Pandora's Box

Peter Biskind’s earned his reputation; there’s no doubt he knows his subject: movies (in particular, Hollywood); and he certainly knows how to write. His books and articles are really hard to put down one you’ve started. He has a knack for narrative that keeps you reading just one more chapter.

What bugs me, though, is his (obsessive) desire to find something bad to say about almost all his subjects. His book about Hollywood in the 1970s – Easy Riders, Raging Bulls – was exhaustive and entertaining – and dotted with nuggets of spite and insult about the people who made those movies. Ihe really seems to have it in for Paul Schrader.)

Pandora’s Box is no exception. It’s terrifically readable; I really could not put it down. But so many of the characters involved in the rise of streaming TV come across as selfish, driven jerks that you almost being to wonder whether Biskind wrote the book to get even with them for some undescribed slight.

I don’t know. Maybe they were; I can’t imagine you succeed in such a high-pressure world by being Pollyanna. But what I’m trying to get at is that this undercurrent of malice makes the books – as readable as they are – also a somewhat depressing experience. 

Contradiction to be worked on by self: readability versus gloom. Does it matter?

Anyway, all that said, this is still a great book about how we’ve ended up with a world crammed with streaming channels and enough programmes to make our head explode ten times over. From HBO’s beginning with OZ, followed by The Sopranos, and then on through Game of Thrones, and the emergence of Apple TV and Amazon and Showtime and the current holder of the top of the heap, Netflix, this is an illustration of an old, old principle: success begets copies, until what started out as a bright shining diamond in the middle of a sea of dross becomes submerged in the very dross it rose above.

It's a good book, though. It really is. 

Just a shame about all the snark.