Ultimately, the book is a page-turner, albeit one in which the need for the readers’ approval is felt on nearly every page.
A highly candid, tell-all memoir from the cult-favorite actress.
In a book that often reads like a Real World confessional or an open diary, the Cougar Town star bares all in recounting her rise to fame: from childhood passion to become an actress to fraught teen years getting in with the wrong crowd and terminating a pregnancy to facing sexism in Hollywood to dating Colin Hanks to landing a role on Dawson’s Creek to countless failed auditions to falling in love with and then considering divorcing her husband. While the honesty is refreshing, much like her Instagram persona, the narrative occasionally comes across as narcissistic. Philipps is open about her overwhelming need to be liked and included, a sentiment that provides the throughline of the book. For example, she chronicles the time she dislocated her knee at a middle school dance because she wanted to see why boys where moshing to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” “That is what I get for wanting to know what was going on,” she writes, “for wanting to be a part of things, for wanting more….It’s too bad I didn’t realize the life lesson I was being handed. Because maybe, possibly, it would have saved me from even more pain in the years to come.” At the same time, Philipps is happy to dole out some literary retribution, calling out some of those who have wronged her—e.g., she calls Freaks & Geeks co-star James Franco “a fucking bully” and Modern Family director Steven Levitan “a fucking asshole” who enjoys “the joy of being an oblivious super successful white man” in showbiz. But while the author is quick to point the finger, she's also her own harshest critic. In explaining her Instagram use, she writes, “the reason I started the stories…was because I was lonely.”
Ultimately, the book is a page-turner, albeit one in which the need for the readers’ approval is felt on nearly every page.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8471-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
A breezy, anecdotal insider's memoir of network television, from a top producer (``The Mary Tyler Moore Show'') who also chaired NBC for five years in the early 1980s. Aided by former NBC executive Rukeyser, Tinker spins stories from 40 years in a colloquial, irreverent voice; he admits most of his important decisions were made haphazardly. In 1949, after failing to find a job in publishing, he joined NBC Radio, developing quiz shows, then crossing over to the network's fledgling TV section. After leaving for a stint in advertising, he returned to NBC's California division in time to further his relationship with Mary Tyler Moore of ``The Dick Van Dyke Show,'' who became his second wife. Eventually, Tinker decided to form a production company—MTM—when his wife was offered her own show. Tinker affectionately recalls the talents and trials involved in building unorthodox shows like ``Hill Street Blues,'' where network anxieties had to be assuaged, and ``Lou Grant,'' which lost sponsors in response to star Ed Asner's vocal leftist politics. Tinker's years at NBC were rewarding, but he laments the network's takeover by General Electric, with ``it's just another business'' approach. Tinker imparts some lessons learned along the way. Programmers should follow their instincts and recognize that new series, especially innovative ones, need time to find an audience. Flagship news programs represent the network at its best, so the current belt-tightening bodes ill for quality. Tinker takes pride in having booted shock-jock Howard Stern from NBC radio. But the high standards and public service approach he calls for will rely more on networks' noblesse oblige than on policy proposals. He also predicts, contrary to the view of many media observers, that some networks will continue to thrive in the expanding universe of cable. A late-summer beach read for TV folk and curious couch potatoes. (8 pages b&w photos—not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-75940-X
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
In this memoir Torgovnick (English/Duke Univ.) proves herself to be a rare breed: a cultural critic who writes lucidly and perceptively not only about her chosen texts, but about herself. The first half of the book consists of autobiographical essays on crossing boundaries of class, religion, education, and place, as an Italian-American woman. Torgovnick grew up in Bensonhurst, a working-class, predominantly Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y. Ocean Parkway, which divides Bensonhurst from Sheepshead Bay (the middle-class, Jewish neighborhood into which she eventually married), symbolized upward mobility and the possibilities of life beyond the confines of her insular world. These essays describe her experiences as an academically successful girl in a community where intellectual expectations for girls were low; later, as a professor in a Waspy college town, she also felt herself an outsider. The book's latter half consists of essays of cultural criticism, on Italian-American icons such as The Godfather, as well as other American literary institutions—Dr. Dolittle, critic Lionel Trilling, and the canon. Torgovnick writes her critical pieces in the same intimate, personal voice she uses in the memoirs. Throughout, she is willing to revise and add complexity to her own narratives. In an epilogue on her father's death, for instance, she reflects that, although she felt that she was rebelling against him in ``crossing Ocean Parkway''—marrying Jewish, going to college, and moving out of the neighborhood—he may have been more of an ally than she had thought. He protested when she skipped grades in school, yet he also gave her books, took her into the city, and was a model of gender rebellion—pulling down the shades so the neighbors couldn't see him doing housework. Torgovnick's scholarly background and life experience inform her readings of both American culture and her own past; she has found an essayist's voice that is very much her own.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-226-80829-7
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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