Kelly's second book on the acclaimed director has the same patchwork quality as her Martin Scorsese: The First Decade (1980- -not reviewed). Billed as an ``oral history,'' it's really a compendium of quotations from Scorsese and his friends, family, and collaborators. Still, despite the limitations of the genre, Kelly manages to elicit some valuable production history and interpretive comments from her many interviewees, who range from Scorsese's ever- loquacious parents to the usually tight-lipped Robert De Niro, with whom Scorsese has created some of the greatest films of our time, from Mean Streets and Taxi Driver through Raging Bull and Goodfellas. Many of the actors who have worked with Scorsese celebrate here his remarkable directorial style, as do the technicians who marvel at his mastery of the form and his meticulous preparation. Others testify to his absolute devotion to the movies, a fervor matched by the religious intensity in many of his films. Kelly, who studied to become a nun, no doubt overworks the priestliness of Scorsese's vocation in her own prose interludes, much as she spends too much time detailing her personal encounters with the director. (Photos by her husband include two of her and Scorsese.) And the platitudes here by studio execs (Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner) are particularly worthless, as are the testimonial-dinner remarks that pass for forewords by Scorsese's director friends Steven Spielberg and Michael Powell. Vague references to personal problems in Scorsese's life remind us how little these interviews tell us about the man. That's exactly the sort of identity crisis this book suffers from—it aspires to critical seriousness but delivers mostly starlust.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-938410-79-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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