Book Details
| Title: | Made Men | |
| Author: | Glenn Kenny | |
| Times Read: | 1 | |
| Last Read: | 06.10.22 |
Other Books Read By This Author (0)
| Date Read | Note |
| 06.10.22 | I mostly know Glenn Kenny from his writing for old beloved Premiere magazine, where I believe he was a critic and editor or whatever. But I also remember him doing commentary tracks for the Fox Lorber DVD releases of Francois Truffaut's 400 Blows and Jules et Jim, which I remember being really fantastic. Well researched, full of interesting tidbits (I believe Truffaut's biography had just come out which it was clear he had read), and overall a great educational interesting listen (especially when compared to stuff like Schwarzenegger on Total Recall). So I like the guy. Unfortunately, much of this book feels like a stretch to me. I suppose you could say he was aiming for the exhaustive resource on the movie Goodfellas, but it kind of comes off as a special issue of Premiere magazine dedicated to Goodfellas. Now, what do I mean by that? Well the structure of the book starts off with a few standard chapters on pre-production. Typically Hollywood stuff: who bought the rights to the book, how did De Niro get cast, etc. But then what feels like half the book is a scene-by-scene account of the final film with informational tidbits strewn throughout. It's a textual equivalent to an audio commentary. Then the final chapters break down into special sidebars if you will, with a chapter talking about the songs used with varying degrees of interesting backstory for each, then a chapter about diverging narratives with the interview subjects (bread and butter for an oral history but here it comes off as, like, full disclosure to keep everyone happy), then it ends with a chapter on the author's sit-down Scorsese interview. It should all come together to feel like a single work but instead the lack of cohesion made it feel (to me) like a collection of articles around the same subject. Perhaps that's a bit unfair, but it was my candid reaction. Large sections of reading the book felt a little like a slog (the commentary chapter is huge! and the songs chapter felt too dry to me, who just read 3 books in a row about music scenes). Again this might be unfair, but I really felt like a book was the wrong format for this. If the interviews were filmed, this could've been an absolutely amazing blu-ray release (I know I know, fantasy land with one guy producing an official Warner Brothers release), but it often times felt clunky to read through. That said, it did make me want to watch the movie again, as well as finally sit down and see New York, New York. And I feel like I do know a lot about the film now. And there's more meat than a fluffy oral history like the Game of Thrones book, so i didn't think it was complete trash or anything like that. And for the record, my standing favorite oral history movie book is (for a single movie) the recent Dazed and Confused book or (for multiple movies/directors) Who the Devil Made It by Peter Bogdanovich, and my favorite non-oral-history single-film making-of book is the Big Lebowski book by the guy who did the storyboards. Those are my high-water marks. |
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