The movie brats: How the film generation took over Hollywood

by Michael Pye

Points out how power in the American film industry was transferred from the legendary moguls to a new generation of filmmakers

Genres: Film, Media Tie In

273 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Michael Pye (b. 1946) is a writer who reported on business for The Sunday Times of London in the 1960s and 1970s. He has also authored many books, two of which are about the entertainment industry: The Movie Brats: How the Film Generation Took Over Hollywood (with Lynda Myles, 1979), and Moguls: Inside the Business of Show Business (1980).

Reviews

[Paul Logan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered this book in fifth grade. I was interested in film long before that but in Midland, TX I could only find books on special effects and those books covered only movies made before 1969. I could get plenty of information about "Jason and the Argonauts," "North by Northwest," and if I was lucky, "2001," but that was it. And then this book showed up and I checked it out immediately. My main interest was Speilberg and Lucas because it was 1985 and I was ten years old, but when I read the sections on Coppola, Scorsese, and DePalma, I became an instant fan. I rented "The Godfather" as soon as I finished the book and my life has never been the same. It might not be the most insightful or critically savvy book about these filmmakers but it's books like this that open worlds. Thank you, Michael Pye.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Subtitled “How the film generation took over Hollywood”, this early (published in 1979) is, in their words, a collaboration - Myles ‘developed the idea of a cine-literate generation of filmmakers’ and Pye “prepared the historical, industrial and sociological material’.
The first part, covering 12 of the 247 pages, is “The Playground”, giving us a rough précis of the Brats and their output. Part 2, “The Playground Opens”, runs 51 pages and covers Hollywood, how it financed itself and why that laid open the doors for the Brats to get in. The meat of the book is in Part 3, “The Children”, where we get entries on Francis Coppola, George Lucas, Brian DePalma, John Milius, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. These feature short biographies, how their talent developed and covers their films to date. Weirdly, the writers don’t seem to like their subjects films very much and are either hostile to most (though Scorsese doesn’t come out of it too badly and Milius is treated like a God for some reason) or dismissive, but they do read some interesting things into them. Of course, it’s easy to feel like this - I’m reading the book 46 years after it was first published and have read biographies on most of those detailed and seen almost all their films - but it does feel like there’s a nip, at these ‘kids’ coming in and making things their own way and making a lot of money in the process. It does make me wonder what the writers would have thought of their later output and I’d have been keen to see books updated perhaps every two decades.
It’s intelligent, it’s well written and presented and, as a time capsule, it does the job. If you don’t know of the Movie Brats, then it wouldn’t be a bad place to start and I’d recommend it.

[Mike Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely one of the most fascinating and essential books about film. Will read this one over and over in the years to come.