The Last Kings of Hollywood is a no-surprises retelling of the rise to fame, wealth and power of filmmakers Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.
Paul Fischer’s The Last Kings of Hollywood re-tells the foundational myths of the late 1960s/1970s era of American filmmaking. Despite naming the three famous filmmakers in its title, the book mostly focuses on the Coppola/Lucas relationship.
Francis Ford Coppola was a drama and film school graduate who achieved the unthinkable by getting into the film industry, a profession so closed to outsiders that at the time film schools were advising their students to drop out. George Lucas was the film school circuit’s star pupil. Both met on the set of Coppola’s Finigan’s Rainbow (1968), and together pursued Coppola’s dream of setting up his Zoetrope studio, an independent filmmakers’ community free from the interference of Hollywood.
Coppola supported Lucas when the studios hated his debut film, THX1138 (1971). The financial trouble that followed forced a reluctant Coppola to make The Godfather (1972). That film was a box office hit and to this day is widely regarded as one of the best ever made. Coppola used his new-found popularity to back Lucas’ second feature, American Graffiti (1973). It was also hugely profitable and that led eventually to his Star Wars (1977). That movie redefined filmmaking, merchandising and box office profit for everything that followed.
Spielberg’s career is given less coverage, with the author recounting the director’s standardised biography – the shy Jewish lad who dropped out of university when he landed a 7-year contract directing TV, only to find himself on set directing crew and stars decades his senior. As the success of The Godfather made adapting bestsellers for the screen popular, Spielberg was given Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws. Fischer retells the famous story of the nightmare-to-box office triumph of that film’s production, sadly, adding nothing new. See Jaws at 50: The Definitive Inside Story (2025) for more detail and on-set footage.
Next, Fischer details the men’s mixed fortunes into the 1980s. Conflict between Coppola and Lucas followed Star Wars, as its unprecedented success inverted their power dynamic. Lucas was careful with his new-found wealth; Coppola took risks, always needed an investor and considered Lucas in his debt. The author repeats familiar criticisms of both men micromanaging their respective empires, becoming the corporate overlords they’d spent the 1970s criticising.
Coppola’s attempts at buying and running a major studio ended in multiple bankruptcies and he spent decades working as a director for hire – the very opposite of the personal filmmaking he had advocated in his earlier years. His self-funded dream project Megalopolis, released in 2024, lost approximately $75 million at the box office.
Lucas gave up making movies almost entirely, returning only to make his derided Star Wars prequels in the late-90s. He sold Lucasfilm and its properties to Disney for $4.05 billion in 2013. Coppola is often quoted as suggesting the success of Star War robbed cinema of Lucas’ wider talents. He never made the personal abstract movies he had intended.
Spielberg went on to become a pillar of the Hollywood establishment and remains a name so influential autocorrect recognises it. This year’s alien conspiracy movie Disclosure Day will be his 34th professional film in 50 years. His net worth is said to be more than $10 billion.
The mixed successes of the directors’ careers show how the title The Last Kings of Hollywood is ultimately a misnomer – their careers owe more to the rapid rise and fall of despots and drug lords than the continuous reign of sovereign figures. Today, Lucas is an entrepreneur and philanthropist long retired from the industry; Coppola remains a controversial and marginal figure whose legacy has yet to solidify if the accounts of what happened during the filming of Megalopolis are to be believed. Spielberg rose steadily through the industry ranks, earning his knightly seat at ever-higher tables with each box-office hit. He might be a pillar of the establishment today, but it took his Holocaust drama Schindler’s List (1993) to shift his reputation beyond that of predicting public tastes, earning enormous box office returns and producing slick, if shallow, popcorn movies.
Overall, Fischer’s book contains little that hasn’t been told and retold in many other places and adds little to the familiar narrative of two hippie dreamers and an industry professional working their way up the director’s career ladder. Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls remains the definitive text on that era as it widens the scope to cover other equally influential figures. The stories of the next decades of their careers are only simplistically glossed over. How well did Lucas run his empire? Why did he return to filmmaking? What happened to Spielberg as he branched out into producing? What was so special about Megalopolis that Coppola spent decades working on it and felt it worthy of risking his fortune on? All are questions left for another author.
In the end, this sticking to the known knowns does inadvertently prove the extent of Lucas and Spielberg’s influence on the wider culture, even on publishing, as their successes paved the way for today’s endless rebooting and retelling of no-surprises, safe stories. This book is a prime example. No doubt the subjects have very good libel lawyers.
The audiobook is narrated by Shaun Taylor-Corbett who sounds remarkably like voice actor Billy West. As a result, listening to Fischer’s book is reminiscent of listening to Fry from Futurama attempt imitations of various famous people. His female voices are cartoonishly bad, and his Martin Scorsese impressions are laughable. This is a book to read, not to listen to, but you’d miss little if you by-passed it entirely. Overall, it’s a disappointing retread of canonised Hollywood lore.
The Last Kings of Hollywood by Paul Fischer is published by Celadon Books
Lee Russell Wilkes 