If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble: Movies, Mayhem, and Malice

by Joe Queenan

Book Overview

The outspoken and hilarious Hollywood commentator collects seventy-five of his most controversial interviews and essays about such figures as Barbra Streisand and Melanie Griffith.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156282788X
• ISBN13: 9781562827885
• Release Date: February 1994
• Publisher: Hyperion Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Have my people call your people.

Some of you may have seen my earlier review of his newer book, Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler. That was a very funny, vicious look at Hollywood and the movie business. This is an earlier book, collecting essays from the early 1990s written for Movieline, Rolling Stone, and one article for the Washington Post, and contains many of the same elements. However, while Heckler was chock full of hilarity, insults, wisecracks and the like, this one doesn't have as many of these. Instead, there are some very fine articles analyzing movies and the careers of certain stars (Jessica Lange, Sean Young, Keanu Reeves, for example). Thus, while I found Heckler much more entertaining than this book, I found this one much more interesting.That's not to say there aren't hilarious articles dealing with the categorization of movies by various odds and ends included in them (such as the opening essay, which deals with older men falling love and having sexual relations with jailbait in the movies). Some of the funniest articles I've read from Queenan are in this book, such as his attempt to "be Mickey Rourke for a day." In this article, he details how he went four days without bathing, dressed up all in black, and determined to travel throughout New York acting like Mickey Rourke, doing and saying things that he has said in his movies or in interviews. This includes trying to find a prostitute who will fondle a blond woman like the prostitute Rourke makes do this to Kim Basinger in 9 ½ Weeks, smoking tons of cigarettes, and repeatedly telling complete strangers that "sometimes, you just gotta roll the potato." He also swears a lot.The funniest article in the book has to be his list of 25 of the most senseless movies ever made. These are not movies that are just plain stupid, because usually even stupid movies are easy to follow. No, these are movies that make no sense whatsoever. Included in this list is Joe vs the Volcano, The Night Porter, The Two Jakes, and King David. He goes on to describe just why these movies have made the list. In this essay, he reaches the heights of vicious humour and commentary as he savages these films. Even if you disagree with him (as my wife does on a couple of them), you will still find this article worth reading and laughing at.Other categorization essays include bad clerics in movies, musicians in movies (and why they usually are terrible), the first installment of "Don't Try This at Home" (where he tries various things that happen in movies and see if they are even remotely realistic), and a complete castigation of the use of bad accents in movies. These articles vary between wonderful and passable, with most being toward the former. "Don't Try This at Home" is the only one that is a letdown. Queenan's at his funniest when he lists movies by category and shows why it is a bad thing that they are in this category.I was quite surprised, however, to find some truly introspective articles in this book as well. No,

Damn Funny Stuff

Just blew threw this is 2 days, one of those 'couldn't put it down' books. Rarely do I laugh, or even chuckle but Mr. Q provided 2 days worth of jollies. Interesting to see how some of these movie moguls have progressed (or degressed) in the few years since the books has been published. If you too feel insulted by what Hollywood offers us as 'entertainment' get this book. Enjoy!!

sharp biting fun

Queenan has an incredible knack to cut straight to the chase and give you wonderful fodder for thought and laughter. His scathing attack on Barbra Streisand ranks as one of the best and most merited public diatribes ever written. His Mickey Rourke piece also manages to blend pop culture, anger and the surreal in a brilliant manner. This book is truly a gem and I recommend it heartily to anyone with an interest in Hollywood and the idolisation of celebrities in general.

Quintessential Queenan

The skewering of Barbra Streisand in "Sacred Cow" would be worth the price of the book alone; however, Joe Queenan's other Hollywood targets (his observation of Melanie Griffith having "the most inexplicable career in the history of motion pictures"is one of his kinder moments) hardly fare much better. I never laughed so hard at other's people's expense in my life - amazing when once considers that Queenan never goes into depth regarding the alleged acting abilities of Sly Stallone. But his musings on John Goodman ("the American Gerard Depardieu"), Keanu Reeves ("His name 'Keanu' comes from his grandfather, and supposedly it's Hawaiian for 'cool breeze over the mountains', although since Keanu's the one supplying the information, it might actually be the Hawaiian word for 'Keanu'"), and Laurence Olivier ("Who can forget Olivier's odd squawking in 'The Betsey', in which his attempts to capture the inflection of an American auto tycoon end up sounding like a cross between Jed Clampett and Scrooge McDuck?") all draw blood. And I haven't even gotten to gems like "Mickey Rourke for a Day" and "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World", a look at Oliver Stone's work where Queenan confesses not to believe the conspiracy theory presented in 'JFK' because of Joe Pesci's wig.Read and laugh.

Hatchet-man with a purpose

If you've sought out this book, I assume I don't have to tell you how agonizingly funny these Hollywood satires are. For those who stumbled upon this by accident, let me assure you: you will laugh out loud. Often. If you're shy, don't read it on the subway. Any afficinado of cheap sarcasm will find plenty to enjoy here. What is also evident, and perhaps less widely noted, is the critical acuity that is also evident throughout. For today's Hollywood (or any day's), perhaps contempt has a clarifying function. His dissection of Oliver ("James Cameron who's read one more book") Stone's misogyny, La Streisand's pompousness and inexplicable popularity, Melanie Griffith's meal- ticket posterior and Mickey Rourke's one-note grunginess are classics. I love Woody Allen, but laughed throughout Queenan's attack on him as well: "In the great films by Renoir, Fellini, Kurosawa, Bergman...[the characters] are not obsessed with getting to the Bleecker Street Cinema's 2:35 showing of the Grand Illusion so they'll still have enough time to screw their neurotic sister-in-law before schlepping uptown to see the 6:45 showing of the Rules of the Game at the Thalia." Ditto the Scorsese section: his paraody of Scorsese/Schrader that opens the piece is a small classic. Queenan, in short, is not a mere hatchet man; his precise, insightful hatchet jobs move this book into the realm of geniune satire