Movie star Leigh (There Really Was a Hollywood, 1984) teams with freelancer Nickens (Brando, not reviewed) to give the real dish on the making of her most famous film, one of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpieces. Of all Hitchcock's films, perhaps none has engendered more interest, more imitators, or more misconceptions than Psycho. Leigh, who was top-billed in the film although she is killed off after only a third of its running time, determined to set the record straight. To that end, she and Nickens interviewed a few of the surviving participants, including assistant director Hilton Green, screenwriter Joseph Stefano, and actor John Gavin. (Conspicuous by their absence are actors Vera Miles and Martin Balsam.) In the Leigh-Nickens version of the making of the film, Hitch set out to reclaim his title as king of fright after seeing a series of low-budget black-and-white films made by the likes of William Castle and Roger Corman. He was intrigued by Robert Bloch's novel, acquired the rights, and set about making a film on a small budget and short shooting schedule, using his television show's crew for that purpose. Understandably, Leigh chooses to focus much of her attention on the parts of the filming for which she was present, including the famous shower scene, but that leaves the book rather lopsided. Along the way, readers do pick up some amusing tidbits—the model for the Bates mansion was a house on the Kent State campus that would later serve as home for its SDS chapter; virtually all of the shots of Marion Crane in the shower are Leigh, not a body double as some have claimed. Unfortunately, too much of the book reads like a transcript of interviews, and Nickens's prologue, giving the background to the film's making, is hackneyed and awkward. For Hitchcock buffs a boon, but a disappointing effort that should have been better. (50 b&w photos) (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-517-70112-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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