Join Diesel, A Bookstore on Tuesday April 22nd at 6:30 pm as they welcome Matthew Specktor to the store to discuss and sign The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood  Joining him in conversation will be Tom Bissell. Sam Kovner reads messages on walls and hears voices in the hall, and wonders: if you find yourself losing your mind, how do you get well?

A personal and cultural exploration of the struggles between art and business at the heart of modern Hollywood, through the eyes of the talent that shaped it

Matthew Specktor grew up in the film industry: the son of legendary CAA superagent Fred Specktor, his childhood was one where Beau Bridges came over for dinner, Martin Sheen’s daughter was his close friend, and Marlon Brando left long messages on the family answering machine. He would eventually spend time working in Hollywood himself, first as a reluctant studio executive and later as a screenwriter. 

Now, with The Golden Hour, Specktor blends memoir, cultural criticism, and narrative history to tell the story of the modern motion picture industry—illuminating the conflict between art and business that has played out over the last seventy-five years in Hollywood. Braiding his own story with that of his father, mother (a talented screenwriter whose career was cut short), and figures ranging from Jack Nicholson to CAA’s Michael Ovitz, Specktor reveals how Hollywood became a laboratory for the eternal struggle between art, labor, and capital.