Luckily, there’s nothing unfinished in Karp’s retelling. He follows every story, dollar and last legal battle in full...
What became of The Other Side of the Wind, that crazy movie that took up the last 15 years of the life of Orson Welles (1915-1985)?
Karp (A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever, 2006, etc.) puts that question to rest with this hilarious and sobering saga of one of the greatest films never finished. Almost from its official start in 1970, the last project by Welles was a shape-shifting obsession, rumored as much for its alleged uniqueness as for its constant and (so far) permanent delay. On the surface, it sounds exciting: an 8½ -style story of a troubled director (played by John Huston) trying to finish a movie; a neo–Godard-ian narrative, shot in a variety of formats; a seemingly Cubist editing style, “reducing each take into little bits of film and then creating a new continuity within each scene.” It was meant to be both spontaneously brilliant and efficient, proof that the famously “troublesome” director could deliver a film on time and under budget. Instead, shooting ballooned from weeks to years upon years, during which it was cast and recast, shot and reshot, edited and re-edited; people were routinely hired, fired and rehired as they watched their careers consumed in the process. After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the incomplete film—partly financed by the shah of Iran’s brother-in-law—officially entered purgatory. Ever since then, family, heirs and financiers have been fighting for control.
Luckily, there’s nothing unfinished in Karp’s retelling. He follows every story, dollar and last legal battle in full detail. Whether the film sees a 2015 release on the anniversary of Welles’ birth, as was speculated as of late last year, we at least have Karp to thank for the next best thing.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00708-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
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
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
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