Customer Reviews:
a very interesting book to page through.......2007-07-18
Kenneth Anger's hollywood babylon is the kind of book you can pick up and put down at any time.. I find it interesting to page through before or after I watch one of the older movies of hollywood's golden age.. I can't get enough of this sort of look into the dumpster of tinseltown.. the scandals and episodes that have been brushed under the carpet or just are no longer known about.. The list of characters that populate these pages are as colorful as they were glamorous.. and also at times hideous..
This is not very heavy reading but it is endlessly fascinating..
Thumbs down on the (myth-ridden) text, thumbs up on (some of) the pictures.......2007-07-12
What saves the sensationalistic - not to say trashy and in many places inaccurate - _Hollywood Babylon_ from being a total failure is the huge number of pictures, many shocking and some downright grisly (as in the picture of poor Thelma Todd lying done to death in her car), but mostly fascinating if sometimes nauseating (I'll talk about one of the worst offenders shortly). Which is a good thing, because frankly I want to take a bath every time I read the text to wash off the grime. We all know that Hollywood in its "Golden Age" was a long way removed from the image of saintly morality painted by its self-appointed guardians, the studio moguls - very many of whom had guilty secrets among them - chief among them, but Kenneth Anger seems to take a little too much delight in the sordidity and scandal for my own taste. What makes it worse is that he passes on a number of urban legends rather than do the boring work of get at the truth.
One of the most objectionable myths he fosters in this book, in my view, is the story that Jayne Mansfield was decapitated in the auto accident that took her life in 1967. This is simply not true. There is a ghastly photo in circulation on the web - I won't link to it but those who really want to know can Google for it - that makes it clear that her injuries, while fatal, did not result in the removal of her head. What you see on the car's crumpled hood in that photo (that Anger claims was Mansfield's noggin) is actually her wig. (And did we really need to see that photo of her dead Chihuahua? Ugh.)
If people want a really good book on Hollywood scandals, I strongly suggest they go find James Robert Parish's well-researched, evenhanded, brightly-written _The Hollywood Book of Scandal_ instead. (And that book doesn't contain any photos likely to make you lose your lunch, either!)
Juicy delicious!.......2007-05-19
If you think today's stars are misbehaved, wait til you read this! I couldn't put it down and read it in few days. Anger's style of writing is witty, sarcastic, and will compltely put you back into another era. The book focuses mainly on early, pre-code Hollywood up until Jayne Mansfield's death in 1967. There are so many juicy stories and even morbid details in this book, and tons of awesome pictures. (Although be warned- picture of Jayne Mansfield's car crash and dead dog are depressing and bloody). Includes everyone who was ever anyone- Clara Bow, Carole Landis, Carole Lombard, Marilyn Monroe, Valentino, Novarro, Judy Garland (who died on the toilet), Gary Cooper, William Randolph Hurst, Jayne Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, etc. etc. etc. All the old legends are in here. Completely worth the price. I just wish there was a newer version.
great book and wonderful gossip.......2007-02-18
if your the type that is intrigued by anna nichole , michael jackson, brittney spears and paris hilton then get this book these people were the real hollywood deal the stars from the 20s 30s and 40s make todays stars seem like cub scouts. this book has it all sex , glamor , drugs all the stuff that will make you not put this book down . you couldnt make this stuff up if you tried .
VERY ENTERTAINING.......2007-01-12
I love reading the trash & gossip about the stars and this book provided it all. It was hard to put down and I was sorry when I finished it.
Great reading!
Book Description
As the birthplace of the Black Panthers and a nationwide tax revolt, California embodied a crucial motif of the postwar United States: the rise of suburbs and the decline of cities, a process in which black and white histories inextricably joined. American Babylon tells this story through Oakland and its nearby suburbs, tracing both the history of civil rights and black power politics as well as the history of suburbanization and home-owner politics. Robert Self shows that racial inequities in both New Deal and Great Society liberalism precipitated local struggles over land, jobs, taxes, and race within postwar metropolitan development. Black power and the tax revolt evolved together, in tension.
American Babylon demonstrates that the history of civil rights and black liberation politics in California did not follow a southern model, but represented a long-term struggle for economic rights that began during the World War II years and continued through the rise of the Black Panthers in the late 1960s. This struggle yielded a wide-ranging and profound critique of postwar metropolitan development and its foundation of class and racial segregation. Self traces the roots of the 1978 tax revolt to the 1940s, when home owners, real estate brokers, and the federal government used racial segregation and industrial property taxes to forge a middle-class lifestyle centered on property ownership.
Using the East Bay as a starting point, Robert Self gives us a richly detailed, engaging narrative that uniquely integrates the most important racial liberation struggles and class politics of postwar America.
Customer Reviews:
Beating Cultural Studies At Its Own Game And Laughing All The Way Up The Ivory Tower With Meticulous History.......2006-03-14
In American Babylon, Robert Self attempts to synthesize consistently isolated renderings of urban, suburban, white black, economic and sociocultural histories in postwar metropolitan development. He seeks to join the histories of "modernist city planning" with "politics and social struggle (9)." In doing so, he centers his study around three primary transitions, each roughly beginning in the New Deal era and reaching completion around the advent of Johnson's Great Society. First, the remaking the white labor movement into what he terms "conservative populism." Second, the remaking of progressive black labor and urban activism into black militarism, nationalism, and Maoism. Finally, the remaking of liberal state aid from infrastructure development to human development, from direct financial subsidy for low-income whites to mobilization against pathology for low-income blacks.
The study concludes with a clash between the liberal state and suburban prosperity, newly estranged by the racialized nature of poverty.
Key to the suburban backlash of the seventies is a political disposition that formed much earlier in the late forties called "conservative populism." Self defines "conservative populism" as a postwar coalition of white blue collar workers, skilled workers, and small business interests that were pro-union, pro-private property, pro private-rights, anti-tax and anti-big-business. He defines "industrial garden" as a sort of ecosystem of commercial, industrial, and residential infrastructure in close proximity that delivers abundance and utopian living. Upon the failure of the inner city industrial garden to deliver utopian prosperity, suburbs became the actualized vision of the garden city and the staging grounds for an evacuation of prosperity.
Self portrays 1960s urban spaces as a conflict between business elites who wish to mechanize and deindustrialize infrastructure toward the end of capital accumulation, and blacks who want infrastructure investment in neighborhoods. Sometimes I found myself asking if Self was too adherent to municipal boundaries in drawing the border between city and suburb. It seems to me that large parts of American cities became and remained suburban-like in the postwar era. To use my own city as an example, there are places where Minneapolis and its suburbs seem to be very much of the same yoke. I wonder to what degree this is the case with Oakland?
There are times when the text seemed aggressive in reducing the city playing field to a contest between business infrastructure and poor blacks when a significant number of prosperous white residents remained in the city. I wonder if "post-municipalism" would be a useful younger sibling to "post-nationalism" in conceptualizing urban spaces. It might be rhetorically useful if "suburb" was reduced to an adjective in a study like this.
American Babylon hits its stride as it explores and lucidly articulates the reasons behind the conservative backlash and the death of the welfare state. While there is a tremendous body of scholarship that presents cultural explanations for the conservative backlash, it is rare that one finds an economic explanation, especially one that centers prosperity rather than exploitation and false consciousness (a la Thomas Frank) as its driving phenomenon. Self takes the same statistics that others (like George Lipsitz) have used to document the structural invention of black poverty and animates them as a call to action for white tax activists.
In affirming that both disempowerment and empowerment can be the precursors of fervent activism, Self avoids reinscribing social action as an exotic and racialized mystique of nature. Undisturbed by the proscribed boundaries of most scholarship, such mystique holds that liberal activism is essentially black, essentially urban, and essentially anti-capital or that conservative activism is essentially white, essentially rural, and essentially theological. Self disturbs and hybridizes this binary by locating the most demonstrably effective social action within suburbs.
Self also uses the suburbs to disrupt what he sees as an inadequate north/south binary in Afro-American history. It is not just business that opposes the welfare state for being anti-market or whites that oppose it out of racism, as one might gather from prevailing readings of the southern movement. Suburban whites had a vested economic interest in the elimination of civil rights gains and their adjunct, the liberal welfare state. Self also advocates retelling the civil rights movement as a national black confrontation with the exclusionary policies of the New Deal.
In perhaps his most radical departure from existing scholarship, Self talks about political economy without talking about liberal capital or economic determinism. He does not see lopsided urban development as the problem or manifest destiny of a free market, nor does he see policy as a reliable proscription on the lives of people. For Self, capital success is always prefixed by organized social action. The invisible hand is neither anonymous nor autonomous and Self is on a mission to name names.
Yet American Babylon is not without shortcomings. The introduction seems to be seeping with rich and critical contradictions. But the text-and perhaps it is just an artifact of the massive amount of information that is represented-the prose engages most of its terms with a very declarative nonchalance. A writer of similar style would be Nell Irvin Painter. Self's prose has a disarming factuality that marginalizes the ambiguity and contested meaning which seems central in cultural history. For all of its insights, it is difficult to read American Babylon as a cultural history because it is so linear. Because it does not raise problematics or invoke dialectic to resolve unclear and confounding juxtapositions, its engagement with its data is more encyclopedic than exegetical.
Ironically, while the Self does not talk about hegemony, intersectional theory, Foucault, Marx, modernity, or subjectivity, his work offers a framework for dissent that could not be built within the cultural studies lexicon.
rigorous and accessible.......2004-02-24
I read American Babylon after hearing about it on the radio, and came away impressed with the author's ability to make a remarkably complex process - the interplay of surburban development, urban decline, racial politics, and civil rights - accessible to an amateur such as myself. The book lays out a persuasive explanation of why things are they way they are in Oakland, and by (my) extension in many urban areas around the country, including my own hometown of Brooklyn. In doing so it seems to me to be the best sort of historical analysis: rigorous, remarkably detailed, and carefully documented, but useful to the public at large. Highly recommended.
Brilliant history that should be read by political activists.......2004-02-14
Robert Self's "American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland" deserves the attention of grassroots political activists as much as academics. It is a brilliant analysis of the post-World War Two business strategy for Oakland, California and the boom (and boomerang to Oakland) in housing and jobs elsewhere in Alameda County that resulted. Self shows how the decline of Oakland was the other side of the coin in the creation of new communities in the open spaces nearby. He lays out the class and race contexts of the suburbanization process and shows the consequences for and responses by the labor movement and African Americans to the changes that were wrought. "American Babylon" thus provides, for example, an interesting account of the Black Panther Party. Finally, using this region in northern California as a case study, the book examines the origins of the anti-property tax movement, when the suburbs regime went sour. Since California is still embroiled over the same issues this book addresses -- taxes, urban revitalization, de-industrialization, racial equality, and the political and environmental impacts of suburban growth -- Robert Self's "American Babylon" could not be more timely.
Medium-sized Cities in the times of Urban Renewal.......2004-02-10
Robert Self's book should interest readers interested in understanding the aftermath of urban renewal and development in US cities and the politics of race and class in the post-WWII to 1975 period. Self's work makes a contribution to studies of urban poltiics and the histories of cities and of the Civil Rights era by pointing to what has often been ignored or left invisible: that the so-called problems of people living in cities are often directly related to the overdevelopment of their surrounding suburbs (the noose), and that the problems of people of color in this country are directly related to the privileges of white people, structurally and historically. Thus, Self's book shows intimately and concretely how one might explore the dynamics of structural, institutionalized racism, in the post-Civil Rights era, when we all thought that the problem of blatant individualized racism had been solved.
In addition, the book will be useful for those of us living and working or traveling through the Bay Area: It adds another part of the story, and links the decline of Oakland with the rise of Silicon Valley, and with shifting terrains of race and class politics. It also provides important historical perspective on the forces that started the long trajectory that we now live, the decisions that sowed the seeds for the so-called ghettos, but also for the gentrification and displacement that threatens to displace our communities today.
If You Want to Understand American Cities, Read This Book.......2004-02-08
Oakland is frequently in the news. Our school board passes a resolution asserting the language rights of African-Americans, and the country explodes in controversy. Our citizens elect a celebrity mayor, and the Wall Street Journal speculates on the reasons. None of these events are understandable without understanding Oakland's history, and Robert Self has done a terrific job of capturing its contours. He lays waste to the common myth that the Civil Rights movement was exclusively a Southern phenomenon, and reports in fascinating detail on Oakland's own Civil Rights movement. Although he reports on its most famous organization, the Black Panthers, he also describes in detail the tenacity and success of other organizations, like the Oakland Black Caucus and the East Bay Democratic Club, which produced changes in the employment and electoral rights of American-Americans.
People who want to change cities should read this book.
An Oakland College Professor
Book Description
REVIEW: "Informative....Well researched." (Library Journal)REVIEW: "A brisk read, complete with with detailed directions and off-the-wall factoids." (San Francisco Examiner)REVIEW: " California Babylon delivers the dirt. .... Provides details on visiting some of the oddest corners of our oddest state." (Dallas Morning News)REVIEW: "....a thoroughly entertaining, wonderfully morbid guide to the Golden State."(New York Post)REVIEW: "California Babylon is the real thing....A kick to read." (Los Angeles Times)REVIEW: "....makes for fascinating reading....A sick little tome."(Pittsburg Tribune Review)
Customer Reviews:
Fun, But In Need Of Revision.......2007-05-26
A fun guide to where things happened, but you'll find some of the sites no longer exist. In serious need of revision, but still will give you hours of good reading.
Very Disappointing........2005-08-15
This book is more a tourist guide to trivia than a guide to places of scandal, mayhem, and celluloid. How scandalous is the place that inspired the Beach Boys hit "Fun, fun, fun"!?!
That happened there???.......2002-08-25
When I picked this book up, it was the uncorrected pre-press edition. It had a few errors in direction (East was West and North was South) and content, but I still find it rather informative.
If you are a California native or new to the Golden State I strongly recommend it for an idea of what fame, fortune and failures can plague the Left Coast. While some information was interesting and thought provoking, other items were rather banal and uninspired. Maybe this was corrected in the later printing, but it still makes me wonder about the veracity that the facts were checked.
Nevertheless a great book for those interested in the underbelly of California pop culture.
This Is Definitely A Guilty Little Pleasure.......2001-09-23
If you want to travel all over California and take in all the bizarre (aka definitely not mainstream) tourist sites along the way, buy this book! It provided me with all sorts of information. Imagine my shock when I found out that the site of the Heaven's Gate last supper was the Marie Calender's I frequent when I am in Carlsbad. Really, this book is a lot of fun. Provides a lot of trivia and gives books like LA Bizzaro and San Francisco Bizzaro a run for the $$$$ and also flip flops all over the state in search for crime scenes and other oddities.
Even if you don't use it as a tour guide and/or never step foot in California, this book will entertain and provide more than a few chuckles.
This Is The Ultimate Guide For Visiting Famous Sites.......2001-09-20
I've actually been into this sort of thing for years, visiting any local sites associated with the more sensational stories of the San Francisco Bay Area, and there simply isn't a better general guide to cover the many other California stories that are even further away.
I say general because I like to read about many other incidents, even those that are no more than bizarre accidents or forgotten front page stories from the Victorian era. I will determine where those occurred too, and newspapers often publish addresses.
The Southern California people with this book will be green with envy that I have easy access to places they don't, and I feel the same way about their area. I'll just have to wait until I get a chance to visit the Southern parts of this state again.
Among the sites I have gone to here in San Francisco are Jimmy Stewart's Apartment from the 1958 thriller Vertigo, and the apartment house where the Symbionese Liberation Army brainwashed Patty Hearst in the closet in 1974. I had already read Patty's own riveting account of the kidnapping, so that particular site made an even more ominous impression.
The Vertigo site has very relaxed vibes, and the SLA site really unsettling vibes. I even looked into the hallway of the latter and noticed a creepy gun sight like design in the old colored windows. Anyone would notice those while going up the stairs, and that's all the more interesting because the SLA practiced with pellet guns in the bathroom during the three months they were there.
One of the things I like about seeing all these places is that they give a local resident a kind of frame of reference about the neighborhoods. Even most cab drivers won't know the city like those who have this little encyclopedia as they travel around.
I never really paid much attention to some areas before, like the ones associated with rock n roll history in the Haight Ashbury and elsewhere, but now when I hear people talking about many legendary names I have visual references to real places and it's something we can both talk about.
If you'd like to chat about this hobby, send me an e-mail. I'm working on an 1895 San Francisco history book that will also have a generous list of places to visit at the end, and I'll let my fellow time trippers know if the project is ever completed.
Book Description
Something about the slow-burning sun and the easy lifestyle of Hollywood's notorious desert haven has nurtured a scrumptious history of cardinal sins, both public and private. From philanthropists to actors-in-waiting, Ray Mungo's Palm Springs Babylon is the compilation of these burning secrets, complete with damning photographic evidence and merciless documentation.
From Clara Bow's sexual appetite and voracious Jim Bakker's denials of promiscuity, to the rich veins of gossip to be mined from the Betty Ford Center, any gossipmonger or film buff will thrill to this lurid social history of Hollywood arcana. Witness zaftig Fatty Arbuckle stand trial for the grisly murder of a starlet; the egos of the powerful, the famous, and the purely eccentric locking horns; and the flamboyance and controversy, past and present, surrounding this florid and flourishing community.
Palm Springs Babylon is a secret history of this Hollywood playground at its best-its sleaziest, most corrupt, and most deliciously indecorous-in short, at its height of glamour.
Customer Reviews:
..........2003-07-02
I bought this book on a whim in at a Palm Springs bookstore. I want my money back. It is padded with stock pictures, stories based on rumor that end abruptly, and just about every person mentioned in the book is either gay or suspected of being gay, according to the author. What makes that part laughable is the author apparently is gay as well, bragging about his own week of debauchery at a P.S. resort. If the people in the book were alive they would have a great class action suit against Mungo. If Mungo had any balls he'd take on people that could actually fight back. One of the worst pieces of self serving trash ever published. This book deserves a no star rating, but [Amazon.com] doesn't provide for one.
Book Description
Hollywood, Interrupted is a sometimes frightening, occasionally sad, and frequently hysterical odyssey into the darkest realms of showbiz pathology, the endless stream of meltdowns and flameouts, and the inexplicable behavior on the part of show business personalities.
Charting celebrities from rehab to retox, to jails, cults, institutions, near-death experiences and the Democratic Party, Hollywood, Interrupted takes readers on a surreal field trip into the amoral belly of the entertainment industry. Each chapter â covering topics including warped Hollywood child-rearing, bad medicine, hypocritical political maneuvering and the complicit media â delivers a meticulously researched, interview-infused, attitude heavy dispatch which analyzes and deconstructs the myths created by the celebrities themselves.
Celebrities somehow believe that it's their god-given right to inflict their pathology on the rest of us. Hollywood, Interrupted illustrates how these dysfunctional dilettantes are mad as hell... And we're not going to take it any more.
Download Description
These are some of the reasons why Hollywood's misbehaving stars do what they do, but over the past few years, their stories have become so outrageous that it's hard to tell what they're actually thinking-if they're thinking at all! In this entertainment industry exposé, Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner pull back the curtain to reveal the twisted culture of Hollywood and the preposterous penchants of today's high-profile celebrities. From John T, Tom Cruise, and Ann Heche to Eddie Murphy, Oliver Stone, and Courtney Love, Hollywood, Interrupted presents the mind-altered behavior of the most reality-challenged celebrities from all walks of life and every genre. Hollywood, Interrupted explores how the pathological behavior of celebrities has destroyed comedy, snuffed relationships, and demeaned family values. Each chapter delivers a meticulously researched, interview-infused, attitude-heavy dispatch-which analyzes and deconstructs the myths created by celebrities and their way-too-protective handlers. You'll enter a world where: Celebrities and Hollywood power players engage in "cyber," "off-line" sex and subterfuge with a young America Online customer service agent "Young Hollywood" swing clubs and "porno-tainment" become mainstream diversions Statutory rapist Roman Polanski can win a Best Director Oscar, but can't collect it because of the criminal conviction against him in the United States Some of the most famous stars send their children to an elite high school with a curriculum that includes extracurricular cross-dressing and a mandatory pseudo-therapeutic program called "Mysteries" Celebrity nannies get so stressed they've formed a Beverly Hills support group Mathew Perry, Robert Downwy Jr., and Ben Affleck, among others, vacation atarm's "five star" rehab resort centers Hollywood Madame Heidi Fleiss can emerge from prison a born-again celebrity, ready to cash in
Customer Reviews:
But why is America still obsessed with them?.......2007-06-07
I wasn't really impressed by this book. I understand that many celebrities are narcissists, shallow people who *think* they are profound and mirror the actions of profound people, all the while craving adulation, money, and prestige, while not thinking about anyone else (they also lack true empathy and conscience, somewhat in the sociopathic style). I understand that they are annoying and shouldn't be representatives of our politics; however, I see nothing wrong with vegetarian celebrities promoting vegetarianism or something of that nature because having compassion towards animals is actually a positive thing. I work with adolescents, some of who have shown cruelty towards animals, and we already know that people who are violent towards animals are then violent towards other people. Also, vegetarianism is good for the health. Anyhow, back to my review. In sum, I think the book really should have explored why the average person, the common man or woman or child, adulates and supports Hollywood. It's our money that feeds the machine. Is it because we have low IQs? I for one never watch television because I realise exactly what it is -- cheap entertainment with boring and repetitive storylines, and don't even get me started with reality shows, I've never kept up with any of them. But in the end the fault is that of America's citizens -- what is the fascination with celebrity and why does America support it? Perhaps there is a hidden narcissism in the regular person who aspires to live like a celebrity, or perhaps the average person, lacking a modicum of IQ, really admires wealth and power and can only see the trappings of wealth and power set before him or her, and is blindsided to everything else? This to me would mean there is also something very wrong with the average American. A book like this, if already using "clinical" terms like narcissism, should have in turn had opinions of more psychiatrists or other professionals and also analysed America's own narcissism and preoccupation with celebrity.
They're Only Human.......2006-07-21
It just goes-to-show what we should have already known; celebrities, like everyone else, are only human. That includes politicians too. Both major parties. Just because someone skyrockets into the limelight, doesn't now make them the experts on what to believe, morals, or who to vote for. Most of these people don't even know what they believe themselves, only the "politically correct" trends-of-the-day. We may enjoy the movies they make, or maybe that beautiful song they just put out, but when it comes to being a spokesperson for today's issues, use your brain and think for yourself.
Dreck: but fascinating for all the wrong reasons.......2006-06-24
It's been a heck of a long time since I've bothered to write a review, but after finishing reading this book, I felt compelled to.
"Hollywood Interrupted" opens with chatroom correspondence between the two authors, who despite one of them being "liberal" and the other "conservative" they both find they have an apathy for celebs and their lifestyles. Conservative Breitbart and Liberal Ebner then have a classic bright-lightbulb-materializes-above-the-head moment! Why not WRITE A BOOK full of rehashed gossip, unfunny attempts at humor and stupid moralistic posturing but also rants about THEIR free speech being trampled on!
Throw in constant unfunny references to "the heterosexual Tom Cruise" (Sure, I make fun of TC, but I try to come up with new stuff, and though I disagree with his views on psychology, I don't HATE the guy.), an entire chapter dedicated to Courtney Love and her problems. Sure she's messed up, but Hole were a good band.
However, the chapter on Scientology is amusing. In fact, this book could have been a 13 page booklet consisting of that chapter alone. That said, you can't put the damn thing down- that is if you can stomach all the arrogance and mean spiritness of the writers. It could have been helped by a healthy leavening of satire, but Breitbart and Ebner appear to be too dim-minded and/or overcome by psychotic rage to be genuinely funny.
By all means read this book. It's not for everyone, but if you are one of those people fascinated by the gory scenes on websites such as rotten.com and the like (and I'm one of them) you may find this worth a look. Although chances are you'll know most of the "news" here: Eddie Murphy and the tranny, Whitney Houston's "Crack Is Whack" schtick and of course the Arquettes, the Phoenixes and the Baldwins -though no Wayans'es- it could be that there's just too darn many of them, or the "authors" may just be racists as well as moralists and homophobes. As the title song in Herschell Gordon Lewis's "2000 Maniacs" (and the remake "2001 Maniacs") goes: "The South's gonna rise again! Yee haw!". I give it an extra star for the sheer sleaziness of it all. If two morons can keep me glued to my chair and entertained for a couple of days, then it can't be all that "bad".(And no, I am not talking about me sitting and amusing myself with a couple of hand puppets). Bad is a relative term.
My next review due sometime in 2007. Those of you with no lives mark it off on your calendars. :-)
My True Confession.......2006-02-25
I'm embarrassed to confess this, but I actually bought this book by way of co-author Mark Ebner's urging in an AOL authors chat room. He shamelessly directed me to his blog, http://www.hollywoodinterrupted.com, and I click-through purchased the paperback here on Amazon. I then read Hollywood, Interrupted in one sitting, and now I feel less embarrassed being comforted by the fact that the book begins and ends with silly instant message sessions conducted by the authors.
In between their late night online chats, the authors composed an uncompromising pastiche of passages (How's that for alliteration?)devoted to exposing the town that they clearly love to hate. The result? I loved it!
Then I went back to Ebner's blog and discovered why this guy seems so desperately egotistical about getting noticed. His journalism rocks!
So, Ebner... Now that I've read and reviewed your work, you are forgiven for being such a shameless self-promoter.
Don't waste your time or money!!!!!.......2006-01-14
I checked this out of the library & only read about 1/3 of it. That's about all i could take of this mean-spirited, one-sided, repetitive diatribe.
Please read the Pub Weekly review above. It gives a fair picture of this crappy book.
I have no problem w/ criticism of hollywood & celebrity, as long as it's fair & intelligent criticism. This book is neither. It's just a biased, unoriginal rant.
The worst thing i can say about it is that the tone is that of a smug, intolerant, finger-wagging, self-righteous hypocrite of the worst kind. Of course the authors, while condemning these celebrities, have no problem making money off of them (& their misfortunes). These guys are the worst kind of blood-sucking insects.
If you're really curious, leaf through it at the library & then put it back. Please don't give these narrow-minded idiots your hard-earned money.
Average customer rating:
- A refreshing look at a microcosm reflecting a larger world.
|
Beach Blanket Babylon: A Hats-Off Tribute to San Francisco's Most Extraordinary Musical Revue
Janet Lynn
Manufacturer: Chronicle Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Voice
| Instruments & Performers
| Music
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Music
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
Musicals
| Musical Genres
| Music
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
Broadway & Musicals
| Theater
| Performing Arts
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Theater
| Performing Arts
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Performing Arts
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| California
| States
| United States
| Travel
| Subjects
| Books
Beaches
| Reference & Tips
| Travel
| Subjects
| Books
California
| State & Local
| United States
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Drama
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0811816990 |
Amazon.com
Bursting onto the theatrical world of 1974 like a breath of fresh helium, the campy San Francisco revue Beach Blanket Babylon established itself as the show that had the courage to put a life-size Mr. Peanut, Glinda the Good Witch of the North, and a tap-dancing Christmas tree together on a stage. Joyously glorifying the detritus of American culture, Steve Silver's monsterpiece has been delighting hip audiences (and thoroughly disorienting others) ever since. This slick paperback is really just a souvenir booklet as extravagantly overblown as one of Silver's signature 33-foot hats. It has lots of photos and history, but, sadly, barely a quote from the show's giddily funny scripts. But it's fun just the same, a window on a countercultural phenomenon.
Book Description
The question is, what did the Queen think of the hats? The longest-running musical revue in American history, Beach Blanket Babylon has taken audiences around the world, from Buckingham Palace to Las Vegas, and the world has in turn come to Beach Blanket Babylon. Known for outrageous humor, great music, fabulous characterizations of the famous and the infamous (from Snow White to John Travolta), and absolutely the biggest hats ever seen on stage, the show still packs the house over twenty years later at its home in San Francisco. Created by the late Steve Silver as an offshoot of his Rent-A-Freak business, with an original script by Armistead Maupin, Beach Blanket Babylon has become a legend. This visual celebration captures all the zaniness of the show and takes the reader behind the scenes, from early sketches and costume design to the ongoing creative genius that keeps Mr. Peanut tap-dancing. For anyone who loves the theater or likes to laugh, this book is the ticket.
Visit S.F. Gate to find out what's happening in Bay Area news, entertainment, sports, and more.
Customer Reviews:
A refreshing look at a microcosm reflecting a larger world........1998-01-07
This delightful book examines the unique theater which one man's vision successfully and energetically designed to examine the pain and parody of an evolving, contemporary American society and body politic. May Beach Blanket Babylon spread it's messages both throughout the American stages and through distribution of this panoramic literary exposition. Yes, proudly, Janet Lynn Roseman is my sister!
Average customer rating:
- The Good, The Bad and The Incoherent
- You have to live in LA to understand this book...
- How good is the book? I couldn't even finish it.
|
The View from Babylon: The Notes of a Hollywood Voyeur
Donald Rawley
Manufacturer: Grand Central Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Movies
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
Industry
| Movies
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
Popular Culture
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Urban
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Culture
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Telecommunications
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Foreign Languages
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Performing Arts
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
Similar Items:
-
The Night Bird Cantata
ASIN: 0446524115 |
Book Description
As luxurious as it is decadent, it is host to lush and extravagant galas, aglitter with the rich and famous, overrun by exotic cars, rife with crazed body builders,peopled by agents scoffing at nine-figure deals, and haunted by greed, ambition, and despair. Devastated by earthquakes, it is even more gloriously rebuilt. But beneath it all echo the cries of infants murdered by drug addicted parents, husbands who kill themselves in hotel rooms, and marriages broken over bank accounts. From the best to the worst, Donald Rawley offers it all up in a sprawling book that captivates the reader with its devastating honesty.
Customer Reviews:
The Good, The Bad and The Incoherent.......2006-07-26
I picked this book up in a dollar store after reading the first paragraph and being amazed at the evocative, sensual prose.
But after the twentieth paragragh, I was completely disillusioned. The author presents himself as a near-god, a cream-of-the-crop Hollywood insider so removed from his readers as to make them feel unappreciated and less than privy to the wonders of the Hollywood backstage.
The prose is littered with erotic, beautiful descriptions and poetic concepts, but those parts are often drowned out by the din of other, less coherent passages. In short, it was a challenging book to finish.
You have to live in LA to understand this book..........2006-03-09
That's basically the bottom line. I've lived in Los Angeles all of my life. I've frequented Hollywood and some of the other star studded places glamorized all over the movie star scene. I was even lucky enough to attend a party at a famous movie stars house. Donald hit the nail on the head with this book. It describes the rich and the famous of Hollywood to a tee. I found it to be a great read since I am an avid reader of Hollywood and celebrity gossip columns. I think some people are just a little curious about how their lives tick. I think he covered just about every aspect of the Hollywood elite. In my opinion, it was a well written observance of life in the shoes of the rich, famous, infamous, and those striving to be as such. I wouldn't expect a grade A review from someone who lives somewhere other than Los Angeles or CA for that matter.
How good is the book? I couldn't even finish it........2000-05-11
While on vacation, I picked up this book looking forward to one of my favorite subjects. Frankly, I was so disappointed I didn't finish the book and went back to my others. For that reason, don't look at this review as conclusive. But I love to read and this is one of the few books I ever started and didn't finish so be forewarned.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Los Angeles Business Journal, published by Thomson Gale on September 25, 2006. The length of the article is 708 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Hollywood Babylon?
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication:
Los Angeles Business Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 25, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 28
Issue: 39
Page: 54(1)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Books:
- I Want to Believe (The Official Guide to the X-Files, Vol. 3)
- In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification
- Inside Power
- Intimate Strangers
- J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (Two Volume Box Set)
- Junie B., First Grader: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! (p.s. so does May.) (A Stepping Stone Book(TM))
- Leading Corporate Citizens: Vision, Values, Value Added
- Let Yourself Go: The Freedom & Power of Life Beyond Belief (Sound True Audio Learning Course)
- Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace
- Map of Bones
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Spreadsheet Modeling and Decision Analysis
- Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible
- Immunizations: The Terrible Risks Your Children Face That Your Doctor Won't Reveal
- Hungarian: Lonely Planet Phrasebook
- Incredible Technologies Of The New World Order; UFOs - Tesla - Area 51
- Neurotica: Jewish Writers on Sex
- Indian Wildlife Insight Guide
- Peter Norton's New Inside the PC
- Confession And Bookkeeping: The Religious, Moral, And Rhetorical Roots of Modern Accounting
- Supply Estimates-revised And Supplementary Estimates: 2003-2004 Spring Supplementary Estimates
The Hollywood Book of Scandals : The Shocking, Often Disgraceful Deeds and Affairs of Over 100 American Movie and TV Idols
The Hollywood Book of Death : The Bizarre, Often Sordid, Passings of More than 125 American Movie and TV Idols
L.A. Exposed: Strange Myths and Curious Legends in the City of Angels
Where Are They Buried? How Did They Die? Fitting Ends and Final Resting Places of the Famous, Infamous, and Noteworthy
The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 1
