Flying Through Hollywood by the Seat of My Pants: From the Man Who Brought You I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Muscle Beach Party

It's hard to believe that Sam Arkoff wrote this over a decade ago because all of his words of warning are still true. He points out that what made AIP last 25 years was because they didn't want to become a major studio. Oddly enough this is the exact lesson the guy who made Veggie-Tales didn't get taught till he tanked his studio when he tried to become the next Disney. AIP made movies - not productions. And if you pick up the MGM Midnite Movie collections, you'll discover that they made so many kind of films. Sam does an amazing job of balancing his tales of how he got in the business, AIP's history and tips for anyone who wants to make low budget films. Recently both Dreamworks and Miramax fell off the horizon as active "indies." Neither of these two studios rate up to AIP. Miramax went from a lowbudget indie wonderland to a bloated entity that just wanted to make $100 million epics. This was a company that died when they passed up on "Company of Men" because they couldn't figure out how to market it. While Sam didn't hesitate to edit or dub a film - he didn't hide under "but he loves film" guise that covered Harvey Weinstein. Sam cut up a foreign film cause he didn't want butts to leave the seat. He wanted to be entertained and didn't care about winning Oscars. Dreamworks set itself up as a place for artists. In the end, it treated its talent like every other studio. Sam always let his "artists" know that they had to make a film he could follow in 15 days or less. The biggest revelation in the book is how Sam hated movies that preached to the kids. No teenager wants to hear an authority figure babble on about the right thing to do - they'd hear enough about that when they got home from the Drive-In after midnight. If you decide to skip film school, read this book as a Master Class. Sam knows what hes' talking about when it comes to filmmaking. Remember - the audience needs to be entertained.

Mr. Samuel Z. Arkoff is indeed a ground-breaking movie producer, and this is his story. It's loaded with insights about a Hollywood we shall never see again. His company, American International Pictures, allowed directors like Scorsese, Demme, Stone, and countless others to cut their teeth, and gave the then-untapped teenage market "a lot of enjoyable Saturday nights." Above all, the book is great fun. Mr. Arkoff is a master storyteller, and is as amazed at his own success as anyone else. I couldn't recommend the book any higher. By the way, the movie mentioned in the title is MUSCLE (not "music") BEACH PARTY.