The book, published in 1968, charts Fox's post-Sound of Music (1965) hubris in producing several massively expensive flop musicals – Star!; Dr Dolittle; Hello, Dolly! – at a time when the kids were more tuned into Bonnie and Clyde than Rodgers and Hammerstein. These costly failures constitute an integral part of the Movie Brat myth. As legend has it, the commercial annihilation of the musicals, and the success of such teensploitation flicks as Easy Rider (1969), scared the execs into bringing such talents as Francis Coppola, Dennis Hopper and Warren Beatty on board, and together these men – with a little help from ace reviewer Pauline Kael – saved American filmmaking.

But if that's so, then why is the world of The Studio such a familiar one – a world in which the big event movies in production include a Pearl Harbour epic and Planet Of The Apes (not to mention Dr Dolittle)? Did the revolution lose steam, or did it never happen? Of course, Bruckheimer and Bay have modified Tora! – which went down with all hands – and the word is that the new Planet is 'no remake' of the Chuck Heston original. But the fact remains that we're much more used to the likes of these films than we are to the complexity of The Godfather, say, or The Parallax View.

Even the most casual of filmgoers cannot have escaped the success of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind's account of 1970s Hollywood. Its influence extends beyond its readership since the anecdotes it contains have been widely disseminated by Sunday supplement hack writers – who hasn't heard the one about Friedkin's shotguns, or the time Marty OD'd? "Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and The Towering Inferno to one side," writes Biskind, "the ’70s was a truly golden age". Acceptable from a talking head on I Love 1974, but in the context of such a highly influential book, this hyperbole rather begs the question: can we set those films aside?

Some of the answers are in The Studio. Dunne shows prescience in latching on to TV producer Irwin Allen while at Fox - it was this man who, after creating such delights as Lost In Space, went on to drop the disaster movie bomb that, far more than Biskind's auteur films, defined the 1970s. But beyond this, The Studio hints at what has become a glaring reality in moviemaking: the importance of merchandise. A full page is expended on an inventory of Dolittle's accompanying tat – the film may have tanked, but it sure made money. Try thinking up merchandise for The Conversation (1974) or Nashville (1975). It just can't be done.

The point is that those films were lucky to have made it to the screens. The producers were less concerned with producing them than they were with finding formulas – like Planet – that could be sold on the back of burgers. Which brings us to now. Anyone who frequents McDonalds will be familiar with Disney's selling methods – surprisingly Pearl Harbor missed out on a tie-in line of Flamin' Zero burgers – but Dunne was reporting a new phenomenon. Tat is now in its baroque phase: you can bet that the same snobs that kept to their original Star Wars tat will start buying up Heston figurines with which to taunt their Wahlberg-owning inferiors.

Perhaps they'll be proved right – the real test is whether the new version get spoofed on The Simpsons - but you'd think director Tim Burton had done a Psycho 1998 from the way some people talk about the original Planet. Likewise, some of Pearl Harbor's reviewers have managed to praise the awesomely dull Tora! But the failure of imagination in Hollywood now is simply a more evolved version of that detailed in The Studio – and its inhabitants did not necessarily have ambitions beyond the retailing of Pushmi-Pullyu toys either. When Heston tells his producer that "I think we've got something more than mere entertainment here", "Jesus, as long as it's not a message picture" comes the response.

The Easy Riders, Raging Bulls myth is a useful one. After all, it's better that we take inspiration from the greats of the past than simply recycle its trash. But it can also be crippling – the post-Biskind film world saw to it that a great film like The Insider was swamped by comparisons with the superficially similar All The President's Men (1976) on release. Besides giving some perspective on this year's blockbusters – and being incredibly funny – The Studio is a reassuring read; one that tells us, ultimately, that it was ever thus.

Henry K Miller