Peter Biskind - Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film

DOWN AND DIRTY PICTURES

Peter Biskind captures his era as John Dunne did that of the Zanucks.... In Down and Dirty Pictures , Biskind takes on the movie industry of the 1990s and again gets the story.

Frank Rich, The New York Times

If Down and Dirty Pictures is valuable as business history, its an absolute treasure as a comedy of manners. A gifted reporter, Peter Biskind convinces nearly everyone in the industry to talk.... Harvey Weinsteins charming social style is abundantly on view in Biskinds story.

Jonathan V. Last, The Wall Street Journal

Absurdly entertaining.... [Biskinds] tone is buoyant as he skims through the history of the last fifteen years of the independent-film movement.... world-class dish; [Biskind] knows how to sprinkle the deep-fried nuggets along the trail to keep you happily moving along.

Dwight Garner, The New York Times

Dishy, teeming, superbly reported.... packed with lively inside anecdotes.... Down and Dirty Pictures is littered with tales of Weinsteins atrocious misbehavior.

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

Biskindwhose last book, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls , chronicled how the sex-drugs-and-rock generation revolutionized 1970s cinemahas done some exploratory surgery on the underbelly of the indie-film scene and found it has plenty of ulcers.... As for Biskind... one thing seems certain: hell never eat lunch in Tribeca again.

Jeffrey Ressner, Time

Sensationally entertaining.

Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

A lively, sprawling, uncut saga of the indie-film movement of the 1990s.

Marc Gunther, Fortune

While the first Sundance sales were brewing, festgoers had plenty to discuss thanks to Peter Biskinds just-published Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film. While no one is eager to be seen with the book in public, the only people who dont have a copy in their condos are those who finished it before they got on a plane.

Dana Harris and Cathy Dunkley, Daily Variety

In other ways, Sundance 2004 is far more muted than earlier incarnations. The shadow of Peter Biskinds tell-all Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film hangs over the proceedings. In his remarks before the opening night screening of the surf documentary Riding Giants , Robert Redford (whom Biskind portrays as a passive-aggressive control freak) wanly joked that he was off to a book signing with Miramaxs Harvey Weinstein.

Ty Burr, Boston Globe

The book is dense yet quick-paced, witty and endlessly amusing, and must reading for any cinephile.

Phil Villarreal, Arizona Daily Star /Scripps Howard News Service

[ Down and Dirty Pictures ] is the second of two wild, racy, informal Biskind histories (the first was Easy Riders, Raging Bulls) which, taken together, will comprise, for quite a while, the definitive history of just about everything good that happened to American movies in the last thirty-five years.... riveting, revelatory and even rollicking about the weird dungeons-and-dragons world of the modern movie business.

Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News

As in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls , his account of Hollywood in the 1970s, Biskind shrewdly shows a vanguard becoming the establishment.

The New Yorker

Because of all the outrageous behavior on display within the pages of this provocative and enthralling book, one might easily confuse the movie business with a junior high playground.... But the descriptions of such appalling behavior, by nearly everyone involved, make Down and Dirty Pictures the irresistible read that it is.

Greg Changnon, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Its a rollicking account of the period from 1989 to the present day when a group of entrepreneurs led by Harvey and Bob Weinstein of Miramax, and legitimised by the earnest work of Robert Redfords Sundance Institute, took on Hollywood and won, only then to become infected by the very studio mentality they had set out to defeat.... a gloriously bitchy account of Robert Redford and his Sundance Institute.... But the meat of the narrative lies in its description of Miramaxs Harvey Weinstein, a food-addicted beast, rampaging across the film world.... All good dirty fun.

Jay Rayner, The Guardian (London and Manchester)

In the tradition of producer Jane Hamshers Killer Instinct or William Goldmans Adventures in the Screen Trade , Peter Biskinds Down and Dirty Pictures offers an insiders take on the movie business. Biskinds description of the deals, the steals, the threats, and the sheer lunacy of filmmaking makes for a page-turner. Its a gossipy, behind-the-scenes account of the infighting and freewheeling deal-making that characterized indie film in the go-go 90s.

Linda Dibattista, The Orlando Sentinel (Florida)

Compulsively readable.

Greg Kilday, The Hollywood Reporter

[Biskind] has written a nuanced and thoroughly researched history of the independent-film movement that came of age in the 1990s.... Down and Dirty Pictures is a smart, funny, and depressing insiders look at the workings of a messy business. Peter Biskind deftly weaves money-shot quotes into the back story and has an eye for the perfect anecdote.

Christopher Carbone, New York Observer

Gritty, ferocious, compulsively readable.... Above all, Biskind conveys a key truth: the Weinsteins and Redford, whatever their personal imperfections, possess courage and a deep, overwhelming love of film.

Publishers Weekly

Scandalously entertaining.... scrupulously researched, compulsively readable.... reminding you once again theres no business as dirty as show business.

Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald

544 juicy, combative pages, most of it, remarkably, on the record.... behind-the-scenes deals and backroom maneuvering... infighting and back-stabbing... all are the hallmark and meat of Down and Dirty Pictures.... [Biskind] invites us to sit back and watchnot the films, but the players and the changes in them, changes that would affect the films themselves.

Joe Baltake, The Sacramento Bee

An entertaining, gossip-packed swim through the shark-infested waters of the 90s independent film boom.... a vivid you are there story of the indie worlds deal making, backstabbing, and general dysfunction. Almost everyone here, from the big bosses to the hungry directors to rising stars, comes off as certifiable.

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News

In Down and Dirty Pictures , [Biskind] has once again done a miraculous job of finding the people who know the dirt and getting them to spill it.

Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News

Deliciously gossipy.

Stefan Sullivan, The Washington Times

Down and Dirty Pictures might make Biskind the Salman Rushdie of Hollywood lit.

Robin Vaughan, Boston Herald

A beautifully researched, scathing lookand indictmentat a decade in which independent film went from the respectable fringes to the blah mainstream. Its an immeasurably enjoyable, hard-to-put-down book. Biskind may be the best writer on the movies that we have; he has the uncanny ability to turn film history into deliciously hot gossip.

Peter Neil Nason, The Tampa Tribune

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For Betsy and Kate as always

This book is a sequel, of sorts, to Easy Riders, Raging Bulls , my history of that exuberant, fecund decade, the 1970s, that gave us the so-called New Hollywooda wave of mostly film schooleducated kids who, under the influence of drugs, European cinema, and the antiwar movement, exploited a nearly bankrupt studio system to produce the best American films of the second half of the century. The New Hollywood lasted a scant ten years or less, but it left a rich legacy, not the least of which is a loose collection of spiritual and aesthetic heirs, collectively known as the independents.