The Fleeting Image - by Peter Bart (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A riveting insider's journey through Hollywood's golden age, blockbuster era, and uncertain future, The Fleeting Image takes readers behind the scenes of the movie business--and inside the rooms where some of its biggest decisions were made.

Drawing on decades as a Hollywood executive, journalist, and observer, Peter Bart offers an intimate and candid account of an industry transformed from the legendary studio system into today's corporate entertainment machine. From the chaotic set of The Godfather, where Bart found himself caught between Marlon Brando, Francis Coppola, and the studio, to the extraordinary gamble of Titanic, he recounts the personalities, power struggles, creative clashes, and high-stakes decisions behind some of Hollywood's most memorable films.

Along the way, Bart encounters Hollywood legends including Robert Evans, Warren Beatty, Peter Guber, and Rupert Murdoch, revealing an industry fueled by outsized personalities, creative ambition, enormous egos, and equally enormous financial risks.

But The Fleeting Image is more than a trip down memory lane. Bart traces the forces that dismantled the traditional studio system--from corporate consolidation and blockbuster economics to mergers and the rise of "content"--before confronting Hollywood's next transformation. As Netflix, YouTube, social media, and artificial intelligence reshape storytelling, Bart asks what happens to Hollywood and its storytellers in an entertainment world increasingly governed by technology and algorithms.

Part memoir, part Hollywood history, and part meditation on the future of storytelling, The Fleeting Image is a revealing portrait of an industry in perpetual reinvention.

About the Author

Peter Bart has been a newspaper editor, Hollywood studio chief and TV host in addition
to writing ten books of fiction and nonfiction. A Manhattan native, Bart started his career
as a newsman at the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times covering politics and
economics. His articles also appeared in Esquire, Harpers, and GQ. Moving into film,
Bart played a key role in such films as The Godfather, Rosemary's Baby, and Being
There while serving as Vice President for Production at Paramount, President of
Lorimar Films and executive vice president at MGM. As a TV co-host with Peter Guber,
Bart appeared weekly on Shoot Out, where guests like Steven Spielberg, Francis
Coppola, and Tom Cruise exchanged views of media trends. For twenty years, Bart was
editor in chief of Variety, covering entertainment and media news in New York and
Hollywood. His books included nonfiction titles such as Fade Out and Boffo, novels like
Thy Kingdom Come, and the short story collection Dangerous Company.