High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Indulgence - Hardcover

Charles Fleming

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747536112 ISBN 13: 9780747536116

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 1998

Synopsis

An account of the life and times of the late Don Simpson, who produced films such as Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop and Flashdance and was also reputed to have a legendary appitite for sex and drugs. The author argues that the profligacy and moral emptiness of its key players, continues to drive the excesses of Hollywood.

About this title

Review

Veteran show-biz news hound Charles Fleming argues that the short, insanely foolish life of producer Don Simpson (Flashdance, Top Gun, Bad Boys) stands as a larger indictment of Hollywood, and it's hard to argue with him. For one thing, Simpson helped create Tom Cruise, Richard Gere, Will Smith, and Eddie Murphy, and his loud, high-concept, low-IQ school of filmmaking helped launch Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, and Bruce Willis to new heights (or depths). Others may have been responsible for 14 Top Ten pop tunes and 10 Oscar nominations, but nobody had thought to combine pop music and movies in a synergistic way.

While Fleming concentrates on Simpson's own antics--car wrecks, career crackups, whacked-out drug and sex orgies, whimsical overspending on brain-dead blockbusters--he does make an excellent case that the entertainment industry as a whole is nutty and slutty. Even the more levelheaded stars who turn up in High Concept turn out to be appalling: Fleming documents the behavior that earned Demi Moore the Hollywood nickname "Gimme More."

Despite his $60,000-a-month drug habit, Simpson actually did come up with smart ideas, according to many witnesses, and he was sharp enough to know how dumb so many of his colleagues were. Sylvester Stallone, for instance, almost starred in Beverly Hills Cop, and had he not left the project in favor of his notorious stink bomb Rhinestone, viewers would have been stuck with Stallone's rewrite of Cop, from which the star had removed every trace of humor--the very concept that made an ordinary action film, in Murphy's talented hands, a smash hit. In his detailed account of Simpson's bizarre life, Fleming demonstrates why modern movies are the way they are.

He also proves what a strangely tiny town Hollywood is. Simpson was mixed up with Heidi Fleiss, whose indicted dad was Madonna's pediatrician; his doctors had treated Kurt Cobain and Margaux Hemingway (and one had helped design Miss Piggy); Don Simpson's drug dealer claims he sold drugs to O.J. Simpson the day Nicole Brown Simpson died. The most shocking thing about the book is the Pulp Fiction-like combination of decadent horror and slapstick comedy that constituted everyday life for Don Simpson's cronies. The high life, as described in Fleming's addictively readable book, exemplifies Carrie Fisher's Hollywood mantra: "Good anecdote--bad reality." --Tim Appelo

From the Publisher

"Hollywood didn't want this book to be written, but I'm happy Charles Fleming wrote it. His account is accurate and he is not afraid to tell tough truths. Don Simpson would have liked it."
--Joe Eszterhas

"This is a cautionary tale of moral failure in the midst of astronomical success -- not just the moral failure of poor dead Don Simpson but the moral failure of the industry he worshipped. Charles Fleming knows the Hollywood turf backwards, forwards, and sideways."
--Dominick Dunne

"Fearless reporting filled with gripping detail. Wow!"
--Maureen Orth

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0747536112
• ISBN 13: 9780747536116
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 300