Product Description

How two film students optioned Tarantino's "Natural Bron Killers" film script, took on Hollywood and made one of the most controversial films of the decade. A fast paced behind the scenes look at the making of Natural Born Killers and the rise of 'The New Hollywood'... Fade in on 2 innocents just out of film school, wannabe producers with big dreams and a small budget. They luck in on a promising screen play and before they know they are caught in a whirlwind which spins them to the top of the movie making world...The plot froom the newAltman movie? No, it's Killer Instinct, the true life story of how 2, 20 something would be film producers became big time players in the new Hollywood where do it yourdelf film makers are going head - head with the studio system. In a fresh no holds barred narrative, Jane Hamsher chronicles the making of Natural Born Killers, from the momentshe and her wild and crazy partner Don Murphy optioned the script from Quentin Tarantino for a mere 10,000$ to their induction onto the Oliver Stone school of film making - a mind boggling and mind blowing experience, even before you add drugs, mney and fame to the equation. This is an insiders view of the Hollywood jungle today - as well as a revealing look at how film really get made.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1561706 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

Eye poppingly warts and all expose of Hollywood.
Think about all the backbiting, petty beauracracy, personality clashes and rampaging ego,s in your workplace, then multiply it by a hundred, nay a thousand because according to “Killer Instinct” that’s what it,s like when you make a major Hollywood movie.
Hamsher was a producer on “Natural Born Killers” and this is the book about the making of that film, from it,s embryonic stages right through to it,s release and the furore surrounding it.N.B.K. as it shall now be known was initially a script written by Quentin Tarrantino about two trailer trash lovers who go on a killing spree. Hamsher and her partner Don Murphy picked up the option on the script from Tarrantino who at this point was still a “video store geek”.Initially a mutual friend of both parties was slated to direct the supposed low budget film but when it became clear to Hamsher and Murphy that he was working under two misguided illusions : 1)That he actually had some talent: 2)That he had a clue what he was doing. ,and since they had no firm contract with him they decided to pass on his dubious directorial skills. Needless to say he does,nt take this well and decides to sue. As this drags interminably on it emerges that Tarrantino who by now is on the verge of making his big breakthrough with “Reservoir Dogs” does,nt want N.B.K. made and is encouraging the jilted would be director on from the sidelines.And then it gets really weird.
This is a riveting and revealing book, very well and waspishly written by Hamsher with pace and zeal. She,s not afraid to dish the dirt and some of her character assesments are so caustic they smoulder on the page. Not too many involved in this project emerge unscathed .Tarrantino is potrayed as a plaigarising ,salacious , immoral opportunistic little s***, while the films eventual director Oliver Stone comes across as a game playing philandering control freak, the eye of a ego driven hurricane.Add in a producer so repellent cockroaches won,t speak his name and various sycophants and toadies and it,s clear that at it,s core Hollywood is so rotten it really should be a land-fill site. Hamsher does,nt escape scott free either, she,s clearly no fool but scathing though she is about the madness that descends onto the film she is a little too eager to immerse herself into it at times.
It,s not necessary to like the film to enjoy the book, personally I think N.B.K. is a overheated, brash headache of a movie but after reading Hamshers account of it,s making I may have to re-assess.Incidentally it,s worth owning this book for the chapter on her attempts to get a re-make of “Planet of the Apes” off the ground, something Tim Burton eventually managed. If the idiotic executive featured here is in anyway indicative of the majority of those in major Hollywood studios, and I fear he may be, then expect lot,s more low brow high cost junk filling up your local multiplex.Scary.