A passionate depiction of how art can create, inspire and destroy—all at the same time.
How the ultimate visual chronicle of adolescent alienation almost didn’t happen—many times over.
The story of how Rebel Without a Cause became a film is at times almost more interesting than the movie itself, though first-time authors Frascella and Weisel pay determined homage to that cinematic touchstone throughout their engaging and learned book. In 1954, director Nicholas Ray told mogul of moguls Lew Wasserman that he wanted to do a movie “about the young people next door,” a dramatic departure from the usual approach of depicting all troubled teens as coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. Ray was attached by Warner Bros. to the long-gestating Rebel, a psychiatric study of a young psychopath. Script after script followed, with everyone from Leon Uris to Irving Shulman banging out treatments (playwright Clifford Odets even provided a few ideas). As Ray’s vision stuttered forward—he knew what he wanted, but couldn’t articulate it—the troubled and brilliant cast started to cohere. Natalie Wood was a precocious 17, cruelly abused by her stage mother and looking for sexual validation from everyone from Ray to her costar, a young Dennis Hopper. Sal Mineo, a strangely handsome boy from the Bronx, gave a homoerotically charged performance that immortalized him as the first (fairly) obviously gay teenager on film. Meanwhile, Ray tried to seduce Brando wannabe James Dean into his picture, though in this account it’s hard to tell exactly who was playing whom. The actual shoot was no easier than the preproduction. Nosy studio heads were nervous about Ray’s bold ideas; a thick web of jealousy and sexual intrigue entangled all the principals; and Ray’s use of actual teen gang members in the cast caused problems. The dénouement is fittingly sad: Dean died just before the film’s release, and Ray’s career quickly sputtered out, to be revitalized briefly decades later.
A passionate depiction of how art can create, inspire and destroy—all at the same time.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-6082-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
