The book's pursuit is roughly chronological, starting with producers who beg, borrow and, for all we know, steal their way to financing. Arguably the most difficult part of 90s film-making, no one understands it all better than former Palace-man Nik Powell, but even he cannot prevent all the meetings and Euro-incentives being as dry as a dust. Difficult and tedious. Keith Griffiths' entry, following the final weeks of the Brothers Quay's extraordinary Institute Benjamenta onto the festival circuit, is far more illuminating.

What we want, for our shame, is sexy stuff - scripts, cameras, directors - and the book certainly has plenty of that: director Gillies MacKinnon on his celebrated Glasgow gang-pic Small Faces; Christopher Hobbs, Derek Jarman's designer of choice, on how to spend a million visualising late Dennis Potter; Mick Audsley letting us in on arguably the most fascinating and least understood part of the process as he edits raw footage from Gilliam's wonderful Twelve Monkeys; and composer Simon Fisher Turner struggling with credibility and selling his soul to corporate video. The section by distributors (Artificial Eye) and exhibitors is unexpectedly gripping.

The best contributions, however, come from actor Peter Capaldi and cinematographer Peter Suschitzky. The latter gets time out of Mars Attacks! to lens his dream project: Cronenberg's auto-erotic Crash. His is a catalogue of hardships, from a relatively low budget to shooting exteriors in sub-zero temperatures, real on-set accidents and, bizarrely, a stand-in's allegations of sexual harassment. Compelling stuff. As are Capaldi's thoughts, not as performer for once but as writer of the cherished Moon Man, an Oscar (for superb short Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life) counting for nothing in his negotiations with a distinctly two-faced Miramax. Capaldi's pragmatism and frustration tell us much.

Pragmatism is also something we might expect of actors Alfred Molina and Katrin Cartlidge working on, respectively, the BBC's Nervous Energy and Lars Von Trier's remarkable Breaking The Waves. But they stand revealed here as a right pair of precious old luvvies, worrying, in Molina's case, about money, and, in Cartlidge's, over insufficient respect for her craft. Hitchcock's crack about cattle suddenly makes a great deal of sense. And worse even, director Michael Apted's attack on critics for the temerity to criticise. And this from a man thrilled at getting to work with Hugh Grant.

The proverbial mixed bag then, often ditch-water dull, sometimes inviting, occasionally even exciting. All in all a bit like British film really.