Preview Harvey — Bruce Kimmel

Once upon a time there were Major Studio Previews. They were highly kept secrets and the people attending wouldn't know what the preview was. Sometimes you'd get a winner and sometimes you'd get a stinker - it was the luck of the draw. Harvey Minton, is a self-confessed preview nut. In 1954, at fourteen years of age, he sees his first Major Studio Preview, and from that moment on there is no looking back as he becomes obsessed with going to as many Major Studio Previews as he can, year after year. Along the way, he meets director Blake Edwards at a preview in 1960 and he becomes Edwards' good luck charm. He meets Jerry Lewis at a preview and Lewis gives him the nickname he'll become known by - Preview Harvey. We also meet Harvey's mother and father, follow his travails growing up as a self-described 5'3 turtle, getting his one and only job at a famous record store in Hollywood, and all his lovingly described Major Studio Previews over the course of three decades, until that all changed and morphed into something completely different in the late 1970s. So, come along on Preview Harvey's journey as he becomes a legendary fixture at previews, beloved by the studios, who basically adopt him. Told in his own non-stop, unique way, thanks to a series of cassettes he makes in 1968 recounting his life seeing previews, Preview Harvey is a warm, funny, and loving look back at a time when moviegoing was the national pastime and nothing was more fun than attending a Major Studio Preview and seeing a movie before anyone else did. Reading this book just might make you wish that you could go back to those glory days before streaming and cable and multiplexes and Rotten Tomatoes and the internet, back to movie palaces and double bills and, of course, Major Studio Previews.