A gripping portrait of a difficult talent.
Film historian Biskind (Gods and Monsters: Movers, Shakers, and Other Casualties of the Hollywood Machine, 2004, etc.) examines the eventful life and career of Warren Beatty, one of Hollywood’s last exemplars of old-school glamour and, evidently, as maddening an individual as ever graced the silver screen.
The author eschews delving into Beatty’s early life, beginning his narrative with the tyro’s early acting roles in theater and live television, when the actor established the twin poles of his persona—the intractable artiste and compulsive seducer of women. Restless, intelligent and secretive, Beatty wielded his charm and beauty as a weapon, using his skills in seduction to manipulate his way into stardom despite a difficult reputation and multiple flops, leaving a bloody trail of broken hearts and damaged careers in his wake. His romances with the likes of Joan Collins, Leslie Caron, Natalie Wood, Diane Keaton and Madonna echo the pattern of relationships with screenwriters including Robert Towne, James Toback and Elaine May: Beatty would charm, overwhelm and drain the object of his attentions, ruthlessly move on when it suited his agenda and yet maintain good relations down the line. Beatty’s parallel career as a political agitator bore the hallmarks of his film work—compromised by indecisiveness and ego. Biskind brings his historian’s acumen to bear on the production of era-defining triumphs like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Shampoo (1975) and Reds (1981), as well as notorious flops like Ishtar (1987), Love Affair (1994) and Town & Country (2001), and his accounts are full of juicy gossip and intriguing insights into the actor’s psychology. As a producer and director, Beatty demonstrated a compulsive nature bordering on psychosis, demanding endless takes and micromanaging insignificant details that drove his projects wildly over schedule and budget and threatened the studios that backed them.
A gripping portrait of a difficult talent.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7432-4658-3
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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
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
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