Where Do I Begin

I enjoyed Peter Bart's memoir about his years at Paramount, Infamous Players, even though the book is incredibly sloppy at times. It's an improbable story, but then, so many Hollywood stories are.  Vulgarian businessman Charles Bluhdorn buys Paramount for its glitz in the 60s and then names Robert Evans, who can barely get a film produced, head of the studio.  Evans brings along Bart--who'd written the New York Times article on Evans that got him noticed--as his right-hand man.

Bart is at least humble enough to admit he didn't make all those films he helped greenlight.  He even admits to mistakes.  Still, with 20/20 hindsight, he usually sees flops coming and recognizes potential hits before others.

It was a time of transition in Hollywood--the studio system was dead and the old stars and styles were falling out of favor, and no one was sure what worked.  At least Evans and Bart recognized if they were going to strike out, they wanted to strike out with something new.

Evans had plenty of misfires, but with hits such as Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, Chinatown and The Godfather, he--and Bart--were able to bring Paramount back from the dead and turn it into the most profitable studio. Bart recounts the stories of these famous films, even though we've heard them before.  In fact, what I preferred was stuff about the suits--Bluhdorn, Frank Yablans, Martin Davis, Stanley Jaffe, Sidney Korshak, Howard W. Koch, etc.--because that you don't hear so much about.

Rather than telling his story chronologically, Bart shoots back and forth, sometimes telling the same story from a different angle, sometimes talking about people and films he seems to have only had tangential relations with.  This also leads to bizarre errors, where he refers to someone working on one film going on to another that was actually made earlier.  I realize this is a personal memoir, not an offical history, but if someone had just run through the dates on the IMDb, it would have prevented a lot of mistakes.