Looking for juicy, behind-the-scenes dish on the making of GREASE 2? Keep looking, amigo, because you’re not going to find it in this biography of the late, flamboyant producer Allan Carr. For a book titled PARTY ANIMALS: A HOLLYWOOD TALE OF SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK ‘N’ ROLL STARRING THE FABULOUS ALLAN CARR, it’s scant on the frivolity and favors, and more about his work.
Throughout, author Robert Hofler beats us over the head with reminders of Carr’s homosexuality, but that was never a secret, and his Hollywood parties were legendary for their excess, so there’s much to qualify as shocking. Carr is, after all, the man who gave us CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC.
[click to continue…]
“One thing all of those authors had in common with each other, but not with me, was that they had led lives that were worth writing about. … What the hell had I ever done? Nothing. Oh, wait, that’s right, I’d taken my GED test and graduated high school two years early. Wow!”
—Josh Becker, GOING HOLLYWOOD, pages 90-91
“I’d rather be Ed-fucking-Wood than not be a filmmaker.”
—Josh Becker, GOING HOLLYWOOD, page 161
I am always personally annoyed when I find that the reputation of a creative work is clearly based on what the audience was expecting, rather than on what they actually received. The clearest example of this I can think of is a cinematic one: In 1982, a very creepy, original horror movie about a satanic toymaker and his attempt to murder thousands of children on the 31st of October was released and immediately upset all of the folks who went to see it. Not because it wasn’t scary or well made, but because its title was HALLOWEEN III and they went to it expecting to see a continuation of the Michael Myers saga.
[click to continue…]
Edited by Ronald E. Kates and Warren Tormey, BASEBALL/LITERATURE/CULTURE: ESSAYS 2008-2009 presents 23 pieces and papers on the sport of baseball, as presented at the 2008 and 2009 Conference on Baseball in Literature and American Culture held at Middle Tennessee State University.
McFarland has been publishing these collections, along with the Cooperstown Symposium papers, for a number of years, and it’s an invaluable service it provides, making these scholarly contributions more accessible not just for those in academe, but serious students of the game.
[click to continue…]
Two books on Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO were released recently. One is THE MOMENT OF PSYCHO: HOW ALFRED HITCHCOCK TAUGHT AMERICA TO LOVE MURDER, by the renowned film critic David Thomson. The other is THE PSYCHO FILE: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO HITCHCOCK’S CLASSIC SHOCKER, by the comparatively unknown Joseph W. Smith III.
Smith’s will cost you nearly double the retail price, but whereas Thomson’s book is a slim, overpriced, glorified essay, Smith’s really digs into its subject, giving you more for your money. (Okay, so neither have anything on Stephen Rebello’s excellent ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THE MAKING OF PSYCHO, but that one’s, like, old.)
[click to continue…]
Too bad 1959’s THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES marked Peter Cushing’s one and only time to play Sherlock Holmes on the big screen, because he does a great job at it. And too bad HOUND is the only Holmes adaptation undertaken by Hammer Films, because this had franchise potential written all over it.
After a 10-minute prologue that doesn’t even involve Holmes or Dr. Watson, detailing the curse of the well-to-do Baskerville family, the movie gets going with the plot, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle originally presented it: With Sir Charles Baskerville dead of fright, his nephew, Henry (Christopher Lee), inherits his estate on the moors, and Holmes and Watson (André Morell) suspect he may suffer the same fate as his uncle.
[click to continue…]
