From Oscars to Oblivion : MY INDECISION IS FINAL; The Rise and Fall of Goldcrest Films <i> By Jake Eberts and Terry Ilott (Atlantic Monthly Press: $29.95; 678 pp.) </i>

Remember Goldcrest? Remember the flash of British film in the early ‘80s that gave us David Puttnam, Richard Attenborough, Roland Joffe and Hugh Hudson? Remember “Local Hero,” “Chariots of Fire,” “Gandhi” and “The Killing Fields”? These were all Goldcrest films and Goldcrest film makers, and at its height, the company’s product racked up an unprecedented 19 Oscars, including Best Picture two years in a row--”Chariots of Fire” in 1981 and “Gandhi” in 1982.

Then, suddenly, the man who founded and was most closely identified with the company abruptly left, his successors dropped two bombs--”Revolution” and “Absolute Beginners”--and it was all over--history, as they say.

“My Indecision Is Final” is an attempt to excavate that history: It is the story of a company that rode the crest of a wave of hits to become the great white hope of the British film industry, and then crashed and burned.

The Goldcrest story is not an unfamiliar one--too many independents in the last decade have suffered a similar trajectory. What is unusual about this book is the writers’ extraordinary access to the records and recollections of the principals and the stunning attention to detail which informs their presentation. This, in an industry that throws a cloak of secrecy over all but the most trivial details of celebrity and production gossip. In fact, this 678-page book, whose 61 chapters, preface, postscript and two appendices are studded with spreadsheets, charts, graphs and undigested chunks of minutes from board meetings, is not for the casual reader; rather, it is more of a how-to or how-not-to book for aspiring producers and venture capitalists.

That being said, “My Indecision Is Final” is by no means uninteresting. A virtual primer to the movie business, it is told in tandem by two writers: company founder and production head Jake Eberts writing in the first person, and journalist Terry Ilott writing in the third, picking up and filling in when Eberts’ career took him away from Goldcrest and providing a perspective that complements Eberts’ personal account.

When the story begins, Eberts is a mildly unsuccessful financier who drifts more or less by accident into raising development money for movies at a point when the British film industry is pretty much moribund. Eberts was to benefit from his own enormous energy, his uncommonly good common sense and his considerable skill in negotiation.

After some initial modest successes, he stumbled onto David Puttnam and, knowing a good thing when he saw it, brought him into the fold. Then he met Richard Attenborough, and was sufficiently charmed by his enthusiasm and impressed by the “Gandhi” script to throw his weight behind the film at a time when it mattered. When “Gandhi” became a huge hit and succes d’estime , Goldcrest prospered and gradually became a company that not only developed, but produced.

It prided itself on making films that mattered with a small group of experienced film makers in an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect, a far cry from the ethos of the ego and the deal that reigned across the ocean. But while Goldcrest was a “directors’ company,” Eberts also applied shrewd business criteria to the scripts he developed, and protected Goldcrest from too much financial exposure to any individual project.

As the company became more successful, it also became more attractive to others, including one James Lee, who moved over from Pearson Longman, one of Goldcrest’s main investors. Eberts, increasingly unhappy with the company he founded, was being strenuously courted by Jerry Perenchio at Embassy, and when Lee wouldn’t meet Eberts’ salary requirements, Eberts left for Embassy.

Lee, by all accounts a smart and energetic executive, had a lot of ambition but very little experience running a film company. He and the people he hired committed Goldcrest to three expensive and commercially problematic movies--”Revolution,” “Absolute Beginners” and “The Mission.” Two bombed while “The Mission” did disappointing business.

Hobbled by escalating overhead and a money-losing television division, Goldcrest was on the ropes. Eberts returned in an effort to save the company, but it was too late. Near bankruptcy, Goldcrest finally was sold in 1987.

The second half of the book is more interesting, because-- pace Horatio Alger--however edifying the story of Eberts cobbling together Goldcrest, disaster always is more compelling than success.

The best parts are the descriptions of the manner in which Eberts was seduced and abandoned by Jerry Perenchio. There is a highly amusing account of a dinner at Michael’s with Perenchio and John Boorman, in which an intoxicated and unnamed Perenchio assistant boorishly attacked the script for “Emerald Forest”; and another description of a conference call among Eberts, Perenchio and a number of Bear Stearns investment bankers--whom Eberts needed to sponsor his campaign to raise $100 million for Embassy--during which Perenchio, after a night of serious partying, astonished the straight-laced bankers by giving them his rendition of “Blue Moon,” thus dooming the prospectus before it got off the ground.

But if “My Indecision Is Final” bears a passing resemblance to “Final Cut,” with “Revolution’s” Hugh Hudson as its Michael Cimino, it lacks the drama of huge Hollywood egos in collision. It gives us black Bentleys rolling silently down London streets instead of Harleys on Mulholland.

This is England, after all, and everyone is well behaved, gentlemanly and curiously muted. There are no heroes and villains here, and even at the end--when some of the principals get to point fingers, to lay blame for the Goldcrest fiasco--Eberts’ mildly accusatory section is full of phrases like “partly my fault . . .” and “I share some of the blame.” This may be a virtue, and Eberts’ restraint may be commendable, but it would make--let’s face it, a dull movie.

Worse, at the end of the book, after we have followed Goldcrest through every turn in every highway and byway, the book is curiously inconclusive. And not only does “Indecision” resist laying blame, it resists drawing any lessons whatsoever from the events it so circumstantially records. Neither of the writers is good enough to really bring the story to life, so finally, we have to ask, “So what?”

It may indeed be, as the authors argue, that the collapse of Goldcrest marked the end of British investment in its own film industry and the resumption of Hollywood hegemony, which is indeed a pity. But it is well to remember that Goldcrest had no hand in the most exciting films that came out of Britain in the ‘80s, films like “Sid and Nancy,” “The Long Good Friday,” “Prick Up Your Ears” and “My Beautiful Laundrette.”

It’s true that Goldcrest won a lot of Academy Awards, but that says only that there was an affinity between the Academy audience in its Sunday best out to do the right thing and the kinds of uplifting, well intentioned, missionary films (“The Mission” was an apt title) in which Goldcrest specialized.

At one point, Eberts, summing up Goldcrest’s achievement, says that it succeeded in competing with Hollywood on Hollywood’s own terms, but this is, perhaps, more of a mixed blessing than he realizes.