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Rebels On The Backlot
Six Maverick Directors And How They Conquered The Hollywood Studio System
by Sharon Waxman


5.5

based on 11 reviews
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based on 2 votes
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Official Publisher Site

Waxman's book examines the careers of directors Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Jonze, David O. Russell, David Fincher and Paul Thomas Anderson.

HarperEntertainment, 416 pages
02/01/2005
$25.95

ISBN: 0060540176

Nonfiction
Entertainment & Media

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Publishers Weekly

These men possess a daring vision, which the author skillfully depicts, simultaneously offering an illuminating view of motion picture politics.

Booklist Gordon Flagg

A sympathetic but clear-eyed account. [1 Feb 2005, p.928]

Salon Andrew O'Hehir

But while Waxman never conceals her own tastes and sympathies, she's a reporter to the core, and like all good reporting Rebels on the Backlot ultimately opens up its subject for debate and leaves the final verdict to the reader.

Kirkus Reviews

Waxman's grasp of the interior of the studio world, and her ability to make the workings of closed-door deals comprehensible, raise her work from text book to something truly absorbing.

Washington Post Robert Sklar

Her book is a triumph of journeywoman legwork.

Library Journal Stephen Rees

Well written though overlong, the book should have included more on women and minority directors (notably Sofia Coppola). [15 Feb 2005, p.134]

Entertainment Weekly Benjamin Svetkey

It's a fun, sometimes nasty read, although a bit sloppy with the facts in spots.

Los Angeles Times David Freeman

A lively book with gossipy and readable stories about some obsessive guys who are as much rascals as rebels. [23 Jan 2005, p.R2]

The New Republic Elbert Ventura

Waxman has shown a workmanlike talent for getting the money quote, the meaty anecdote. Less apparent is an ability to contextualize and critique, to bring the information she digs up under insightful scrutiny. In a Sunday arts feature, such failings may be negligible; in a book, they can be fatal.

The New York Times Book Review Ken Tucker

The sloppy language is consistently distracting in a book that has all it can do to prove the assertion of its subtitle... Rebels might have been a classic of show-business reportage had Waxman had only two things: a better editor and a willingness to let loose with what she really thinks about some of these gifted jerks.

The Onion A.V. Club Nathan Rabin

Waxman's vicious gossip-as-history approach—which echoes Peter Biskind's compulsively readable, utterly trashy Hollywood epics "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down And Dirty Pictures"—can be invigorating and exciting in small doses, but becomes suffocating and toxic over the course of an entire book. Waxman's got a wonderful, meaty story to tell, but it's strangled by the ugliness and mean-spiritedness of its telling.

The average user rating for this book is 5.5 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

chris m. gave it a10:
so entertaining. A must read for any true movie lover.

Ellie D gave it a1:
Inept storytelling here. Quentin Tarantino and David O. Russell's careers were shamelessly told-- the others were bad, but a little less. The only good story here was Spike Jonze's, which wasn't half-a**ed and really courageous. But the rest is awful.

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Rebels On The Backlot Six Maverick Directors And How They Conquered The Hollywood Studio System by Sharon Waxman

Rebels On The Backlot
Six Maverick Directors And How They Conquered The Hollywood Studio System
by Sharon Waxman