During the heyday of the studio system spanning the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, virtually all the American motion picture industry’s money, power, and prestige came from a single activity: selling tickets at the box office. Today, the movie business is just a small, highly visible outpost in a media universe controlled by six corporations–Sony, Time Warner, NBC Universal, Viacom, Disney, and NewsCorporation. These conglomerates view films as part of an immense, synergistic, vertically integrated money-making industry. In The Big Picture , acclaimed writer Edward Jay Epstein gives an unprecedented, sweeping, and thoroughly entertaining account of the real magic behind moviemaking: how the studios make their money. Epstein shows how, in Hollywood, the only art that matters is the art of the deal: major films turn huge profits, not from the movies themselves but through myriad other enterprises, such as video-game spin-offs, fast-food tie-ins, soundtracks, and even theme-park rides. The studios may compete with one another for stars, publicity, box-office receipts, and Oscars; their corporate parents, however, make fortunes from cooperation (and collusion) with one another in less glamorous markets, such as cable, home video, and pay-TV. But money is only part of the Hollywood story; the social and political milieus–power, prestige, and status–tell the rest. Alongside remarkable financial revelations, The Big Picture is filled with eye-opening true Hollywood insider stories. We learn how the promise of free cowboy boots for a producer delayed a major movie’s shooting schedule; why stars never perform their own stunts, despite what the supermarket tabloids claim; how movies intentionally shape political sensibilities, both in America and abroad; and why fifteen-year-olds dictate the kind of low-grade fare that has flooded screens across the country. Epstein also offers incisive profiles of the pioneers, including Louis B. Mayer, who helped build Hollywood, and introduces us to the visionaries–Walt Disney, Akio Morita, Rupert Murdoch, Steve Ross, Sumner Redstone, David Sarnoff–power brokers who, by dint of innovation and deception, created and control the media that mold our lives. If you are interested in Hollywood today and the complex and fascinating way it has evolved in order to survive, you haven’t seen the big picture until you’ve read The Big Picture . Hollywood no longer operates under the old studio system, as the digital age has revolutionized the way movies are made and distributed. New York writer Epstein peels away the Hollywood facade and gives a nuts-and-bolts view of how the six entertainment empires--Viacom, Fox, NBC/Universal, Time Warner, Sony, and Disney--create and distribute intellectual property today. Money flows through these clearinghouses in a complicated mix involving licensing deals, talent agencies, digital effects houses, film laboratories, and advertising firms. The accounting practices alone rival anything that ever came out of Enron. Epstein presents a fascinating look at the unbelievable efforts that must be coordinated to produce a film, including principal photography, computer graphics, sound effects, musical score and editing, not to mention final changes and approval by the studio heads. With all the complications that can arise, it is a wonder these things get made at all. Here is the stark economic logic of today's Hollywood: movies rarely break even through theater revenues anymore, and the only real money is in the rush to DVD and television releases. David Siegfried Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “A rich adventure that will change the way you look at the movies.” –BusinessWeek “Edward Jay Epstein is here to tell us that when it comes to Hollywood these days, we’ve got it all wrong.” –The Washington Post Book World “One of the virtues of The Big Picture is Mr. Epstein’s astonishing access to numbers that the movie studios go to great lengths to keep secret. . . . A groundbreaking work that explains the inner workings of the game.” –The Wall Street Journal “Hollywood has needed one of these for a long time–a user’s manual. This one could not be more complete. . . . [Grade] A.” –Entertainment Weekly “Entertaining and enlightening.” –The New York Sun From the Trade Paperback edition. Edward Jay Epstein is author of a number of books, including Inquest: The Warren Commission , News from Nowhere: Television and the News , Establishment of Truth , Legend: Lee Harvey Oswald , and Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer . He lives in New York City. Edward Jay Epstein is here to tell us that when it comes to Hollywood these days, we've got it all wrong. Each week the box-office grosses rung up by the big new movies are published, and each week it is near universally assumed, reflexively and reverentially, that they represent not merely an accurate ranking of current films but also an accurate record of how much they a