February 2, 2004

Those books again.

"One person's gossip is another person's interesting personal history. To understand personal films you have to understand what those people are like." Peter Biskind explains to David Bowman in Salon why Harvey Weinstein is his Moby Dick while Robert Redford is his Tina Weymouth. As for the "White Whale" himself, he brushes off the book pretty much as expected in an answer to one of Jeffrey Ressner's questions in Time.

Hollywood Animal A Joe Eszterhas double feature: Duncan Campbell in the Guardian on how he's cleaned himself up, followed by an extract from Hollywood Animal, and Anthony Lane's review of the book in the New Yorker. The crux:

He may no longer inhabit "this deadly suckhole of a town," but his pride will not allow him to stand back and consider the things that he has wrought. The trouble with Basic Instinct and Showgirls, one of which made four hundred million dollars while the other could barely cover its outlay on nipple rouge, is that both of them are more fun to read about, and joke about, than to watch.

In the same issue, David Denby, who's got a book out himself, you know, reviews Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers.



Bookmark and Share

Posted by dwhudson at February 2, 2004 9:18 AM

Comments

Re: Eszterhas, and also amusing, was David Kipen's review of the book in a recent SF Chron book review: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/27/DDGMO4GUSN1.DTL

in which Kipen asks:
"So what the hell happened? How did the William Randolph Hearst Foundation's "outstanding college journalist in America" wind up not just writing the "Flashdance" line "If you give up your dream, you die," but taking bows for that movie's inspirational effect on the young women of America?"


Posted by: Craig P at February 2, 2004 3:04 PM