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Burn It Down

Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood
By Maureen Ryan
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Brief Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER An NPR Best Book of the Year In this spectacular, newsmaking exposé that has the entertainment industry abuzz and on its heels, Vanity Fair's Maureen Ryan blows the lid off patterns of harassment and bias in Hollywood,... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER

An NPR Best Book of the Year

In this spectacular, newsmaking exposé that has the entertainment industry abuzz and on its heels, Vanity Fair's Maureen Ryan blows the lid off patterns of harassment and bias in Hollywood, the grassroots reforms underway, and the labour and activist revolutions that recent scandals have ignited.

It is never just One Bad Man.

Abuse and exploitation of workers are baked into the very foundations of the entertainment industry. To break the cycle and make change that sticks, it’s important to stop looking at headline-making stories as individual events. Instead, one must look closely at the bigger picture, to see how abusers are created, fed, rewarded, allowed to persist, and, with the right tools, how they can be excised.

In Burn It Down, veteran reporter Maureen Ryan does just that. She draws on decades of experience to connect the dots and illuminate the deeper forces sustaining Hollywood’s corrosive culture. Fresh reporting sheds light on problematic situations at companies like Lucasfilm and shows like Lost, Saturday Night Live, The Goldbergs, Sleepy Hollow, Curb Your Enthusiasm and more.

Interviews with actors and famous creatives like Evan Rachel Wood, Harold Perrineau, Damon Lindelof, and Orlando Jones abound. Ryan dismantles, one by one, the myths that the entertainment industry promotes about itself, which have allowed abusers to thrive and the industry to avoid accountability—myths about Hollywood as a meritocracy, what it takes to be creative, the value of human dignity, and more.

Weaving together insights from industry insiders, historical context, and pop-culture analysis, Burn It Down paints a groundbreaking and urgently necessary portrait of what’s gone wrong in the entertainment world—and how we can fix it.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780063269316

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 04 July 2024

Country: United States

Imprint: HarperCollins

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 23.0mm

Width: 135.0mm

Height: 203.0mm

Weight: 286g

Pages: 400

Collections

American & Canadian History Arts & Culture Education & Reference History & Archaeology History & Military Maureen Ryan Non-Fiction

About the Author

Maureen Ryan is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and has covered the entertainment industry as a critic and reporter for three decades. She has written for Entertainment Weekly, the New York Times, Salon, GQ, Vulture, the Chicago Tribune, and more. Prior to joining Vanity Fair, Ryan served as the chief television critic for Variety and the Huffington Post. She has served on the jury of the Peabody Awards and has won three Los Angeles Press Club Awards.

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  • Burn It Down
    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER An NPR Best Book of the Year In this spectacular, newsmaking exposé that has the entertainment industry abuzz and on its heels, Vanity Fair's Maureen Ryan blows the lid off patterns of harassment and bias in Hollywood, the grassroots reforms under way, and the labour and activist revolutions that recent scandals...
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