Starflacker

The great movies and the great stars of Hollywood’s classic period hold our fascination still..  in these less romantic times, perhaps more than ever.  You’re invited to download (at no cost to you) and to read the first 150 pages of a very inside look at what made the legendary artists and films of that time so enduringly remarkable and interesting.   The book also touches on the history-shaping role Hollywood PR played. It was a time when the movie factory was bursting at the seams not only with stars but also with brilliant supporting players, and PR was one of these.  “Starflacker: Inside The Golden Age of Hollywood” by Dick Guttman is the revealing memoir of a sixty year career in Hollywood press-agenting at its starriest level.  It is a deeply-imbedded PR guy’s eye-view of the complex, witty and very human people called stars who made that time and its product so compelling. “Starflacker,” which is being excerpted in The Saturday Evening Post and other publications, is a distinctly personal recall of why those people and films linger in mind and heart, capturing the exciting decades when Hollywood was a fabled Camelot of daring talents, unbounded personalities and treasured motion pictures.

WWW.STARFLACKER.COM is your free access to the first quarter of a comprehensive book drawn from a lifetime of adventuring as a Hollywood press agent, a flack, a PR rep working with hundreds of the superstars who gave that period its golden aura.  They reveal themselves in dialogue and antics richly their own, captured by a fly-on-the-wall with a precise crazy-glue memory for what informed and amused him.

“Starflacker’s” thousand and more tales, funny or edgy, sometimes touching, reflect the experiences of almost every flack who has tight-roped his or her way along the stressful and invigorating paths of entertainment PR, a profession vastly more amusing, dangerous, contributive and essentially ethical than you certainly must think.  Stirred into the mix are the highly applicable and hard-earned rules of PR which are also effective guidelines to the art of persuasion.

Thank you for checking out the introductory portion of this book.  Feel free, and it is free, to download it or to visit it whenever you wish to be entertained.  That is its purpose.  And, if you feel it merits your good opinion, please share with your community of friends this invitation to visit WWW.STARFLACKER.COM .

Here are a few incentive comments by noted experts on Hollywood’s legacy:

“Dick Guttman is one of the most experienced and accomplished film publicists who ever lived, his knowledge and experience stretching from the Golden Age through the present day.  In Starflacker, he recalls the moments that have shaped his life and career with such vividness and humor that it becomes impossible to put the book down. Dick has known everyone, seen everything and, most remarkably, in a business in which most people come and go like shooting stars, retained the respect of just about everyone he has encountered over the course of more than a half-century. Anyone inside or outside of the business should do themselves a favor and read his book to learn about the movies they love — and from his example.”

Scott Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter, esteemed entertainment industry journalist

“don’t know what the author could’ve done to make this any livelier short of coming to our house and acting it out. It’s fascinating and significant.. a primer on how to get along with some formidably famous people.  It’s a remarkable life, but told with a staggeringly sharp eye/ear/nose and throat for not just the way people act, but also the way they think and speak!  Guttman never comes off as a moralist (or an immoralist). All the madcap strategies of a unique profession are brought to life”

Sam Kashner  top Vanity Fair writer and noted author (“Furious Love,” the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton best-seller, co-authored with Nancy Schoenberger)

“’Starflacker’ is funny and eccentric, and it’s exactly how it was.  I thought stardom’s greatest era was gone forever, but now with Dick’s book it isn’t.”

Pat Newcomb, legendary publicist on whose genius, friendship and confidentiality such immortals as Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn depended

“’Starflacker’ is more than the story of Hollywood.  It’s a box of chocolates.   300,000 words, yes, but no one ever complained that a box of chocolates was too big.’

Barry Hirsch,  distinguished leader among Hollywood’s sage lawyers to the stars