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Confessions of a Puppetmaster
- A Hollywood Memoir of Ghouls, Guts, and Gonzo Filmmaking
- Narrated by: Charles Band, Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
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Publisher's summary
“Confessions of a Puppetmaster is a fast, funny, wild ride through some wild times. Plus, Charlie compares me to Harrison Ford, so I’m all in!” (Bill Maher)
Renowned producer, director, and “B-movie” showman Charles Band takes listeners on a wild romp through Hollywood’s decidedly un-Oscar-worthy underbelly, where mayhem and zombies reign supreme, and cheap thrills and entertainment are king
"This book is a blast. It made me want to stay up all night and watch terrible movies." (Peter Sagal)
"One of the most entertaining film bios ever." (Larry Karaszewski)
"Reads like a Tarantino film written by Hunter S. Thompson." (Booklist)
Zombies, aliens, a little skin, lots of gore - and even more laughs - the cinematic universe of Charles Band is legendary. From the toilet-invading creatures of Ghoulies to the time-travelling bounty hunter in Trancers to the pandemic-crashed Corona Zombies, Band has spent four decades giving B-movie lovers exactly what they love. In Confessions of a Puppetmaster, this congenial master of Grindhouse cinema tells his own story, uncut.
Born into a family of artists, Band spent much of his childhood in Rome, where his father worked in the film industry. Early visits to movie sets sealed young Charlie’s fate. By his 20s, he had plunged into moviemaking himself and found his calling in exploitation movies - quick, low-budget efforts that exploit the zeitgeist and feed people’s desire for clever, low-brow entertainment. His films crossed genres, from vampire flicks to sci-fi to erotic musical adaptations of fairy tales. As he came into his own as a director, he was the first to give starring roles to household names like Demi Moore, Helen Hunt, and Bill Maher.
Off set, Band’s life has been equally epic. Returning to his beloved Italy, he bought both Dino De Laurentiis’ movie studio and a medieval castle. After Romania’s oppressive communist regime fell, he circumvented the US State Department to shoot films in Dracula’s homeland. He made - and then lost - a moviemaking fortune. A visionary, Band was also at the vanguard of the transition to home video and streaming, making and distributing direct-to-video movies long before the major studios caught on.
In this revealing tell-all, Band details the dizzying heights and catastrophic depths of his four decades in showbiz. A candid and engaging glimpse at Hollywood’s wild side, Confessions of a Puppetmaster is as entertaining as the movies that made this consummate schlockmeister famous.
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Who was Jeffrey Epstein? A Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist unearths never-before-reported details in the most comprehensive account yet of the disgraced financier’s life, death, and criminal web, including the role of Ghislaine Maxwell.
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Author is Obsessed with Trump
- By Brandon Castel on 12-22-20
By: Barry Levine
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Truth
- A Brief History of Total Bullsh*t
- By: Tom Phillips
- Narrated by: Tom Phillips
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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We live in a “post-truth” world, we’re told. But was there ever really a golden age of truth-telling? Or have people been lying, fibbing, and just plain bullsh*tting since the beginning of time? Tom Phillips, editor of a leading independent fact-checking organization, deals with this question every day. In Truth, he tells the story of how we humans have spent history lying to each other - and ourselves - about everything from business to politics to plain old geography.
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A fun, informative book
- By GJW on 05-09-23
By: Tom Phillips
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Be My Baby
- A Memoir
- By: Ronnie Spector, Vince Waldron - contributor, Keith Richards - foreword
- Narrated by: Rosie Perez
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Ronnie Spector’s first collaboration with producer Phil Spector, “Be My Baby,” stunned the world and shot girl group the Ronettes to stardom. No one could sing as clearly, as emotively as Ronnie. But her voice was soon drowned out in Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, and lost in Ronnie and Phil’s ensuing romance and marriage. Ronnie had to fight tooth and nail to wrest back control of her life, her music, and her legacy. And while she regained her footing, Ronnie found herself recording with Stevie Van Zandt, partying with David Bowie, and touring with Bruce Springsteen.
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Be My Baby
- By Ray Robles on 06-08-22
By: Ronnie Spector, and others
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Unbeaten
- By: Mike Stanton
- Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling author of The Prince of Providence comes a revelatory biography of Rocky Marciano, the greatest heavyweight champion of all time.The son of poor Italian immigrants, with short arms and stubby legs, Rocky Marciano accomplished a feat that eluded legendary heavyweight champions like Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Muhammad Ali, and Mike Tyson: He never lost a professional fight. His record was a perfect 49-0.
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Great book, terrible accents in the reading
- By Ishmael Angaluuk Hope on 11-02-21
By: Mike Stanton
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Love, Kurt
- The Vonnegut Love Letters, 1941-1945
- By: Kurt Vonnegut, Edith Vonnegut - editor
- Narrated by: Lucas Hedges, Edith Vonnegut
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Kurt Vonnegut’s eldest daughter, Edith, was cleaning out her mother’s attic when she stumbled upon a dusty, aged box. Inside, she discovered an unexpected treasure: more than 200 love letters written by Kurt to Jane, spanning the early years of their relationship.
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A wonderful timeline of love letters
- By Jeremiah on 03-23-23
By: Kurt Vonnegut, and others
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Modern Family
- The Untold Oral History of One of Television's Groundbreaking Sitcoms
- By: Marc Freeman
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley, Christopher Lloyd, Frankie Corzo, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Since premiering in 2009, the groundbreaking television sitcom Modern Family has garnered tens of millions of devoted fans, earning 75 Emmy nominations and 22 Emmy Awards, including five in a row for Outstanding Comedy Series (one of only two sitcoms to ever achieve that feat). Professors have written about it. Psychologists have lectured on it. Leading publications, such as The New York Times and Washington Post, have explained their love for it.
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Overall pretty good and interesting
- By David Dyer on 08-17-20
By: Marc Freeman
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Kill Chain
- The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins
- By: Andrew Cockburn
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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This essential, pause-resister narrative on the history of drone warfare by the acclaimed author of Rumsfeld explores how this practice emerged, who made it happen, and the real consequences of targeted killing.
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Introduction
- By Batman on 03-24-15
By: Andrew Cockburn
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Eye of the Beholder
- The Almost Perfect Murder of Anchorwoman Diane Newton King
- By: Lowell Cauffiel
- Narrated by: Chris Abernathy
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Battle Creek, Michigan, is famous as the birthplace of breakfast cereal, and the nearby suburb of Marshall is as wholesome as shredded wheat. Well-known for its colorful Victorian mansions, this stately slice of 19th-century Americana became infamous on a frigid night in February of 1991. Newscaster Diane Newton King was stepping out of her car, her children strapped into the backseat, when a sniper's bullet cut her down.
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Thoroughly Researched Book but UNNECESSARILY WORDY
- By Mary Burnight on 01-07-22
By: Lowell Cauffiel
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The War Magician
- Based on an Extraordinary True Story
- By: David Fisher
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 15 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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When England went to war against Hitler in 1939, it mobilized its entire military and industrial resources. But there was no place in that vast army for legendary stage magician Jasper Maskelyne, whose family was renowned for creating modern theatrical illusions. Maskelyne was determined to fight the Nazis using his only weapon: he intended to apply the techniques of popular magic to the battlefield. Initially ignored and ridiculed by the staid military leadership, he eventually cajoled his way into the Camouflage Corps.
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Exceptional Story Perfectly Narrated
- By oseedee on 05-11-23
By: David Fisher
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A Brotherhood Betrayed
- The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc.
- By: Michael Cannell
- Narrated by: Gary Galone
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was set to begin that threatened to end the careers and lives of New York’s most brutal mob kingpins. The lead witness, Abe Reles, had been a trusted executioner for Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of a coast-to-coast mob network known as the Syndicate. But the man responsible for coolly silencing hundreds of informants was about to become the most talkative snitch of all. In exchange for police protection, Reles was prepared to rat out his murderous friends, from Albert Anastasia to Bugsy Siegel....
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History from the bottom up
- By Mark on 12-12-21
By: Michael Cannell
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The Nolan Variations
- The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan
- By: Tom Shone
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A rare, intimate portrait of Christopher Nolan with the full cooperation of Nolan himself who opened up more fully than ever before in his talks with Tom Shone. In chapters structured by themes and motifs ("Time"; "Chaos"), Shone writes of Nolan's thoughts on movies, on plots; on time, identity, perception, chaos, daydreams. Here is Nolan on the evolution of his pictures, and the writers, artists, directors, and thinkers who have inspired and informed his films.
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Extremely informative but …
- By GalwayK on 07-17-23
By: Tom Shone
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North Korea Undercover
- Inside the World's Most Secret State
- By: John Sweeney
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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North Korea is like no other tyranny on Earth. Its citizens are told their home is the greatest nation in the world, and Big Brother is always watching. It is Orwell's 1984 made reality. Huge factories with no staff or electricity, hospitals with no patients, uniformed child soldiers, and the world-famous and eerily empty DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone, where North Korea ends and South Korea begins - are all framed by a relentless flow of regime propaganda from omnipresent loudspeakers. Free speech is an illusion: one word out of line, and the gulag awaits.
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Highly listenable, humorous and enlightening
- By Kevin Stokes on 09-09-15
By: John Sweeney
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Nöthin' but a Good Time
- The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion
- By: Tom Beaujour, Richard Bienstock
- Narrated by: Amy McFadden, Gary Furlong, Richard Bienstock, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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From the do-or-die early days of self-financed recordings and D.I.Y. concert productions that were as flashy as they were foolhardy, to the multi-platinum, MTV-powered glory years of stadium-shaking anthems and chart-topping power ballads, to the ultimate crash when grunge bands like Nirvana forever altered the entire climate of the business, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock's Nothin' But a Good Time captures the energy and excess of the hair metal years in the words of the musicians and industry insiders who lived it.
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Nothin but a Good Time/Yes it Was
- By Anonymous User on 04-06-21
By: Tom Beaujour, and others
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In the Shadow of the Valley
- A Memoir
- By: Bobi Conn
- Narrated by: Bobi Conn
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Bobi Conn was raised in a remote Kentucky holler in 1980s Appalachia. She remembers her tin-roofed house tucked away in a vast forest paradise; the sparkling creeks, with their frogs and crawdads; the sweet blackberries growing along the road to her granny’s; and her abusive father. An elegiac account of survival despite being born poor, female, and cloistered, Bobi’s testament is one of hope for all vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls caught in the cycle of poverty and abuse.
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Hard Pass
- By Kathryn Liggett on 06-13-20
By: Bobi Conn
What listeners say about Confessions of a Puppetmaster
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- CPI
- 11-29-21
Just like a Fullmoon movie, A Crazy Good Time
As a fan of Fullmoon movies growing up as a kid, Its amazing to hear how these classic films was all created lol.
2 things I can find about this book I felt could've been improved.... The lack of talking about Puppet Master... Yes he mentions it but thats it, I feel that's his biggest franchise and he treats it like some basterd red headed step child. That alone could've been another chapter or so.....
and the other thing is Charles Band starts off reading the book and it gets you excited for a great time..... And that's it... His story is read by someone else... BUMMER.
BUUUUUUT Besides that, The man owned A Castle, A FREAKING CASTLE 🏰....
Keep doing what you do Mr Band, Love the cheese then, Still loving the cheese now.
Thanks....
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- Stephen W Strout
- 01-18-22
Great memoir from an amazingly creative guy!
it's amazing what this guy was involved with, from the ups and downs of his career to the actual movie properties he developed! amazing!
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- Jordan
- 11-18-23
Deeply revealing, yet also hilarious!
Adam Felber and Charles band do an excellent job of telling Charles' crazy life story in a moving, informative, and funny way. Charles holds almost nothing back, refusing to gloss over the bad, wall also highlighting the good in the best way possible. Fantastic!
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- Alejandro G
- 04-08-24
Funny and insightfull
I totally recommend this audiobook! It was funny and quite easy to hear! I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.
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- H. D. Martinez
- 06-02-23
Funny, fascinating and entertaining as hell!
Band takes us through his crazy, inspiring and tragic journey in becoming one of the top B movie horror and sci fi mavericks in hollywood. Worthy of mention is Sean Patrick's performance as he captures the nuances and aliveness of the peculiar characters Band comes across right down to hilarious the Brooklyn accents.
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1 person found this helpful
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- CLSLUGGER
- 07-30-22
Captivating
Charles Band is truly a captivating, infectious personality who's passion for film making makes every minute listened to, every page turned, worth it.
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- Rick
- 12-11-21
What an interesting life!
II didn't know anything about Charlie Band before I read the book. I was surprised to find out that I had seen some of his movies over the years. He has had a pretty amazing career. I have a feeling his life story would make a great movie also. Adam Felber did a good job piecing together a life that is all over the map.
I was a little confused when the narrator switched from Charlie to Sean Patrick Hopkins and then back to Charlie. Not a big issue but worth mentioning.
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- keyton welden
- 11-19-21
worth the wait
loved this so glad to have this in my collection Charles band is a b movie icon and hearing his life story was truly inspiring
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- Jerry
- 08-21-23
Great story and narration
I grew up on Charles Band movies so this memoir was very enjoyable. And the narration is fantastic.
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- Susie Felber
- 11-27-21
Fabulous showbiz memoir about a unique character
Really enjoyed the story of a guy who made brilliant moves and stupid ones in equal amounts. Totally enjoyed the ride from the 70’s to today dealing with indie exploitation movies and lots of his clever side hustles. Funny and very breezy telling. I’m not familiar with the movies but now I want to see some. His ability to produce so many properties is stunning.
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