A dull, gossipy rendering of days past, bereft of candor or narrative verve.
A post-mortem of Hollywood’s lawless decade, rife with lawsuits, debauchery and some of the world’s worst films.
Books about Hollywood come in lots of guises. Stadiem’s (co-author: Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond, 2009, etc.) combines the dual drawbacks of dull subjects and sketchy research. Usually, the author ghostwrites or co-authors autobiographies of the flamboyant (e.g., George Hamilton) or those smallest players who walked in the shadows of stars like Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe. Here, the author mines every scrap of Hollywood gossip he gathered about the 1980s, situating the book as an in-depth investigation of the narcissism, greed and competition that created such movies as Flashdance and Howard the Duck. Instead, Stadiem delivers a high-pitched, mildly personal screed against the industry’s power players and mind-numbing stories about lawyers to the stars. Will readers care that Jeffrey Katzenberg wouldn’t shake the author’s hand or that Jon Peters started his career as a pubic-hair colorist? Is it revealing that one of the book’s key subjects is infamous madam Alex Adams, whose autobiography was co-written by Stadiem? The author does make the occasional salient point. “One of the hardest realities that an aspiring screenwriter had to adjust to in the 1980s was that your target reader must be not Pauline Kael, but rather P.T. Barnum. Or Caligula,” he writes. “Your target reader was not a reader. Therein lay the great paradox of Hollywood creativity, intrinsic to the foundation of the movies themselves.” Otherwise, the same old stories are all here: Don Simpson’s coke, Eddie Murphy’s vanity, Michael Ovitz’s ambition and the tracksuits of Golan and Globus.
A dull, gossipy rendering of days past, bereft of candor or narrative verve.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-65689-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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