Fast Fade: David Puttnam, Columbia Pictures, and the Battle for Hollywood – Books
Fast Fade: David Puttnam, Columbia Pictures, and the Battle for Hollywood
FFC rating: 2/10
by Andrew Yule
by Walter Chaw Andrew Yule’s anecdotal biography-as-memoir of David Puttnam’s rise as an independent movie producer and brief run as the head of Columbia Pictures, Fast Fade: David Puttnam, Columbia Pictures, and the Battle for Hollywood is a poorly-written vanity piece that offers a minimum of analysis en route to being tediously repetitive and at least 30 pages too long. Packed to the gills with quotes from Puttnam, his wife Patsy, close friend/director Alan Parker, and an extended cast of British and Hollywood production glitterati, the book finds Yule interjecting occasionally in the tiresome reportage style of a relatively talentless journalist incapable of offering anything in the way of a trenchant critique. Chapter flows into chapter, bound only by chronology and Yule’s occasional stultifying transition, e.g.:
David probably did not realize it at the time, but The Mission marked the end of a major phase in his career. A very significant phase was about to begin.