Killer Instinct
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Overview
Now in paperback, the instant L.A. Times bestseller and "rip-roaring, not-to-be-missed" story of how two young producers broke into the Hollywood studio system and survived the shark-eat-shark insanity to become Hollywood players.Synopsis
Fresh out of film school, aspiring producer Jane Hamsher and her partner Don Murphy stumbled onto a screenplay by a geeky filmmaker-wannabe named Quentin Tarantino. For $10,000, Jane and Don optioned Natural Born Killers and set off on a two-year roller coaster ride no classroom could have prepared them for. With an outrageous cast of real-life characters including Oliver Stone, Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey, Jr., and Juliette Lewis—along with a slew of film-crew leeches and behind-the-scenes studio pitbulls—Killer Instinct rivals the most mesmerizing, gut-wrenching movie scenes. A wild joyride like no other, Hamsher's tale provides a fresh, insider's perspective on stardom and the real balance of power in Hollywood.
Publishers Weekly
As fledgling film producers with more ambition than money or clout, Hamsher and her partner Don Murphy, working out of her apartment, optioned a script in 1990 by a then-unknown Quentin Tarantino, a road movie about two serial killers called Natural Born Killers. This memoir follows Hamsher and Murphy as they wheedle, beg, finagle and bully various higher and lower orders of Hollywood life to get the movie made, struggling all the while to keep themselves associated with the project. There are lawsuits, screaming matches, backstabbing, double-crossesbut, most of all, there is Oliver Stone. While Tarantino comes across as a petulant child, Stone appears as a brilliant monster straight out of The Playermanipulative, charming, promiscuous, cruel, substance-abusing and paranoid. In Hamsher's self-serving account, Stone is both the best and worst possible director for the filmedgy and brilliant, but dangerously insecure and terrifying to work for. Hamsher's prose is sometimes clumsy, and her portrait of herself is not as charming as she seems to intendit's never clear if she understands how appalling all this bad behavior, including her own, might be to an outsiderbut her book is never, ever dull. Energetic, sometimes hilarious, often unpleasant, much of this volume is wicked fun, a warts-and-all portrait of moviemaking on the edge that is liable to become necessary reading for ambitious young filmmakers. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
As fledgling film producers with more ambition than money or clout, Hamsher and her partner Don Murphy, working out of her apartment, optioned a script in 1990 by a then-unknown Quentin Tarantino, a road movie about two serial killers called Natural Born Killers. This memoir follows Hamsher and Murphy as they wheedle, beg, finagle and bully various higher and lower orders of Hollywood life to get the movie made, struggling all the while to keep themselves associated with the project. There are lawsuits, screaming matches, backstabbing, double-crossesbut, most of all, there is Oliver Stone. While Tarantino comes across as a petulant child, Stone appears as a brilliant monster straight out of The Playermanipulative, charming, promiscuous, cruel, substance-abusing and paranoid. In Hamsher's self-serving account, Stone is both the best and worst possible director for the filmedgy and brilliant, but dangerously insecure and terrifying to work for. Hamsher's prose is sometimes clumsy, and her portrait of herself is not as charming as she seems to intendit's never clear if she understands how appalling all this bad behavior, including her own, might be to an outsiderbut her book is never, ever dull. Energetic, sometimes hilarious, often unpleasant, much of this volume is wicked fun, a warts-and-all portrait of moviemaking on the edge that is liable to become necessary reading for ambitious young filmmakers. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)Library Journal
At the beginning of her tale of the making of a big Hollywood picture, Hamsher finds herself in her bathrobe with the flu and not enough money to pay the rent. She goes on to chronicle the misadventures of her life with business partner Don Murphy as they try to succeed as film producers in Hollywood shortly after graduating from the University of Southern California film school. They live on their passion for movies and lunches with people who may or, more likely, may not be able to help them advance their careers. Finally, their work pays off as they buy the script for Natural Born Killers from then unknown Quentin Tarantino and convince Oliver Stone to direct it, resulting in one of the most controversial films ever madeand a great success for the young producers. Hamsher's style is gritty and to the point, she drops names, and she is unabashedly critical of the Hollywood power players and the men's world she encounters. The reader should know a bit about the film industry before reading this volume, which ultimately would make an interesting film. For academic or public libraries with film collections.Lisa N. Johnston, Sweet Briar Coll. Lib., Va.Kirkus Reviews
This lean, mean, scabrously honest account of the making of Natural Born Killers amply proves the truism that moviemaking is a "controlled accident."What goes on behind the scenes of certain movies is often a better, more involving story than what appears on-screen. Such is certainly the case with the notorious Natural Born Killers. One of Quentin Tarantino's early scripts, it was optioned by two ambitious recent film-school graduates, Hamsher and Don Murphy. The script was optioned when Tarantino was still an unknown; later, a suddenly hot Tarantino decided that he didn't want the film to be made. His substantial efforts to stop Murphy and Hamsher (including bad- mouthing the pair to studios) were trumped, however, when Oliver Stone decided that he wanted to make this his next film. And that's when things really spun out of control, including long, drug-fueled location-scouting trips, a prison riot during shooting, and innumerable back-stabbings. Stone's preferred modus operandi involves elaborate mindgames, playing his crew members off against each other—purportedly to energize their creativity. The results were predictably chaotic and venomous. Rarely has a book by a Hollywood player (albeit a minor one) been so confessional and recklessly revealing, detailing just how mean and twisted, petty and vindictive, the movie industry can be: "The world of Hollywood . . . belonged to the cantankerous sons of bitches who were willing to risk any humiliation, broach any authority, get on the phone and scream until they got what they wanted." Hamsher freely burns bridges left and right, viciously (though apparently justifiably) damning Tarantino, sideswiping Stone, lambasting agents and studio execs. Forget lunch. After this book, she'll be lucky to do a snack in Hollywood.
But her recklessness is our gain: This compelling look behind the curtain should help dispel forever any fond illusions about the "magic" of movies.