"If I had a talent for anything, it was a talent for knowing who was talented."

Mike Medavoy is a Hollywood rarity: a studio executive who, though never far from controversy, has remained well loved and respected through four decades of moviemaking. What further sets him apart is his role in bringing to the screen some of the most acclaimed Oscar-winning films of our time: Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and Sleepless in Seattle are just some of the projects he green-lighted at United Artists, Orion, TriStar, his own Phoenix Pictures.

"The ultimate lose-lose situation for a studio executive: to wind up with a commercial bomb and a bad movie."

Of course, there are the box office disasters, and the films, as Medavoy says, "for which I should be shot." They, too, have a place in his fascinating memoir -- a pull-no-punches account of financial and political maneuvering, and of working with the industry's brightest star power, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Sharon Stone, Michael Douglas, Meg Ryan, and countless others.

"Putting together the elements of a film is a succession of best guesses."

Medavoy speaks out on how movie studio buyouts have stymied the creative process and brought an end to the "hands-off" golden age of filmmaking. An eyewitness to Hollywood history in the making, he gives a powerful and poignant view of the past and future of a world he knows intimately.

Psychological thriller set in the American ballet world starring Natalie Portman in an award-winning performance. Nina (Portman) is a dancer in a New York City ballet company. Still living with her domineering and obsessive mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), a former ballerina herself, Nina barely has a life outside her dancing. When the company's artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) decides to replace prima ballerina Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder) for a major new production of Swan Lake, Nina finds herself losing sight of her own identity as she becomes caught up in a twisted competitive friendship with her rival Lily (Mila Kunis). Portman won the 2011 Golden Globe, BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Actress.