Action! : A Novel

From The Critics

Cort has produced 52 films, including ''Runaway Bride'' and ''Mr. Holland's Opus,'' and he clearly knows his way around what Collins and her competitors invariably call Tinseltown. He has put his knowledge to good use in Action!, a sprawling book that manages to be both entertaining and smart. — Dana Kennedy

People Magazine

Don't wait for the movie -- the book is up-all-night entertaining. Cort captures all of Hollywood in this decadently detailed novel.

The Los Angeles Times

Some of the best writing evokes the larger-than-life personalities of movie moguls, the Machiavellian studio politics, the travail of producing a big-budget action movie on location with a power-crazed director. The serendipity of success and failure, the ecology of power, the intangibility of talent are elements not just in the book's themes but in its brushstrokes. Cort has the wardrobes, the restaurants, the golf courses, the argot of the business down pat. — Peter Lefcourt

The New York Times

Cort has produced 52 films, including ''Runaway Bride'' and ''Mr. Holland's Opus,'' and he clearly knows his way around what Collins and her competitors invariably call Tinseltown. He has put his knowledge to good use in Action!, a sprawling book that manages to be both entertaining and smart. — Dana Kennedy

Publishers Weekly

In a letter accompanying the galley for this first novel by veteran Hollywood producer Cort, the publisher promises a story that gives insight into "how movies are really made." It doesn't quite live up to that promise. The novel essentially follows the fortunes of one moviemaking family through most of the 20th century, across three generations, focusing primarily on the middle scion, AJ Jastrow, a pushy, nervy, cocksure producer whose career ranges from the post-WWII period to the millennium. Raised in the moral shadow of his father, Harry, a self-made man too decent for Hollywood, according to his wife ("I married a fucking moron"), AJ reluctantly enters the movie business following an aborted legal career. Making an early reputation in the new medium of television, AJ shifts to feature production via agenting, attempts a version of Apocalypse Now, suffers a stroke, recovers and founds his own studio with Japanese capital. Then there are the family subplots: his failed marriage to Steph, followed by remarriage to Steph after a 14-year hiatus; the doings of his dutiful daughter, Jess, his disastrous son, Ricky, and most of all, his mother, Maggie, whose malicious machinations against her son could earn her a spot on The Sopranos. The cast is multiplied by a host of celebrity cameos, including Bing Crosby (" `I shot a seventy-seven at Bel Air yesterday and took Astaire for a C-note' "), Steve McQueen (" `Let's get ripped' ") and Sam Kinison ("Sprawled across a king-size bed, Sam swamped two young women with his blubber"). But this avalanche of anecdotal scenery is so far-ranging, it can barely support its own weight. (July) Forecast: Studio execs may pick the book up for the long plane ride between New York and L.A., but general interest is likely to be less than overwhelming. 50,000 first printing; 6-city author tour. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

This debut from the producer of such films as Mr. Holland's Opus and Runaway Bride follows second-generation movie producer AJ Jastrow as he swerves through life in Hollywood's fast lane. Abandoning law school to fulfill his late father's legacy by creating a movie-making empire to rival MGM, Paramount, and Universal, AJ caddies for David O. Selznick, stands in for Danny Kaye, serves as an agent for Steve McQueen, has a marriage-ending affair with Romy Schneider, and on and on. As his career dips and rises, his ego inflates commensurately, and he takes on all of the big-name boys in the corner offices. Nothing stands in the way of AJ's obsession, and he leaves his family, his health, and most of his real friends bobbing in his wake. Cort clearly knows a great deal about the history of the film industry; his rather predictable plot is so crammed with vignettes of studio big shots of the past half-century that the reader is left wishing for more plot and less name-dropping. Indeed, much of this book could have been left on the cutting-room floor. Perhaps Action! could have worked as a nonfiction expos , but it is not recommended as historical fiction.-Susan Clifford Braun, Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, CA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Generational Hollywood business saga and first outing by Cort, a producer whose 52 film credits include Runaway Bride and Mr. Holland’s Opus. Cort gives his real-life Hollywood figures a strong rounding-out with famous quirks and punchy dialogue. Focusing on the Jastrow family, he opens with attorney Harry Jastrow’s 1948 effort in the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling against the distribution monopoly of Paramount, RKO, Twentieth Century-Fox, Warner Bros., and M-G-M, who own the theater chains that show their films. Harry loses, and, once divested of their chains, the studios face the rising threat of TV. The studios bury their heads in the sand about selling product to this medium, but Harry, seeing ahead, suggests making fresh programming for TV. A first-generation Ukrainian Jewish immigrant, Harry is married to former film star Maggie Nolin (Margaret Rose Kimmel), niece of Hollywood founding father Adolph Zukor. Too decent for an indecent business, Harry finds himself being bounced from Paramount for his far-reaching ideas and has a heart attack at his son AJ’s bar mitzvah. Ten years later, in a Bing Crosby celebrity golf tournament, AJ partners showman Mike Todd, who is taken with him and offers him a job on Don Quixote, his follow-up to Around the World in Eighty Days. Then AJ falls in with Steve McQueen and represents him at William Morris for McQueen’s first big TV western series, and after that through a series of five films, McQueen being no easy client. Like McQueen, AJ turns rebel, quitting the Morris agency when his mild antiwar activity upsets his bosses. When Charlie Bludhorn takes over Paramount and names Bob Evans president, AJ’s star rises as a producer.When his own company, J2 (J-squared) goes into the red, only a massive first-week opening of The Coney Island Maniac can save it. Then his son Ricky wants into the business and already has a great script to shuck--about AJ’s infidelity. Much fun. Four Stars and an Irving Thalberg Award. First printing of 50,000; author tour