You're Only As Good As Your Next One:
100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot
by Mike Medavoy, Josh Young
reviewed by Kenneth Lyen

Hollywood is a place where children refuse to grow up.

At least this is how I perceive it. A place populated by Peter Pans giving vent to their naked ambitions, greed, and petty jealousies. Behaviors that might well be ignored were it not for the fact that some of these characters are obscenely powerful and wealthy. They are the movie moguls, directors, and stars. More famous than presidents, wealthier than royalty, they strut around their make-believe fairy tale movie kingdoms like proud peacocks. Extravagance unlimited. The budget for a single film can exceed the gross national product a small country.

Thus books written by insiders about how the film industry is run, offer intense fascination for outsiders.

Mike Medavoy's memoirs of his 40 years in Hollywood, "You're Only As Good As Your Next One" is one such book. He is an insider, and therefore ideally placed to write an authoritative account about the studios and the 300 or so films that he was involved with.

It bypasses the boring bits quickly. We are not interested that Mike was born in Shanghai of Russian parentage, that he spent his childhood in Chile, and that he attended the University of California at Los Angeles. Nor are we terribly interested that he started life at the bottom of the rung, in the mail room of Universal Studios. So these are compressed into a few pages. He started in the film industry proper by being an assistant in an agency that represented actors, scriptwriters, and directors.

Mike apparently had little talent. He could not act, was unable to write screenplays, was unable to direct films, and could not even read the fine print of a contract so that he was often caught off guard by an unfavorable clause. He said, "If I had a talent for anything, it was a talent for knowing who was talented."

This ability led him to promote a remarkable galaxy of stars and directors, often before they became stellar. These include, Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Costner, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Denzel Washington, Warren Beatty, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Terrence Mallick, Jonathan Demme, and others.

"I had two requirements for my clients, that they be talented and that they be passionate about their work," he said.

As an agent he helped package The Sting, Young Frankenstein, and Jaws. He then changed from agent to producer, working in United Artists, Orion Pictures, Sony Tristar, and finally in Phoenix Pictures. During his tenure in these studios, he was instrumental in championing many films, especially those rejected by other studios. His nose for good films earned seven Oscars for Best Picture.