The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema
Paul Fischer
Celadon Books (February 2026)

Behind the camera…indeed, behind another major transition in filmmaking

Hollywood resembles Broadway in that both are locations but also entertainment communities and each has a long and fascinating history.

I was interested to learn that the first film made in Hollywood was “This Silent Western.” The first film produced entirely in Hollywood was the 17-minute silent short “In Old California” (1910), directed by D.W. Griffith, and the Park Theatre (1798) was the first significant theater built on Broadway.

Both Hollywood and Broadway have evolved through a number of significant transitions. In The Last Kings of Hollywood, Paul Fischer focuses on one of the most important  (anchored in the 1980s) and three of that era’s most important change agents in the entertainment world: Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg. All three are filmmakers in terms of vision, direction, and production within a system that — with exceptions – also involves a major film studio to provide funding and distribution.

Bottom line: Fischer rigorously examines HOW Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg created their most important films at a time when studios were transitioning from being essential to being one of several options.

I was especially interested to learning more about subjects such as these:

o How Coppola cast and then completed the first Godfather film despite constant interference by Paramount Pictures
o How Lucas formulated details of a new world for his Star War films
o How Spielberg solved the “Bruce” problem — and other challenges — to complete Jaws
o How Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg got along both professionally and personally
o Why Zoetope Studios failed as Coppola envisioned it
o The filmmakers who were most influenced by Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg
o Which of the three will probably be most highly regarded in decades to come

Here are two brief excerpts that suggest the thrust and flavor of Paul Fischer’s insights:

o In 1996, “Steven was chairman of his own studio, Dream Works, founded in partnership with Jeffrey Katzenberg and former agent David Geffen, thevlatter ofcwhom nowowned and lived in Jack Warner’shouse, bought lock, stock, and barrel from the Warner family. Steven had taken Schindler’s List back from Marty [Scorsese] in 1993, and directed a new masterpiece out of it…[Francis] had ‘quit’ mainstream filmmaking and went back to ‘try[ing] to understand what making movies is…by self-financing some very small, low budget movies…[that] were not meantto be successful.

…”But it was George who still thought of himself as the little guy — though he was a millionaire many times over, a Bay Area tech entrepreneur in his own right, and a film executive who no longer particularly cared to make films and produced almost exclusively franchise prequels and sequels.” (410-411)

I have seen most of the films with which Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg have been associated thus far and am certain that they will continue to be held in very high regard for decades to come. I am deeply grateful to Paul Fischer for what I have learned about “the last three kings of Hollywood.” I plan to re-read the book in few months.  Yes, it is that entertaining as well as informative.

Meanwhile, I urge those who share my high regard for the book to check out two others: An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, written by Neal Gabler and published by Vanguard Books (1989), and, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era written by Thomas Schatz and published by Pantheon Books (1988).