project, The Story of Movies. She lives in Middletown, Connecticut.

I was a child in the 1970’s and so I saw Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy on morning television during the school holidays, I saw “golden age” musicals and westerns from the 1940’s to 1960’s as television matinees on wet Sunday afternoons, and I saw 1970’s and later films at the cinema. COLICCHIO So let’s make it an international competition. Let’s bring in Top Chef winners or runners-up from different productions. And if it’s an international competition, let’s get out of the States.COHEN It’s my opinion that Food Network should be paying Bravo residuals. The whole look of the Food Network completely changed after Top Chef. What a talent, what a career, what a life, and what a treat to relive it all with this most down-to-earth of demigods.

FLYNN In London, we were like “We’re here! It’s Top Chef!” And they’re like, “That’s lovely… what does that mean?” Kudos to Frances, because all shows are fighting for budgets right now. This season is a bit of an anomaly in terms of the spend. MINOPRIO That first season was just relentless. I don’t think I had a day off for three months. Everyone involved was, in retrospect, really overworked. The other complaint I have is that although there is a list at the beginning of everyone who was interviewed and what their job was, it would have been nice to have their principle job listed next to their name when there is a quote by them. Some people had name recognition, but many did not, and there aren't always context clues to piece together who they were and when they worked. I had to let go of caring about that or else I'd go mad.This book is enjoyably absorbing and genuinely unputdownable . . . . Resounding with the multitudinous voices of Hollywood’s first century, it delivers a narrative sweep as embracing as any Cinemascope historical drama . . . .These are stories you have never heard before . . . reflections of the famous and the not-so-famous directors and stage hands, major and minor performers, script girls and sound engineers, set and clothing designers, agents and critics—all seamlessly spliced together without a narrative glitch in sight.” — The Spectator