Here is Hollywood over the last three decades- the superfreaks, lowlifes, charlatans and the occasional geniuses who have left their bite marks on American culture, as refracted through the trajectory of Peter Biskind's career. Biskind began as a radical journalist and a film critic. Now he legitimately describes himself - as he does in the autobiographical introduction to this book - as a 'recovering celebrity journalist'. At the heart of the book are the likes of Martin Scorsese, Robert Redford, Terrence Malik, Sue Mengers, and uber-producer Don Simpson, all of whom Biskind portrays in great Dickensian detail, charting how they have had a simultaneously strangulating and liberating effect on the industry.