Hollywood Explained: Method to the Madness

A guide to the pieces that make up the business and people of Hollywood, circa 1975. Come with me on a tour through Hollywood, through the movie business, through television. Is it all madness? Possibly. Does it all make any sense? Most of the time. But when the conversation turns to Hollywood (and it does, doesn't it?), how much do you really know about it? Do you know about the fabled film studios - Universal, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Columbia, United Artists - what they do and how they came about? Do you know about the TV networks - CBS, NBC, ABC - and how they control Hollywood? Do you know on which stars Hollywood banks its money? Do you know what directors do? producers? writers? agents? Do you know how a movie like The Towering Inferno is made, step by step? How about a television series like Kojak? Do you know about video-discs and videocassettes, and why we're all going to be using them? Come with me, and the top Hollywood writers I have assembled, and find out. Find out in a book written so that you can understand it all, so that when the next conversation turns to Hollywood, you'll know. with 34 photos

Dick Atkins has been producer of two feature films, along with numerous television movies, a health & lifestyle cable series, three documentaries, and an original eight-part video series.  He also has written three original theatrical shows for teenage performers, and directed many hours of documentary footage in Mongolia with the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere. He was head of Daytime Programming for Benton & Bowles advertising in New York, overseeing three daytime "soaps" owned by P&G (Another World and Texas on NBC & Edge of Night on ABC) and a production consultant for CBS/60 Minutes, King World Productions, and Hearst Entertainment. Mr. Atkins designed computer budgeting and accounting software that have been used on dozens of motion pictures. His bio appears in Who's Who... in America, ...in the World, ...in the East, ...in Entertainment, and ...of Emerging Leaders in America.  He holds a B.A. in politics from Princeton University.