
Desperately Seeking Something
A Memoir About Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls
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Narrated by:
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Jaime Lamchick
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By:
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Susan Seidelman
About this listen
This program includes the song "Loveless Love" from The Feelies album Crazy Rhythms (1980). It appears courtesy of Bar/None Records.
“Director Susan Seidelman's memoir is enhanced by narrator Jaime Lamchick's lively cadence and bright intonation.”—AudioFile
The funny and insightful first-person story of this trailblazing movie director of the 80s and 90s whose fearless punk drama, Smithereens, became the first American indie film to compete at Cannes, and smash-hit Desperately Seeking Susan led to a four-decade career in film.
Starting out in the mid-70s, a time when few women were directing movies, Susan was determined to become a filmmaker. She longed to tell stories about the unrepresented characters she wanted to see on screen: unconventional women in unusual circumstances, needing to express themselves and maintain their autonomy. Her genre-blending films reflect a passion for classic Hollywood storytelling, mixed with a playful New Wave spirit, informed by her years living in downtown NYC.
Seidelman continued to shape American pop culture well into the 90s, directing the pilot of the iconic TV series Sex And The City, focusing her sharp lens on the changing place of women in American society, and helping to fundamentally reshape our self-image in ways that are still felt today.
Raised in the safe cocoon of 1960s suburbia, Susan Seidelman wasn’t a misfit, an oddball, or an outlier. She was a “good-girl” with a little bit of “bad” hidden inside. A restless teenager, she dreamed of escape and reinvention, a theme that would play out in her films as well as in her own life. Because she loved stories, a high school guidance counselor suggested she become a librarian, but she had her sights set further afield.
In 1973, she left the Philly suburbs, enrolled at NYU’s burgeoning graduate film school, and moved to NYC’s Lower East Side. There, she found herself in the right place at the right time. New York City was falling apart, but out of that chaos came a burst of creative energy whose effects are still felt in American pop culture today. Downtown became a vibrant playground where film, music, performance art, and graffiti cross-pollinated and where Seidelman chronicled the lives of the colorful misfits, oddballs, dreamers and schemers she met there.
It’s all in DESPERATELY SEEKING SOMETHING. Seidelman not only has a keen perspective on the times she’s lived through—from her Twiggy-obsessed girlhood through the Women’s Lib movement of the early 70s, the punk scene of the late 70s, Madonna-mania of the 80s, to the dot-com “greed is good” 90s, and beyond—she tells great stories.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.
©2024 Susan Seidelman (P)2024 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Interwoven with fascinating behind-the-scenes detail, Seidelman vividly traces the evolution of her artistic vision, combining the strong, feisty heroines of classic screwball comedies with the playful, postmodern spirit of New Wave film. It’s an enthralling look at a trailblazing filmmaker’s perseverance and vision."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Seidelman offers a revealing peek into her four-decade career in Hollywood. The author delivers an unguarded portrait of her life, telling it her way. Seidelman’s films have always reflected her hopes for a more just society and a world that allows women to tell their stories; her book also demonstrates those themes."—Kirkus
"Susan Seidelman has directed and created some of the most iconic and audacious characters of our time—her new book is a dazzling encapsulation of them and of her life’s work. Part time capsule and part memoir—her gritty “I’ll show you” determination will inspire any woman who wants to make her mark on the world. 'Desperately Seeking Something' is a super-relatable, unputdownable tour de force. I just love this book!"—Marisa Acocella, New York Times bestselling author of CANCER VIXEN
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Overall
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A remarkably candid biography of the remarkably candid - and brilliant - Carrie Fisher. Sourced by friends, colleagues, and witnesses to all stages of Fisher’s life, Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge is an empathic and even-handed portrayal of a woman who - as Princess Leia, but mostly as herself - was a feminist heroine, one who died at a time when we need her blazing, healing honesty more than ever.
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Need a different narrator or director?
- By Brad on 12-24-19
By: Sheila Weller
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Zero Gravity
- By: Woody Allen
- Narrated by: Woody Allen
- Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Zero Gravity is the fifth collection of comic pieces by Woody Allen, a hilarious prose stylist whose enduring appeal has been savored since his classics Getting Even, Without Feathers, Side Effects, and Mere Anarchy. This new work combines pieces that have appeared in The New Yorker along with 11 written exclusively for this book, each a comic inspiration.
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Where’s the rest of the book?
- By Brett Dewing on 12-26-22
By: Woody Allen
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The Path to Paradise
- A Francis Ford Coppola Story
- By: Sam Wasson
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Francis Ford Coppola is one of the great American dreamers, and his most magnificent dream is American Zoetrope, the production company he founded in San Francisco years before his gargantuan success, when he was only thirty. Through Zoetrope’s experimental, communal utopia, Coppola attempted to reimagine the entire pursuit of moviemaking. Now, more than fifty years later, despite myriad setbacks, the visionary filmmaker’s dream persists, most notably in the production of his decades-in-the-making film and the culmination of his utopian ideals, Megalopolis.
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Narrator was awful
- By Cyrus Nowrasteh on 12-17-23
By: Sam Wasson
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Do Something
- Coming of Age Amid the Glitter and Doom of '70s New York
- By: Guy Trebay
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in the Bronx, Guy Trebay was raised in an atmosphere of privilege on Long Island’s North Shore after his entrepreneurial father struck business gold with Hawaiian Surf, a wildly successful cologne company that capitalized on the optimism of the 1960s as marketed to “an adventurous new breed of men.’’ But behind the facade of material prosperity lay the emotional disarray of a household dominated by a charismatic, con artist father, a glamorous yet lost and careless mother, a family haunted by tragedy.
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Heartache and heartbreak and the will to survive.
- By Polly B. on 07-05-24
By: Guy Trebay
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Yes: The Tormato Story
- By: Kevin Mulryne
- Narrated by: Kevin Mulryne
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The music of Yes indelibly shaped the original sound of progressive rock. But the true tale of this landmark band goes well beyond headline-making albums like Fragile and Close to the Edge. In this book, Kevin Mulryne tells the absorbing story of the final Yes album of the 1970s, Tormato, uncovering myriad fascinating twists and turns for the first time.
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A fascinating read.
- By Preston M. Frazier on 10-20-23
By: Kevin Mulryne
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Lust & Wonder
- A Memoir
- By: Augusten Burroughs
- Narrated by: Augusten Burroughs
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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From the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author comes an intimate look at the driving forces in one man’s life. With Augusten's unique and singular observations and his own unabashed way of detailing both the horrific and the humorous, Lust and Wonder is a hilariously frank audiobook memoir that his legions of fans have been waiting for. His story began in Running with Scissors, endured through Dry, and continues with this memoir, the capstone to the life of Augusten Burroughs.
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Relentlessly Tedious
- By River Holmes-miller on 03-31-16
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Candy Darling
- Dreamer, Icon, Superstar
- By: Cynthia Carr
- Narrated by: Justin Vivian Bond
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up on Long Island, lonely and quiet and queer, she was enchanted by Hollywood starlets like Kim Novak. She found her turn in New York’s early Off-Off-Broadway theater scene, in Warhol’s films Flesh and Women in Revolt, and at the famed nightclub Max's Kansas City. She inspired songs by Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones. She became friends with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, borrowed a dress from Lauren Hutton, posed for Richard Avedon, and performed alongside Tennessee Williams in his own play.
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Thee candy darling’s bibile
- By Anile on 04-15-24
By: Cynthia Carr
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Deliberate Cruelty
- Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century
- By: Roseanne Montillo
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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When Ann Woodward shot her husband, banking heir Billy Woodward, in the middle of the night in 1955, her life changed forever. Though she claimed she thought he was a prowler, few believed the woman who had risen from charismatic showgirl to popular socialite. Everyone had something to say about the scorching scandal afflicting one of the most rich and famous families of New York City, but no one was more obsessed with the tale than Truman Capote.
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An interesting true crime story buried in here
- By Quinn on 11-11-22
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Bucky F*cking Dent
- A Novel
- By: David Duchovny
- Narrated by: David Duchovny
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Ted Fullilove, aka Mr. Peanut, is not like other Ivy League grads. He shares an apartment with Goldberg, his beloved battery-operated fish, sleeps on a bed littered with yellow legal pads penned with what he hopes will be the next great American novel, and spends the waning malaise-filled days of the Carter administration at Yankee Stadium, waxing poetic while slinging peanuts to pay the rent.
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David Fucking Duchovny
- By Kelly W. on 05-04-16
By: David Duchovny
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We All Shine On
- John, Yoko, and Me
- By: Elliot Mintz
- Narrated by: Elliot Mintz
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1972, Elliot Mintz installed a red light in his bedroom in Laurel Canyon. When it started flashing, it meant that either John Lennon or Yoko Ono—or sometimes both—were calling him. Which they did almost every day for nearly ten years, engaging Mintz in hours-long late-night phone conversations that all but consumed him for the better part of a decade. In We All Shine On, Mintz—a former radio and television host in Los Angeles—recounts the story of how their unlikely friendship began and where it led him over the years.
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Give it an hour and you will be hooked.
- By Christianna on 11-21-24
By: Elliot Mintz
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Burning Boy
- The Life and Work of Stephen Crane
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 35 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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With Burning Boy, celebrated novelist Paul Auster tells the extraordinary story of Stephen Crane, best known as the author of The Red Badge of Courage, who transformed American literature through an avalanche of original short stories, novellas, poems, journalism, and war reportage before his life was cut short by tuberculosis at age 28.
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My New Go To - Paul Auster.
- By James Bernard Kane on 01-17-23
By: Paul Auster
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New York Nico's Guide to NYC
- By: New York Nico
- Narrated by: New York Nico
- Length: 4 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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What makes New York City the greatest city in the world? As one of the foremost chroniclers of New York’s local legends and urban glory, New York Nico has thoughts. Nico gets asked a lot of questions about his hometown. Where’s the best slice, pastrami sandwich, cup of coffee, vintage store, or bookshop? In this must-have city guide, New York Nico takes readers on an epic tour of his 100 can’t-miss NYC spots, including food, shopping, and so much more.
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good variety of spots
- By M. Rogers on 12-01-24
By: New York Nico
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Act One
- An Autobiography
- By: Moss Hart
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 17 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Moss Hart's Act One, which Lincoln Center Theater presented in 2014 as a play written and directed by James Lapine, is one of the greatest American memoirs - a glorious memorial to a bygone age filled with all the wonder, drama, and heartbreak that surrounded Broadway in the early 20th century.
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Good but not great
- By c on 07-08-17
By: Moss Hart
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Welcome to Pawnee
- Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation
- By: Jim O'Heir
- Narrated by: Jim O'Heir, George Newbern, Eva Kaminsky, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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For seven seasons, Leslie Knope and the Parks and Recreation gang charmed millions of viewers with their quirky antics and unwavering positivity. The sitcom continues to be a fan-favorite for streaming services today, nearly a decade after its finale. Now for the first time, Jim O’Heir, who played the lovable Jerry (or, well, Garry/Larry/Terry/Barry, depending on the episode), invites listeners back to Pawnee for an exclusive look behind the scenes.
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Misleading
- By Amazon Customer on 02-27-25
By: Jim O'Heir
An Inspiring Listen
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