Film buffs know that dozens of viewers at a test screening of "The Wild Bunch" were sickened by the violence depicted in the 1969 western, and left the theater.
    
But what film buff knows that Cecil B. DeMille's 1949 biblical epic, "Samson and Delilah," cost $3.2 million to make -- which translates to an equivalent of $26.2 million in 2005 dollars?
     
Throughout the pages of "George Lucas's Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success," such film geek stats whiz by like bullets in "Scarface."
     
Edited by Alex Ben Block and Lucy Autrey Wilson, the book examines 300 movies selected by Lucas, dating from 1913 to 2005. The text, bolstered by graphs and charts, looks at not just the acting and directing but also the production, technology, distribution and marketing that combined to make these films memorable.
     
Yes, that sounds like so much inside baseball. But -- in this age of the blockbuster, mega-grossing film -- the approach of "Blockbusting" makes sense.
     
"George Lucas's Blockbusting" (It Books, 976 pages) is in stores now.