Book Review: "Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions — My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood"

My Washington Post review of prolific writer/director/producer/showrunner Ed Zwick’s name-dropping but also name-naming memoir is here.

"Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story" REVIEWED IN THE WASHINGTON POST

Reviewing Bono’s memoir for the Washington Post was a big deal for me. U2 was my first favorite band, and I remain, as I say in the piece, “wearily devout.” It’s been a few years (but only two albums) since the Paper of Record let me rank their albums! (I’d like a word with circa-2009 me about some of my decisions.)

I didn’t find space to point out that the only two living world leaders for whom The Fly has anything less than an admiring word are Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Or to point out that two episodes from the author’s career — though I would not call them successes — go unmentioned entirely: U2’s 9/11 memorial performance at the 2002 Super Bowl halftime show, and Bono and The Edge’s ill-fated foray (with Julie Taymor!) into musical theatre with the Broadway flop Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Though it you want to know about that exercise, I can recommend Glen Berger’s Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History.

Anyway. My review of Bono’s memoir is here. Am I boogin’ ya I doon’t mean to boog ya.

"HEAT 2" Reviewed in The Washington Post

Michael Mann’s 1995 crime epic HEAT gets a new prose sequel.

HEAT 2 is—like The Godfather, Part II—both prequel & sequel. It is also—unlike The Godfather, Part II—a novel and not a movie. One that preserves little of what made HEAT, the movie, a classic. I’m a Mann’s Man. It pains me to air my disappointment in the Paper of Record.

The 58-Year Mission: "Nobody Does It Better," reviewed for The Washington Post

Daniel Craig in 2006’s sublime Casino Royale, chronicling a formative mission for a wet-behind-the-ears 007.

I was a big fan of Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross’s two-volume Star Trek oral history The Fifty-Year Mission, so I fairly leapt at the chance to review Nobody Does It Better, their new oral history of the James Bond movies, for the Paper of Record. It’s not as illuminating or contradictory as their Trek books, though I was delighted to find some comments from my pal Matt Gourley within its (seven! hundred!) pages.

Dad Rock of Ages: Twilight of the Gods, reviewed in the Washington Post.

The Rolling Stones of 1969 are not the latter-day Stones. Mick Taylor (second from left_ and Bill Wyman (far right) both quit, for one thing, albeit decades apart.

My first Washington Post byline in two years in a review of Steven Hyden's new book Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock. I had it with me on my own journey to the end of classic rock, when I caught an Amtrak up to New York two months ago to see Springsteen on Broadway. (I wrote up my impressions for Slate.) Strangely enough, my prior Post item was a review of Hyden's previous book, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me. That book was good. This one is better. Maybe your mom would enjoy receiving a copy on Sunday. I don't know. I don't know your mom.

Rock Island Party Line: Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World by Billy Bragg, reviewed.

For the Dallas Morning News, I reviewed folk singer Billy Bragg's new history of skiffle, a largely forgotten British musical form that linked blues and "trad jazz" with rock and roll in the mid-to-late 1950s. Enjoy.

George Jones Talks About His Greatest Lines

My review of Rich Kienzle's new biography The Grand Tour: The Life and Music of George Jones, is in Sunday's Washington Post. There's probably some other stuff in there that would be good to read, too, I bet.

Anyway, here's a paragraph I had to cut for space.

Amid his dutiful, carefully sourced recounting of booze-lubricated recording sessions and singles, Kienzle highlights some amusingly unexpected sides of Jones, like when he told his ex-wife Tammy Wynette in a 1980 interview in Country Music (a magazine Kienzle contributed to for 24 of its 31 years) that if he had to find a second career he would enjoy being an interior decorator. He might fare better than he did as the proprietor of three outdoor country music parks, which he opened at three different points in his life and quickly abandoned. He was also wanton enough with his brand to lend it to random products: George Jones Country Sausage and, also, troublingly, George Jones Country Gold Dog Food and Cat Food. Kienzle notes that a TV spot for the latter was called “George Jones Talks About His Greatest Lines.” If a TV commercial has to have a title, that’s either an unfortunate one or a brilliant one for a pitch from a man whose life and career were so damaged by his eight-year dalliance with cocaine.

I wouldn't ordinarily be so flip discussing something as serious as an addiction problem but that ad just beggars belief.