Gripping account of the two-fisted, drunken life of filmmaker Peckinpah (1926-84) that will keep even a repelled reader drawn in. Fine, a syndicated entertainment columnist, writes with a clear eye unblinded by myth about his hypnotic, larger-than-life subject. Born in Fresno, Peckinpah was the small, wiry, feisty son of a tall, Lincolnesque, dramatically well-spoken lawyer who was also a disciplinarian who thought it wise at times to backhand the boy across the room—which would send Sam into his mother's apron for comfort. Peckinpah went to military school, joined the Marines in WW II, never fired a shot in anger. Surprised readers will discover that his earliest theatrical work was as a stage director for the small-potatoes Huntington Park Civic Theater, mounting South Pacific, Our Town, The Man Who Came to Dinner, and loving productions of Saroyan and Tennessee Williams. Years writing and directing TV oaters (his mother's family were ranch folk) led to his first movie, The Deadly Companions (1961), a flop, then to his first classic, Ride the High Country, distinguished by its first- rate dialogue, authenticity, brilliant editing, and flawless turns by Randolph Scott and Joel McCrae as aging gunfighters. The climactic blood ballet of The Wild Bunch stamped him forever as ``Bloody Sam,'' a name he hated because it ignored everything sensitive and large-minded in his work. By Straw Dogs, he was already his image: a sucker-punching, wife-beating, smash-up drunk, addicted to rage and appreciative of rape and woman-stomping. Fine, however, shows Peckinpah's obverse, in the director's finely crafted, egocentric memos, and in his beleaguered fellow workers' love for him. Again and again, readers will want to backhand Sam across the room but instead will find themselves spellbound by a bullheaded alcoholic in eternal crisis. Like walking barefoot through a nest of snakes and scorpions. (Photos—not seen.)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1991
ISBN: 1-55611-236-X
Page Count: 417
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1991
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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