The emphasis on personal wealth feels a touch unseemly after a while, and the lazy, arbitrary story arc will leave many...
A veteran TV writer/producer recounts how he got lucky and made an obscene amount of money during Hollywood’s go-go ’80s and ’90s.
Few would deny that Stepakoff is one of the luckier people in television: To have nabbed as much work and earned as much money as he has—as a writer, no less—practically implies the presence of a watchful higher power. Fortunately, his upbeat, smiley memoir is very mindful of this fact, and the author rarely tries to play the sympathy card. His narrative bounces amiably from getting an MFA in playwriting at Carnegie Mellon to scoring extremely fortuitous meetings with powerhouse TV writers and producers like Steven Bochco and John Wells. Stepakoff moved up easily from well-connected intern to writer, working on shows including The Wonder Years and Dawson’s Creek. The text frequently reads like a speech to prospective TV scribes, laying out the mechanics of residual payments and explaining Hollywood’s intricate social hierarchy. A little of this goes quite a long way, especially as Stepakoff seems more interested in chronicling the massive amounts of money shoveled out to writers in the days before reality TV (Fox paid one guy $2.5 million a year just to “think funny”) than he is in discussing how exactly he churned out all that dialogue.
The emphasis on personal wealth feels a touch unseemly after a while, and the lazy, arbitrary story arc will leave many readers too listless to care.Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-59240-295-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gotham Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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