True Hollywood Stories

James Ulmer's Hollywood Hot List:

The Complete Guide to Star Ranking

St. Martin's Griffin, 279 pp., $13.95 (paper)

Just weeks after its first printing, James Ulmer's Hollywood Hot List is about as hot as an iceberg. Billed as the definitive "industry bible," Hot List ranks Hollywood's stable of superstars in order of their bankability, or ability to have a film greenlit on their marquee value alone. Ulmer divides his list into sections, starting with the A-plus team of Julia, Tom, Tom, Mel, and Bruce and ending way down at 200 with B-teamer Steven Seagal. Each star is given a numerical value from one to 100 ranking their professionalism, willingness to travel, career management, and talent. Ulmer, an entertainment journalist, should be commended for these easy-to-reference rankings, but too often, his information is riddled with personal bias, factual error (Meg Ryan stars in A Man and a Woman?), and dubious predictions ("Kevin Costner is finished," -- this coming as Costner is riding positive buzz for 13 Days). The majority of each star's write-up is filled with "inside dirt," information that Ulmer attributes to anonymous industry insiders, most of which ranges from light gossip (about Richard Gere: "He's not gay. And there's no such thing as a gerbil.") to malicious barbs (about Anthony Hopkins: "He's always riding off to his AA meetings when the best thing he could do would be to have a drink.") Other quotations only discredit Ulmer's judgment: He foolishly cites Harrison Ford as "over" when What Lies Beneath torpedoed all but three of last summer's releases. Perhaps its best to think of this pretentious volume of hooey more as a tabloid and less as a bible.