a number of e-mails are aksing if i'm going to review barbra streisand's autobiography?
probably not and surely not this weekend. it's very long and i'm not a speed reader.
you know who should review it?
c.i.
we were talking on the phone and she has read it and she offered the best critique and i told her she should review it. she doesn't want to but i'm going to stay on her. i think i can sell her on doing it with just one decade. her remarks on what barbra included from the 70s and what she ignored from the 70s.
I didn't want to write about it.
Ava and I went over topics late last night for our piece at THIRD. That book wasn't one of them. But Jim begged us to write it. So we agreed. And we've finished it. It took a little over six hours and that includes editing. We didn't edit out A STAR IS BORN but we may go back in and link to Frank Pierson's article about directing Barbra in that film -- that awful film. I've shared that before here, my opinion that it's an awful film. It was a popular film in its day but that doesn't mean it was worth anything. TITANIC starring Barbara Stanwyck was a popular film of its day and today most people don't even know the film.
Ava and I focused on the lack of honesty and the lack of fairness.
If we were going to add anything to the piece -- and we're not other than link to Frank's article -- we'd address Barbra's portrayal of her mother. Oh, no, she didn't want to spend New Year's Eve watching you perform in Las Vegas!!! Oh, the horror!!! Get over your damn self. Diana Ross is doing the farewell performance with the Supremes in Las Vegas and they're introducing everyone's mother and Ernestine Ross was not present. Diana has never turned that into a sob story or tried to use it to create sympathy for her and turn herself into 'poor Diana.' But Barbra can't stop trying to be 'poor Barbra.' It's really too damn much for a whole book but that is her theme.
You're elderly mother, in a motorized wheelchair, with bladder problems didn't want to sit through a concert. Stop being surprised and stop acting like it was a tragedy -- and, honestly, shame on the person who told you while you were working on the book. There was no reason to share that with you.
Did Barbra's mother do bad things as a mother? Absolutely. But that whine, which opens her chapter on her mother, is just beyond stupid. Her mother was needing a bathroom every thirty or forty minutes at that point in her life. No, spending New Years at your concert -- when she knew you wouldn't know she wasn't there (and you wouldn't have if the busybody bitch 'friend' hadn't told you) -- and having to go to the ladies' room in a wheel chair repeatedly during the concert was asking too much of her and it was not her trying to be mean. If she wanted to be mean, she would've told you, "I'm not going to your concert."
There are real injuries and real hurts in Barbra's life. She doesn't need to go looking for more.
And what a sad and pathetic life it is.
We focus on that and we focus on the book that should have been written instead.
It's 3,610 words.
We've written it, we've edited it. It's way too much for my eyes, I'm going to take nap because everything's so blurry. (I've already put videos in the queue to go up regularly over the next few hours.)
So, to recap, I didn't want to write about the book (I do know Barbra and we do greet each other -- in fact, I once greeted her when it was Sally Kellerman -- Sally dropped by unexpectedly one night and it was really dark and I was convinced she was Barbra before she spoke). Ava and I didn't want to write about the book. But we did and we worked forever on it -- and called a number of people to verify a few things (these are not things about Barbra, when it posts, you'll see we were trying to clarify credits on film producing -- I'll leave it at that). It is done. It took way too much time. It should be posted now. I'm not regrouping for any more on THIRD again this week. Not tonight, not Monday, not Tuesday.
Maybe Jim believe it since I'm posting this note here.