Book by
Julie Salamon.
Julie Salamon decided to write a book charting the
development of a film – from the moment the idea is
okayed by the
studio until the
premiere. Using her
Hollywood contacts, she managed to get to sit in on a really exciting
project – a big vehicle for
A-list stars, with a big director, based on one of the most popular
novels of recent times.
That novel was Bonfire Of The Vanities.
From the first chapter it’s clear that the project is doomed to failure. The book charts the surreal descent into chaos, cataloguing the insanity, stupidity, greed, blindness and utter vanity that led to Brian De Palma’s Bonfire Of The Vanities being recognised as one of the worst films ever. There are several moments of hilarity, such as the obsessive second unit director who spends a week camped on the tarmac of JFK, waiting to get a three-second shot of a plane landing. And of course the wonderful part where Melanie Griffith shoots the exterior scenes and then refuses to shoot the interior scenes until she’s allowed get breast implants, which leads to some, er, inconsistencies in the actual movie.
The title comes from Hollywood slang, meaning something which is a dead cert to be a box-office smash. So The Matrix 2 is the devil's candy, for instance, while Meet Joe Black 2 isn't
ISBN: 0385308248