Peter Bart: Hollywood Studios Face Extinction Unless They Retool; One Filmmaker Has Been On That Mission For Decades
deadline.comWill the Hollywood studio become extinct? One hundred years ago, Louis B. Mayer unfurled his grand idea to mobilize “all the stars in heaven” for his filmmaking adventure.
His dream factory, once prolific, now seems adrift amid the economic debris of streamerville and linear TV. The studio system still has its advocates, one of whom, Francis Coppola, attempted to re-invent the studio on three occasions.
He’s still trying. His intriguing, if bizarre adventure, is told in a gripping new book by Sam Wasson titled Path to Paradise, vividly chronicling how the director leveraged his two great movies into an assembly line of cinema.
Well, almost. Coppola’s effort to orchestrate the genius of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now into an enduring filmmaking enterprise was defeated by two realities: The eccentricity of his management style and the frailty of his infrastructure.
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