A nuanced and surprisingly tender depiction of a movie giant and a vanished industry.
A graphic novel focuses on the life of Hollywood legend Buster Keaton.
Barnett’s book, illustrated by Tavares, opens in Montreal in 1963. Thirty-two-year-old animation director Gerald Potterton is struck with the inspiration for a new film, the story of a funny “little man who travels across Canada on one of those little rail-speeders” and has lots of misadventures along the way. He brings his idea to the National Film Board of Canada along with his dream: to cast an aging Keaton as the protagonist. Keaton agrees, and Barnett’s narrative splits between chronicling the day-to-day triumphs and challenges of making The Railrodder and looking back at the celebrity’s long film career. Early on, he writes, directs, and appears in the 1921 silent movie The Playhouse. Keaton’s story progresses, flashback by flashback, through all the triumphs and challenges the star experiences on the path to becoming a cinematic titan, from pausing his career in order to serve in World War I to the making of the films that cemented his reputation as the greatest comic actor of all time. Since many of Keaton’s early movie projects have a spotty preservation record at best, every flashback has the feel of captivating speculation. Barnett has obviously steeped himself in Keaton lore, and the cast of characters, from studio foils and collaborators to the various people the filmmaker has personal relationships with through the years (the author provides a handy list of the players), is intriguing. But the consistent strength of Barnett’s writing is its complex, grounded affection for the older, more disillusioned Keaton, who works with Potterton on The Railrodder. That mature Keaton is also consistently well captured by Tavares’ artwork, particularly when contrasted with the younger, anything-goes, idealistic version of the man seen in flashbacks. Through the illustrator’s artwork and Barnett’s unaffected prose, a bygone Hollywood era beautifully comes to life.
A nuanced and surprisingly tender depiction of a movie giant and a vanished industry.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2022
ISBN: 9781778288302
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Knockabout Media
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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