Product Description
Variety reporter Nicole LaPorte reveals the glamorous and gritty truth of what happened when the entertainment empire known as DreamWorks was created…. More >>
The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks
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“The Men Who Would Be King,” is one hell of a great ride, brimming over with flamboyant personalities, outrageous behavior, and the kind of feats of hubris that would shame even Icarus. It’s no easy task to write about the scariest men in town, especially when, as LaPorte says in her book, “DreamWorks was not going to take things lying down.” Thankfully she didn’t give up the fight. I had a ball.
Rating: 5 / 5
Spent alot of time in college reading dry business-of-Hollywood-books. Too bad our professor didn’t have this one on the syllabus. A great read, with an incredible amount of research put into it.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book somehow manages to get in the minds and psyches of three of the most accomplished men Hollywood has ever seen and explain, down to the color of the curtains in the room when they decided to go into business together, every last riveting detail. Books like these tend to skim the surface, take the easy way out, or just read like they’re written by someone who’s very aware of how they’ll be perceived by the subjects. Nicole LaPorte seems out to both understand and explain what happened, mis-step by mis-step and clearly isn’t interested in pleasing these men who would be king.
Even people who aren’t interested in Tinseltown shenanigans would find this compelling: a fascinating tale of how sometimes the best intentions, when mixed with some other less-than-stellar intentions, can cause a “sure thing” to come toppling down.
Rating: 5 / 5
It’s amazed me that Dreamworks hasn’t spawned more books. The only one before was “The Dream Team” which was rather short. But this more than makes up for it as Nicole Laporte does an excellent job on the behind-the-scenes struggles of what seemed the perfect talent merger. She shows how right off the bat, Giffin was above things, only coming in to supply funds when needed while Spielberg’s vision as a filmmaker didn’t translate as well to the business side of things.
It’s Katzenberg who’s the real focus and Laporte does a great job showing the key problem: The man was far more interested in beating out Disney and sticking it to Michael Eisner than really doing his best to make Dreamworks successful. He became obsessed with “out Disneying Disney” in animation, backing flops like “Road to El Dorado” and the brilliant irony is that the one movie he didn’t micromanage would be the company’s biggest hit “Shrek.” Laporte points at 2003′s “Sinbad” as a turning point for the company as Katzenberg never really recovered from the animated movie he’d been championing becoming a total bomb.
While she can be a bit too in-depth (did we really need eight pages on “Mousehunt?”) Laporte does a great job detailing the company’s successes and failures. She moves from how “Gladiator” survived a chaotic production to become a huge hit to how the company poured millions into “Almost Famous” only to see it die at the box office. She nails their problems like Katzenberg producing way too many copies of “Shrek 2″ on DVD among other spending items. And it’s terrific reading her detailing the Dreamworks/Miramax feud that would become war at Oscar time.
The book details more of the final years of the company and how this once-powerhouse became a shell of itself sold to other studios right before the economic crunch. It’s an incredibly detailed book that shines new light on the personalities involved and shows how even the biggest dreamers have a hard time dealing with the reality of Hollwyood. A must-have for any movie-making buff.
Rating: 5 / 5
For anyone interested in HOllywood, this book is an amazing look inside the insanity of the movie business. And for anyone who isnt interested in Hollywood, its a breathtaking look at hubris on an enormous scale. A trio of moguls who, in tthe style of baby boomers, thought their own specialness would make things different just because it was them..But in the end, there was less to the specialness than met the eye. A must read!
Rating: 5 / 5