Schlock Value: Hollywood at Its Worst

A hilarious collection of essays, riffs, and lists that celebrate the insanity of Hollywood--for anyone who loves the movies.

Richard Roeper, like the rest of us, adores the movies. In this uproarious, off-beat book, he gives us a whole new set of critical lenses for assessing the movies and the people and the industry that make them. With his characteristic acerbic wit, he weaves short essays with lists that work together to explain where Hollywood succeeds -- and where it so often frustrates, disappoints, and fails us. But while Roeper devotes most of the book to mockery and ridicule, this book is, in the end, a love letter to film.

Some of the essays and lists included in Schlock Value:

• Comical statistical breakdowns, including career batting averages of actors
• Reviews of Hollywood finances, including budgets, salaries, and ticket prices
• A proposed moratorium on pet projects, e.g., Kevin Costner's The Postman or John Travolta's Battlefield Earth
• The age differences between Woody Allen and his various leading ladies
• Actors appearing around the world in television commercials, including a list of the biggest stars that do overseas commercials -- and the products they push

Schlock Value is the perfect book for anyone who loves grumbling and complaining about the movies -- but still can't help spending their weekends and evenings in front of the screen.

Richard Roeper is the cohost of the nationally syndicated Ebert & Roeper (watched by more than 2.5 million viewers each week) and author of 10 Sure Signs a Movie Character Is Doomed & Other Surprising Movie Lists. A daily columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Times syndicate, he was the recipient of the National Headliner Award in 1993 as the top columnist in the country. He is the film critic for the CBS affiliate in Chicago and contributes monthly essays on film to Esquire. Richard Roeper lives in Chicago.