With nine films eclipsing the coveted $100 million mark, including such breakout hits as Armageddon, Saving Private Ryan, and There's Something About Mary, the summer of 1998 brought in more revenue than any before it. But in a perverse twist of Hollywood logic, not even the most successful studio was happy about it. Out-of-control production and marketing costs, inflated star salaries, and generous back-end deals have increased the risk of spectacular failure and diminished the spoils of success. As a former production head and current editor of Variety, Peter Bart knows alarming numbers when he sees them. Part exposé, part cautionary tale, his briskly readable The Gross reaches for the sort of era-defining statement that Steven Bach's 1985 book Final Cut made about the studio system in the wake of the Heaven's Gate fiasco. That he comes up short is, ironically, a testament to his influence at Variety: Now that industry news and box-office reports dominate the pages of newspaper arts sections and glossy entertainment rags, Bart is in many ways retelling a familiar story. Reading The Gross is not unlike leafing through four months of Variety; it's only when Bart wrests himself from monotonous, week-by-week tallies that his scolding, almost paternal, look at Hollywood begins to take shape. What he uncovers is frequently appalling. Warner Bros., desperate to come up with a big release for the summer, began production on Lethal Weapon 4 without a completed shooting script, resulting in its director and stars frantically improvising on the set. Convinced that The Truman Show was a debacle, Paramount executives demanded drastic re-cuts until producer Scott Rudin wisely screened it for a few critics, one of whom declared it "the movie of the decade." The Gross is filled with many such incidents of studios' recklessness and bad taste, but Bart saves some contempt for filmmakers who undermine the system for their own personal vision—including Bulworth's Warren Beatty and The X-Files' Chris Carter—which is a peculiar double-standard. Were the book not as rushed to completion as the would-be blockbusters he's describing, Bart might have had more time to flesh it out. But as it stands, The Gross remains too sketchy and thin to be the wake-up call the industry has coming.