This look at working on movie sets features plenty of worthy tips gleaned from the author’s personal experiences, making it...
A Hollywood veteran dispenses advice on how to find a job in the film industry.
Onken (Other Worlds, 2017), who worked on the crews of such movies as Planet of the Apes and Men in Black II, has created a manual filled with tips on how to enter his field. The book outlines “how to find work in the movie business” and “how to stay working.” The author’s tone throughout is one of positivity. He reassures hopefuls that “there are tons of people employed in the film business that showed up out of nowhere and flourished having started their careers with no strategy at all.” Onken explains that although the “business is not fair,” in his experience it’s the people who have “more determination than others” that make it in the movie industry (“It’s about mental and physical endurance. It’s about living in an extended family and playing well with others”). Among his memorable suggestions are to remember to network even if you’re shy, show up early and always solicit recommendations, and “pile up as much cash as you can” while busy in case the jobs suddenly dry up. But Onken feels that even those who go into the business “initially having no connections and not much of a plan” will find success as long as they’ve resolved to “live the dream while making friends and working hard.” Peppered in with the author’s useful advice are his colorful and entertaining personal stories, from meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger during a Gold’s Gym commercial to filming with Madonna on a “beautiful yacht” and serving as the lighting director of an Oscar nomination party at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant. During his many Hollywood adventures, Onken recalls remaining a cheerful presence on the set—once, after finally eating breakfast at 5 in the afternoon, he told a fellow crew member he was just “happy to be here with wonderful people like you.” The author turns out to be an endearing and encouraging narrator who seeks to help readers find their paths in the filmmaking world.
This look at working on movie sets features plenty of worthy tips gleaned from the author’s personal experiences, making it a valuable read for anyone hoping to thrive in Hollywood.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973319-40-5
Page Count: 154
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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