An engrossing, comprehensive book that gives invaluable insight into the life and work of a truly original artist.
The expansive oral biography a great American director.
Zuckoff (Journalism/Univ. of Boston; Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend, 2005, etc.) begins with Altman’s childhood in Kansas City, his first two brief marriages and his struggle to become established in Hollywood. Recollections from his sisters and ex-wives paint the director as a hard-living, immensely likable character with grand ambition. During his many years directing television, Altman met his third wife and lifelong companion, Kathryn Reed Altman, whose contributions to this volume are substantial and forthright. Altman directed a wide variety of films in his long career, and each theatrical picture is represented here by at least one substantial passage or archived review. The major works—M*A*S*H (1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Nashville (1975), The Player (1992) and Short Cuts (1993)—receive their own chapters, which chronicle the beginnings, production and reception of each film. Nearly all of this material is of great interest to movie buffs, but certain passages stand out—the disagreements between Altman and Warren Beatty over McCabe; the production fiasco of Popeye (1980) on the island of Malta; the director’s critical rebirth with The Player, told from the perspective of its star, Tim Robbins. Altman was known as a director beloved by his actors, and an abundance of rhapsodic anecdotes from the likes of Paul Newman, Elliot Gould and Cher reinforce this reputation. Conversely, an often-neglected family and a litany of wronged producers and screenwriters amply represent his cruel side. Due to the sheer number of contributors, several of these accounts, particularly those regarding the director’s financial problems, bear marked similarities that can become tiresome. But Zuckoff’s portrait is multifaceted and fully realized, giving the reader a clear view into Altman’s firebrand persona.
An engrossing, comprehensive book that gives invaluable insight into the life and work of a truly original artist.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-307-26768-9
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2009
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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