An entertaining memoir that refreshingly focuses on character and dialogue over stardom.
A debut account of brushes with fame, love affairs, and hilarious conversations from an actor’s life.
Trebor writes that his parents, whom he describes as “decent and loving as they were middle class,” agreed to fund his early acting education at Northwestern University despite their initial worries. Right from the start, he showed prodigious talent and charisma, winning the lead in a production of Jean Anouilh’s play Poor Bitos as well as the affection of a beautiful but already engaged woman. Despite his raunchy fantasy life and youthfully crass sense of humor, Trebor says that he earned a reputation as a “four square Mr. Clean.” His star continued to rise in the school’s drama department, leading to him spending a summer at a regional theatrical repertory in California alongside then-unknown Robin Williams and going to New York City with his first serious girlfriend. Unfortunately, both the relationship and his few potential career breaks fell apart. Eventually, his striking resemblance to the Son of Sam serial killer led to him getting a glowing New York Times review for a role opposite Martin Sheen in a TV movie. This took Trebor to Hollywood, where he eventually married his longtime girlfriend and landed a popular recurring role on the TV show Xena: Warrior Princess. Throughout, Trebor boils down his advice to aspiring actors with brief asides: “Tip #2: Don’t sweat the small stuff when it comes to rivals getting a role….Let the other guy get the coronary.” His story follows a traditional rise-to-fame narrative but without ever relying on clichés; instead, he focuses on the many personalities he encountered, both on-set and off. At times, the memoir has the pace of a screenplay; it’s heavy on dialogue and features simple, concise summations of others’ reactions, such as “silence” or “slightly awkward pause.” These smart choices eliminate excessive nostalgia and highlight Trebor’s incredible wit; the book’s best moments are when he verbally spars with his parents, acting legends, or his own lovers, firing off punch lines on everything from waffles to director Akira Kurosawa. He presents the life of a working actor who neither attained incredible fame nor succumbed to despair, and his engaging, charming voice creates a story that feels extraordinary.
An entertaining memoir that refreshingly focuses on character and dialogue over stardom.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
