Hit and Run — Book Summary & Review

Hit and Run is built around Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters’ recurring framework of “spending other people’s money” while Jon Peters and Peter Guber chase studio power, and the book keeps returning to the gap between who gets credit and who actually does the work. Griffin and Masters track how Peters, a former hairdresser with a seventh-grade education, and Guber, his smoother “partner in crime,” position themselves as serious executives while Spielberg, by Griffin’s telling, simply refuses to let them anywhere near The Color Purple’s set. The narrative is structured like a long con that keeps upgrading its pitch: first the film-packager swagger, then the pivot to “studio” legitimacy, then the legal and financial pressure that makes deals possible. One of the book’s most concrete sequences is the Warner Bros. breach-of-contract mess, where Sony’s carelessness shows up as a series of decisions that feel cavalier until Steve Ross at Time Warner turns the screws. Griffin returns to the Milken connection repeatedly, especially the way a top lieutenant helps convert Hollywood hustle into something Sony can’t easily refuse. The Sony history chapters also matter: Griffin and Masters explain why a Japanese corporate culture that is careful in some respects still walked into American entertainment risk with the wrong assumptions. They also underline the book’s central irony—Batman is the exception that proves the rule that Peters and Guber were often absent from the actual creative grind. The limitation is real: this is not a nuts-and-bolts guide to deal-making or media strategy, and readers hoping for an even-handed look at studio craft will feel the focus tilt toward personalities, lawsuits, and corporate maneuvering rather than the filmmaking process itself.