Sedate stuff from an actor and writer who is normally anything but.
Hyperactive monologist and character actor Leguizamo provides the narrated tour of his life.
It's difficult to reconcile this plain and tired string of well-rehearsed anecdotes with the livewire, mercurial actor who can always be counted on to spark up the screen or stage. Maybe he just put so much into his legendary biographical one-man shows that there was nothing left. Born in Bogotá to high-drama parents whose ethnic blend included Italian, Colombian, Native American and Lebanese, Leguizamo grew up in Queens and knew early on that he wanted to be a performer. As just one of many class clowns in high school, Leguizamo had to work hard to stand out—there was so much competition to sit at the funniest cafeteria table that he would start writing jokes the day before. A couple plays at the renowned Public Theatre led to a stereotypical part as a gangster on Miami Vice, just one of many compromises the aspiring actor had to make in the ’80s, a lean time for Latino performers: “You'd see the same guys at every audition: me, Benicio del Toro, Benjamin Bratt, Luiz Guzman.” More roles followed, as well as Leguizamo's one-man show, Mambo Mouth, the first of four semi-autobiographical shows that incorporated satirical skits and traded heavily on family drama. For fans, there is interesting material related to behind-the-scenes melodramas on movies like Moulin Rouge and Summer of Sam, and even bombs like Super Mario Brothers. But most of the engaging stuff has already been covered in his quartet of live shows, and there's little left to go over but some dully related and thinly conceived pronouncements on film and life that wouldn't sound out of place on a DVD commentary.
Sedate stuff from an actor and writer who is normally anything but.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-052071-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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