An inspiring tale of a remarkable life.
Detailed, colorful autobiography by one of America’s most creative filmmakers.
The gritty, uncompromising work of director Fuller (1911–97) has over the years won him a devoted international cult following. Martin Scorsese (who contributes an introduction) and Steven Spielberg (who keeps a cherished copy of Fuller’s 1954 submarine action film, Hell and High Water, in the trunk of his car) are among those who have long respected his brand of frank, violent realism. And Fuller’s life story, told here in scrappy prose, is almost more incredible than some of his scripts. Raised in New York City, he worked as a copy boy and crime reporter in the yeasty era of 1920s tabloid journalism, rode the rails during the Depression writing freelance pieces about Hoovervilles, published three novels, then enlisted in the US Army immediately after Pearl Harbor. Unabashed about revealing his heroes (Abe Lincoln, Ben Franklin, and Marlene Dietrich, among others), Fuller has a Forrest Gump–like knack for being in places where history is being made, and his account is filled with vignettes of his encounters with the famous and infamous, including Al Capone, William Randolph Hearst, and Alfred Hitchcock. As a member of the legendary infantry unit memorialized in his 1980 film, The Big Red One, he saw action from North Africa through the invasion of Sicily, landed on Omaha Beach on D-day, and was caught in the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, Fuller rose to Hollywood acclaim with movies distinguished by his mastery of the themes of conflict and heroism. Films like I Shot Jesse James (1949), Pickup on South Street (1953), Underworld, U.S.A. (1961), and Shock Corridor (1963) were standouts for their punchy dialogue, innovative plotlines, and powerful direction. He lived some of his last years in France, where his work has been popular ever since it inspired Jean-Luc Goddard and other filmmakers of the French New Wave in the 1950s.
An inspiring tale of a remarkable life.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-40165-2
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
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
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
© 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.
