Variety senior editor Hofler (The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson, 2005, etc.) presents the gaudy career of flamboyant Hollywood and Broadway producer Allan Carr (1937–1999), a strong contender for the most tasteless tyro in show business.
Caftan-clad, morbidly obese and publicly gay in an era when, even in the entertainment industry, flaunting one’s homosexuality was still very much taboo, Carr cut a curious figure among the beautiful people of Hollywood. He cultivated an outrageous public persona and marshaled his gifts for promotion to create a series of extravagantly themed parties that brought together old-school Hollywood royalty, rock musicians and the gay demimonde in sybaritic soirees with names like “The Mick Jagger Cycle Sluts Party.” The parties were hits, but as a producer, Carr’s record was rather mixed. His sensibilities synched up perfectly with the stage musical Grease, and he shepherded the massively successful film adaptation in 1978. Lightning struck again with his Broadway musical adaptation of the French farce La Cage aux Folles (1983), a long-running hit that also broke boundaries in bringing its gay subject matter to a mainstream theater audience. But Carr’s debit column is a doozy, containing the legendarily tacky and inept Village People vehicle Can’t Stop the Music (1980) and gauche cinematic non-events Grease 2 (1982) and Where the Boys are ’84. Most damning, though, was the 1989 Academy Awards broadcast, a fiasco of epic proportions that reached its nadir with a tone-deaf Rob Lowe warbling “Proud Mary” to Snow White. The Oscars telecast effectively ended Carr’s career, and the ailing producer retreated to his pleasure palace of a house and succumbed to his chronic health problems, ultimately dying of liver cancer. Does this tawdry legacy warrant a book? That’s debatable, but Hofler delivers a hell of a tour of Hollywood egotism, crassness and gross excess. Carr would have approved.
Fast-paced, funny and occasionally horrifying portrait of a compulsive personality and the culture of excess that both created and destroyed him.Pub Date: March 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-306-81655-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2009
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.
35
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The former first lady opens up about her early life, her journey to the White House, and the eight history-making years that followed.
It’s not surprising that Obama grew up a rambunctious kid with a stubborn streak and an “I’ll show you” attitude. After all, it takes a special kind of moxie to survive being the first African-American FLOTUS—and not only survive, but thrive. For eight years, we witnessed the adversity the first family had to face, and now we get to read what it was really like growing up in a working-class family on Chicago’s South Side and ending up at the world’s most famous address. As the author amply shows, her can-do attitude was daunted at times by racism, leaving her wondering if she was good enough. Nevertheless, she persisted, graduating from Chicago’s first magnet high school, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, and pursuing careers in law and the nonprofit world. With her characteristic candor and dry wit, she recounts the story of her fateful meeting with her future husband. Once they were officially a couple, her feelings for him turned into a “toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.” But for someone with a “natural resistance to chaos,” being the wife of an ambitious politician was no small feat, and becoming a mother along the way added another layer of complexity. Throw a presidential campaign into the mix, and even the most assured woman could begin to crack under the pressure. Later, adjusting to life in the White House was a formidable challenge for the self-described “control freak”—not to mention the difficulty of sparing their daughters the ugly side of politics and preserving their privacy as much as possible. Through it all, Obama remained determined to serve with grace and help others through initiatives like the White House garden and her campaign to fight childhood obesity. And even though she deems herself “not a political person,” she shares frank thoughts about the 2016 election.
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6313-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2018
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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