Box Office Poison: Hollywood's Story in a Century of Flops

I super enjoyed this. Robey manages to avoid all the potential pitfalls of this type of writing, which is impressive. He writes with honest love for movies in general and some of these movies in particular, and he doesn't revel in disaster; he just tries to find out what went wrong with these very expensive collaborative dreams. He also doesn't go too much into famous flops that have been overanalyzed; Heaven's Gate is mentioned but not given a chapter, for example. And he only openly mocks Cats, which, look. It deserves it. (He also ends the book with Cats, because what's going to follow that?)

I do wish he'd hit a few through-notes harder, though. Reading this, it was evident that there are basically three types of flops, or I guess I show more should say three well-trodden paths to flophood. The biggest one is "lauded auteur who believes he can do no wrong," (I say he because it does, at this point, seem to always be a dude). One of these guys even straight up says "I thought I was bulletproof," and it's obvious that he thought that because everyone told him that. I would love to see the Problem of the Auteur interrogated more thoroughly. (The Problem of the Audience for This Movie Isn't Born Yet is the other of the three paths I'd love to see a whole book about.) show less

There is something to be said or to be learned from the greatest box office disasters of all time. I'm just not sure what it is! Each movie from Intolerance (1916) to Cats (2019) is covered in detail with engaging stories and depth of understanding. I read every footnote for greater context and enjoyed learning about all of Hollywood's flops.

Always fun to crack open some schadenfreude and look at the great flops from history. My only complaint is the title, which seems a blatant attempt to capitalize on other, more popular, works with the same title.