The Monster That Ate Hollywood - Anatomy Of A Monster | PBS - FRONTLINE

A closer look at the business of Hollywood today, those who control it, and how it got to be the way it is.




		Steven Spielberg's second film, released in the summmer of 1975, is considered a turning point in the history of the movie business. Marketing budgets began to mushroom, films opened in theaters from coast to coast, and summer soon became the all-important season for Hollywood bookmakers.





		Introducing Hollywood's major players -- and their corporate masters.





		How significant are the studios' contributions to the companies that now own them?





		"'Sleepy Hollow' is making money in some airliner, at some hotel, in some television station in Paraguay and in Venezuela and someplace in Eastern Europe," says studio exec Peter Guber. In other words, Hollywood films continue to make money for the studios, across several platforms, years after they're released in theaters. In movie-business parlance, it's called "windows of exhibition." Here's how it works.





		"Could [these companies] screw up? The main way they can screw up is simply that the gambles get so outrageous that it just doesn't make sense anymore. And we're well on our way." So says Variety editor and Hollywood studio veteran Peter Bart. Here are excerpts from FRONTLINE's interviews with Bart, former Fox studio chief Bill Mechanic, Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Natale, industry analyst Larry Gerbrandt, veteran studio executive Lucy Fisher, and entertainment journalist Michael Cieply.

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