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Action! Audiobook
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(1.95) - 22 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
ALA Booklist Editor's Choice 2003 list
Action! is a family saga in which five decades of Hollywood history are embodied in the lives of three generations of a movie dynasty, with each generation reflecting the changing values of the motion-picture industry.
AJ Jastrow, the producer at the center of this story, seeks to build a movie empire. Along the way he battles manipulative executives, power-crazed directors, drug-addicted actors, duplicitous agents, the FBI, and his own mother, Hollywood's wealthiest woman. Interwoven into the fiction are some of Hollywood's most colorful historical characters and a who's who of today's players.
Author Robert Cort, the producer of fifty-two films that have grossed more than $2 billion at the box office, has written a novel that is not only a page-turning family drama but also an inside account of Hollywood and how movies are really made.
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“Some of the best writing evokes the larger-than-life personalities of movie moguls, the Machiavellian studio politics, the travail of producing a big-budget action movie on location with a power-crazed director. The serendipity of success and failure, the ecology of power, the intangibility of talent are elements not just in the book’s themes but in its brushstrokes. Cort has the wardrobes, the restaurants, the golf courses, the argot of the business down pat.”
— Los Angeles
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“[Cort] clearly knows his way around what Collins and her competitors invariably call Tinseltown. He has put his knowledge to good use in Action!, a sprawling book that manages to be both entertaining and smart.”
— New York Times -
“Don’t wait for the movie—the book is up-all-night entertaining. Cort captures all of Hollywoodin this decadently detailed novel.”
— People Magazine -
“Gardner’s marvelous rendering makes a good novel even better. An impressive narrator with many accents and dramatic variations at his command, Gardner clearly relishes this tale of Hollywoodback lots, boardrooms, and bedrooms.”
— Booklist -
“Cort gives his real-life Hollywood figures a strong rounding-out with famous quirks and punchy dialogue…Much fun.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“I grew up in this world. I recognize the family. I recognize the industry. These were the ambitions that we all shared and achieved—or not. I enjoyed Action! thoroughly and completely. The only thing wrong with Robert Cort’s novel is that it’s too short.”
— Richard Dreyfuss -
“Gardner’s voice has all the necessary smarmy intonations and inflections that characterize stereotypical Hollywood executives and agents. You can almost hear them sucking on their big cigars as they make their deals; but he also captures the innocence of youth and the agony and joy or family relationships.”
— Kliatt -
“Cort absolutely knows the territory...Like any appalling story of how people really behave, it’s fascinating, and Grover Gardner gives it all the gravitas good acting can.”
— AudioFile
Awards
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An Booklist Editors’ Choice
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A Booklist Editors’ Choice, June 2003
Action! Listener Reviews
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" I was rather disappointed. "
— Karen, 11/2/2010 -
" I could not really get into this book. I read the first couple of chapter and was not interested enough to keep going. "
— Randi, 10/17/2007
About Robert Cort
Robert W. Cort has produced fifty-two films, including Mr. Holland’s Opus and Three Men and a Baby. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School, he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and McKinsey & Company. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife.
About Grover Gardner
Grover Gardner (a.k.a. Tom Parker) is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.