Veni, Vidi, Video: The Hollywood Empire and the VCR

A funny thing happened on the way to the movies. Instead of heading downtown to a first-run movie palace, or even to a suburban multiplex with the latest high-tech projection capabilities, many people's first stop is now the neighborhood video store. Indeed, video rentals and sales today generate more income than either theatrical releases or television reruns of movies. This pathfinding book chronicles the rise of home video as a mass medium and the sweeping changes it has caused throughout the film industry since the mid-1970s. Frederick Wasser discusses Hollywood's initial hostility to home video, which studio heads feared would lead to piracy and declining revenues, and shows how, paradoxically, video revitalized the film industry with huge infusions of cash that financed blockbuster movies and massive marketing campaigns to promote them. He also tracks the fallout from the video revolution in everything from changes in film production values to accommodate the small screen to the rise of media conglomerates and the loss of the diversity once provided by smaller studios and independent distributors.

Author: Frederick Wasser
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 01/01/2002
Pages: 270
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.98lbs
Size: 8.96h x 6.00w x 0.65d
ISBN: 9780292791466

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 02/15/2002 pg. 148
Choice 06/01/2002 pg. 1779

About the Author
Wasser, Frederick: - Frederick Wasser is Professor of Television and Radio at Brooklyn College. As a freelancer in the Hollywood film and television industry, he witnessed the rise of home video throughout its first decade.