Hollywood Math and Aftermath

Reviews / Votes

One of the more original and illuminating explorations of commercial film and television production ... Connor is as funny as he is smart, and he knows that taking the business of movies seriously will involve some ludicrous scenarios. Reading Aftermath often provides the insider thrill of pulling the curtain back to get a glimpse of how the sausage gets made. * Johns Hopkins Magazine * This is a rare book that provides an entirely new way of thinking about Hollywood and the 'equation of pictures.' Eloquent and methodologically aware, JD Connor provides deft analysis of the internalized relation of film to money, excavating the economic image of movies and TV shows with killing insight. For anyone seeking yield in the study of media industries and the stories they tell, this book is worth serious investment. * Paul Grainge, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of Nottingham, UK * With Hollywood Math and Aftermath, Connor establishes himself as the premier quantum economist of contemporary Hollywood. Bringing film and TV studios' financial logic into dialogue with Deleuzian theory and his own imaginative capital through a series of dexterous case studies spanning the past 50 years, Connor gives new meaning to creative accounting, yielding a profitable, balanced account of industry practices, corporate self-inscription and the politics of entertainment finance. * Mark Gallagher, author of Another Steven Soderbergh Experience: Authorship and Contemporary Hollywood (2013), University of Nottingham, UK * With Hollywood Math and Aftermath, J.D. Connor provides an original, provocative perspective on Conglomerate Hollywood's evolving practices and products. At once historical, philosophical, and industrial in scope, Connor creatively accounts for Hollywood's financial activities in a compelling set of case studies. * Alisa Perren, Associate Professor of Radio-Television-Film, University of Texas at Austin, USA * Deciding where the numbers end and art begins is a mug's game that writers have been trying to play with Hollywood almost since the birth of cinema itself. J. D. Connor's terrifically provocative new book should end this game for once and all. * Los Angeles Review of Books *