The authors had previously written or been involved in the creation of similar books exploring "bad movies" or "cinematic mistakes": The Fifty Worst Films of All Time, and The Golden Turkey Awards.

The main section of The Hollywood Hall of Shame explores in detail a small selection of celebrated failures, describing the financial and production problems that led to the big budget and in many cases cost overruns, while contemplating why the film failed to gain public acceptance.

A basement compendium aims to give a comprehensive overview of other big money losers not examined in the main section of the book.

[3] While the main section of the book examines in detail those films that the authors felt had interesting production histories and circumstances, The Basement Collection is an objective catalogue covering Hollywood's most expensive failures.

The book was published in 1984 and with the hugely inflated film budgets since that time it provides a glimpse of an era when expensive failures were considered notable and unusual.