By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up! (@AKessaris) “Blunt-featured and barrel-chested with a full head of dramatically dark, pomaded hair, Klein doesn’t share his clients’ flair for fashion. He prefers sneakers and sweatshirts to paisleys and Nehru jackets. But while Klein doesn’t look like the most powerful and controversial player in the music business, he is […]
Books
The Horror of it All: One Moviegoer’s Love Affair with Masked Maniacs, Frightened Virgins, and the Living Dead…by Adam Rockoff (Simon & Schuster, $32)
By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up! (@AKessaris) “As a general rule, horror fans embrace their status as cultural outsiders. In fact, many define their identity solely by opposition to the mainstream. We tell ourselves we don’t need, or even want, casual endorsements-not from the public or the critics, and especially not from Hollywood suits.” -Adam […]
Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News by A. Brad Schwartz (Hill and Wang, $39.99)
By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up! (@AKessaris) “Remembered as a ‘textbook example of mass hysteria,’ the War of the Worlds panic is still cited constantly by historians as evidence of the anxiety permeating the country just before World War II. The broadcast itself has become shorthand for the dangerous power and influence of the media, […]
Let’s Start a Riot by Bruce McCulloch (HarperCollins, $29.99)
By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up! (@AKessaris) “…I realized that, even though I had been a young a**hole, I was right. No one should ever go to Drumheller.” -Bruce McCulloch (from Let’s Start a Riot) In 1988 a void existed in broadcast comedy/variety, with SCTV long gone and Saturday Night Live just beginning to become […]
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson (Riverhead Books, $32.95)
By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up! (@AKessaris) “A life had been ruined. What was it for: just some social media drama? I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new […]
The B-Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song by Ben Yagoda (Riverhead Books, $32.95)
By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up! (@AKessaris) “The songs were composed with sundry goals in mind, producing great art barley being one of them. But the songs – the best of them, anyway – took on lives of their own: it turned out they lent themselves to being interpreted in different styles and with different […]
Stevie Nicks: Visions, Dreams & Rumours by Zoë Howe (Overlook Omnibus, $32.95)
By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up! (@AKessaris) “Frankly, Stevie didn’t care what anyone else thought. It was her album, and she wasn’t interested in being trendy. This is one of the reasons Stevie Nicks has endued as an icon over the decades. She has always stayed true to her own heart; a strength necessary in […]
So, Anyway…by John Cleese (Doubleday, $32.95)
By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up! (@AKessaris) “A good sense of humour is the sign of a healthy perspective, which is why people who are uncomfortable around humour are either pompous (inflated) or neurotic (oversensitive).” -John Cleese No matter what John Cleese achieves in his life, he will always be remembered for Monty Python (even […]
Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies by Dave Itzkoff (Times Books, $31)
By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up! (@AKessaris) “It’s impossible to describe what it feels like to be handed the same award that was given to Paddy Chayefsky thirty-five years ago, for another movie with Network in the title…The commoditization of the news and the devaluating of the truth are just a part of our way […]
Most Outstanding Book of 2014
By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up! (@AKessaris) Annually around this time, everyone and their pet dog puts out a list encapsulating their year into “Best” and “Worst” lists. When I was asked to do the same it became a dilemma: How do I select the “Best” book of the year, especially when I find […]