MacLaine is wickedly honest about moviemaking, sincere and enthusiastic in describing her beliefs, and welcoming in the...
The award-winning actress reflects on her latest film and her previous life.
MacLaine, a talented woman who believes in reincarnation, is getting a lot out of this life. She’s acted in more than 50 films and written 14 books, including this one. At 81, she’s acting in another film and writing a book about it. Wild Oats (2016), a screwball comedy about an elderly woman (MacLaine) who mistakenly receives a very large social security check and decides to take her friend (Jessica Lange) on a lavish vacation, was over five years in the making and $500,000 in debt before it even started shooting in the Canary Islands, which some believed “were the remnants of Atlantis.” After the musical chairs of finalizing actors and director and with funding somewhat secured, the cast was flown to the island’s opulent Lopesan resort, and her “adventure” began. She writes in a jaunty, casual, daily diary style, providing affectionate portraits of her fellow actors: Billy Connolly (in one scene, “he made me laugh so hard, I nearly developed a herniated disk), Lange (“beautiful, intense, and a brilliant dramatic actress”), Demi Moore (sweet…and nervous”), and Howard Hesseman (“adorably funny”).” MacLaine was constantly anxious about the ongoing efforts to raise funds, calling it “amateur hour,” and at one point worried, “Why am I here? Are we going to shoot a movie…or ourselves?” However, it ended well: “It had all been worth it to me for so many reasons.” The author’s insider’s portrait of the moviemaking world sparkles, but it’s dimmer when she engages in her New Age ruminations (“I feel that I am in alignment with my soul’s destiny”).
MacLaine is wickedly honest about moviemaking, sincere and enthusiastic in describing her beliefs, and welcoming in the skepticism of others—it’s all refreshing and fun.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3641-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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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