This book is enjoyably absorbing and genuinely unputdownable . . . . Resounding with the multitudinous voices of Hollywood’s first century, it delivers a narrative sweep as embracing as any Cinemascope historical drama . . . .These are stories you have never heard before . . . reflections of the famous and the not-so-famous directors and stage hands, major and minor performers, script girls and sound engineers, set and clothing designers, agents and critics—all seamlessly spliced together without a narrative glitch in sight.” — The Spectator

CUTFORTH A lot had fallen apart. CCA [California College of the Arts] — which was going to be our space, our Parsons for Top Chef— pulled out at the last minute. The real story of Hollywood as told by such luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Harold Lloyd, and nearly four hundred others, assembled from the American Film Institute's treasure trove of interviews, reveals a fresh history of the American movie industry from its beginnings to today. Much of the middle discussion is about those who ran the studios and those who worked for the studios. Because they owned the production from soup to nuts, and owned the theaters, they were able to produce as many as fifty movies a year. The actual contract players give us their opinions as to how good the system was. Legendary film scholar Jeanine Basinger and New York Times bestselling author Sam Wasson, both acclaimed storytellers in their own right, have undertaken the monumental task of digesting these tens of thousands of hours of talk and weaving it into a definitive portrait of workaday Hollywood.The book's great originality becomes at points its risk and the fact that there's no narrator, rather the tale is made by the said participants, can be confusing at some point: we read, for instance, "L. B. Mayer was a tyrant" by one actor and then "Mayer was the sweetest person" by another one, and the reader often doesn't know what to make of this. Though he blew his top in his first appearance, affable French chef Hubert Keller (left of Katie Lee and Tom Colicchio) became a Top Chef fixture. David Moir/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images LEE The days were long and the budget was very low. My dressing room had a giant hole in it to the outside and it was freezing cold, and it seemed that whenever they broke for lunch or dinner was when I was on camera. I ended up losing weight hosting a food competition.

LIPSITZ For a long time, Food Network wouldn’t have anyone from Top Chef on the air. But the culinary landscape is just populated with people who did either Top Chef or Masters. You can’t really avoid it.

By Bruce Allen Murphy

FLYNN In London, we were like “We’re here! It’s Top Chef!” And they’re like, “That’s lovely… what does that mean?” Kudos to Frances, because all shows are fighting for budgets right now. This season is a bit of an anomaly in terms of the spend.