Far from a classic, but better than the standard actor bio.
From Broadway to sitcoms to HBO to off-Broadway in a few short decades.
Though she’s best known as a buxom horror-film action babe and as Maude’s daughter on the long-running Norman Lear sitcom, Barbeau delves into far more interesting subject matter here than the usual warmed-over showbiz anecdotes. Half French-Canadian and half Armenian, she grew up in California during the 1950s. She started acting in high school, then moved to New York and entered the off-Broadway/waitress grind. Barbeau seems lackadaisical about her career; more than once, she dryly laments opportunities missed because she just wasn’t paying attention. So it’s even more surprising than usual that fairly early on she landed a lucky break—originating the role of Tevye’s second daughter Hodel in Fiddler on the Roof. That led to originating Rizzo in Grease, after which she decamped for Hollywood to spend six years with Bea Arthur on Maude. Barbeau chronicles romances along the way with ’70s icon Burt Reynolds and the surprisingly decent-sounding John Carpenter, who directed her in Escape from New York and The Fog. Her career was hit-and-miss for a while but has perked up in recent years, with roles on HBO’s Carnivale and in an upcoming off-Broadway show about Judy Garland. Barbeau’s style can be off-putting, as she jumps around in time and leavens her narrative with scraps from the journals she’s kept since childhood. But the refreshing directness of her approach keeps things moving even when the subject matter is less than enthralling. She also has a nice way of introducing characters: “I played a whore in a bordello who’s in love with a legless man. Alex was the legless man.”
Far from a classic, but better than the standard actor bio.Pub Date: May 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-7867-1637-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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