Tinderbox

HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers

By: James Andrew Miller

Narrated by: Amy McFadden, James Andrew Miller, Robert Petkoff

Tinderbox tells the exclusive, explosive, uninhibited true story of HBO and how it burst onto the American scene and screen to detonate a revolution and transform our relationship with television forever.

The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Sex and the City, The Wire, Succession…HBO has long been the home of epic shows, as well as the source for brilliant new movies, news-making documentaries, and controversial sports journalism. By thinking big, trashing tired formulas, and killing off cliches long past their primes, HBO shook off the shackles of convention and led the way to a bolder world of content, opening the door to all that was new, original, and worthy of our attention.

In Tinderbox, award-winning journalist James Andrew Miller uncovers a bottomless trove of secrets and surprises, revealing new conflicts, insights, and analysis. As he did to great acclaim with SNL in Live from New York; with ESPN in Those Guys Have All the Fun; and with talent agency CAA in Powerhouse, Miller continues his record of extraordinary access to the most important voices, this time speaking with talents ranging from Abrams (J. J.) to Zendaya, as well as every single living president of HBO—and hundreds of other major players.

Over the course of more than 750 interviews with key sources, Miller reveals how fraught HBO’s journey has been, capturing the drama and the comedy off-camera and inside boardrooms as HBO created and mobilized a daring new content universe, and, in doing so, reshaped storytelling and upended our entertainment lives forever.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company

Loved the book; Hated the sloppy audiobook production

The book is fascinating, captivating and exquisitely researched and detailed. The audiobook contains dozens (or more) of shocking and lazy audio edits. How could this have possibly passed any sort of QC process? The mistakes are almost entertaining, they are so plentiful. Still worth the read.

Great Story

The story was fantastic. Great to hear about the inner workings of the network and the creative process. Flow was a bit fragmented and jarring topic changes. Not sure why only a few narrations (Oliver and Gervais) had accents whereas other’s did not-seemed random.

It’s good, but it ain’t great.

First, the released audiobook uses a rough cut that has our narrators repeating himself or herself using a different inflection in delivery.
Annoying to say the least.

As for the content, I very much enjoyed the look into my favorite television production company since childhood. You get detailed analysis early and entertaining backstabbing bureaucratic nonsense but it dwindled into bitching about change and diversification of projects and management thereof.
The productions details were rich but fell short of embarrassing the talent that’s worked for the network.
I liked it but I won’t go pushing this on my friends

Good listen brutalized by narrators

Narrators were awful. Main narrator sounded like he rolled out of bed after a night of cigarettes and bourbon - mispronounced a lot of words. Female narrator overacts - sounds like a valley girl. Story was ok. Too much emphasis on including every name that worked at HBO

One of the narrators slurred his words

Extensive, educational, entertaining sums it. Utterly researched. Worthy of the Wharton School. A big minus is one of the narrators slurred his words so badly I nearly gave up on the book.